*This post stops short of discussing the telescope comparison, which would probably open up my questions about Imagination and Reason (and the use of analogy) in interesting ways, but perhaps we'll get to this passage in class, since Natalie also brings it up in her post.
I'm interested in Darwin's use of the term “perfect” in describing the structures and species that result from natural selection in Chapter VI, “Difficulties on Theory.” The ideal of perfection is of course jarring in the context of a work whose overall tendency is present nature in a state of constant flux. So , what does perfection mean in this context? This first comes up on page 166 of this chapter. Darwin traces the possible evolution of the flying squirrel, arguing that “by the accumulated effects of this process of natural selection, a perfect so-called flying squirrel [is] produced.” Here, the flying-squirrel in its then-current state is described as perfect, but the term, interestingly, is followed up by another-- “so-called”--that suggest to the reader the uncertainty and anthropocentrism of this classification. The second mention occurs on the next page, in which Darwin attempts to explain how birds might have acquired their “perfect power of flight” (167). Here, flight evolves out of a skill at falling: intermediate species leap and parachute until the relevant membranes enable them to fly. When flight occurs, it is designated “perfect.” But that doesn't seem to be because it's the best of all possible flights. It's more likely perfect in the sense that we (Darwin, the reader then and now) can recognize it as flight. The same goes for the “perfect...flying squirrel.” In a nature that always changing its demands on a species, perfection is emphatically located in the human mind, in the present moment or geological age.
Similarly, we find “imperfection” in the less complex optic nerves of crustaceans, which have at their lower ends “an imperfect vitreous substance” (172). The imperfection is not necessarily related to whether the crustacean is sufficiently well-adapted to thrive in its environment, but rather to how well it conforms to a human conception of what an eye ought to be. The “imperfect vitreous substance” here is offered as an intermediate step between species—the imperfect is a stop-gap measure that enables Darwin and the reader to make that imaginative leap to understand the “imperfect explanation” offered in this chapter (172). And again, the explanation is imperfect not because it necessarily fails to conform to Nature's requirements, but because it fails to conform to man's.
There are two glaring problems when it comes to formulating a perfect explanation, both of which Darwin acknowledges. The first would be the gaps in the geological record: the information just isn't available to us. The second problem is that, even if the information were available (in earlier chapters, Darwin asserts, it has been), the reader would have no interest in reading, say, an exhaustive catalog of species over millenia. So the imperfection here implicates the reader, and the reader, as we've suggested in class discussions, wants a story, and perhaps knows no other way to communicate.
I'm quibbling with Darwin a bit when I characterize this move as imaginative leap. Despite the fact that he admonishes readers to let “reason...conquer...imagination” at the bottom of 172, Darwin does seem to be presenting us with an imaginative activity: inviting the reader to follow him through an imperfect exercise in which he sets up a series of inferior eye-formations, suggesting that we might theorize how the gradual process of natural selection could fill the gaps between these different structures. But he limits the reach of imagination (or whatever faculty he's drawing on) from the beginning, stating that “how a nerve comes to be sensitive to light, hardly concerns us more than how life itself first originated” (171). What faculty is he appealing to in his conclusion of this portion of the argument, though? He writes, apropos of the various facts and suggestions assembled, “I can see no very great difficulty...in believing that natural selection has converted the simple apparatus of the optic nerve...” etc. (172). There is a semblance of reason here, but the language seems equally suggestive of faith. So, does the imaginative leap land us in the realm of reason, or faith (or both or neither)?
Darwin stages the cognitive challenges posed by his theory which asks us to (and at the same time tells us we can't) image processes that take tens of thousands of years. Hence the twilight zone--exactly between reason and faith (though a decidedly secular one)--into which he hurls his readers.
ReplyDelete