Kurt Vonnegut's “Homage to Santa Rosalia”: The “Patroness of Evolutionary Studies” and Galapagos
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Ian Marshall
Abstract
Though critics have noted the evolutionary themes in Kurt Vonnegut's Galapagos, none has discussed the name Vonnegut gave to the fictional island where most of the novel's action takes place: Santa Rosalia. Since Vonnegut had been reading up on evolutionary ideas while writing the novel, it seems likely that his source for the name was ecologist G. Evelyn Hutchinson's famous 1959 article, “Homage to Santa Rosalia: Or Why Are There So Many Kinds of Animals?” In a study of water bugs in a spring below a cave on Mount Pellegrino where Saint Rosalia's bones had been found in the seventeenth century, Hutchinson established ecological principles regarding speciation, ecological niches, and biodiversity, and he expressed prescient concerns about human impacts on the natural world. These concerns all surface in Galapagos. Of particular interest to Vonnegut must have been Hutchinson's designation of Saint Rosalia as the “patroness of evolutionary studies.”
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© Academic Studies Press
Artikel in diesem Heft
- Back Matter
- Front Matter
- INTRODUCTION TO THE FIRST ISSUE
- Why We Need a Journal with the Title Evolutionary Studies in Imaginative Culture
- SPECIAL SECTION: BELIEFS ABOUT HUMAN NATURE, CULTURE, AND SCIENCE
- A Cross-Disciplinary Survey of Beliefs about Human Nature, Culture, and Science
- Epistemic Territory and Embodied Imagination
- Growing Primacy of Human Agency in the Coevolution Process
- Human Nature Evolved to Enable Culture
- A Cultural Psychological View on Human Culture and Cultural Development
- Evolutionary Approaches to Culture in Sociology
- Response to the ESIC Questionnaire
- Charles Darwin on the Aesthetic Evolution of Man
- Gender Identity: Nature and Nurture Working Together
- Against Dichotomy
- The Best-Loved Story of All Time: Overcoming All Obstacles to Be Reunited, Evoking Kama Muta
- Stories of Minds and Bodies: The Role of Evolutionary Perspectives in Understanding Narrative
- History from an Evolutionary Perspective
- Identity Politics in Science
- Human Nature
- Cultural Evolution and Gene–Culture Coevolution
- Sexual Dials (Not Switches) Theory: An Evolutionary Perspective on Sex and Gender Complexity
- ARTICLES
- The Bad Breaks of Walter White: An Evolutionary Approach to the Fictional Antihero
- Cognitive Evolution and the Transmission of Popular Narratives: A Literature Review and Application to Urban Legends
- Kurt Vonnegut's “Homage to Santa Rosalia”: The “Patroness of Evolutionary Studies” and Galapagos
- Art in Early Human Evolution: Socially Driven Art Forms versus Material Art
- Animal Metaphors Revisited: New Uses of Art, Literature, and Science in an Environmental Studies Course
- Poetic Justice and Edith Wharton's “Xingu”: An Evolutionary Psychological Approach
- REVIEW ESSAYS
- Neuroaesthetics: The State of the Domain in 2017
- “It Just Must Be True”: Tomasello on Cognition and Morality
- Recent Critiques of Dual Inheritance Theory
- BOOK REVIEWS
- Antweiler, Christoph. 2016. Our Common Denominator: Human Universals Revisited.
- Beecher, Donald, 2016. Adapted Brains and Imaginary Worlds: Cognitive Science and the Literature of the Renaissance.
- Carroll, Sean B. 2016. The Serengeti Rules: The Quest to Discover How Life Works and Why It Matters.
- Eibl, Karl. 2016. Evolution—Kognition—Dichtung: Zur Anthropologie der Literatur.
- Gopnik, Alison. The Gardner and the Carpenter: What the New Science of Child Development Tells Us about the Relationship between Parents and Children.
- Hallam, Susan, Ian Cross, and Michael Thaut, eds. 2009. The Oxford Handbook of Music Psychology.
- Harari, Yuval Noah. 2015. Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind.
- Henrich, Joseph. 2015. The Secret of Our Success: How Culture Is Driving Human Evolution, Domesticating Our Species, and Making Us Smarter.
- Johnson, Dominic. 2016. God Is Watching You: How the Fear of God Makes Us Human.
- Kaufman, Scott Barry, and Carolyn Gregoire. 2015. Wired to Create: Unraveling the Mysteries of the Creative Mind.
- McConachie, Bruce. 2015. Evolution, Cognition, and Performance.
- Parrish, Alex C. 2014. Adaptive Rhetoric: Evolution, Culture and the Art of Persuasion.
