Evolution and the ‘Species’: The Individual in Deep Time
Evolution and the ‘Species’: The Individual in Deep Time
This chapter argues that deep time is the most vivid challenge posed to the ?awed and fragile human subject in Pater's writings. It explores Pater's knowledge of, and belief in, Darwinian science, Spencer's social Darwinism, and Thompson's theory of entropy drawing examples from works such as 'Coleridge' and Plato and Platonism. It suggests though that Pater's attitude toward Darwinism is more complex and inconsistent than critics have hitherto accounted for. Specifically, it suggests that Pater is able to accept Darwin's theory of evolution in the abstract, on his own terms, with the idea of deep time and constant evolution aesthticised into a beautiful spectacle. However, Pater is unable to accept the idea that the individual is one of a ‘species’ and this chapter discusses how precisely he distances himself from Darwinism as it conceives the individual as part of a 'species.'
Keywords: Darwin, Darwinism, Evolution, Herbert Spencer, 'species', Deep Time, Aestheticism, Evolutionary history
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