Darwin Loves You: Natural Selection and the Re-enchantment of the World

Description

Jesus and Darwin do battle on car bumpers across America. Medallions of fish symbolizing Jesus are answered by ones of amphibians stamped "Darwin," and stickers proclaiming "Jesus Loves You" are countered by "Darwin Loves You." The bumper sticker debate might be trivial and the pronouncement that "Darwin Loves You" may seem merely ironic, but George Levine insists that the message contains an unintended truth. In fact, he argues, we can read it straight. Darwin, Levine shows, saw a world from which his theory had banished transcendence as still lovable and enchanted, and we can see it like that too--if we look at his writings and life in a new way. Although Darwin could find sublimity even in ants or worms, the word "Darwinian" has largely been taken to signify a disenchanted world driven by chance and heartless competition. Countering the pervasive view that the facts of Darwin's world must lead to a disenchanting vision of it, Levine shows that Darwin's ideas and the language of his books offer an alternative form of enchantment, a world rich with meaning and value, and more wonderful and beautiful than ever before.Without minimizing or sentimentalizing the harsh qualities of life governed by natural selection, and without deifying Darwin, Levine makes a moving case for an enchanted secularism--a commitment to the value of the natural world and the human striving to understand it.

George Levine is Professor Emeritus of English at Rutgers University. His books include "Darwin and the Novelists; Dying to Know: Narrative and Scientific Epistemology in Victorian England; The Realistic Imagination: English Fiction from Frankenstein to Lady Chatterley; The Boundaries of Fiction;" and a memoir about birdwatching, "Lifebirds".

"George Levine ... tries to vindicate Darwin for students of literature by emphasizing his modest 'sense of wonder,' the almost mystical awe at the sheer existence of life in the universe; Darwin disenchanted believers in Heaven, but he reenchanted lovers of Earth. Levine's book is one of the most appealing and subtle attempts to bridge biology and the humanities."-- Adam Gopnik, The New Yorker "Levine restores and celebrates Darwin's humanness, arguing for the vital important to modern democracy of a radically secular, ethical engagement with the world...an engagement that is scientific and sympathetic."--Angelique Richardson, Times Literary Supplement "Levine argues persuasively that an understanding of Darwinism can lead to a secular enchantment of the sort experienced by Darwin himself."--Publishers Weekly "George Levine's book Darwin Loves You confronts Weber's problem of the loss of enchantment head-on. Levine's thesis is that this all-too-common view of science in general and evolution in particular is dead wrong and that, in fact, Darwinian evolution provides a model for what he calls 'secular re-enchantment.'...The book is erudite and wonderfully interdisciplinary."--Robert T. Pennock, American Scientist "Levine's readings of Darwin himself are infectiously enchanted ('Who else would have thought of playing the piano for worms?'), and emphasize the crucial point that Darwin's scientific achievement depended on his capacity for imaginative sympathy with other animals."--Steven Poole, The Guardian (UK) "Levine's intelligently designed case for secular enchantment seeks to show that Darwin's theories, long reviled by literal creationists, can co-exist with a deep love of natural beauty that does not depend on divine creation."--Kathy English, Globe and Mail "A considered, carefully worked and sensitive argument for Charles Darwin the man."--Henry Nicholls, Times Higher Education Supplement "Darwin Loves You combines passion, subtlety, critical scrutiny and moral purpose... Levine is surely right to see hope for our own times in an avowedly Romantic Darwinism."--Marek Kohn, The Independent "George Levine has written a fascinating book about the impact of Charles Darwin's ideas on Western culture and how they affect people's moral and spiritual values... This book, which represents an admirable attempt to humanize Darwinism, is welcome in today's climate... This book should appeal to the lay public concerned about the growing threat of fundamentalism."--Choice "Levine's Darwin is a dedicated and scrupulous observer who insisted on scientific clarity and rational precision whether studying finches, barnacles, worms, or human beings. Levine is inspired by the great naturalist's awe before the ordinary, which he characterizes as a kind of inverted sublimity."--Steven G. Kellman, San Antonio Current "Darwin Loves You is a lucid, incisive and delightful book which shows that literary criticism still has an important part to play in leading us towards a humane culture and in safeguarding and sustaining secular understanding. It is a model too for an interdisciplinary engagement between the literary critic and the world of science... As the intellectual climate has again been favourable to sociobiology, so is it favourable too to this more urgent revival. We live in a more dangerously religiose environment than at any time since the nineteenth century, and the stakes are if anything higher. In times like these, we should be all the more grateful for such a subtle and profound book as Levine has given us."--John Holmes, British Society for Literature and Science "George Levine offers a compelling view of the kind of deep attachment Darwin felt to his objects of study, broadening that view to a general account of one kind of meaning that one might find in one's own life. Levine's interpretations of both content and form of Darwin's prose are eminently convincing. Levine faces fundamental issues raised by Darwin's conception of natural selection and evolution, taking on the Socratic question, 'How should one live?' in the context of evolutionary science. I hope that others are able to respond likewise, extending and exploring the novel and exciting proposals advanced in Darwin Loves You."--Adam M. Goldstein, Evolution Education and Outreach