The Early Evolutionary Imagination
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The Early Evolutionary Imagination
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Author : Emelie Jonsson
language : en
Publisher:
Release Date : 2021
The Early Evolutionary Imagination written by Emelie Jonsson and has been published by this book supported file pdf, txt, epub, kindle and other format this book has been release on 2021 with categories.
"Jonsson is the first scholar in this historical field to assimilate the most recent empirical knowledge about our evolved human nature and the psychology of imagination. Her theoretical framework provides robust explanatory power, her interpretive critiques are incisive and authoritative, and her style is lucid and vigorous. Like the best critics of any literary school, she evokes the whole imaginative world view of the authors she discusses." --Joseph Carroll, Curator's Distinguished Professor Emeritus, University of St. Louis, Missouri, USA "Jonsson's new book is brilliantly conceived, elegantly written, and deeply illuminating. Her premise is that Darwinian thinking represented a profound challenge to the foundational concepts of literary culture-the autonomy of the individual, the meaningfulness of human life, the importance of moral choice, and the value of art. Her argument is that literary culture in the years following Darwin explored ways of confronting this challenge, opening up a space between difficult truths and soothing fictions, and making it possible for people to grasp the unique disturbance of the Darwinian message without being destroyed by its implications." --Geoffrey Harpham, senior fellow at the Kenan Institute for Ethics, Duke University, USA Darwinian evolution is an imaginative problem that has been passed down to us unsolved. It is our most powerful explanation of humanity's place in nature, but it is also more cognitively demanding and less emotionally satisfying than any myth. From the publication of the Origin of Species in 1859, evolution has pushed our capacity for storytelling into overdrive, sparking fairy tales, adventure stories, political allegories, utopias, dystopias, social realist novels, and existential meditations. Though this influence on literature has been widely studied, it has not been explained psychologically. This book argues for the adaptive function of storytelling, integrates traditional humanist scholarship with current knowledge about the evolved and adapted human mind, and calls for literary scholars to reframe their interpretation of the first authors who responded to Darwin. Emelie Jonsson is Assistant Professor of English literature at the Arctic University of Norway, UiT, and Associate Editor of Evolutionary Studies in Imaginative Culture. Her research centers on the friction between human psychology and naturalistic cosmology. .
The Early Evolutionary Imagination
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Author : Emelie Jonsson
language : en
Publisher: Springer Nature
Release Date : 2021-09-29
The Early Evolutionary Imagination written by Emelie Jonsson and has been published by Springer Nature this book supported file pdf, txt, epub, kindle and other format this book has been release on 2021-09-29 with Literary Criticism categories.
Darwinian evolution is an imaginative problem that has been passed down to us unsolved. It is our most powerful explanation of humanity’s place in nature, but it is also more cognitively demanding and less emotionally satisfying than any myth. From the publication of the Origin of Species in 1859, evolution has pushed our capacity for storytelling into overdrive, sparking fairy tales, adventure stories, political allegories, utopias, dystopias, social realist novels, and existential meditations. Though this influence on literature has been widely studied, it has not been explained psychologically. This book argues for the adaptive function of storytelling, integrates traditional humanist scholarship with current knowledge about the evolved and adapted human mind, and calls for literary scholars to reframe their interpretation of the first authors who responded to Darwin.
The Literary Imagination From Erasmus Darwin To H G Wells
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Author : Michael R. Page
language : en
Publisher: Routledge
Release Date : 2016-03-09
The Literary Imagination From Erasmus Darwin To H G Wells written by Michael R. Page and has been published by Routledge this book supported file pdf, txt, epub, kindle and other format this book has been release on 2016-03-09 with Literary Criticism categories.
At the close of the eighteenth century, Erasmus Darwin declared that he would 'enlist the imagination under the banner of science,' beginning, Michael Page argues, a literary narrative on questions of evolution, ecology, and technological progress that would extend from the Romantic through the Victorian periods. Examining the interchange between emerging scientific ideas-specifically evolution and ecology-new technologies, and literature in nineteenth-century Britain, Page shows how British writers from Darwin to H.G. Wells confronted the burgeoning expansion of scientific knowledge that was radically redefining human understanding and experience of the natural world, of human species, and of the self. The wide range of authors covered in Page's ambitious study permits him to explore an impressive array of topics that include the role of the Romantic era in the molding of scientific and cultural perspectives; the engagement of William Wordsworth and Percy Shelley with questions raised by contemporary science; Mary Shelley's conflicted views on the unfolding prospects of modernity; and how Victorian writers like Charles Kingsley, Samuel Butler, and W.H. Hudson responded to the implications of evolutionary theory. Page concludes with the scientific romances of H.G. Wells, to demonstrate how evolutionary fantasies reached the pinnacle of synthesis between evolutionary science and the imagination at the close of the century.
