Evolution, “Pseudo-science,” and Satire: Edith Wharton’s “The Descent of Man”
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Judith P. Saunders
Abstract
The protagonist of Edith Wharton’s 1904 short story “The Descent of Man” is both scientist and satirist. The target of his satire-“false interpreters” of evolutionary theory-allows Wharton to combine analysis of genre with inquiry into the cultural controversy Darwin’s ideas inspired. Anthropocentric anxieties explain popular preference for soothing “pseudo-science” over unsparing accounts of natural selection; they likewise explain widespread obtuseness to Professor Linyard’s ridicule of hazy illogic posing as science. Motivated more strongly by fitness interests than by allegiance to scientific truth, however, the professor becomes complicit in widespread misreading of his own text. He thereby encourages the ignorance he intended to dispel, and Wharton highlights the ironies inherent in this self-sabotage. She insists that susceptibility to evolved adaptations is universal, moreover, and that it often impedes the discovery and promulgation of truth.
© 2022 by Academic Studies Press
Artikel in diesem Heft
- Titelei
- Table of Contents
- ARTICLES
- Horror Manga: An Evolutionary Literary Perspective
- Two Servants, One Master: The Common Acoustic Origins of the Divergent Communicative Media of Music and Speech
- Courtliness as Morality of Modernity in Norse Romance
- Evolution, “Pseudo-science,” and Satire: Edith Wharton’s “The Descent of Man”
- REVIEW ESSAYS
- Ancient Voices, Contemporary Practice, and Human Musicality
- Narrative Theory and Neuroscience: Why Human Nature Matters
- What Nature Gave Us: Steven Pinker on the Rules of Reason
- BOOK REVIEWS
- Steven Brown. The Unification of the Arts: A Framework for Understanding What the Arts Share and Why
- Mathias Clasen. A Very Nervous Person’s Guide to Horror Movies
- James E. Cutting. Movies on our Minds: The Evolution of Cinematic Engagement
- Jonathan Gottschall. The Story Paradox: How our Love of Storytelling Builds Societies and Tears Them Down
- Emelie Jonsson. The Early Evolutionary Imagination: Literature and Human Nature
- J. L. Modern. Neuromatic; or, a Particular History of Religion and the Brain
- ARTICLE REVIEWS
- Audiovisual Media
- Imagination
- Law
- Literature
- Music
- Neuroaesthetics
- Paleoaesthetics
- Politics and Ideology
- Popular Culture
- Contributors
Artikel in diesem Heft
- Titelei
- Table of Contents
- ARTICLES
- Horror Manga: An Evolutionary Literary Perspective
- Two Servants, One Master: The Common Acoustic Origins of the Divergent Communicative Media of Music and Speech
- Courtliness as Morality of Modernity in Norse Romance
- Evolution, “Pseudo-science,” and Satire: Edith Wharton’s “The Descent of Man”
- REVIEW ESSAYS
- Ancient Voices, Contemporary Practice, and Human Musicality
- Narrative Theory and Neuroscience: Why Human Nature Matters
- What Nature Gave Us: Steven Pinker on the Rules of Reason
- BOOK REVIEWS
- Steven Brown. The Unification of the Arts: A Framework for Understanding What the Arts Share and Why
- Mathias Clasen. A Very Nervous Person’s Guide to Horror Movies
- James E. Cutting. Movies on our Minds: The Evolution of Cinematic Engagement
- Jonathan Gottschall. The Story Paradox: How our Love of Storytelling Builds Societies and Tears Them Down
- Emelie Jonsson. The Early Evolutionary Imagination: Literature and Human Nature
- J. L. Modern. Neuromatic; or, a Particular History of Religion and the Brain
- ARTICLE REVIEWS
- Audiovisual Media
- Imagination
- Law
- Literature
- Music
- Neuroaesthetics
- Paleoaesthetics
- Politics and Ideology
- Popular Culture
- Contributors
