A01=George Levine
Agnosticism
Altruism
Analogy
and Selection in Relation to Sex
Anthropocentrism
Anthropomorphism
Author_George Levine
Biological determinism
Biology
Category=PDX
Category=PSAJ
Charles Darwin
Consciousness
Consilience
Contingency (philosophy)
Criticism
Daniel Dennett
Darwinism
Determination
Dichotomy
Disenchantment
E. O. Wilson
Encyclopedic knowledge
eq_bestseller
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_science
Ethics
Eugenics
Evolution
Evolutionary biology
Evolutionary psychology
Explanation
Group selection
Human
Human behavior
Ideology
Inference
Intelligent design
Janet Browne
Modernity
Morality
Narrative
Natural selection
Natural theology
Nature
Objections to evolution
On the Origin of Species
Organism
Positivism
Prose
Rationality
Reason
Rebecca Stott
Reductionism
Religion
Rhetoric
Richard Lewontin
Science
Scientism
Scientist
Secularism
Secularization
Selfishness
Sensibility
Sexual selection
Social Darwinism
Social theory
Sociobiology
Stephen Jay Gould
Struggle for existence
Symptom
Teleology
The Descent of Man
Theory
Thomas Henry Huxley
Thought
Writing
Product details
- ISBN 9780691136394
- Weight: 454g
- Dimensions: 155 x 235mm
- Publication Date: 30 Mar 2008
- Publisher: Princeton University Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Paperback
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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".
