UPM Institutional Repository

From natural selection to the sentient symphony of life: a chaotic reading of Wertenbaker's After Darwin


Citation

Yas, Khalid Ahmad and Ali Termizi, Arbaayah and Talif, Rosli and Jujar Singh, Hardev Kaur (2018) From natural selection to the sentient symphony of life: a chaotic reading of Wertenbaker's After Darwin. GEMA Online® Journal of Language Studies, 18 (1). pp. 161-175. ISSN 1675-8021; ESSN: 2550-2131

Abstract

Darwin’s theory of evolution was shaken to the core by the discovery of the second law of thermodynamics and entropy. While it accentuates that the world has evolved from simple to complex, and it moves from disorder to order, the second law preaches the opposite totally. Such inconsistency remains unsolved until the advent of chaos theory, which emphasises that the universe has the capacity to renew itself from within through a process called self-organisation. As a new paradigm shift in science, it pushed scientists to re-read Darwinism from an entirely different perspective. The paper intends to trace the various interpretations of Darwinism in Timberlake Wertenbaker’s After Darwin (1998) through characters’ responses to evolution, utilising chaos theory as a theoretical and methodological framework. The play, which offers a Darwinian-Dawkinsian vision of competition, ends by embracing Margulis and Sagan’s view of cooperation inspired by the new science of chaos. As the only species endowed with an independently functioning brain, Man is able to adapt and turn the table against the brutality of natural selection to establish his own values.


Download File

[img]
Preview
Text (Abstract)
From natural selection to the sentient symphony of life a chaotic reading of Wertenbaker's After Darwin.pdf

Download (50kB) | Preview
Official URL or Download Paper: http://ejournal.ukm.my/gema/article/view/19573

Additional Metadata

Item Type: Article
Divisions: Faculty of Modern Language and Communication
DOI Number: https://doi.org/10.17576/gema-2018-1801-10
Publisher: Penerbit Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia
Keywords: Evolution theory; Thermodynamics; Entropy; Chaos theory; Self-organisation
Depositing User: Nabilah Mustapa
Date Deposited: 08 Jun 2018 00:58
Last Modified: 08 Jun 2018 00:58
Altmetrics: http://www.altmetric.com/details.php?domain=psasir.upm.edu.my&doi=10.17576/gema-2018-1801-10
URI: http://psasir.upm.edu.my/id/eprint/64048
Statistic Details: View Download Statistic

Actions (login required)

View Item View Item