TY - BOOK AU - Ruse,Michael TI - Darwinism as religion: what literature tells us about evolution SN - 9780190241056 AV - PR878 .D379 2017 PY - 2017/// CY - New York, NY PB - Oxford University Press KW - Darwin, Charles, KW - English literature KW - 19th century KW - History and criticism KW - Literature and science KW - Great Britain KW - History KW - Religion and literature KW - Evolution (Biology) in literature KW - Nature in literature KW - Religion in literature KW - Religion and science KW - Electronic Books N1 - 2; Prologue --; The eighteenth century --; Before Darwin --; The Darwinian theory --; Reception --; God --; Origins --; Humans --; Race and class --; Morality --; Sex --; Sin and redemption --; The future --; Darwinism as background --; Darwinian theory comes of age --; The divide continues --; Conflicting visions --; Epilogue; 2; b N2 - 'Darwinism as Religion' argues that the theory of evolution given by Charles Darwin in the nineteenth century has always functioned as much as a secular form of religion as anything purely scientific. Through the words of novelists and poets, Michael Ruse argues that Darwin took us from the secure world of Christian faith into a darker, less friendly world of chance and lack of meaning; "Through the lens of poetry and fiction, Darwinism as Religion tells the history of evolutionary theory, arguing that Charles Darwin was the significant figure in this story, that his Origin of Species published in 1859 was the key work, and that the revolution he brought about was less one of science and more one of religion. Evolutionary thinking focusing on Darwin's mechanism of natural selection formed a rival worldview to the Christianity from which his ideas in major respects derived. Darwinism as Religion is unique in combing a deep feeling for literature with a synoptic knowledge of the theory of evolution and its past, from the early days when it was essentially a pseudoscience resting on the back of enthusiasm for the ideology of Progress, a direct challenge to the Christian commitment to Providence, through the years after the Origin when it was the great popular science of the museums and lecture halls, and on to the professionalism of the genetically informed twentieth century. Drawing on novelists including George Eliot, Thomas Hardy, and D. H. Lawrence and poets including Alfred Tennyson, Emily Dickinson, and Robert Frost, the tale is told of Darwinism growing and rivaling and challenging Christianity, continuing the story to the present, through such Darwinian writers as the poet Philip Appleman and the novelist Ian McEwan, and such Christian writers as the poet Pattiann Rogers and the Calvinist novelist Marilynne Robinson."--Provided by publisher UR - https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&scope=site&db=nlebk&db=nlabk&AN=1348496&site=eds-live&custid=s3260518 ER -