Darwin's influence on Mathematics, 150 years later.

I came across an article recently at http://bigthink.com/ideas/23103 titled "Can Evolution Be As Certain as 2+2?" The article introduces Gregory Chaitin, who is currently developing a concept called 'metabiology. With the recent 150^th anniversary of The Origins of Species in 2009, Chaitin’s idea may perhaps infuse some new momentum in the dissemination of understanding evolutionary theory. In light of the continued rejection of evolutionary theory within our society today, this is surely an exciting notion. I was taken aback when we read the Scopes Trial, realizing how similar ignorance prevails within our society today. Though no proof can sway the most stubborn of dissenters, Chaitin’s work attempts to "represent mathematically the fundamental biological principles of evolution in such a manner that we can prove that evolution must take place." Of course, given evolution’s nature, the mathematical proofs will present the archetypal behavior of a Platonic ideal of evolution, rather than the messy reality that accompanies the random behavior of natural selection. However, as Chaitlin quotes Picasso, “Theories are lies that help us to see the truth,” and perhaps a mathematic representation will bare new insights into the realities of our evolutionary nature and open new doors for public acceptance of evolutionary theory.

Jacques' Questionable Love in Zola

            An aspect of Emile Zola’s La Bete Humaine that was not closely considered in class is Jacques reaction when Severine admits to him her past with Grandmorin.  She fears the knowledge will cause Jacques to fall out of love with her; however, he responds calmly.  “‘Not going to love you any more?  Me!  Why?  I couldn’t care less about your past.  It isn’t my business…You are Roubaud’s wife, but you might just as well have been someone else’s,’” Jacques responds to Severine’s confession, quite callously, indicating his relationship with Severine has more to do with need than want.  “So you were the mistress of that old chap!  Seems funny, somehow,” Jacques continues.  Roubaud’s jealousy seems the consequence of feelings of inadequacy whilst Jacques’ reaction reveals his noncommittal attitude toward Severine that most likely originates from his violent and animal response to the female.   While Roubaud adores and idolizes his wife and seems truly in love with her, Jacques’ desires for Severine are more circumstantial when he realizes that she is the only woman around whom he can suppress the instinctual, murderous response.  Because he believes her guilty of Grandmorin’s death, his natural instincts to kill can be restrained; however, once Severine reveals Roubaud to be the murderer and she to be only his required accomplice, Jacques’ strength dissipates, and he finally murders Severine. 

            The situation causes one to wonder what Zola is implying about the power the human mind can have over impulse or about the inevitability of impulse or about the psychology of impulse.  Because Zola was a naturalist, it would be most appropriate to conclude that his view is pessimistic about humans’ ability to control themselves, as the naturalists believed that environment and heredity determined character.  

Kilgore Trout on the 'Selfish Gene'

In Galapagos, Leon Trout stubbornly refuses to join his father, Kilgore, in the blue tunnel of the Afterlife in an attempt to satisfy his curiosity about humanity. As Kilgore explained to Leon that there was nothing left for him to find other than more proof of humanity's imminent peril, I was reminded of the 'Selfish Gene' discussed in Matt Ridley's The Origins of Virtue. The concept was developed by George Williams and William Hamilton who noted the inevitable certainty that “genes which cause behavior that enhances the survival of such genes must thrive at the expense of genes that do not” (Norton 520). This led to a reevaluation of the observed selfless cooperation in ant colonies, and what once seemed altruistic proved to be an illusion, as “each worker ant was striving for genetic eternity through its brothers and sisters.” Basically, in the ant colonies, individual advancement is traded in for cooperative progress with the same “gene-selfishness as any human elbowing aside his rivals on the way up the corporate ladder.” Kilgore laid out the argument that our big brains had botched all hope for humanity’s future genetic prosperity with citizens and leaders who are more concerned with their self-esteem than genetic longevity. Through the big brain’s creation of civilization that include class systems, which lead to status competition between individuals, Kilgore seems to argue that the products of our insecurities, in part, have led to imminent self-destruction. Kilgore adds we are “proud as punch” of certain inventions, like weapons, that have been contradictorily created to protect us with greater potential to destroy us (Vonnegut 278). I found it hard to disagree with Kilgore on many fronts, but his character attempts to simply foil Leon’s curious optimism, rather than provide a pragmatic prediction of humanity’s future destruction. I know plenty of humans that do not find pride in the more downward bent creations accredited to our big brains, who do understand, as Riddley writes, that “Our minds have been built by selfish genes, but they have been built to be social, trustworthy, and cooperative” (Norton 521). Our big brains are, in part, a product of our sociability. So perhaps humanity's big-brained curiosity may navigate towards a greater understanding and awareness of our ‘Selfish Genes,’ that trades in individual gain and collective loss for individual sustainment alongside collective sustainment. Though, if Leon didn't see much improvement over a million years, we might not want to necessarily hold our breath for improvement in our lifetime... but I'll cross my fingers.

