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Sample From Essay 'a Problem Of 'reading'.

Covers History and Philosophy of science from a literary perspective

Date : 03/10/2011

Author Information

Imogen Cambridge

Uploaded by : Imogen Cambridge
Uploaded on : 03/10/2011
Subject : Science

In 1857 readers were able to purchase a curious volume published under the title Omphalos. If any title harboured the promise of narrative intrigue, it was this which, Latin for Adam's naval, suggested the retelling of a familiar story under slightly different premises. Swiftly skimming through authorial forewords, the writing commences quite literally in the beginning and at the beginning of an imaginative journey through nature from the point of Creation. "This sounding-winged Hawkmoth" the writer first directs us through his authorial gaze, "like a gigantic bee is buzzing around the jasmine in the deepening twilight" . Like a magnifying glass, the opening demonstrative foregrounds the nocturnal insect and pinpoints its erratic movements with similaic descri ption. Our focus is still drawn to the moth, but the observer zooms outwards to colour the background with "starry flowers". In a floral profusion of olfactory details, as well as visual, are also evoked such that the air becomes "almost palpable with fragrance". "This sounding-winged Hawkmoth" the writer's attention returns the opening protagonist, "-this moth, what 'story of a life' can he tell" (p.118)? Within ten years of publication, however, readers no longer desired to read this 'story of a life'; nor, in fact, could they be persuaded by the copious other narrative outlets that the writer probes during his travels through nature . For, these literary explorations in fact explain and illustrate, natural historian, Philip Henry Gosse's theory on the age and development of the earth. This "question of chronology" (p.82) was becoming an insistent concern for Victorian society, because it brought to the forefront of consideration long-held beliefs on the six-day Creation story, in opposition to more recent advancing geological theories on the gradual development of the earth's history. Gosse's Omphalos was offered as an answer to this question. Simply put, the book suggests that the traditional notion of Creation contained within it the necessity that God would give to living things the appearance of a history that in fact they had not experienced. From this premise, the naturalist argues, it follows, therefore, that the geological strata, the fossils, and any other observations suggesting a vast antiquity for the globe, were evidence of a gradual history that the world had never had . Gosse writes Omphalos at a point in time when it was becoming increasingly difficult to justify "scri ptural statements" with "Geological deductions" (p.viii). His theoretical response to the overarching issue of the earth's chronology is therefore posited as a reconciliation of both central approaches towards the study of nature: the Creatal narrative still stands and geologists can continue their endeavours, but in the knowledge that they are studying an illusory past until the actual point of Creation when history begins. Regardless of the inquisitive manner with which Gosse carefully inspects and literarily depicts the moth, according to his theory, the moth is pictured from the moment of its creation and "its history presents an absolute blank" (p.124). Until that point at which the writer describes him, the moth "was nothing" (p.123), it had "no existence", and it emphatically "was not" (p.124). Similarly every living sample that falls under Gosse's observation on his journey through nature conforms to this overarching theoretical pattern in his book. Although conveyed with the best intentions of permitting an observer from any theoretical standpoint to continue to explore nature, 'What story of life' did nature inevitably impart? - That there was, according to Gosse's Omphalos, no story of life past the six days of Creation. This book was rejected and, by 1869, three-quarters of the copies had to be pulped. To the modern reader the rejection of Omphalos seems obvious. The palaeontologist, Stephen Jay Gould, sounds a familiar response when he writes that "arguments are only as good as their premises, and Gosse's inspired nonsense fails because an alternative assumption, now accepted as undoubtedly correct, renders the question irrelevant- namely evolution itself" . Readily might we brand this text as useless, perhaps only to be archived in the forgotten theories of science, fit simply for the investigative hands of scholars such as Gould. Based on an objective assessment of theory alone, Omphalos, it seems, is a far cry from anything that might be rendered for the attention of a literary critic. But for its Victorian readership, there was no such fixed objective on the earth's history by which to judge. In his book, Gosse actually lists some of the "wide range" (p.28) of solutions that were offered alongside his own, asking questions a reader might have themselves demanded when presented with yet another theory: Shall we accept the antediluvian, or the diluvian stratification? the six ages or the six days of creation?[...]the extension of the Mosaic record to universal nature, or its limitation to a region of South-western Asia? (p.28) "No clear orthodoxy existed that could confer a status [on the study of natural history]" writes Alison Winter, and, against this hybrid of possible theories as to the particular 'question of chronology', we cannot reject Gosse's Omphalos solely on the grounds of its objective absurdity. Gosse's theory must therefore be considered in context, and, given its particular and outright rejection in spite of this, there appears to be a further consideration which points to the real complexity of Omphalos' reception. Gould is actually among a few recent critics to more closely examine the nuances of Gosse's ideas, and their theoretical implications for the book's contemporary readership. Writing from a similar disciplinary background to the biologist, Ron Roizen also advances a perceptive approach, stipulating that Omphalos "provides us with an interesting window on the shifting intellectual priorities and matrix of values in the mid-nineteenth century" . Certainly sensitive theoretical reassessments of Gosse's work usefully unearth the tips of its critical value, but even reconsider just his evocation of the moth, and we are forced to look beyond the particular interests of these critics and delve deeper into the very nature of Omphalos. The sensory descri ption of Gosse's subject teases receptive readerly assumptions of an ensuing narrative; in fact, the moth is so redolently wrought that the writer takes license to ponder it's [!] possible narrative himself: it might have been a "great fat green caterpillar", unceasingly labouring for survival, "working ever harder and harder at devouring poplar leaves", and before that a vulnerable "little wriggling worm" still to face the trials and dangers of nature's kingdom (p.118). Yet, any expectations are instantly quashed by the jarring theoretical conclusions, "[the moth's] history presents an absolute blank". It is in this literary inconsistency that our response manifests, and not in the plain statement of the theory itself. Roizen does concede that "perhaps there were deeper sources to the book's rejection" , but more than an extraneous factor, understanding Omphalos in light of its reception we must necessarily turn towards language as intrinsic to, and inseparable from, the theory that it conveys. Each topographical point of Gosse's natural exploration is flourished with literary descri ption that excites the same questions of narrative and chronology probed as when the moth is first examined. In accordance with his theory, each time Gosse sounds the choric conclusion that, despite appearances of any past history, these living creatures have just that moment "burst into existence" (p.195). These strangled narratives and the reader's thwarted response towards them, are all connected under Gosse's claim that he is metaphorically 'reading' each one. "Every scale [of the fish] is therefore a document", the writer elucidates his approach by citing a particular creature for illustration. On each "document" is "indelibly written the record of a multitude of processes, all effected in the past history of the fish" (p.242). From the small detail to the "mighty processes which are recorded on the 'everlasting mountains'" (p.6) Gosse asserts that "we [can] read a record of past history" (p.256). Nature therefore offers its observers information on earlier processes which, like a collected text, can be 'read' in order to be further understood. Every focus of study that Gosse investigates on his hypothetical journey falls subject to this form of scrutiny. Collectively they are the 'reading' of nature that is presented under the title Omphalos, and a worked demonstration of the theory Gosse posits towards the question of the earth's history.

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