Evolutionary Perspectives On Imaginative Culture
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Author : Joseph Carroll
language : en
Publisher: Springer Nature
Release Date : 2020-08-28
Evolutionary Perspectives On Imaginative Culture written by Joseph Carroll and has been published by Springer Nature this book supported file pdf, txt, epub, kindle and other format this book has been release on 2020-08-28 with Psychology categories.
This pioneering volume offers an expansive introduction to the relatively new field of evolutionary studies in imaginative culture. Contributors from psychology, neuroscience, anthropology, and the humanities probe the evolved human imagination and its artefacts. The book forcefully demonstrates that imagination is part of human nature. Contributors explore imaginative culture in seven main areas: Imagination: Evolution, Mechanisms and Functions Myth and Religion Aesthetic Theory Music Visual and Plastic Arts Video Games and Films Oral Narratives and Literature Evolutionary Perspectives on Imaginative Culture widens the scope of evolutionary cultural theory to include much of what “culture” means in common usage. The contributors aim to convince scholars in both the humanities and the evolutionary human sciences that biology and imaginative culture are intimately intertwined. The contributors illuminate this broad theoretical argument with comprehensive insights into religion, ideology, personal identity, and many particular works of art, music, literature, film, and digital media. The chapters “Imagination, the Brain’s Default Mode Network, and Imaginative Verbal Artifacts” and “The Role of Aesthetic Style in Alleviating Anxiety About the Future” are licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
The Evolution Of Imagination
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Author : Stephen T. Asma
language : en
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Release Date : 2017-06-21
The Evolution Of Imagination written by Stephen T. Asma and has been published by University of Chicago Press this book supported file pdf, txt, epub, kindle and other format this book has been release on 2017-06-21 with Philosophy categories.
Consider Miles Davis, horn held high, sculpting a powerful musical statement full of tonal patterns, inside jokes, and thrilling climactic phrases—all on the fly. Or think of a comedy troupe riffing on a couple of cues from the audience until the whole room is erupting with laughter. Or maybe it’s a team of software engineers brainstorming their way to the next Google, or the Einsteins of the world code-cracking the mysteries of nature. Maybe it’s simply a child playing with her toys. What do all of these activities share? With wisdom, humor, and joy, philosopher Stephen T. Asma answers that question in this book: imagination. And from there he takes us on an extraordinary tour of the human creative spirit. Guided by neuroscience, animal behavior, evolution, philosophy, and psychology, Asma burrows deep into the human psyche to look right at the enigmatic but powerful engine that is our improvisational creativity—the source, he argues, of our remarkable imaginational capacity. How is it, he asks, that a story can evoke a whole world inside of us? How are we able to rehearse a skill, a speech, or even an entire scenario simply by thinking about it? How does creativity go beyond experience and help us make something completely new? And how does our moral imagination help us sculpt a better society? As he shows, we live in a world that is only partly happening in reality. Huge swaths of our cognitive experiences are made up by “what-ifs,” “almosts,” and “maybes,” an imagined terrain that churns out one of the most overlooked but necessary resources for our flourishing: possibilities. Considering everything from how imagination works in our physical bodies to the ways we make images, from the mechanics of language and our ability to tell stories to the creative composition of self-consciousness, Asma expands our personal and day-to-day forms of imagination into a grand scale: as one of the decisive evolutionary forces that has guided human development from the Paleolithic era to today. The result is an inspiring look at the rich relationships among improvisation, imagination, and culture, and a privileged glimpse into the unique nature of our evolved minds.
The Evolutionary Imagination In Late Victorian Novels
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Author : John Glendening
language : en
Publisher: Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.
Release Date : 2007-01-01
The Evolutionary Imagination In Late Victorian Novels written by John Glendening and has been published by Ashgate Publishing, Ltd. this book supported file pdf, txt, epub, kindle and other format this book has been release on 2007-01-01 with Literary Criticism categories.
Dominated by Darwinism and its numerous guises, evolutionary theory presented opportunities and difficulties for late Victorian novelists. John Glendening shows how a range of texts, from The Island of Doctor Moreau and Dracula to Heart of Darkness, address the interrelationship between order and chaos uncovered by evolutionary thinking. His focus is on how these authors stressed, not objective truths, but rather the contingencies and confusions generated by theories of evolution.
