Dickens vs. Darwin

One of an occasional series.

I've written an essay that examines two landmark works that turned 150 years old this year: A Tale of Two Cities and On the Origin of Species. How do you compare a work of literature and a work of science? With these two books, it comes down to a question of worldview.

If Darwin’s Origin of Species can be seen as ushering in a new era in Western thought, Dickens’s A Tale of Two Cities embodies biblical ideals that are often seen as downright backward. But for this very reason, we can look to Dickens for a corrective to some of the Darwinian ideas that have had a harmful impact on our society.

Note that I'm not arguing against natural selection per se, but against Darwin's materialistic interpretation of it. Various scientists over the years -- including Darwin's contemporary Alfred Russel Wallace -- have observed the same facts that Darwin did but drawn very different conclusions.

My argument here is simply that Dickens's worldview embraces the possibility of personal and societal redemption and healing -- a possibility for which Darwin's worldview, despite all the optimism it seems to offer, ultimately does not allow.

Darwin’s vision is a morally neutral one, free from values of any kind. His “perfect” beings would be merely specimens of superior physical and mental strength, not of goodness, kindness, or tolerance. . . . Dickens, meanwhile, is envisioning a fundamentally moral society, in which the sins of the past have been “expiated” by the struggles and suffering of those who want to be “truly free” of tyranny.

Advantage: Dickens.

I understand that we have readers bringing all kinds of different beliefs and approaches to this topic, so I'd be interested to hear your various takes on it. Please feel free to add your two cents!

Comments

[24601]

A fascinating juxtaposition...

[Nibs]

Good show, Gina! I get so SICK of people saying that Dickens' morality is outdated.

[Christy]

Heavens above, no. In short, his period was so like the present that the more I read him, the more I recognize the present world and good ways for us to deal with it.

[Scrabcake]

Gina, I think this post represents a fundamental misunderstanding of evolution. I know enough biology to know that evolution is a model, not a philosophy, not a worldview, but a mechanism describing how life diverges and changes, and why some species do really well while others don't. The veracity of evolution as a mechanism is NOT in question. We know it happens. We have watched it happen in viruses and bacteria, and we have the fossils to prove it. This is not to say that evolution as described in Origin of Species is entirely correct. We've learned a lot since Darwin's time...when Darwin wrote origin of species, Mendel had not yet "discovered" genetics. Also, I do not think that Darwin ever claims that might is right. There ARE situations where kindness could be evolutionarily advantageous...You could say Lucie's kindness to Sydney Carton, for example, ensures that her family survives into the next generation! We now think neanderthals and other early hominids cared for their elderly, because we have the skeleton of an old man with no teeth who was crippled, but nourished. His family must have been protecting him. Why? They certainly had no Bible to guide them! Perhaps helping grandpa gave these early hominids an edge somehow? Perhaps being able to bond as a group made them more resistant to predation or less likely to starve, etc? Other examples include animals that have evolved odd traits that make them suited for a particular niche but in no way represent a move towards perfection: some birds have colours which make them super foxy to the females, but are pretty much the equivalent of "eat me" signs for predators. Pandas and koalas have evolved diets that require very high intakes of bamboo and gum-leaves and pay out very little energy, resulting in species that can't really run from predators, aren't terribly good at hiding, are dependent on the fruitfulness of one crop, and in the case of pandas, seem to have a hard time even summoning up the energy to mate!
However, if the only thing to eat in the outback one year was gum leaves, you can bet that the koalas would be doing great in comparison with the other animals. Evolution doesn't strive for perfection, and to my knowledge, Darwin never claimed that it did.
Poor Darwin has gotten saddled with the inappropriately named "social darwinism" with which he himself had very little to do--social darwinism and eugenics, which to my knowledge were in development even before the Origin of Species (although not with those names and not by Darwin) had a lot more to do with victorian imperialism than with science--the works of darwin were probably deliberately misunderstood and cherry-picked to bolster political ideas of white European male supremacy that were already in existence. In fact, there doesn't seem to be a relationship between eugenics and "materialism" or atheism. Darwin himself was never an atheist, but I've definitely heard a lot of religious people read atheism and materialism into the sordid pasts of these movements in an effort to vilify evolution.
Back to tale of two cities, I know that the religious underpinnings of the plot have been dealt with by many authors and essayists since the novel was written, and I have very little to add to what they've said...they know better than I do.
However, to me, the religious overtones of the book have always been only skin-deep. Carton may invoke Christ, but he is no Christ figure. Charles has committed no sin requiring redemption (unless you count naivete as a sin), and Carton isn't really sacrificing himself out of love for Darnay, anyway. Carton is dying for himself. And for lucie. Christ had no need to redeem himself, for he was without sin. Sydney Carton has sinned, and condemns himself both mentally and in the end physically for it. Carton's sacrifice has a component of selfishness that Christ's sacrifice MUST NOT have had. To read Tale of Two Cities as a Christ Allegory is short-changing the complexity that makes the work great. Carton is not a pure being. He doesn't have divine motives.
Back to evolution, and a fun little tie-in, you could say that what makes Carton's sacrifice so valuable is that he eliminates any vestige of himself from the next generation. He gives up any future for himself and his offspring. In essence, he bucks the laws of nature by selecting himself out of the genepool in order to confer advantage on Lucie's descendants.
And that's all I have to say about THAT.

[Gina]

Scrabcake, thank you for weighing in! I appreciate it. Just a few points:

-- As I mentioned, I'm not arguing against natural selection at all. It does happen, as anyone can observe.

-- When I talked about "Darwin's 'perfect' beings," I was referring mainly to this line from chapter 14 of "Origin": "And as natural selection works solely by and for the good of each being, all corporeal and mental endowments will tend to progress towards perfection."

-- I didn't refer to Darwin as an atheist. However, he did refer to himself as both an agnostic and a materialist.

-- "Christ figures" in literature and film generally are not perfect representations of Christ. (They can't be, as no human being is without flaws -- except, as Christians believe, Christ Himself.) They usually earn the comparison through martyrdom or some other form of sacrifice, not through moral perfection. And I did point out that Carton himself is redeemed before he plays redeemer.

-- Your point about Carton "selecting himself out of the genepool" is a good one. But I think it does go along with what I've been saying -- that under pure Darwinism, such an act is hard to explain. To Darwin, I surmise, it might even have looked like folly.

[Nibs]

I just thought of a few other things I meant to say last time. :)

1) I immediately recognized the Scrooge comment you posted as Malthusian when I was watching the new 3d film. I have been learning SO MUCH about anthropology and sociology and comes up a lot. ('Tis a drag to fill the social science college quota, IMVHO.)

2) Did you ever get the feeling that Uriah Heep's exploitation of a certain gentleman (for those who haven't read the book) to be similar to survival of the fittest - the cunning of Heep vs. weakness? I think this is with a lot of Dickens' villains but I noticed it especially here.