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.

Rachel Carson's "Violent" Spring

It is important to recognize when reading Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring that this book is not the work of a 1960’s flower child. The nature that Carson depicts in her work is not a beautiful and harmonious picture of peace and love--instead Carson depicts a nature that very much abides by Darwin’s fifth principle of existence: The Struggle for Existence. Carson’s nature imagery is one of a bird perched in a flowering green tree, which suddenly takes to the wing to destroy a wasp, which, moments ago, had just laid its parasitic eggs in a hapless caterpillar that will now be eaten from the inside out by these wasp larvae. Similarly, Carson does not advocate for a complete abandonment of humankind’s war on insects in order to make the world a more hospitable place. Rather, Carson argues for a more sustainable and functional method of combat (in humankind’s struggle for existence) than this method of chemical use which destroys all of nature--including humans.

Carson’s view of nature, however, does not subscribe to this single principle of Darwinian thought. Carson’s entire approach towards nature, and humankind’s role in it, is dominated by Darwin’s anti-anthropocentric and non-telic conceptions of life. Darwin presents his readers with a nature that is always changing, that has no end and favors no specie over another--all of life is connected under his principles of existence. For Carson, it is the same. And if we take this Darwinian perspective of Carson’s work, then we can begin to shed light on several of the unique, and at first confounding, features of her book.

The most encompassing passage to consider, highlighting this Darwinian perspective and revealing Carson’s guiding logic throughout the book, is the work’s ending. In this passage Carson describes humans and their advanced institutions as being guided by a Neolithic instinct to conquer and dominate. She paints humankind, despite its several advances, as un-evolved and stuck in this static state of stimulus-and reaction to conquer. The cause of this stasis, she argues, is that we have failed to recognize the rest of nature around us as Life.

If we take Carson’s argument as indicative of a type of solution, namely that humans must always evolve--constantly and open-mindedly reevaluating their position in and as a part of nature, then this synthesis or struggle for existence in nature begins to connect all her literary devices in the novel. Her anti-anthropocentric model reminds us that man is no different from all of Life. Her “web of life” metaphor is reflected in her synthesis of scientific, poetic, and philosophical writing (everything is connected and nothing stands (steadfastly, at least) separate from the rest of its environment). And her apparent lack of clearly outlined and step-by-step proposal for a solution to this problem is understandable because this book is not a guide on how to fix our insect or pesticide problem, it is a commentary on humankind’s lack of awareness of the relative position in this “web of life.”

Carson does not give us a clear solution because there is none. Life and nature are impermanent--constantly changing, and only evolving species survive and propagate. There is no solution to this inconvenient fact of living, insects and other threats to humankind’s survival will always be present, only awareness of this fact and of our position in nature can save us (temporarily) from extinction--and this is the aim of her work.

A book of its time.

While reading Kurt Vonnegut's novel Galapagos, I was surprised by how current the book is. Rather, I should say that the novel is definitely grounded in the 1980s. The fiction is not too far from the contemporaneous facts. One of the first things I was the economic crisis...of the world. The 1980s are often remembered as a time of prosperity, but some countries, in Argentina I believe as well as most of South America (I only know this through foreign film), there was a economic crisis. I may be incorrect, but I also believe many currencies were finished, and new ones introduced. I discovered this while trying to determine the value of some South American bills in my possession. Apparently inflation was high, and new currencies were issued, tagging the value at lower numbers per U.S. dollar. Secondly, I noticed the presence of Japan in the novel. The idea of Japan as a rising power to sit on America's left hand, if not dethrone America, was common in the 1908s. Simply watch American Psycho (takes place in 1989) in which a character discussed this philosophy shortly before the film ends. Indeed, the fact that the list of protagonists noted by the narrator were Japanese and Americans reminded me of how Japan was regarded in the 80s. It was an upcoming nation brimming with talent, determination, and wealth...and then the Asian finical crisis happened. Thirdly, there exists the topic of a disease that eradicates fertility in humans. Well, AIDS was a very big deal in the 1980s, in fact my parents remember the live broadcast by president Reagan about AIDS. It was a big deal in the 1980s, and relatively new on the scene of dangers threatening humanity. In the end, my point is that the sense of apocalypse in this book is based on a actual sensation felt by people twenty to thirty years ago. AIDS was scary and new, South America was in financial jeopardy, and the West felt threatened by the East.

The "Pages" of Nature

A major concern for Rachel Carson in Silent Spring is to force a reevaluation of humankind’s anthropocentric tendencies. She not only wants us to reconsider our separatist attitude towards nature, urging a more diverse and connected conception of the environment and our role in it, but in several passages she argues for a larger incorporation of nature into the configuration of institutions that were anthropocentrically created and maintained. In other words, Carson argues for a total erasure of the binary between man and nature--she pushes us to view nature not as a backdrop to human institutions but as a contributor and consideration in the formation and the functioning of these institutions.

Take, example, Carson’s question of morality in the chapter “Needless Havoc:” “The question is whether any civilization can wage relentless war on life without destroying itself, and without losing the right to be called civilized” (p.99). This reference to loss of civility brings to mind its implication: barbarism. By classifying the acts of pollutions and degradation of nature as violent and barbaric, Carson implies that nature has its own rights and that these acts infringe upon them. She extends the anthropocentric models of ethics and morality to incorporate an agent, which is traditionally viewed as a non-agent. In fact, she erases this very distinction between the two.

