Movie of the Week: Quest for Fire (1981)

This film is based on a 1911 novel, La Guerre de Feu  by J.-H. Rosney aine.  It does makes quite a lot of imaginative leaps in terms of evolutionary development and the co-existence of different human-ish species.

It is the Ice Age, and there are several groups, homo erectus and homo neanderthalis.  After an attack on the homo neanderthalis tribe, where they lose their fire, this group go on a quest to find fire (something that they do not know how to make.  They meet a woman from a homo sapiens sapiens group.  From this woman, one of the men in the group learns comedy and laughter, love and companionship, and, how to make fire. 

 This film then, imagines “what if” three early human groups could have existed at the same time, and shared culture and genetic material.   Given recent discoveries about the possibility of interbreeding between homo neanderthalis and homo sapiens sapiens, it may be worth a look.

Reflections on Week 2

Dr. Wentzell made some general comments that I agree with.  One of the dangers of thinking of the history of an object is that it begins to normalize; that is, the leaps of imagination that one needs to do to really see the relationship between environmental pressures and also the directional shifts away from the potential counterfactuals means that one has to see evolution as a process with far less predictability than we might be encouraged to see.   These relationships won’t always be the most obvious.  Like Dr. Wentzell, I found the stronger presentations the ones who really stretched to identify unusual environmental pressures, beyond the obvious narrative.

Dr. Wentzell’s example, of how Darwin’s theory of evolution became “dominant” as a result of the environmental pressure of classism is excellent.  How is it that we can only now see that there was a real relationship between these two thinkers, while the official historical narrative, reproduced in textbooks, etc., made Darwin’s theory dominant? 

Evolution: A Very Short Introduction, Chapters 1-2

Because my primary responsibility in this course is to teach the cultural representation of evolution in literature, philosphy, religion and art, I am going to begin by building on the idea presented in the first chapter of our textbook.

The relentless application of the scientific method of inference fromexperiment and observation, without reference to religious or governmental authority, has completely transformed our view of our origins and relation to the universe, in less than 500 years. In addition to the intrinsic fascination of the view of the world opened up by science, this has had an enormous impact on philosophy and religion. The findings of science imply that human beings are the product of impersonal forces, and that the habitable world forms a minute part of a universe of immense size and duration. Whatever the religious or philosophical beliefs of individual scientists, the whole programme of scientific research is founded on the assumption that the universe can be understood on such a basis. (1-2)

There has been an odd tendency to “blame” the rise of scientific rationality for “undermining of traditional belief systems” (2).  And yet, this seems such a strange idea, when in fact, it has not been the fault of scientific rationality that has been the problem.   Here, a book I have been reading by George Levine, Darwin Loves You has helped me.  I want to understand why the rise of scientific rationality resulted, rather than in a greater wisdom about the workings of the world, a “very real sense of spirituality vacuuity” (xii).   This paradigm shift, I think, demanded a major rethinking of the terms, and what happened, rather, was a more reactionary response.  “The wise application of scientific  understanding of the world in which we live is the only hope for the future of mankind.”  That our book begins with an epigraph by Thomas Hardy is apt.  Here is another quotation from Hardy:

Few people seem to perceive fully as yet that the most far-reaching consequene of the establishment of the common origin of all species is ethical; that it logically involved a re-adjustment of altruistic morals by enlarging as a necessity of rightness the application of what has been called “The Golden Rule” beyond the area of mere mankind to that of the whole animal kingdom. (Used as an epigraph to Darwin Loves You.)

What then, has the idea of evolution changed?  It has changed the place of the human.  It has reconnected the human to other forms of life on the planet.  It has redefined the notion of who is considered our “kin”.  It has offered the possibility of humility by decentering our perspective.  

I am going to start with the claim that the place for “hope” is in speculative fiction, that is “utopic” fiction.  It is here where the hope for the future is place.  Rather than clinging to old dogmas and traditions, utopic fiction allows us to spin out those possibilities and alternatives for a different future.  

Reflections on Week 1

So, I am now considering what we learned as of last week.  My purpose here is to think about the implications of such ideas, to help us to look ahead to the second half of the course and also, as I will be creating the review session, I am creating a review document as I follow Dr. Wentzell’s section of the course.

