Download notes-2013-10-08-arnold-darwin

10/8 – Arnold (con’t) & Darwin
from Culture and Anarchy (1869)
What conditions is Arnold responding to?
 Industrial Revolution
 Isolation, the fragmentation of the populace
 Political turmoil (working class riots)
 An incurious (uncultured) middle class gaining political power
 Failing public education system
Culture and Classical Education not valued (1595)
Curiosity derided as suspicious or not useful, especially when it’s about the life of
the mind for its own sake (1595)
Culture is both an inward perfection and a common good (1596)
 Hellenism
o Spontaneity of consciousness
o Intellectual curiosity (1595)
o Appreciation for Sweetness and Light (Beauty and Understanding)
(1596)
 Humanism with a civic (NATIONAL) focus (1596)
o Motivated to elevate the populace (1596)
o Re-unify our fragmented Nation (1600)
Machinery is the modern mindset that devalues culture. (1597, **1598)
 Hebraism
o Strictness of conscience
o Right conduct
o The one thing necessary
 “Doing As One Likes”: Utilitarianism with a narrow self-interest (1597);
o No sense of Duty or Discipline (1598)
Hebraism / Hellenism (**1600; 1601)
 Must be joined (wholeness and unity) (1601-02)
Influence of Science  Modernity  anxiety (1601); dangerous (1603)
Greeks vs. Moderns (1602)
One Thing Necessary (1603)
Conclusion: modernity and “the confusion which environs us” (1603 bottom)
Posterity (1604)
Voyage of the Beagle (1839)
 Travel narrative
 Imperialism (1263, 1264)
o Create a favorable corner for England (1269)
 The Fuegian Savages and Jemmy (1262-69)
o Bought as slave in order to “civilize” (1265)
o The results (1268)
 Race – savages admire whitneness (1266)
 Suggests natural selection of humans (1267)
Galapagos Archipelago (1839) (1269-72)
 Alien land (1269)
 Tortoise rides (1271)
 Origin of Species
o Mystery of origins (1270)
o Key observation of Galapagos (geology/meteorology) (1271-72)
o Animals not afraid of humans (1272)
Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection (1859) (1272-77)
 Speciation, struggle for life, natural vs. artificial selection (1273)
 Romanticism? Victorian vision of nature (1273)
 Population growth (Modernity) (1274)
 Racial component
The Descent of Man (1871)
 Vs. Edenic origin narrative (1277-78)
 Man descended from monkeys (1278)
 Man is an animal, but with a difference (1278-79)
 Belief in God (1279-80)
 Sexual Selection vs. Natural Selection (1280)
o Eugenics (1282)
o Social Darwinism / Victorian Social Criticism – points in common with
Arnold, Mayhew, Engels? (1282)
 Pride in descent from savages? (1283)
 Triumph of scientific method (1283)
Ending of Autobiography (1887):
 Bible as unbelievable (1287-88)
 Hellenism (1288)
 Vs. Intelligent Design (1288)
 Universe in decay / Entropy (1289)
 Agnosticism (1289)