Permanent Re-Enchantments: On Some Literary Uses of the Supernatural from Early Empiricism to Modern Aesthetics

Paige, Nicholas D.

doi:10.11126/stanford/9780804752992.003.0010

Cited by 6 publications

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“…The recent historiographical studies, a majority of which are reactions to scientific disenchantment in general, and a minority to Darwinian disenchantment in particular, still confirm the feeling of social discomfort. These studies, some more profusely than others, analyse-and many of them also boost-the concepts of "enchantment" and, above all, "re-enchantment" and its multiple manifestations, namely, artistic and literary, ecological, mystical or spiritual, religious and secular or scientific as strategies for re-enchanting the world (Swatos 1983;Berman 1981;Lassman and Velody 1989;Scribner 1993;Kontos 1994;Schroeder 1995;McDowell 1996;Curry 1999;Berger 1999;Ruickbie 1999;Jenkins 2000;Griffin 2001;Gane 2002;McGrath 2002;Owen 2004;Partridge 2004;Koshul 2005;Graham 2007;Levine 2008Levine , 2011Walsham 2008;Gibson 2009;Landy 2009;Landy and Saler 2009;Paige 2009;Tanaka 2009;Richards 2011;Taylor 2011;Asprem 2014;Josephson-Storm 2017).…”

Section: Disenchantment and Darwinian Disenchantmentmentioning

confidence: 99%

Darwin’s perception of nature and the question of disenchantment: a semantic analysis across the six editions of On the Origin of Species

Pazos

2021

HPLS

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This body of work is motivated by an apparent contradiction between, on the one hand, Darwin’s testimony in his autobiographical text about a supposed perceptual colour blindness before the aesthetic magnificence of natural landscapes, and, on the other hand, the last paragraph of On the Origin of Species, where he claims to perceive the forms of nature as beautiful and wonderful. My aim is to delve into the essence of the Darwinian perception of beauty in the context of the Weberian concept of “disenchantment of the world”, assumed as a possible conceptual axis that enables the unravelling of the core of this contrast of perceptions. In acknowledging the theory of evolution as one of the most prominent scientific theories likely to have contributed to disenchantment, a number of questions arise: Is disenchantment compatible with aesthetic experience and sensibility before natural beauty? Was it Darwin’s disenchanted conception of the world that led him to believe he was colour blind? To answer these questions, a computer-assisted semantic analysis of lexical frequency and variability, most especially focused on aesthetic-emotional and religious or spiritual adverbs and adjectives, has been undertaken across the six editions of The Origin. The semantic analysis demonstrates that, although disenchanted, Darwin’s descriptions of, mainly, the adaptational excellence of living beings, reflect an aesthetically enriched perception of nature. It is concluded that Darwin’s perceptual colour blindness, then, might be based on a confusion rooted in the equation of equality between aesthetic sensibility in nature and the perception of its beauty as part of the vestigia Dei.

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Section: Disenchantment and Darwinian Disenchantmentmentioning

confidence: 99%

Darwin’s perception of nature and the question of disenchantment: a semantic analysis across the six editions of On the Origin of Species

Pazos

2021

HPLS

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“…Expressly, except perhaps for the more historical, neutral studies on enchantment, disenchantment and secularism (Greisman, 1976;Swatos, 1983;Lassman and Velody, 1989;Curry, 1999;Koshul, 2005;Martin, 2005;Taylor, 2007;Walsham, 2008), the majority of approaches to this topic, moved by an apparently intense feeling of negativity, try to convince of the social need for various types of "re-enchantment". Artistic and literary (Graham, 2007;Landy and Saler, 2009;Paige, 2009), ecological (Berman, 1981;Partridge, 2004;Gibson, 2009), mystical or spiritual (Kontos, 1994;Ruickbie, 1999;Gane, 2002;Partridge, 2004;Gibson, 2009), religious (Berger, 1999;Griffin, 2001;McGrath, 2002;Graham, 2007;Gibson, 2009) and secular or scientific (Partridge, 2004;Levine, 2008;Landy, 2009;Landy and Saler, 2009) forms of re-enchantment are proposed as a way out of the fateful, disenchanting present and future of society.…”

Section: Negativist Disenchantersmentioning

confidence: 99%

¿Viaje desde el encantamiento hasta el desencantamiento? Un estudio sobre las descripciones de la naturaleza de Darwin desde el Journal hasta el Origin

Pazos¹

2021

Daimon

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Teniendo en cuenta la cuestión en disputa sobre el encantamiento o el desencantamiento del mundo causado por la ciencia moderna, este artículo examina comparativamente la semántica del léxico en Journal of Researches y The Origin of Species de Charles Darwin utilizando estrategias de minería de textos. El objetivo es mostrar que existe un camino semántico directo, comenzando en Journal y culminando en Origin, que confirma una tendencia hacia un tipo de lenguaje desencantado empleado por Darwin en sus descripciones de la naturaleza. Esto queda demostrado por el análisis léxico y semántico de ambos textos. Taking into accountthe disputed question about enchantment or disenchantment of the world caused by modern science, this paper comparatively examines the semantics of the lexicon of Charles Darwin’s Journal of Researches and The Origin of Species using the software package Wordsmith Tools. Its aim is to show that there is a direct semantic path, starting with the Journaland culminating in the Origin, which confirms a tendency towards a gradually disenchanting, in a non-pejorative sense, type of language used by Darwin in his descriptions of nature. This is demonstrated by the lexical and semantic analysis of the texts.

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Journeys without Maps

Vetter¹

2018

British Literature in Transition, 1920–1940: Futility and Anarchy

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Permanent Re-Enchantments: On Some Literary Uses of the Supernatural from Early Empiricism to Modern Aesthetics

Cited by 6 publications

References 0 publications

Darwin’s perception of nature and the question of disenchantment: a semantic analysis across the six editions of On the Origin of Species

Darwin’s perception of nature and the question of disenchantment: a semantic analysis across the six editions of On the Origin of Species

¿Viaje desde el encantamiento hasta el desencantamiento? Un estudio sobre las descripciones de la naturaleza de Darwin desde el Journal hasta el Origin

Journeys without Maps

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