Paleopoetics
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Author : Christopher Collins
language : en
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Release Date : 2013-01-22
Paleopoetics written by Christopher Collins and has been published by Columbia University Press this book supported file pdf, txt, epub, kindle and other format this book has been release on 2013-01-22 with Science categories.
Christopher Collins introduces an exciting new field of research traversing evolutionary biology, anthropology, archaeology, cognitive psychology, linguistics, neuroscience, and literary study. Paleopoetics maps the selective processes that originally shaped the human genus millions of years ago and prepared the human brain to play, imagine, empathize, and engage in fictive thought as mediated by language. A manifestation of the "cognitive turn" in the humanities, Paleopoetics calls for a broader, more integrated interpretation of the reading experience, one that restores our connection to the ancient methods of thought production still resonating within us. Speaking with authority on the scientific aspects of cognitive poetics, Collins proposes reading literature using cognitive skills that predate language and writing. These include the brain's capacity to perceive the visible world, store its images, and retrieve them later to form simulated mental events. Long before humans could share stories through speech, they perceived, remembered, and imagined their own inner narratives. Drawing on a wide range of evidence, Collins builds an evolutionary bridge between humans' development of sensorimotor skills and their achievement of linguistic cognition, bringing current scientific perspective to such issues as the structure of narrative, the distinction between metaphor and metonymy, the relation of rhetoric to poetics, the relevance of performance theory to reading, the difference between orality and writing, and the nature of play and imagination.
The Evolutionary Imagination In Late Victorian Novels
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Author : John Glendening
language : en
Publisher: Routledge
Release Date : 2016-03-16
The Evolutionary Imagination In Late Victorian Novels written by John Glendening and has been published by Routledge this book supported file pdf, txt, epub, kindle and other format this book has been release on 2016-03-16 with Literary Criticism categories.
Dominated by Darwinism and the numerous guises it assumed, evolutionary theory was a source of opportunities and difficulties for late Victorian novelists. Texts produced by Wells, Hardy, Stoker, and Conrad are exemplary in reflecting and participating in these challenges. Not only do they contend with evolutionary complications, John Glendening argues, but the complexities and entanglements of evolutionary theory, interacting with multiple cultural influences, thoroughly permeate the narrative, descriptive, and thematic fabric of each. All the books Glendening examines, from The Island of Doctor Moreau and Dracula to Heart of Darkness, address the interrelationship between order and chaos revealed and promoted by evolutionary thinking of the period. Glendening's particular focus is on how Darwinism informs novels in relation to a late Victorian culture that encouraged authors to stress, not objective truths illuminated by Darwinism, but rather the contingencies, uncertainties, and confusions generated by it and other forms of evolutionary theory.
The Evolutionary Road To Human Memory
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Author : Elisabeth A. Murray
language : en
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Release Date : 2019-12-05
The Evolutionary Road To Human Memory written by Elisabeth A. Murray and has been published by Oxford University Press this book supported file pdf, txt, epub, kindle and other format this book has been release on 2019-12-05 with Psychology categories.
We tend to think about memory in terms of the human experience, neglecting the fact that we can trace a direct line of descent from the earliest vertebrates to modern humans. But the evolutionary history that we share with other vertebrates has left a mark on modern memory, complemented by unique forms of memory that emerged in humans. This book tells an intriguing story about how evolution shaped human memory. It explains how a series of now-extinct ancestral species adapted to life in their world, in their time and place. As they did, new brain areas appeared, each of which supported an innovative form of memory that helped them gain an advantage in life. Through inheritance and modification across millions of years, these evolutionary developments created several kinds of memory that influence the human mind today. Then, during human evolution, yet another new kind of memory emerged: about ourselves and others. This evolutionary innovation ignited human imagination; empowered us to remember and talk about a personal past; and enabled the sharing of knowledge about our world, our culture, and ourselves. Through these developments, our long journey along the evolutionary road to human memory made it possible for every individual, day upon day, to add new pages to the story of a life: the remarkably rich record of experiences and knowledge that make up a human mind. Written in an engaging and accessible style, The Evolutionary Road to Human Memory will be enjoyable reading for anyone interested in the human mind.
Evolution And Imagination In Victorian Children S Literature
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Author : Jessica Straley
language : en
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Release Date : 2016-06-06
Evolution And Imagination In Victorian Children S Literature written by Jessica Straley and has been published by Cambridge University Press this book supported file pdf, txt, epub, kindle and other format this book has been release on 2016-06-06 with Literary Criticism categories.
An interdisciplinary study that explores the impact of evolutionary theory on Victorian children's literature.