Sympathy and Fitness in McTeague

            In his Descent of Man, Charles Darwin discusses the morality of man in his discussion of how man differs from the lower beings.  “Sympathy, though gained as an instinct, is also much strengthened by exercise or habit,” he writes.  In a significant way does this discussion relate to the relationship between McTeague and Trina in Norris’ McTeague.  Because McTeague seems incapable of sympathizing (as demonstrated by his initiation of a relationship with Trina despite his friendship with Marcus – for McTeague does realize Marcus’ attachment to Trina), his relationship with Trina cannot succeed. Darwin writes:

The moral nature of man has reached its present standard…especially from his sympathies having been rendered more tender and widely diffused through the effects of habit, example, instruction, and reflection…the first foundation or origin of the moral sense lies in the social instincts, including sympathy; and these instincts no doubt were primarily gained, as in the case of the lower animals, through natural selection…

Here, Darwin suggests that such moral instincts were developed as a way to control or to mediate human interaction and are passed from parent to child (Darwin).  Through this statement, then, McTeague’s general solitude at the beginning of McTeague can be understood.  McTeague is able to maintain his dental occupation; however, he has few close human relationships – even his friendship with Marcus cannot be described as intimate.  Consequently, when Trina first appears on his dental chair and McTeague puts her to sleep, he cannot resist the temptation to kiss her.   “No, by god!  No, by god!” he cries, knowing that his impulse is wrong – not because he knows kissing her to be an unsympathetic move but because “Dimly he seemed to realize that should he yield now, he would never be able to care for Trina again.  She would never be the same to him, never so radiant, so sweet, so adorable; her charm for him would vanish in an instant” (Norris 24).  McTeague is not one of the fittest of his species, but more fit for the animal world.  Thus, even if Trina had been a sympathetic character herself – for she ultimately submits to vice and to McTeague’s sensual advances – the McTeague’s marriage would probably not have been successful (in the natural sense, in that they would have reproduced).  

Carson, Norris, Vonnegut - Capabilities of the Big Brain

In his essay “The Responsibilities of the Novelist,” Frank Norris starts a conversation about “the best vehicle of expression” each century offers to contemporary analysts.  From this idea, I developed my reasoning against the usefulness of Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring that I voiced in class.  Norris writes in his 19^th century voice:

To-day is the day of the novel.  In no other way and by no other vehicle is contemporaneous life so adequately expressed; and the critics of the twenty-second century, reviewing our times, striving to reconstruct our civilization, will look not to the painters, not to the architects nor dramatists, but to the novelists to find our idiosyncrasy…There is no doubt that the novel will in time “go out” of popular favor as irrevocably as the long poem has gone, and for the reason that it is no longer the right mode of expression (Norris). 

After limited research, I found that Silent Spring appeared in the New York Times serially, and in this context, Carson’s words surely may have found their relevancy.  However, I do believe that the novel has “gone out” of favor as the most effective mode in which the people communicate their society’s injustices.  For this reason, the novel’s images were more effective in recalling the way in which humans beget the earth’s sickness than, perhaps, Carson’s benign and poetic passages.  Obviously, though, Carson’s words are often powerful, as in her final sentence:  “It is our alarming misfortune that so primitive a science has armed itself with the most modern and terrible weapons, and that in turning them against the insects it has also turned them against the earth” (Carson 197).  Such words, though, need to find another voice and another audience – one that will attempt reform. 

            Interestingly, though, Carson emphasizes that the government works secretly against the well being of the individual as well as against the environment; thus, she raises the question of how the individual can disturb and reform this destruction cycle.  Though we discussed in class that Carson’s focus is not upon a way in which humans can change the predicament, Carson impels her reader to want to change in her chapter “The Human Price” by scaring him with frightening facts and suggesting organic solutions.  She emphasizes, though, that a man’s belief that he has the power to affect nature – human, animal, environmental – created the problem in the first place.  In this way, Carson communicates a wish that humans would not try to protect themselves from nature, for though nature can overcome our poisons, we cannot.  Humans merely work against themselves in performing their “solutions” – recalling Vonnegut’s idea of the disadvantageous “big brain”.  Are humans, then, incapable of imagining real, grand solutions.  

