Darwin vs. Wallace: When Poetry Dies and When Poetry Survives in the Not-So-Natural Selection of Memetic Evolution

Abstract

The theory of memetic evolution – explaining the reproduction of cultural units called memes – illuminates the decline of poetry as a cultural presence by clarifying the contrasting attitudes towards poetry manifested by the co-discoverers of natural selection: Charles Darwin and Alfred Wallace. Darwin’s eventual indifference to poetry can be traced to an all-absorbing faith in science that extinguishes poetry-favouring memes (such as religious beliefs, memories of the ‘useless’ past and reflections on inexplicable mysteries). In contrast, Wallace’s abiding passion for poetry reflects a surprising insistence on the limits of science, an insistence that protects poetry-sustaining memes.

Keywords:

• memes
• Charles Darwin
• Alfred Wallace
• science
• poetry
• religion

Notes

1. Peacock evidently wrote these words in a spirit of playful irony. But literary historians note that the view he expresses is ‘very close to that actually held in his day by Utilitarian philosophers and the material-minded public, which either attacked or contemptuously ignored the imaginative faculty and its achievements’ (Greenblatt et al. 2006, 837).