- Paul, Robert A. 2015. Mixed Messages: Cultural and Genetic Inheritance in the Constitution of Human Society.
- Ridley, Rosalind. 2016. Peter Pan and the Mind of J. M. Barrie: An Exploration of Cognition and Consciousness.
- Van Schaik, Carel, and Kai Michel. 2016. The Good Book of Human Nature: An Evolutionary Reading of the Bible.
- Tague, Gregory F. 2014. Making Mind: Moral Sense and Consciousness in Philosophy, Science, and Literature.
- Contributors
Artikel in diesem Heft
- Back Matter
- Front Matter
- INTRODUCTION TO THE FIRST ISSUE
- Why We Need a Journal with the Title Evolutionary Studies in Imaginative Culture
- SPECIAL SECTION: BELIEFS ABOUT HUMAN NATURE, CULTURE, AND SCIENCE
- A Cross-Disciplinary Survey of Beliefs about Human Nature, Culture, and Science
- Epistemic Territory and Embodied Imagination
- Growing Primacy of Human Agency in the Coevolution Process
- Human Nature Evolved to Enable Culture
- A Cultural Psychological View on Human Culture and Cultural Development
- Evolutionary Approaches to Culture in Sociology
- Response to the ESIC Questionnaire
- Charles Darwin on the Aesthetic Evolution of Man
- Gender Identity: Nature and Nurture Working Together
- Against Dichotomy
- The Best-Loved Story of All Time: Overcoming All Obstacles to Be Reunited, Evoking Kama Muta
- Stories of Minds and Bodies: The Role of Evolutionary Perspectives in Understanding Narrative
- History from an Evolutionary Perspective
- Identity Politics in Science
- Human Nature
- Cultural Evolution and Gene–Culture Coevolution
- Sexual Dials (Not Switches) Theory: An Evolutionary Perspective on Sex and Gender Complexity
- ARTICLES
- The Bad Breaks of Walter White: An Evolutionary Approach to the Fictional Antihero
- Cognitive Evolution and the Transmission of Popular Narratives: A Literature Review and Application to Urban Legends
- Kurt Vonnegut's “Homage to Santa Rosalia”: The “Patroness of Evolutionary Studies” and Galapagos
- Art in Early Human Evolution: Socially Driven Art Forms versus Material Art
- Animal Metaphors Revisited: New Uses of Art, Literature, and Science in an Environmental Studies Course
- Poetic Justice and Edith Wharton's “Xingu”: An Evolutionary Psychological Approach
- REVIEW ESSAYS
- Neuroaesthetics: The State of the Domain in 2017
- “It Just Must Be True”: Tomasello on Cognition and Morality
- Recent Critiques of Dual Inheritance Theory
- BOOK REVIEWS
- Antweiler, Christoph. 2016. Our Common Denominator: Human Universals Revisited.
- Beecher, Donald, 2016. Adapted Brains and Imaginary Worlds: Cognitive Science and the Literature of the Renaissance.
- Carroll, Sean B. 2016. The Serengeti Rules: The Quest to Discover How Life Works and Why It Matters.
- Eibl, Karl. 2016. Evolution—Kognition—Dichtung: Zur Anthropologie der Literatur.
- Gopnik, Alison. The Gardner and the Carpenter: What the New Science of Child Development Tells Us about the Relationship between Parents and Children.
- Hallam, Susan, Ian Cross, and Michael Thaut, eds. 2009. The Oxford Handbook of Music Psychology.
- Harari, Yuval Noah. 2015. Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind.
- Henrich, Joseph. 2015. The Secret of Our Success: How Culture Is Driving Human Evolution, Domesticating Our Species, and Making Us Smarter.
- Johnson, Dominic. 2016. God Is Watching You: How the Fear of God Makes Us Human.
- Kaufman, Scott Barry, and Carolyn Gregoire. 2015. Wired to Create: Unraveling the Mysteries of the Creative Mind.
- McConachie, Bruce. 2015. Evolution, Cognition, and Performance.
- Parrish, Alex C. 2014. Adaptive Rhetoric: Evolution, Culture and the Art of Persuasion.
- Paul, Robert A. 2015. Mixed Messages: Cultural and Genetic Inheritance in the Constitution of Human Society.
- Ridley, Rosalind. 2016. Peter Pan and the Mind of J. M. Barrie: An Exploration of Cognition and Consciousness.
- Van Schaik, Carel, and Kai Michel. 2016. The Good Book of Human Nature: An Evolutionary Reading of the Bible.
- Tague, Gregory F. 2014. Making Mind: Moral Sense and Consciousness in Philosophy, Science, and Literature.
- Contributors