A more complicated example of this erasure of the human and nature binary is Carson’s metaphor of nature as a book (p.64). Carson here argues that nature is something which can be read, something that is “eloquent” and possesses “integrity” which warrants preservation. Carson laments, however, that these “pages lie unread” (64). But for Carson nature is both subject and author of a complicated story that man participates in and observes. In choosing to describe nature in these terms Carson involves nature in one of the most anthropocentric institutions: reading and writing. By implying that nature is not only subject in this institution but also agent she forces a reevaluation of the role of both man and nature in this institution and collapses the two into the same role. In her lamentation that we have failed to recognize this dynamic between the two, that we have failed to “read” these pages of nature, she argues that this understanding is not outside of our grasp and forces a responsibility onto humankind to take in these words and gain a better understanding of its subject.

Anthropocentrism, an unsustainable distraction

As you have all probably noticed, the majority of issues discussed in Silent Spring so far are still currently unresolved. Shamefully, our society continues to spend more time looking in the mirror, enamored with the human identity, rather than looking past our own existence towards the natural world, which we have overwhelmingly taken for granted. Despite Silent Spring nearing its 50th anniversary, the majority of our status quo seems more interested in 'reading' about celebrities, fashion, arts, etc. than enriching any appreciation of the interconnected web of life. I found the image that Rachel Carson provides for the natural landscape as an "open book in which we can read why the land is what it is, and why we should preserve its integrity, " as the perfect example of our societies illiteracy (Carson 64). As a result of our self-serving strides of conveniences in the production of food, we have been separated from the ground that provides our subsistence, leaving the treatment of our natural landscape to the "free" market that has little to no concerns outside of profitability. I don't feel as though we are completely doomed, as Carson notes 800 concerned citizens calling within an hour of the Detroit spraying noted in "Needless Havoc," but the use of the media to unjustly assuage the anxiety only shows the disconnect we have with the issue in its entirety. It is quite jarring how transparent some of these issues are once we lay down entertainment and personal pleasure for the sake of survival, which is readily at stake.

The Write Audience

Rachel Carson's Silent Spring demands an adaptation of reading from what most of us English buffs are used to. A cross between poetic literature, scientific report, and a persuasion to better the world, many excerpts demand at least a double take in order to grasp Carson's ideas. Tangled up in earthworms and DDT, I've found myself putting the book down on more than one occasion to ask, "and I care because...?" I sympathize with Carson's passion--some of the cases she reports are sickening and scary and make me want to chain myself to a tree and write angry letters to bug spray companies--but when I try to wrap my mind around the vast scope of time in which her writing is set, and her heavy, nothing-we-can-do-about-it-now content, I can already see myself neglecting my sympathy for Carson's cause the moment I get busy with whatever it is I get busy with. In Chapter 5, "Realms of the Soil," Carson claims:

The problem that concerns us here is one that has received little consideration: What happens to these incredibly numerous and vitally necessary inhabitants of soil when poisonous chemicals are carried down into their worlds, either introduced directly as soil "sterilants" or borne of the rain that has picked up a lethal contamination as it filters through the leaf canopy of forest and orchard and cropland?

In examining this statement as I would any other piece of litereature, I notice firstly that Carson immediately uses pronoun "us" to persuade the reader that in the midst of reading scientific reports and assumptions about the deterioration of the earth that will potentially, if not certainly, happen in the next couple billion years, this problem to which she refers, does in fact, concern her readers. I am not saying that Carson's writing is not persuasive or that it is impossible to understand. In fact I find her writing captivating. However, if Silent Spring is a merge between literature, science, and persuasion, she succeeds with all but the latter. It is the nature of man to resent the feeling of being blamed for a mess he did not make, or for making a mistake he did not know was wrong. Similarly, the feeling of guilt concerning our environment when reading about this heavy subject makes me want to drop my book and focus on other things, to some extent. This tendency to become irresponsible toward my actions is one of the foundations of Carson's arguement. If she is fully aware of this human inablilty to barely see or care past one's own lifetime, she should have catered to that more in her writing. If Silent Spring was intended for a wider audience than a circle of eager-to-help-the-world scientists or hippies--which it was-- Carson's persuasion could have been more effective if she hadn't placed so much of the burden of environmental trauma on her readers' shoulders.

Life Under Our Feet

In chapter five, Realms of the Soil, Carson wants the reader to realize how vast and varied the underground web of life is. Most people don’t notice or care to notice the community beneath our feet, but Carson aims to emphasize its importance in the ecosystem. She writes, “The specialization of some of these minute creatures for their task is almost incredible” (55). This is an interesting choice of words, especially when compared with how she has used “specialization” as a sort of curse word when referring to humans. But whereas human specialization tends to go against nature to dominate it, the specialization of this underground community of life is produced by and necessary for nature. Every species of life in the soil has its own specific task it must perform, such as the gradual overturning of soil by earthworms or the aeration by larger mammals.

Carson also characterizes the ecosystem of the soil with utmost importance: “The truly staggering task of dealing with the tremendous amount of plant material in the annual leaf fall belongs to some of the small insects of the soil and the forest floor” (55). Not only is the task so huge—deliberate word choice in “tremendous” and “staggering”—but it is performed by the smallest of insects! Carson succeeds in putting the task of this community in perspective for humans. Without the combined workforce of underground life, plant life above it would not be possible. And if plant life is not possible, then the mammals who depend on it for sustenance will die off, and then the humans who rely on them will lose a crucial food source. She uses Darwin-like imagery of the layers of life, starting with the soil; then she goes on to show how all of these layers are connected and rely on each other. It’s amazing how the very small so intimately affects each subsequent stratum of life. How can humans be so blind to destroy such an important part of the ecosystem with chemical poisons? If we aim to destroy just one small weed, the chemical can seep into the soil and irreversibly change the way nature conducts itself—for the worse.