First, evolution, although most people immediately think of biological evolution when they think of evolution, is first and foremost a process to describe how a thing passes through different stages or sequences, by degree, from a less complicated to a more complicated thing.  [Question:  Does the concept of staging mean that it becomes more complicated over time?]

If we are trying to understand the evolution of a thing, then we need to know the following:

1. the progenitors of a thing: The idea of a genitor is a “natural parent”.  So clearly, this word means something to do with direct ancestry.  When you identify the progenitors, you are trying to look to the past to try to figure out “who” the ancestors were.  In the literature we read, I will call these fantasies of “kinship”.  That is, the stories we tell about our “ancestors” reveal anxieties about our connections to the animal world.  (Wait – my ancestor is an APE?  That is distressing to some who consider that humans represent the “highest” biologically evolved life form.)
2. environmental pressures: This refers to the pressures imposed on the thing from outside. (Hmm.  So this means that no spontaneous change can come from inside the thing.  No free will in biology.)  That is, the thing is always responding to influences from outside. 
3. counterfactuals:  Dr. Wentzell explained that these are harder to identify, but that this is basically a mode of imagining, what would have been the case, if a particular environmental pressure had not happened, or, if the thing’s history were different.   Now, here is where I come in again.  In literature, there is a parallel genre called “alternative/alternate history”.  In French/German, the genre is called “uchronie”, which means that they take place in “no-time”.  All of the “What if” novels we are reading are extended “counterfactual” discussions.
4. imperfections:  To identify imperfections means that one looks at the thing in the present state, and then tries to identify possibilities for changes that might be necessary.  Again, I worry about the idea of “perfection” but perhaps it isn’t so worrisome as all that.  Again, this becomes the realm of speculation and imagination.  Where are we going to go? What might happen?  What changes may happen, that may result in the modification of human biology, perhaps beyond what we recognise as the human?

What amazes me, of course, is how close a connection I can find between the idea of evolution – and I do think that when we focus attention on biological evolution – and the development of the literary genre called speculative fiction.   And I am fascinated with a scientific method that asks one to “imagine” alternative possibilities.  It makes me think about science and the idea of “wonder” – the scientists who saw before them endless shifting, changing biological forms, and began to imagine the origins of life on this planet.

First Week Reflection

Wednesday’s Class

So what did we learn this week? 

One question that emerges from the discussion, is the use of the concept of “perfection”.  What is the difference between change, greater and greater complexity, and the idea of perfection? 

I think I’m struggling to make sure that I understand that there is no such thing as “progress” and therefore, there is no way that things become more and more “perfect”.  Am I correct in this?   Things “change”, but what determines such a change is chance. 

The project students do will be helpful, I think.  I am especially interested in how they identify points in which things could have gone in another direction – and didn’t.   What I hope is that students understand that there is no purpose that determines why a “thing” evolved in such a way rather than another.

The Evolution of Useful Things

Friday’s Class

A few podcasts of interest: religion and science debates

I thought Dr. Wentzell’s choice of film was useful.   What I liked hearing in this film was reference to the tradition of the university, and to academic freedom.   I consider that a university is a place of freedom, in which all share in the project towards truth, and that, the more and more the discussions themselves evolve, religion and science have been demonstrated to be compatible discourses – as are all discourses within the university.  What we must continue to do is to allow each other to do our work, despite political influences.  I will say that what has helped me in preparing for the teaching of the course was learning about the history of teaching of evolution in the US in this film, Intelligent Design on Trial.

Science and Being -  ”How do science and religion — practiced together — distinctively illuminate what it means to be human? Host Krista Tippett speaks with three scientists on how science and religious faith inform their understanding of what it means to be human.”

The Biology of the Spirit ”Former surgeon Sherwin Nuland speaks about his sense of wonder at the body’s capacity to sustain life and support our pursuits of order and meaning, and why he believes the human spirit is an evolutionary accomplishment of the brain. The three-pound human brain, he says, is the most complex structure that has ever existed on this planet.”

Quarks and Creation - “Scientist and theologian John Polkinghorne applies the insights of quantum physics to religious mysteries and the evolution debate.”

Darwinia, which I’m reading this week, has as its premise the idea that a major, unexplained event, called, ”The Miracle” – the disappearance of Europe – happens in 1912.  As a result, Darwinian evolution does not become the prevailing theory by which change happens in biology.  Rather, another theory, one which reads the world  in terms of radical interventions by God (“The Flood” etc.)  dominates.  Its quite an interesting “What if” story, because it is the what if story of “what if” evolution had not become the dominant theory.

