Literary notes about Evolution (AI summary)
Writers use “evolution” in a variety of ways that extend far beyond its strict scientific meaning. In literature, it often denotes the gradual, sometimes accidental, unfolding of moral, social, or individual change—as when it symbolizes a cumulative moral liberty or intellectual progress ([1],[2]). It can also refer to the shifting foundations of society and cultural norms, portraying the steady transformation of institutions and even personal relationships ([3],[4],[5]). At times, authors adopt “evolution” to comment on the mechanics of natural as well as social processes, blending scientific ideas with broader metaphors of growth and decay ([6],[7],[8]). In this light, evolution frequently becomes a unifying theme that links the organic development of life with broader historical and ethical transitions ([9],[10],[11]).
- This accidental, cumulative evolution accordingly justifies a declaration of moral liberty.
— from The Life of Reason: The Phases of Human Progress by George Santayana - If extinction does not defeat it, evolution will.
— from The Life of Reason: The Phases of Human Progress by George Santayana - But it's well I never made that evolution of matrimony.
— from Bleak House by Charles Dickens - The idea that, as society grew older, it grew one-sided, upset evolution, and made of education a fraud.
— from The Education of Henry Adams by Henry Adams - Coal-power alone asserted evolution--of power--and only by violence could be forced to assert selection of type.
— from The Education of Henry Adams by Henry Adams - The experimental devices were constructed and donated by Cyril Ponnamperuma and the Laboratory of Chemical Evolution, University of Maryland.
— from Rockets, Missiles, and Spacecraft of the National Air and Space Museum, Smithsonian Institution - [332] Thomas H. Huxley, Evolution and Ethics and Other Lectures , Lecture ii, pp.
— from Introduction to the Science of Sociology by E. W. Burgess and Robert Ezra Park - By a combination of movements of the elevators, rudder, and ailerons almost any evolution can be performed with a modern aeroplane.
— from The New Gresham Encyclopedia. A to Amide by Various - Mankind surely does not represent an evolution toward a better or stronger or higher level, as progress is now understood.
— from The Antichrist by Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche - Evolution does not make happiness its goal; it aims merely at evolution, and nothing else.
— from The Dawn of Day by Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche - At the same time the word evolution has a certain pomp and glamour about it which fits ill with so prosaic an interpretation.
— from The Life of Reason: The Phases of Human Progress by George Santayana
