Book Review: Darwin Loves You
Natural Selection and the Re-enchantment of the World
The bumper sticker, from which the book draws its initial inspiration, is a testament to the ongoing title fight that humankind has forced Jesus and Darwin to engage in; a conflict in which religion (an assumed haven of faith, wonder and enchantment) is pitted against evolution via natural selection (stereotyped as a hard-nosed, soulless exploration of nature’s brutality).
In his book, Darwin Loves You: Natural Selection and the Re-enchantment of the World, Professor Levine argues that understanding how the natural world has come into being through the process of selection does not have to result in a bleak, secular pessimism. It didn’t for Charles Darwin.
Seeing the World through Darwin’s Times and Eyes
Darwin’s astounding insights were unleashed on 19th century Victorian England. Levine’s expertise in Victorian literature and culture enable him to expertly guide his readers on a journey from the climate of the times surrounding the publication of The Origin of Species through the persistent cultural wake of Darwin’s theory of evolution.
Levine also devotes considerable attention to how Darwin himself was affected by his own discoveries, and an amazed wonder of nature’s complexities permeates Darwin’s charming, insightful and considerable writings.
Charles Darwin, Antichrist?
As might be expected, Darwin Loves You has received praise from the critics and criticism from those that prays. In his weblog on intelligent design, William Dembski accuses the book of being a silly and superficial deification of Darwin, an allegation that smacks of fear-based ideological self-defense.
In short, the naysayers are missing the point, which is that nature requires no deity to be awe inspiring, and Charles Darwin’s discovery of how the natural world is shaped, his evidence-based eschewing of supernatural explanation, has clearly earned him a dedicated spot as the unholy darling of fundamentalist America.
The Darwinism of Darwin
Levine book thankfully brings us back to the unadulterated Darwinism of Darwin; a view of the natural struggle for life that “does not empty the world of spirit, but fills it with wonder.” One honk for enchanted secularity!
About George Levine
In 2006 Dr. George Levine retired from his post as English professor at Rutgers University, where he taught courses on Victorian Fiction & Prose; Narrative & Science, Narrative & Epistemology and Science & Culture. Reading Charles Darwin’s writings led Levine to examine how Darwinian thought helped shape literature and how scientific and literary pursuits are both deeply imaginative enterprises.
In addition to the book Darwin Loves You, Professor Levine’s publications include Dying to Know (Chicago, 2002); The Cambridge Companion to George Eliot (Cambridge, 2001); Darwin and the Novelists (Harvard, 1988); The Realistic Imagination (Chicago, 1981); Lifebirds (Rutgers, 1997). He also wrote introduction and notes for The Origin of the Species (Barnes and Noble, 2004), and How to Read the Victorian Novel (Wiley-Blackwell, 2007)
About The Book
Title:Darwin Loves You: Natural Selection and the Re-enchantment of the World
Author: George Levine
Publisher & Year:Princeton University Press 2006
List Price: $18.95
ISBN Paperback: 978-0-691-13639-4
