2009
Dimensions cm. 14 x 21
Paperback
Cover with flaps
Fedrigoni Freelife Mérida White
ISBN 978-88-95642-33-8
pp. 352

BUY NOW >>

George Levine

DARWIN LOVES YOU
Natural selection and the re-enchantment of the world

In the United States the bitter argument that counters creationists against evolutionists is also fought out on bumper stickers. Some proclaim that "Jesus Loves You" while others retaliate with "Darwin Loves You". The bumper sticker debate might be trivial and the pronouncement that "Darwin Loves You" may seem merely ironic, but George Levine insists that the message contains an unintended truth. Levine argues that Darwin was a man and scientist driven mainly by a love of the natural world and man himself, and that he adopts this love as a model for enchanted secularism. Taking the perspective of a literary critic, he analyses different "uses" to which Darwin's ideas have been put, as well as his writings and aspects of his life, leading us to discover a form of alternative enchantment in Darwin's work and life to that of religion, in which the world does not appear as mechanistic and brutal but rich in meaning and value. Based on this unusual interpretation, Darwin Loves You strongly asserts the idea of a naturalistic ethics that can provide the basis to a new vision of the relationship between man and nature.


George Levine is Professor Emeritus of English at Rutgers University. He has written many books on literature and culture in the Victorian age, and on the relationship between literature and science, including Darwin and the Novelists. He has also edited a recent edition of Darwin's Origin of the Species for Barnes and Noble.