TO:
VICTOR FET
Thank you for your correction. Could you help me to find the
most historically appropriate word for “creationism” in the modern sense? In
other words, how would VN call “creationism” if he were to address the matter?
Thank you,
Grigori
-----Original Message-----
From:
Sent: Thursday, April 19, 2007 4:41 AM
To: NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU
Subject: [NABOKV-L] THOUGHTS: Creationism and VN
[EDNOTE. This is the first of two messages from Victor Fet on this
topic. -- SES]
Jansy (and Grigory):
I think we are mixing here a lot of apples and oranges -- or Oranges
and Peaches (
Grigory used "creationist" in its strict modern context, i.e.
an anti-evolutionist, i.e.a person one who is opposed to Darwinian evolution
defined as (let me tackle this), say, process of life forms/systems being able
to become other life forms by means of natural selection (and other means,
depending on your definition of selection). In this sense,
"creationist" was not use din VN's times -- teh argument is old but
terminology had developed only recently.
Jansy: I do not think that calling VN a "creationist" in art
helps too much -- in art VN was a "creator."
Dr. Blackwell might correct me but I tend to think that both VN's
mimicry work and abstract species theories (Father's Butterflies) still are
very much in the vein of evolutionary biology, largely divorced from
metaphysics.
And while it is true that VN was (and many are still) dissatisfied with
neo-Darwinist models of his (pre-molecular) times, I daresay he never disputed
evolution as a process: instead, he celebrated its wonders every time he had
chance both as an artist and as an intellectual.
Clearly it has nothing to do with modern "creationism",
largely an anti-intellectual political and cultural phenomenon.
Apes and monkeys: in Russian indeed they are a single word, unlike in
English ("obezyany") --- but I would not read evolutionism into
English language only because it has a separate word for apes.
Russian, for example, has no word for "privacy" (best
rendered as "not your business") but there still are deeply private
Russians.
(Also, neither of modern European languages evolved within geographic
range of any four big species of apes, which always were exotic creatures to
the Europeans. Not so for monkeys: they are found in
Victor Fet
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