Vonnegut's Speeches and Notes

My project, after some initial investigation, focuses on Vonnegut’s collection of notes for speeches in 1990. This folder contained a mixture of typewritten outlines for speeches and hand-written notes. 3 pages of this folder were typed outlines of speeches, just the initial stages in Vonnegut’s speech writing process. These pages contained simple but crucial thoughts that Vonnegut wished to address in his speech and were often only a sentence or two long. Very few developed paragraphs appear at this stage of his drafting process. The rest of this folder, another 8 pages, were pages or scraps of paper on which Vonnegut had scribbled a few thoughts or very rough outlines of speeches. These outlines did not reveal much about the eventual content of the speech as they often contained only a word or two on what Vonnegut wanted to address. The typical outline structure followed a pattern of: Topic A, Topic B, Someone’s name, APOLOGIZE!!-- the apologies at the end of his speech notes were always emphasized. Vonnegut, in these notes, clearly recognizes the often incendiary reaction his colorful and humorous speeches tended to provoke.

This collection of notes contained some of the more incendiary of speeches Vonnegut’s collection. It is not clear for what occasion these notes and speeches were drafted, but they are all centered on the subject of war--specifically the recent involvement of the United States in the Gulf War. In these notes, and the early stages of these outlines, Vonnegut demonstrates an incredible amount of angst and frustration with the U.S.’s tradition of romanticizing the atrocity of war. Pointing towards his “pacifist” upbringing, Vonnegut claims at one point that:

I was raised to believe and still believe that on any holiday commemorating a war we should all paint ourselves blue and go down on our hands and knees in the mud somewhere and grunt like pigs.

This hostile tone is carried throughout his 3 pages of typed outlines, and makes the need for the emphasized “APOLOGIZE!!” in his initial outlines very obvious. The sincerity of this apology can be doubted however, as on one page of his type written outline he retells a story of his evening with a mysterious woman writer and her metaphor of the atmosphere of America at this time as being that of jovial dinner party where guests are increasingly becoming aware of a terrible stench in the air. He follows this metaphor with his speech’s conclusion:

There. I’ve got that off my chest. I feel much better. I bet you feel worse, unless you’ve started noticing that smell, too. There’s an easy remedy. Just hire somebody else, practically anybody else, to speak to you.

This final remark obviously casts a major doubt over the sincerity of his outlined apology, and provides insight into perhaps why there remains nothing but note and half completed outlines of these speeches.

What is Vonnegut Looking For?

One of the things that kept coming up in class, and what has baffled me most about Galapagos, is the way it seems to lack any sort of message or purpose. While this isn’t necessarily a bad thing—much of the postmodern tradition’s purpose is not having a purpose, reflecting the meaninglessness and chaos of reality—I still felt bereft of satisfaction after reading the last page. Vonnegut leaves the reader with a perplexing anti-lesson: You’ll learn. Learn what? Is the lesson contained within the book? Or are we supposed to come to some sort of realization afterwards, looking at our own world with Galapagos as a lens? Neither, I think. Vonnegut simply wants to indicate the valuable things in our precious world, while simultaneously trashing those things without value. Early on in the novel he dismisses money completely, and when we look at the seal population in retrospect, they have no sort of currency.

The thing I most picked up on after reading is how Vonnegut presents the seal-humans: they are still basically human, but missing many parts of humanity that defines it. What’s left, Vonnegut implicitly asks, after a million years of backwards evolution? We’re missing language, trade, emotion, even most of our limbs. We reproduce and eat, and that’s about it. I think what Vonnegut is doing here is asking, isn’t that what we’ve been doing all along? Our big brains have gone and screwed up those tenets of survival, and nearly brought about the end of humanity. And yet the hardy human race continues to survive. At what cost? What are we left with at the end? There is something we learn, perhaps—we get a hint at what is so valuable about the human condition with our big, screwy brains. Vonnegut marvels in the capability, the potential of those big brains while at the same time mourning the destruction it is capable of as well. This apparent paradox is at the heart of Galapagos—it is Vonnegut’s love letter and eulogy to the human brain. We can destroy and create, love and hate. Can the good negate the bad? Whatever the answer is, without that big brain we can never learn in the first place.