Darwinism and the Linguistic Image

Darwinism and the Linguistic Image PDF Author: Stephen G. Alter
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 224

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Book Description
"A rich and rewarding account of the often subtle connections that bound the nineteenth-century sciences of language and life." -- British Journal of the History of Science

Darwinism and the Linguistic Image

Darwinism and the Linguistic Image PDF Author: Stephen G. Alter
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 224

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Book Description
"A rich and rewarding account of the often subtle connections that bound the nineteenth-century sciences of language and life." -- British Journal of the History of Science

God After Darwin

God After Darwin PDF Author: John F. Haught
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 0429979797
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 326

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Book Description
In God After Darwin, eminent theologian John F. Haught argues that the ongoing debate between Darwinian evolutionists and Christian apologists is fundamentally misdirected: Both sides persist in focusing on an explanation of underlying design and order in the universe. Haught suggests that what is lacking in both of these competing ideologies is the notion of novelty, a necessary component of evolution and the essence of the unfolding of the divine mystery. He argues that Darwin's disturbing picture of life, instead of being hostile to religion-as scientific skeptics and many believers have thought it to be-actually provides a most fertile setting for mature reflection on the idea of God. Solidly grounded in scholarship, Haught's explanation of the relationship between theology and evolution is both accessible and engaging. The second edition of God After Darwin features an entirely new chapter on the ongoing, controversial debate between intelligent design and evolution, including an assessment of Haught's experience as an expert witness in the landmark case of Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District on teaching evolution and intelligent design in schools.

William Dwight Whitney and the Science of Language

William Dwight Whitney and the Science of Language PDF Author: Stephen G. Alter
Publisher: JHU Press
ISBN: 9780801880209
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 372

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Book Description
Linguistics, or the science of language, emerged as an independent field of study in the nineteenth century, amid the religious and scientific ferment of the Victorian era. William Dwight Whitney, one of that period's most eminent language scholars, argued that his field should be classed among the social sciences, thus laying a theoretical foundation for modern sociolinguistics. William Dwight Whitney and the Science of Language offers a full-length study of America's pioneer professional linguist, the founder and first president of the American Philological Association and a renowned Orientalist. In recounting Whitney's remarkable career, Stephen G. Alter examines the intricate linguistic debates of that period as well as the politics of establishing language study as a full-fledged science. Whitney's influence, Alter argues, extended to the German Neogrammarian movement and the semiotic theory of Ferdinand de Saussure. This exploration of an early phase of scientific language study provides readers with a unique perspective on Victorian intellectual life as well as on the transatlantic roots of modern linguistic theory.

Darwinism Tested by the Science of Language

Darwinism Tested by the Science of Language PDF Author: August Schleicher
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Evolution
Languages : en
Pages : 88

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Book Description


Was Hitler a Darwinian?

Was Hitler a Darwinian? PDF Author: Robert J. Richards
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 022605909X
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 278

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Book Description
In tracing the history of Darwin’s accomplishment and the trajectory of evolutionary theory during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, most scholars agree that Darwin introduced blind mechanism into biology, thus banishing moral values from the understanding of nature. According to the standard interpretation, the principle of survival of the fittest has rendered human behavior, including moral behavior, ultimately selfish. Few doubt that Darwinian theory, especially as construed by the master’s German disciple, Ernst Haeckel, inspired Hitler and led to Nazi atrocities. In this collection of essays, Robert J. Richards argues that this orthodox view is wrongheaded. A close historical examination reveals that Darwin, in more traditional fashion, constructed nature with a moral spine and provided it with a goal: man as a moral creature. The book takes up many other topics—including the character of Darwin’s chief principles of natural selection and divergence, his dispute with Alfred Russel Wallace over man’s big brain, the role of language in human development, his relationship to Herbert Spencer, how much his views had in common with Haeckel’s, and the general problem of progress in evolution. Moreover, Richards takes a forceful stand on the timely issue of whether Darwin is to blame for Hitler’s atrocities. Was Hitler a Darwinian? is intellectual history at its boldest.

