The Edge of Evolution: Animality, Inhumanity, and Doctor Moreau

297 Pages·2016·5.974 MB·English

by  Ronald Edwards

The Edge of  Evolution

The Edge of  Evolution
Animality, Inhumanity, and
The Island of Doctor Moreau
RONALD EDWARDS
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1
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CONTENTS
Preface vii
Acknowledgments xv
PART I NOT MEANT TO KNOW
1. The Paw 5
TAKING EXCEPTION 7
SCIENCE AND FICTION 9
SCIENCE FICTION 20
2. The -ism That Wasn’t 36
IT DOES NOT PLEASE YOU 38
DARWIN IN THE MIDDLE 44
TWO WINDOWS 50
3. Don’t Meddle 59
MOVIES AND MOREAU 61
SORCERY 66
LIFE SCIENCE 72
PART II THE THING IS AN ABOMINATION
4. The House of Pain 83
NO PAIN, NO GAIN 84
MOREAU 1, PRENDICK 0 92
PAIN IS REAL 100
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vi Contents
5. Into the Lab and Onto the Slab 112
HOW 114
BUT WHY 129
PART III POOR BRUTES
6. All the Difference 139
MOREAU’S MAN 141
PRENDICK’S GAZE 150
“NO!” 152
THE VIRAGO 157
7. To the Beasts You May Go 165
NO THRESHOLD 167
SELECTION AND ITS DISCONTENTS 174
THE VALLEY 181
PART IV NO ESCAPE
8. That Is the Law 197
WHOSE LAW? 199
HELL IS REAL 205
THE JESUS MOMENT 209
THE REBEL 215
9. Beast Monsters 223
THE TASTE OF BLOOD 224
THE STUBBORN BEAST FLESH 238
THE HORROR 242
10. Big Thinks 249
SUFFERING AND PHILOSOPHY 250
SCIENCE AND HUMANITY 253
Glossary 261
Index 269
PREFACE
I’ve taught many different university courses, first as a biology graduate student,
then as a professor: freshmen and capstone, majors and non-majors, focused and
general, biology and interdisciplinary. Pound for pound, it was the non-majors
general biology classes that taught me the most about what people “out there”
know, how they think the world works, and what order and type of informa-
tion opens up the discussion. I loved these classes, because the students were
unswervingly honest: screw up some ideas, or give an unfair or poorly conceived
test, and you found out about it in no uncertain terms, and not months later in an
evaluation, either. But if you show that you’re exacting but fair, and bring the biol-
ogy into their lives—not as spectacle, but as a genuine issue—then they show up
early, arrive waving something they’ve looked up, stay late, make friends with one
another, and study diligently.
They also taught me the most about the limitations of my course material: what
parts were hand waving, or seemed like it, and what gaps were obvious to them
although invisible to me and my colleagues. I made it my professional business
to keep refining the presentation and the content for maximum clarity, to keep
reorganizing the material for maximum impact, and to keep redesigning the test-
ing methods for maximum reward for learning. I also tried many ways to open the
course—what exercise or project should kick it off, and what to say. My operating
principle, the most successful as it turned out, was brutal honesty to set up a real
social contract:
The administrators call this a “requirement.” I do not actually know if
they laugh about the tuition they’re getting from you, but they do wear
tassel loafers and have much nicer offices than anyone I know at this
school. I can tell you, they are not my people, and I do not work for them.
I work for one guy down the hall, the department head. I teach this class
because I think it’s important. I don’t think the tuition is “extra” or a
scam, and I’ll tell you why, or I hope to show you why as we go along.
vii
viii Preface
But I know I can’t ask you to believe that, not right now. Professors tell
you all kinds of things on the first day and unless something has changed,
well, I don’t remember a lot of my old profs really making good on it. I’m
saying that you are right to ask, how is this worth my time? Why do I have
to do this? I’m also saying that I can’t answer it unless you meet me—let’s
say, a third of the way. Attend class, do some stuff, and see what makes
sense—talk about what doesn’t, ask some questions, and in a few weeks,
see what you think. Really be here, though, don’t wander in with your
head somewhere else. I’ll be doing the same, because although I do have
a schedule of topics, there’s some flexibility, and I’ll always say it exactly
as I think you, no one else, right here this term, will get the most out of it
based on what’s happened so far.
Here are some mechanics to help us both with this.
• I don’t assign discussion points, subjective points, whatever you want to call
them. Your grade comes right out of your scores. That’s because I don’t trust
myself, or anyone, not to abuse those points for students I like. This way, you
