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"Evolution (Biology) Fiction."
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Victorian science in context
Victorians were fascinated by the flood of strange new worlds that science was opening to them. Exotic plants and animals poured into London from all corners of the Empire, while revolutionary theories such as the radical idea that humans might be descended from apes drew crowds to heated debates. Men and women of all social classes avidly collected scientific specimens for display in their homes and devoured literature about science and its practitioners. Victorian Science in Context captures the essence of this fascination, charting the many ways in which science influenced and was influenced by the larger Victorian culture. Contributions from leading scholars in history, literature, and the history of science explore questions such as: What did science mean to the Victorians? For whom was Victorian science written? What ideological messages did it convey? The contributors show how practical concerns interacted with contextual issues to mold Victorian science—which in turn shaped much of the relationship between modern science and culture.
eBook
In ascension
Leigh grew up in Rotterdam, drawn to the waterfront as a refuge from her unhappy home life and volatile father. Enchanted by the marine world of her childhood, she excels in postgraduate research on ancient algae. When an unfathomable vent appears in the mid-Atlantic floor, Leigh joins the investigating team; what she finds there will change her life forever. Around the same time, a trio of engineers, unknown to each other, make a seismic breakthrough in rocket propulsion, announcing an almost limitless era of space exploration. Billions of dollars is poured into projects, and Leigh's classified research on the ocean vent sees her recruited to develop an experimental food source for off-world travel. From her base in the Mojave desert, she's drawn further into the space agency's work, where she learns of a series of anomalies suggesting a beacon sent from the far side of the solar system.
Book
Literary Darwinism
First published in 2004. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.
Joseph Carroll is Professor of English at the University of Missouri-St. Louis. He has published books on Matthew Arnold and Wallace Stevens. In Evolution and Literary Theory (1995) and in his subsequent writing, he has spearheaded the movement to integrate literary study with Darwinian psychology.
eBook
Refugia
Relic species extinct everywhere else on the planet thrive on a
remote archipelago. Evolution requires isolation, and these islands
offer the perfect environment for genetic variation to take place,
fostering new and unique forms of flora and fauna. Evolutionary
biologists Emily and Roland have come on an extended field
expedition to this secluded world, eager to expose its unique
biosphere.
As they work to gather a large dataset of dead specimens for
study and description, Emily and Roland experience growing shifts
in their perception, in their bodies, and even in the flow of
linear time. The environment they have come to quantify acts upon
them, the species they collect observe and comment upon them, and
the controlled lens of science cannot save them. Succumbing to the
dynamic power of isolation, they find themselves irrevocably
changed.
A poetic novel told through field notes, letters, and scientific
data, Refugia is a story of discovery and transformation
that shows the hubris inherent in the idea that humans live both
outside, and at the center of, the natural world. This is a book
that reveals science in all its imperfect beauty, crossing the line
between observer and observed, scientist and subject, between what
is known and what is unknowable.
eBook
Quantifying and explaining the rise of fiction
We present a comprehensive analysis of the rise of fictions across human narratives, using large-scale datasets that collectively span over 65,000 works across various media (movies, literary works), cultures (over 30 countries, Western and non-Western), and time periods (2000 BCE to 2020 CE). We measured fictiveness – defined as the degree of departure from reality – across three narrative dimensions: protagonists, events, and settings. We used automatic annotations from large language models (LLMs) to systematically score fictiveness and ensured the robustness and validity of our measure, specifically by demonstrating predictable variations in fictiveness across different genres, in all media. Statistical analyses of the changes in fictiveness over time revealed a steady increase, culminating in the 20th and 21st centuries, across all narrative forms. Remarkably, this trend is also evident in our data spanning ancient times: fictiveness increased gradually in narratives dating back as far as 2000 BCE, with notable peaks of fictiveness during affluent periods such as the heights of the Roman Empire, the Tang Dynasty, and the European Renaissance. We explore potential psychological explanations for the rise in fictiveness, including changing audience preferences driven by ecological and social changes.
Journal Article
Evolution, Two Darwins, and the Gestalt Imagining of Edward Lear
Edward Lear was in the vanguard of cultural assimilation of evolutionary theory. In what amounts to a gestalt relationship, some of his published \"nonsense\" figures against, and largely derives its meaning from, innovation in the natural sciences. Certain of his works, some not previously interpreted, are specific in their engagement with evolutionists, including Erasmus and Charles Darwin, Étienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, and Robert Grant. Before and after the appearance of On the Origin of Species (1859), Lear backs one side against another in public debates sparked by evolutionary theory. His implicit engagement with the new biology becomes evident in close attention to the drawings, which are essential components of Lear's innovative hybridization of visual and literary artforms.
Journal Article
H. P. Lovecraft, Photography, and the Transhumanist Imagination
This essay explores photography’s relationship to the transhumanist imaginary of American weird fiction writer H. P. Lovecraft; transhumanism refers to the belief that humans can evolve through technological advancements. I argue that Lovecraft’s seemingly naïve conception of photography as unerringly “objective” actually reflects his understanding of photography as a transhuman technology that can transform human consciousness. However, Lovecraft’s transhumanist vision is plagued by the recognition that the endpoint of transhumanist evolution is the annihilation of the individual body and the specific desires on which one’s sense of self is grounded—a vision Lovecraft is attracted to but finally cannot embrace.
Journal Article
On the Origin of Stories
Brian Boyd explains why we tell stories and how our minds are shaped to understand them. After considering art as adaptation, Boyd examines Homer's Odyssey and Dr. Seuss's Horton Hears a Who! demonstrating how an evolutionary lens can offer new understanding and appreciation of specific works. Published for the bicentenary of Darwin's birth and the 150th anniversary of the publication of Origin of Species, Boyd's study embraces a Darwinian view of human nature and art, and offers a credo for a new humanism.
eBook
The Protoplasmic Imagination: Ernst Haeckel and H. P. Lovecraft
This essay traces an imaginative history of protoplasm in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It is a material that still exists today, though, with the advent of DNA and cellular biology, in a somewhat different form. For the biologist Ernst Haeckel (1834–1919) and the short story writer H. P. Lovecraft (1890–1937), protoplasm was the key to the specific nature of evolved life. Not only was it the material that, in the living organism, was given shape, but it was also the place where the hereditary information of what shape to give was passed on from one generation to the next, making evolution possible in the first place. For Haeckel, it was the missing piece in the puzzle that Darwin had almost completed, and with it the whole mystery and wonder of life was within explanatory reach. For Lovecraft, on the other hand, it was the very essence of the shapeless, primitive, and fundamentally menacing quality of life that civilization had to keep at bay. Though protoplasm plays a very different role in modern science than it did then, its imaginative legacy lives on in a whole range of fiction genres nowadays, and Haeckel's and Lovecraft's both very different and very similar conceptions provide a starting point for exploring a conception of biological life that is far from dead.
Journal Article