Darwinism and Pragmatism

Darwinism and Pragmatism PDF Author: Lucas McGranahan
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351975811
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 214

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Book Description
Charles Darwin’s theory of natural selection challenges our very sense of belonging in the world. Unlike prior evolutionary theories, Darwinism construes species as mutable historical products of a blind process that serves no inherent purpose. It also represents a distinctly modern kind of fallible science that relies on statistical evidence and is not verifiable by simple laboratory experiments. What are human purpose and knowledge if humanity has no pre-given essence and science itself is our finite and fallible product? According to the Received Image of Darwinism, Darwin’s theory signals the triumph of mechanism and reductionism in all science. On this view, the individual virtually disappears at the intersection of (internal) genes and (external) environment. In contrast, William James creatively employs Darwinian concepts to support his core conviction that both knowledge and reality are in the making, with individuals as active participants. In promoting this Pragmatic Image of Darwinism, McGranahan provides a novel reading of James as a philosopher of self-transformation. Like his contemporary Nietzsche, James is concerned first and foremost with the structure and dynamics of the finite purposive individual. This timely volume is suitable for advanced undergraduate, postgraduate and postdoctoral researchers interested in the fields of history of philosophy, history and philosophy of science, history of psychology, American pragmatism and Darwinism.

Darwin's Plots

Darwin's Plots PDF Author: Gillian Beer
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521783927
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 316

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Book Description
New edition of highly acclaimed book examining Darwin's work in a literary/cultural context.

Darwin's Pictures

Darwin's Pictures PDF Author: Julia Voss
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0300141742
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 351

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Book Description
In this first-ever examination of Charles Darwin's sketches, drawings, and illustrations, Julia Voss presents the history of evolutionary theory told in pictures. Darwin had a life-long interest in pictorial representations of nature, sketching out his evolutionary theory and related ideas for over forty years. Voss details the pictorial history of Darwin's theory of evolution, starting with his notebook sketches of 1837 and ending with the illustrations in The Expression of Emotions in Man and Animals (1872). These images were profoundly significant for Darwin's long-term argument for evolutionary theory; each characterizes a different aspect of his relationship with the visual information and constitutes what can be called an “icon' of evolution. Voss shows how Darwin “thought with his eyes' and how his pictorial representations and the development and popularization of the theory of evolution were vitally interconnected. Voss explores four of Darwin's images in depth, and weaves about them a story on the development and presentation of Darwin's theory, in which she also addresses the history of Victorian illustration, the role of images in science, the technologies of production, and the relationship between specimen, words, and images.

Excavating Stephen King

Excavating Stephen King PDF Author: James Arthur Anderson
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1793628637
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 259

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Book Description
Excavating Stephen King: A Darwinist Hermeneutic Study of the Fiction combines approaches from science and literary theory to examine the canon of Stephen King’s fiction work in a single critical study. James Arthur Anderson has devised the concept of Darwinist Hermeneutics as a critical tool to combine evolutionary psychology, neuroscience, biology, and literary Darwinism with other more conventional critical theory, including structuralism, narratology, semiotics, and linguistic analysis. Using this theory, Anderson examines King’s works in terms of archetypes and mythology, human universals, affective emotions, and the organization of story to create maximum suspense. This method brings new insights into King’s stories and broader implications for storytelling as a whole.

The Kingdom of Speech

The Kingdom of Speech PDF Author: Tom Wolfe
Publisher: Hachette+ORM
ISBN: 0316404640
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 145

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Book Description
The maestro storyteller and reporter provocatively argues that what we think we know about speech and human evolution is wrong. Tom Wolfe, whose legend began in journalism, takes us on an eye-opening journey that is sure to arouse widespread debate. The Kingdom of Speech is a captivating, paradigm-shifting argument that speech -- not evolution -- is responsible for humanity's complex societies and achievements. From Alfred Russel Wallace, the Englishman who beat Darwin to the theory of natural selection but later renounced it, and through the controversial work of modern-day anthropologist Daniel Everett, who defies the current wisdom that language is hard-wired in humans, Wolfe examines the solemn, long-faced, laugh-out-loud zig-zags of Darwinism, old and Neo, and finds it irrelevant here in the Kingdom of Speech.