can raise questions, you can be wrong, you can disagree with me, or you can
simply keep to yourself if you want, and there’s not a thing I can do to you in
terms of your grade. It keeps that safe.
• I don’t take attendance or apply it to your grade. You’re all grown-ups. I know
most of you work, like I did in college. You have to decide how to trade off your
time and your obligations. So you know, we’ll have graded work almost every
day, and I don’t do “ten percent off” or make-ups. If something truly medical
or outrageous is involved, it’s pro-rated, and that’s all. Miss one without one of
those situations listed in your syllabus, and it’s a zero—but the good news is,
no extra points are coming off.
At about this point, the students are surprised, and I can see them thinking,
“This guy might actually be all right.” That’s when I tell them something biologi-
cally amazing, not just a cool detail from a nature special, but a point they never
dreamed of, which makes them think back on their experience and sense their
own bodies differently. It could be any of a dozen things, from the blood pooling
in their circulatory system because they’re been sitting too long, to what in the
world is actually in that cup of legal psychoactive drug I’m drinking in front of
them and what it’s doing to my brain, or anything else immediate, experiential,
and familiar. Halfway through the explanation, I ask, “Do you want to know?”
And the tigerish enthusiasm that responds lets me know, this term, this class,
we’re going to make it.
Preface ix
Author’s Voice
I’ve written this book in the language I developed in these classes. It’s still a
professor voice, although I hope only the good parts: intellectual ruthlessness,
attention to the listener’s starting position, and the biologist’s typical and pos-
sibly charming social shortcomings. But it’s also a fellow learner’s voice, ready to
be surprised by what the other humans might say. I tell every classroom of stu-
dents at the beginning of a course that they are not intellectual subordinates, that
although they may well be informed and provoked in a good way, they don’t have
to agree with me in order to pass, or to make me feel important. I learned as a stu-
dent myself—and carried it into my teaching—that instruction is not about rank,
it’s about showing you can add value and about building trust.
Here, I’d like to reduce the implicit authority of writing a book as far as I can.
My own history—teacher, evolutionary biologist, reader of speculative fiction,
political activist, animal care committee member, small-press game publisher,
father and husband, and more—produce a certain lived expertise, perhaps a good
one for this project. I entered my studies in an exciting period for evolutionary
thinking, and in retrospective, had remarkable luck in meeting and working with
some notable individuals. Instead of a single mentor and specialty, I learned tech-
niques from the fragments of DNA—back when gel kits were built in the lab—to
hands-on work with both living and dead animals, to the hectares of open fields
full of unsympathetic plants and creatures who bite. I had also been lucky to be
trained in a broad range of liberal arts, with an eye toward history and toward the
multiple ways a problem or idea is expressed in a historical moment; science to me
is never merely testing a hypothesis, it’s a powerful debate in which this one study
flares up briefly, and that debate neither came from nowhere nor exists in isolation
from anywhere in society.
Two things stood out for me, beyond the technical science. The first was the
role that we as scientists found, or made, toward those animals we held power
over, and who would be so surprised as me to find myself in a position of author-
ity toward other scientists as well—some pretty scary smart ones, too, with many
thousands of animals in the picture. The second was teaching, which I love, the
job that never goes sour or old, the wonderful blend of the familiar and reliable,
combined with the new things I’d decided to bring to it this time and the new
statements and thoughts a new room of students may bring. It’s added up: his-
tory, evolutionary theory, animal care, and the demand and excitement of finding
whether it makes sense in the meeting of minds. One might say I’ve been training
all my life to be able to talk about this single novel.
I’ve written from that expertise, as how could I not, but my point about the
author’s voice stands: I do not assume the privilege to inflict the technical infor-
mation upon a captive audience, or to use it to baffle others into silence. I do not