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THOUGHTS: Creationism and VN
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[EDNOTE. This is the first of two messages from Victor Fet on this topic. -- SES]
Jansy (and Grigory):
I think we are mixing here a lot of apples and oranges -- or Oranges and Peaches (Darwin's famous book title, as you know :).
Grigory used "creationist" in its strict modern context, i.e. an anti-evolutionist, i.e.a person one who is opposed to Darwinian evolution defined as (let me tackle this), say, process of life forms/systems being able to become other life forms by means of natural selection (and other means, depending on your definition of selection). In this sense, "creationist" was not use din VN's times -- teh argument is old but terminology had developed only recently.
Jansy: I do not think that calling VN a "creationist" in art helps too much -- in art VN was a "creator."
Dr. Blackwell might correct me but I tend to think that both VN's mimicry work and abstract species theories (Father's Butterflies) still are very much in the vein of evolutionary biology, largely divorced from metaphysics.
And while it is true that VN was (and many are still) dissatisfied with neo-Darwinist models of his (pre-molecular) times, I daresay he never disputed evolution as a process: instead, he celebrated its wonders every time he had chance both as an artist and as an intellectual.
Clearly it has nothing to do with modern "creationism", largely an anti-intellectual political and cultural phenomenon.
Apes and monkeys: in Russian indeed they are a single word, unlike in English ("obezyany") --- but I would not read evolutionism into English language only because it has a separate word for apes.
Russian, for example, has no word for "privacy" (best rendered as "not your business") but there still are deeply private Russians.
(Also, neither of modern European languages evolved within geographic range of any four big species of apes, which always were exotic creatures to the Europeans. Not so for monkeys: they are found in Northern Africa).
Victor Fet
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Jansy (and Grigory):
I think we are mixing here a lot of apples and oranges -- or Oranges and Peaches (Darwin's famous book title, as you know :).
Grigory used "creationist" in its strict modern context, i.e. an anti-evolutionist, i.e.a person one who is opposed to Darwinian evolution defined as (let me tackle this), say, process of life forms/systems being able to become other life forms by means of natural selection (and other means, depending on your definition of selection). In this sense, "creationist" was not use din VN's times -- teh argument is old but terminology had developed only recently.
Jansy: I do not think that calling VN a "creationist" in art helps too much -- in art VN was a "creator."
Dr. Blackwell might correct me but I tend to think that both VN's mimicry work and abstract species theories (Father's Butterflies) still are very much in the vein of evolutionary biology, largely divorced from metaphysics.
And while it is true that VN was (and many are still) dissatisfied with neo-Darwinist models of his (pre-molecular) times, I daresay he never disputed evolution as a process: instead, he celebrated its wonders every time he had chance both as an artist and as an intellectual.
Clearly it has nothing to do with modern "creationism", largely an anti-intellectual political and cultural phenomenon.
Apes and monkeys: in Russian indeed they are a single word, unlike in English ("obezyany") --- but I would not read evolutionism into English language only because it has a separate word for apes.
Russian, for example, has no word for "privacy" (best rendered as "not your business") but there still are deeply private Russians.
(Also, neither of modern European languages evolved within geographic range of any four big species of apes, which always were exotic creatures to the Europeans. Not so for monkeys: they are found in Northern Africa).
Victor Fet
Search the archive: http://listserv.ucsb.edu/archives/nabokv-l.html
Search archive with Google:
http://www.google.com/advanced_search?q=site:listserv.ucsb.edu&HL=en
Contact the Editors: mailto:nabokv-l@utk.edu,nabokv-l@holycross.edu
Visit Zembla: http://www.libraries.psu.edu/nabokov/zembla.htm
View Nabokv-L policies: http://web.utk.edu/~sblackwe/EDNote.htm