The Machinate Literary Animal: Butlerian Science for the Twenty-first Century
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Issue Date
2014-12-01Author
Neill, Anna
Publisher
Johns Hopkins University Press
Type
Article
Article Version
Scholarly/refereed, publisher version
Metadata
Show full item recordAbstract
Current inquiry into nongenetic forms of inheritance has deep roots in the nineteenth century. Samuel Butler’s evolutionary science writing and fiction points ahead, beyond the twentieth-century dismissal of pre-Darwinian science, to our own questions about how the experiences of an individual organism may effect change at the species level. This includes the way that symbolically mediated information, which rapidly shapes the human environment, exercises a downward pressure on slower-moving, genetic change. Butler’s theories of unconscious memory and extended cognition, along with the Lamarckian principle that acquired traits could be passed on to descendants, together constituted an “evo-devo” approach to species history. In particular, language—specifically literary language—for Butler functioned as a machinate extension of the mind that could communicate transformative information to successive generations. Such extension therefore enables the little events of a lifetime to reach into the evolutionary future and transform it.
Description
This is the publisher's version, also available electronically from http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/configurations/v022/22.1.neill.html.
ISSN
1063-1801Collections
- English Scholarly Works [308]
Citation
Neill, Anna L. (2014). "The Machinate Literary Animal: Butlerian Science for the Twenty-first Century." Configurations: A Journal of Literature, Science, and Technology, 22(1):55-77. http://www.dx.doi.org/10.1353/con.2014.0001
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