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lewilliams's picture

Darwin: Between Poetry and Science

Submitted by lewilliams on Tue, 02/10/2009 - 1:05pm.

I think the line that we are trying to draw with Darwin between fiction and nonfiction would be best viewed the way we would view a poet. Poetry is a medium that is rarely labled one or the other. It would be very difficult to do such a thing. Poetry is never fiction: there's always an underling truth. The poet writes from observation as does a scientist. No matter how this observation is conveyed, whether through verse or scientific narrative, this truth is still a truth in identifying what has been observed.

I was reading an article in New York Magazine about the way people are shopping due to the economy. The article described the situation in New York as Darwinian. The way people are shopping at some stores and not at others so that some thrive and some die out seems to reflect a natual selection of consumerism. I thought this was another very interesting way of looking at Darwin's model.

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