ASEBL Journal – Volume 11 Issue 1, January 2015
first glance to have little if no bearing on literary studies until one stops to examine
the chain of intermediating logic. Evolution by natural selections shaped, over hundreds of thousands of years, the modern human brain. This is a fact, and literary studies would be best suited to accept it and adopt it – else to parallel inaction with evolutionary trends – it will simply become irrelevant and disappear from record. Perhaps a
prescient quotation from Charles Peirce, writing in 1913, would be sufficient to close
this paper. Peirce says,
For although there is as much reason to believe in the unity of origin of humankind…the extraordinary variety of languages, customs, institutions, religions, as
well as the many revolutions [these] have undergone in the brief half-dozen of millennia to which our acquaintance with them is as yet limited, as compared with the
almost insignificant variations, – these facts, I say, make the old-fashioned notion
that because there is no immediate appeal from instinctive ratiocinative conviction
that there can be no improvement or growth in fundamental ratiocinative procedure, appear to a modern a good deal in the attitude of a schoolboy perched on a
stool with a fool’s cap on his head. (1998: 468)
What literary studies avoid in eschewing the natural sciences is nothing less than the
origin of the species’ humanity, the font of dignity from which we may be better
equipped to understand ourselves through our artistic endeavors, not just understanding what these books and poems and paintings mean, but why they have meaning to
us in the first place.
(This article was originally presented at the conference Rhythms: Art, Work, Text,
hosted by Tembusu College, National University of Singapore, April, 2014. My deepest thanks go to the gracious organizers of the conference, John Phillips, Ingrid Hoofd
and Jeremy Fernando, and to the other presenters.)
Notes
i
No pun.
Peirce would say that the denial of ‘Truth’ as a quality of reality is trapped in a logical contradiction and thus cannot be entertained. He says, “Every man is fully satisfied that there is
such a thing as truth, or he would not ask any question. That truth consists in a conformity to
something independent of his thinking it to be so, or of any man’s opinion on that subject. But
for the man who holds the second opinion, the only reality, there could be, would be conformity to the ultimate result of inquiry. But there would not be any course of inquiry possible except in the sense that it would be easier for him to interpret the phenomenon; and ultimately he
would be forced to say that there was no reality at all except that he now at this instant finds a
certain way of thinking easier than any other. But that violates the very idea of reality and truth
[Peirce’s emphases]” (1975: 129).
iii
Though he is not suggesting that the arts somehow evolve autopoieically and autonomously.
He outlines first- through third-level Darwinian machines (2009: 403-407) and says, “I mean
only that art involves highly deliberate human choices, both individual and cultural, even if our
choices derive ultimately from nature” (406). There’s no fallacy of equivocation here in use of
the term ‘evolve’. For more on Darwinian Machines, see Plotkin.
iv
This sensitivity to rhythm is not particular to humans. Hattori, et al. (2013) note that chimps
can spontaneously synchronize their tapping to rhythmic music.
ii
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