From natural selection to the sentient symphony of life: a chaotic reading of Wertenbaker’s After Darwin
Darwin’s theory of evolution was shaken to the core by the discovery of the second law of thermodynamics and entropy. While it accentuates that the world has evolved from simple to complex, and it moves from disorder to order, the second law preaches the opposite totally. Such inconsistency remains...
| Main Authors: | , , , |
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
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Universiti Malaysia Perlis
2018
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| Online Access: | http://psasir.upm.edu.my/id/eprint/72794/1/From%20natural%20selection%20to%20the%20sentient%20symphony%20of%20life.pdf |
| _version_ | 1825950143931744256 |
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| author | Ahmad Yas, Khalid Ali Termizi, Arbaayah Talif, Rosli Jujar Singh, Hardev Kaur |
| author_facet | Ahmad Yas, Khalid Ali Termizi, Arbaayah Talif, Rosli Jujar Singh, Hardev Kaur |
| author_sort | Ahmad Yas, Khalid |
| collection | UPM |
| description | Darwin’s theory of evolution was shaken to the core by the discovery of the second law of thermodynamics and entropy. While it accentuates that the world has evolved from simple to complex, and it moves from disorder to order, the second law preaches the opposite totally. Such inconsistency remains unsolved until the advent of chaos theory, which emphasises that the universe has the capacity to renew itself from within through a process called self-organisation. As a new paradigm shift in science, it pushed scientists to re-read Darwinism from an entirely different perspective. The paper intends to trace the various interpretations of Darwinism in Timberlake Wertenbaker’s After Darwin (1998) through characters’ responses to evolution, utilising chaos theory as a theoretical and methodological framework. The play, which offers a Darwinian-Dawkinsian vision of competition, ends by embracing Margulis and Sagan’s view of cooperation inspired by the new science of chaos. As the only species endowed with an independently functioning brain, Man is able to adapt and turn the table against the brutality of natural selection to establish his own values. |
| first_indexed | 2024-03-06T10:10:07Z |
| format | Article |
| id | upm.eprints-72794 |
| institution | Universiti Putra Malaysia |
| language | English |
| last_indexed | 2024-03-06T10:10:07Z |
| publishDate | 2018 |
| publisher | Universiti Malaysia Perlis |
| record_format | dspace |
| spelling | upm.eprints-727942021-02-08T00:28:16Z http://psasir.upm.edu.my/id/eprint/72794/ From natural selection to the sentient symphony of life: a chaotic reading of Wertenbaker’s After Darwin Ahmad Yas, Khalid Ali Termizi, Arbaayah Talif, Rosli Jujar Singh, Hardev Kaur Darwin’s theory of evolution was shaken to the core by the discovery of the second law of thermodynamics and entropy. While it accentuates that the world has evolved from simple to complex, and it moves from disorder to order, the second law preaches the opposite totally. Such inconsistency remains unsolved until the advent of chaos theory, which emphasises that the universe has the capacity to renew itself from within through a process called self-organisation. As a new paradigm shift in science, it pushed scientists to re-read Darwinism from an entirely different perspective. The paper intends to trace the various interpretations of Darwinism in Timberlake Wertenbaker’s After Darwin (1998) through characters’ responses to evolution, utilising chaos theory as a theoretical and methodological framework. The play, which offers a Darwinian-Dawkinsian vision of competition, ends by embracing Margulis and Sagan’s view of cooperation inspired by the new science of chaos. As the only species endowed with an independently functioning brain, Man is able to adapt and turn the table against the brutality of natural selection to establish his own values. Universiti Malaysia Perlis 2018 Article PeerReviewed text en http://psasir.upm.edu.my/id/eprint/72794/1/From%20natural%20selection%20to%20the%20sentient%20symphony%20of%20life.pdf Ahmad Yas, Khalid and Ali Termizi, Arbaayah and Talif, Rosli and Jujar Singh, Hardev Kaur (2018) From natural selection to the sentient symphony of life: a chaotic reading of Wertenbaker’s After Darwin. Gema Online Journal of Language Studies, 18 (1). 161 - 175. ISSN 1675-8021; ESSN: 2550-2131 https://ejournal.ukm.my/gema/article/view/19573 10.17576/gema-2018-1801-10 |
| spellingShingle | Ahmad Yas, Khalid Ali Termizi, Arbaayah Talif, Rosli Jujar Singh, Hardev Kaur From natural selection to the sentient symphony of life: a chaotic reading of Wertenbaker’s After Darwin |
| title | From natural selection to the sentient symphony of life: a chaotic reading of Wertenbaker’s After Darwin |
| title_full | From natural selection to the sentient symphony of life: a chaotic reading of Wertenbaker’s After Darwin |
| title_fullStr | From natural selection to the sentient symphony of life: a chaotic reading of Wertenbaker’s After Darwin |
| title_full_unstemmed | From natural selection to the sentient symphony of life: a chaotic reading of Wertenbaker’s After Darwin |
| title_short | From natural selection to the sentient symphony of life: a chaotic reading of Wertenbaker’s After Darwin |
| title_sort | from natural selection to the sentient symphony of life a chaotic reading of wertenbaker s after darwin |
| url | http://psasir.upm.edu.my/id/eprint/72794/1/From%20natural%20selection%20to%20the%20sentient%20symphony%20of%20life.pdf |
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