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

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...

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Main Authors: Ahmad Yas, Khalid, Ali Termizi, Arbaayah, Talif, Rosli, Jujar Singh, Hardev Kaur
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: Universiti Malaysia Perlis 2018
Online Access:http://psasir.upm.edu.my/id/eprint/72794/1/From%20natural%20selection%20to%20the%20sentient%20symphony%20of%20life.pdf
http://psasir.upm.edu.my/id/eprint/72794/
https://ejournal.ukm.my/gema/article/view/19573
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spelling my.upm.eprints.727942021-02-08T00:28:16Z http://psasir.upm.edu.my/id/eprint/72794/ From natural selection to the sentient symphony of life: a chaotic reading of Wertenbaker’s After Darwin Ahmad Yas, Khalid Ali Termizi, Arbaayah Talif, Rosli Jujar Singh, Hardev Kaur 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. Universiti Malaysia Perlis 2018 Article PeerReviewed text en http://psasir.upm.edu.my/id/eprint/72794/1/From%20natural%20selection%20to%20the%20sentient%20symphony%20of%20life.pdf Ahmad Yas, Khalid 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). 161 - 175. ISSN 1675-8021; ESSN: 2550-2131 https://ejournal.ukm.my/gema/article/view/19573 10.17576/gema-2018-1801-10
institution Universiti Putra Malaysia
building UPM Library
collection Institutional Repository
continent Asia
country Malaysia
content_provider Universiti Putra Malaysia
content_source UPM Institutional Repository
url_provider http://psasir.upm.edu.my/
language English
description 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.
format Article
author Ahmad Yas, Khalid
Ali Termizi, Arbaayah
Talif, Rosli
Jujar Singh, Hardev Kaur
spellingShingle Ahmad Yas, Khalid
Ali Termizi, Arbaayah
Talif, Rosli
Jujar Singh, Hardev Kaur
From natural selection to the sentient symphony of life: a chaotic reading of Wertenbaker’s After Darwin
author_facet Ahmad Yas, Khalid
Ali Termizi, Arbaayah
Talif, Rosli
Jujar Singh, Hardev Kaur
author_sort Ahmad Yas, Khalid
title From natural selection to the sentient symphony of life: a chaotic reading of Wertenbaker’s After Darwin
title_short From natural selection to the sentient symphony of life: a chaotic reading of Wertenbaker’s After Darwin
title_full From natural selection to the sentient symphony of life: a chaotic reading of Wertenbaker’s After Darwin
title_fullStr From natural selection to the sentient symphony of life: a chaotic reading of Wertenbaker’s After Darwin
title_full_unstemmed From natural selection to the sentient symphony of life: a chaotic reading of Wertenbaker’s After Darwin
title_sort from natural selection to the sentient symphony of life: a chaotic reading of wertenbaker’s after darwin
publisher Universiti Malaysia Perlis
publishDate 2018
url http://psasir.upm.edu.my/id/eprint/72794/1/From%20natural%20selection%20to%20the%20sentient%20symphony%20of%20life.pdf
http://psasir.upm.edu.my/id/eprint/72794/
https://ejournal.ukm.my/gema/article/view/19573
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score 13.211869