Signs of Science: Literature, Science, and Spanish Modernity since 1868

Notes

Notes Introduction 1. Culture here means the integrated pattern of knowledge, belief, and behavior of a social group. 2. In fairness to Snow, "The Two Cultures" was not written as atreatise ot:J. fundamental differences between science and literature, but rather as a call for cultural unity in approaching the difficult questions posed by technological change. Snow summarized the essence of his lecture as follows: "In our society (that is, advanced Western society) we have lost even the pretence of a common culture. Persons educated with the greatest intensity we know can no longer communicate with each other on the plane of their major intellectual concern. This is serious for our creative , intellectual and, above all, our moral life. It is leading us to interpret the past wrongly, to misjudge the present, and to deny our hopes of the future. It is making it difficult or impossible for us to take good action" ("The Two Cultures: A Second Look" 51). Of Leavis and his continued vituperations, Snow wrote: "I can't trust him to keep to the ground rules of academic or intellectual controversy" ("The Case of Leavis and the Serious Case" 81). 3. See LainEntralgo's Espana como problema for an excellent discussion of Menendez Pelayo's work. 4. Lopez Pinero says of this period that "la inmensa mayoria de los supervivientes pasaron a convertirse en elementos indeseables, unos por afrancesados . . . y otros por liberales, ideologia por la que sufrio postergacion, persecucion 0 destierro el noventa por ciento de nuestros cientificos de talla europea de este momento" ("La literatura cientifica" 678). 5. In Clarin's view, "la filosofia en Espana era en rigor planta exotica; puede decirse que la trajo consigo de Alemania el ilustre Sanz del Rio" (Alas, Solos de Clar(n 69). For a more thorough and less ideologically driven perspective on early nineteenth-century Spanish philosophy, see Antonio Heredia Soriano's Pol(tica docente y filosojfa oficial en la Espana del siglo XIX: la era isabelina. 6. George Eliot was familiar with Darwinism and the laws of thermodynamics when she' wrote Middlemarch in 1872. Evolutionary theory jibed well with Victorian optimism and faith in progress, whereas entropy cast the world in a pessimistic light. 7. Levine expresses the complexities of this relationship: "the formula 'science and literature' ... announces, through the 'and,' a difference; the innocuous copula becomes yet more problematic than the difficult major terms. 'And' implies relationship, of course, but (para)tactically refuses to define it. The 'and' also intimates the oddity of the relationship : what can the two have to do with each other? It implies, moreover, that in spite of the conventions of literary hostility to science, and of 187 Notes to Pages 9-26 scientific indifference to literature, the relationship matters" ("One Culture " 6). The difference between Levine's book on Darwin and "One Culture" lies in the former text's more rigid traditional view of what the "and" means to literary studies. 8. See German Gull6n's enlightening discussion of "10 modemo" in La novela moderna en Espana (18-35). 9. In a less controversial move, Onis places the start of the modem era during the Renaissance-a period, like modernismo, of "profunda y. rica originalidad" (35). 10. In Espana como problema Lain's hopes for Spain rest on the perfection of the individual-a healthy position for a "paria oficial" (as Lain called himself) under Franco: "sean nuestras almas arcos bien tendidos y saetas rectamente enderezadas. Luego, disparando uno tras otro los venablos de nuestra acci6n personal, vayamos'llevando nuestras vidas a lei cima de su posible perfecci6n. Que nuestra obra, grande 0 chica, sea limpia, rigurosa, acendrada" (681). Chapter One "One Short Sentence": The Spanish Reception of Darwinism 1. Pierre Simon, Marquis de Laplace (1749-1827); James Hutton (1726-97); Charles Lyell (1797-1875); Charles Darwin (1809-82). 2. Contemporary physicist Stephen Hawking similarly holds out hope that the ultimate answers will be forthcoming:."Ifwe do discover a complete theory, it should in time be understandable in broad principle by everyone, not just a few scientists. Then we shall all ... be able to take part in the discussion of the question of why it is that we and the universe exist. If we find the answer to that, it would be the ultimate triumph of human reason-for then we would know the mind of God" (175). What Hawking does not admit is that a grand unifying theory would provide more knowledge about the minds of its human creators...