"Only connect! . . .Live in fragments no longer.” E. M. Forster, Howards End (1910), ch. 22
‘One day when I was twenty-three or twenty-four this sentence seemed to form in my head, without my willing it, much as sentences
form
in my head, without my willing it, much as sentences form when we are half-asleep, ‘Hammer
your thoughts into unity’. For days I could think of nothing
else and for years I tested all I did by that sentence [...]” William
Butler Yeats (cited in Frank Tuohy, Yeats, 1976, p.51 )
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J= Optional Journal; JR= Required Journal Due; L=Learning Record Due; C = Class Presentation Due; P1A, P1B, P2A, P2B = Project Due; R= Responses to Projects Due; I=In-class writing project; G=Graded Discussion
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Formal Writing due dates
Sept. 8 LR A1 and A2
Sept. 22 LR Goals
Sept. 27 P1A posted on DB, responses to others required
Oct. 6 P1A hard copy
Oct. 20 P1B
Nov. 1 LR midterm
Nov. 3 P2A posted on DB, responses to others required
Nov. 10 P2A hard copy
Dec. 1 P2B
Dec 13 LR Final due in Par 132 1:30-3 if not before
Dec 16 Portfolio due in Par 132 1:30-3:30 or earlier
Dec. 19 Portfolio returned 1-3 in Par 132 or earlier
REQUIRED JOURNALS
Sept. 13:College Life: Wordsworth and Wolfe
Oct. 18: Distractions of College Life, Zuleika pp. 268-313
Nov. 8: The Evolution Debate
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Oct . 13: Personal Road Map
Dec. 6 and 8: Art Presentations
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Oct.?: Zilker nature sites
Nov?: Downtown architecture
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Dec. 24 Official Graduation Date (no public ceremonies)
Nov. 8: JR What is Your Position? Darwinian Evolution vs. "Intelligent Design"? Moving toward unity? Myths, Models, and Metaphors: Science, Religion, and Personification?
Read
The Discussion Board on this topic
636-637 Bump, “Science, Religion, and Personification”
review, connect, hammer into unity:
598-600 Huxley Wilberforce debate, Oxford Univ. Museum
603 Eiseley, from The Firmament of Time
604-607 Genesis
611 Evolution, introduction
612- 617 Darwin, from The Origin of Species (1859)
615-616 “The Great Tree”
618 “The Tree of Life”
THE VICTORIAN LITERARY DEBATE ABOUT EVOLUTION
623-624 Tennyson, introduction
625-629 Tennyson, In Memoriam selections (1850)
630 Browning and evolution
THE CONTEMPORARY DEBATE
631-632 “Darwin Under Attack”
633-635 Olasky and Perry: Monkey Business
635B-635D R. C. Changing Position on Darwin?
635E-G "Bush Remarks Roil Debate"
635H "Design for Confusion"
1] Read Tennyson's #123 (from (In Memoriam), which focuses on the firmament of time. This is the poem quoted on the south side of the Hogg building, referring to the time when this part of Texas was at the bottom of the sea. Relate to the quote from Eiseley's Firmament of Time.[2] Read "Evolution" on the debate between Darwinism and the literal interpretation of the Bible. Basically, the problem was the belief that fossils and multiple strata in the crust of the earth (more than seven) meant that Genesis could not be scientifically true if taken literally. This was not necessarily a problem for a Rabbi or a Jesuit priest, but fundamentalists, then and now, who insist on a literal interpretation of the Bible were and are troubled by this. [3] In that context read poem #56 (In Memoriam), written by Tennyson when speculated on the meaning of fossils in "scarped cliff and quarried stone." In this poem "type" means "species." As you can see, to him, fossils provide that species could become extinct, and thus according to the Darwinian interpretation, homo sapiens also could become extinct. If this is true, he feared, churches and organized religion based on the Bible could become meaningless and "love thy neighbor as thyself" reverts to the war among dinosaurs and other "dragons of the prime." Eventually he solved the problem in the same series of poems (In Memoriam), but this is a famous statement of the predicament. [4] Read our Darwin selections to see for yourself what Darwin said.
INTERNET "READING"
Oxford University Museum virtual tour
Oxford University Museum images
The Debate at the Oxford University Museum
McKinney Falls Rock Shelter (just east of Austin)
ASSIGNMENT FOR DISCUSSION BOARD:
To relate the debate to our own readings, which do not
include anything on Intelligent Design, let's rephrase the questions:
Is Darwinian evolution scientific truth?
If not, why not?
If so, does that mean the Bible is not true?
If not, why not?
If so, what happens to the mottos of Oxford and U.T., which are both phrases
from the Bible?
If all is governed by chance, is there no spiritual unity in nature?
If not, what happens to Hopkins's nature poetry? (pp. 503-505)
What happens to Wordsworth's faith in nature? (pp. 513-518, 373-87, esp.
Simplon Pass finale, 386-387?)
What happens to Blake's evocation of The Mystery? (pp. 519-521)
What happens to Arnold's sense of the relation between literature and science?
(pp. 338-343).
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