Notes from this Week’s Reading:

I have been doing close readings of the texts for my section of the course.  I know that Dr. Wentzell wants to read them too, so I thought that I’d start here with my thoughts.

Greg Bear, Darwin’s Radio:  The plot of this text is quite complicated, so I will outline only the major premise, that major evolutionary changes to the human could happen within several generations, given environmental stress.   What I like about this book is the way it engages scientists – anthropologists, molecular biologists and other researchers who suddenly begin to piece together the story by shared evidence.

(I also like the “Biological Primer” and the “Glossary of Scientific Terms” at the back.)

rigorous exercise

I almost forgot! I just had a paper published, on evolutionary comparisons between the nervous systems of two mollusks.  This stuff is a little deep, but I will put the link to the abstract below.  

This gives me an idea -  perhaps we can throw a really deep evolutionary concept at each student.  There are five students in the class who have signed up for the biological perspective - I can come up with five very terminology-heavy evolutionary discoveries, and have one student research each of them and do a paper or presentation on it.  The five students on the English side can have a similar experience, though I can’t speak for the projects that can be created. 

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20029185?itool=EntrezSystem2.PEntrez.Pubmed.Pubmed_ResultsPanel.Pubmed_RVDocSum&ordinalpos=1

evolution all around us

I am thinking a good way to start the course is to have students explore the concept of evolution through familiar ideas and people around us.  I got this idea while listening to NPR, where a commentator was discussing the evolution of how we listen to music.  Here are some other putative ideas for exploration of this concept:

• comedy / comedians
• car design
• Brett Favre
• hearing aids
• game theory
• spending habits

A way to approach these concepts, and explore their evolutionary history, would be to research the history behind how they came to be what they are today.  More than that, though, evolution is not just history but what did NOT happen. 

• history
• adaptations that led to the present
• weaknesses (imperfections)
• false starts
• radiatative events
• punctate events
• putative parallel histories – what could have been?

And so on.  Evolution  is so much more than talking about what IS, but also an assessment of what COULD have been.  It is difficult, and complicated, and takes critical thinking behond the obvious.  This is an exercise I have never done, but I am up to the challenge.

The dying earth

Wonderful conversation with a colleague, about speculative fiction and the concept of evolution.  He challenged me to find my thesis, my thread.  I told him I had found the “bookends” of the course, but that it felt too teleological, and so counterintutive to evolution as endless forms, coming into existence and fading out through the workings of accident. 

Dying Earth 

H.G. Wells, The Time Machine

Cormac McCarthy, The Road or Margaret Atwood’s Oryx and Crake

 *A note on my reservations about Cormac McCarthy, and the masculinist paradigm, what I will call the, nothing left at the end but a man at the end of the world, a child (son), and the memory of a dead woman.

There’s a moral code of separation between eating and being eaten.  I must return to my Human Animal course and rethink cannibalism as an Enlightenment trope.  Remember that the only true cases of cannibalism – that is, a return to human killing for survival – Donner Party, lifeboats, cabin boys, etc. are Europeans out of Europe.  All other examples are ritualised and symbolic. 

From The Road:

We wouldn’t ever anybody, would we?
No. Of course not.
Even if we were starving?
We’re starving now.
You said we weren’t.
I said we weren’t dying. I didn’t say we weren’t starving.
But we wouldn’t.
No. We wouldn’t.
No matter what.
No. No matter what.
Because we’re the good guys.
Yes.
And we’re carrying the fire.
And we’re carrying the fire. Yes.
Okay.

I’ve been thinking so much of Coetzee here, and Disgrace, and Coetzee’s return to the animal as a base line of ethics.

Jennifer Egan, Cormac McCarthy and literary masculinity

Jack London, The Star Rover.

*Is this really the film I just saw, The Jacket, with Adrian Brody?

Olaf Stapledon, The Starmaker.

*Note: Stapledon knew Virginia Woolf well.  Virginia Woolf loved Wells and speculative fiction about time.  Should we teach, “The Telescope” by Woolf?

William Hope Hodgeson, The House on the Borderland.

Degeneration, Racism, Anxiety:

H.P. Lovecraft

Michel Houllebecq