Making Darwin Late
Making Darwin Late
Later Life and Style in Evolutionary Writing and its Contexts
This chapter explores the ways in which Charles Darwin, as the pre-eminent figure in the history of evolutionary science, might be said to have become associated with the idea and practice of a ‘late style’. Placing an ageing, infirm Darwin in a number of contexts, the chapter explores how Darwin, and his Victorian and subsequent audiences and commentators, used his research and writing on the earthworm, in conjunction with images and other texts, to comment on ‘the human condition’. The chapter concludes by examining, through the figure of E. O. Wilson, the way in which writing and research completed late in a career continues to use constructions of ‘the human condition’ in science’s commentary on contemporary cultural crises.
Keywords: late style, science, evolution, Victorian, celebrity, human condition
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