The Biosemiotic Imagination in the Victorian Frames of Mind: Newman, Eliot and Welby
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
The Biosemiotic Imagination in the Victorian frames of Mind: Newman, Eliot and Welby By Deana Neubauer A Thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of requirements of London Metropolitan University For the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy June 2016 i ABSTRACT This thesis traces the development of thought in the philosophical and other writings of three nineteenth-century thinkers, whose work exemplifies that century’s attempts to think beyond the divisions of culture from nature and to reconcile empirical science with metaphysical truth. Drawing on nineteenth-century debates on the origin of language and evolutionary theory, the thesis argues that the ideas of John Henry Newman, George Eliot and Lady Victoria Welby were cultural precursors to the biosemiotic thought of the second half of the twentieth century and beyond, specifically in the way in which these three thinkers sought to find a ‘common grammar’ between natural and human practices. While only Lady Welby communicated with the scientist, logician and father of modern semiotics, Charles S. Peirce (1839-1914), all three contributed to the cultural sensibility that informed subsequent work in biology/ethology (Jakob von Uexküll (1864-1944), zoosemiotics (Thomas A. Sebeok (1920-2001), and the development of biosemiotics (Thomas A. Sebeok and Jesper Hoffmeyer (1943-present), Kalevi Kull (1952-present) among others. Each of these nineteenth-century writer’s intellectual development show strong parallels with the interdisciplinary endeavour of biosemiotics. The latter’s observation that biology is semiotics, its postulation of the continuity between the natural and cultural world through semiosis and evolutionary semiotic scaffolding its emphasis on the coordination of organic life processes on all levels, from simple cells to human beings, via semiotic interactions that depend on interpretation, communication and learning, and its consequent refusal of Cartesian divide, all find distinct resonances with these earlier thinkers. ii The thesis thus argues that Newman, Eliot and Welby all gave articulation to what the thesis identifies as the growth of a ‘biosemiotic imagination.’ It argues that Newman, Eliot and Lady Welby envisaged a unity, or a holistic understanding, of life based on a European developmental tradition of biology, philosophy and language which was familiar to Charles Darwin himself. This evolutionary ontology called forth a new epistemology grounded in a mode of unconscious creative inference (biosemiotic imagination) akin to Charles S. Peirce’s concept of abduction. Abduction is the logical operation which introduces a new idea and, as such, is the only source of adaptive and creative growth. For Peirce, it is closely tied to the growth of knowledge via the evolutionary action of sign relations. The thesis shows how these thinkers conceptualised their own version of what I suggest can be understood as this biosemiotic imagination and the implications this has for understanding creativity in nature and culture. For John Henry Newman, it was a common source of inspiration in religion and science. For George Eliot, it lay at the basis of any creative process, natural and cultural, between which it forged a link. Similarly to Eliot, Lady Victoria Welby saw abduction as a signifying process that subtends creativity both in nature and culture. iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I am above all grateful to my director of studies Emeritus Professor Wendy Wheeler for her generous attention, enthusiastic encouragement and wise supervision. Her trust in me and belief in this project enabled me to pursue and complete my studies. I would also like to thank Professor Paul Cobley for his support during difficult times and for the countless conversations that, among other things, enabled me to view things from a different perspective. My life during my studies has been variously enriched by the joy, support, humour and friendship provided by Dr Sara Cannizzaro, Dr Sarah Law, Trevor Norris, Dr Martin Murray, Dr Adam Beck and Dr Christopher Ryan. For the help and support in administrative and research matters I would like to thank the staff in the department of Social Sciences and Humanities, specifically Cathy Larne, Hema Joshi, Dr Anna Gough-Yates and Megan Redmond. The love and support of my dear friends Valentina Fachin, Penelope Jones, Vera Guštin, Helen McKenna, Catherine Mitsaki and Matt Potter have been indispensable in the achievement of this project. A very special thank you goes to Matevž Peterlin and to my family. Without my mother Tanja, father Guido and sister Andra and their endless love, belief and support it would have been much harder to complete my project. This thesis is dedicated to them and to the memory of my dear uncle Marko. iv CONTENTS Abstract Acknowledgements Abbreviations Introduction 1 Chapter 1 21 An Introduction to the Philosophical Origin of Biosemiotics: Charles S. Peirce and Jakob Von Uexküll Chapter 2 61 Language and Species: Signs and Evolution in Victorian Frames of Mind Chapter 3 98 John Henry Newman and the Illative Sense as Abduction: the Challenge to the Epistemology of the Enlightenment Chapter 4 136 George Eliot and the Semiotic Web: The Role of Aesthetic Imagination and Sympathy as Underlying Aspects of Biosemiotic Realism Chapter 5 179 Lady Victoria Welby’s Significs: Mother-Sense, Meaning, Significance Conclusion 221 Bibliography 227 v ABBREVIATIONS This thesis follows the standard notation employed by Peirce’s scholars to reference his work. All references will appear in the standard form in the text: the volume in Arabic numerals, a period, and the paragraph in the volume cited, using the form CP. and EP. CP Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce. 8 volumes; Vols.1-6 eds. Charles Hartshorne and Paul Weiss. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1931- 1935; Vols. 7-8 ed. Arthur Burks. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1958. EP The Essential Peirce: Selected Philosophical Writings. 2 Vols. Eds. Nathan Houser, Christian Kloesel, and the Peirce Edition Project. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1992-99. v INTRODUCTION The key question lying at the root of all this is: How could natural history become cultural history? (Jesper Hoffmeyer)1 The aim of this dissertation is to trace the development of thought in the philosophical and other writings of three nineteenth-century thinkers, namely John Henry Newman (1801-1890), George Eliot (1819-1880) and Lady Victoria Welby (1837-1912) whose work exemplifies that century’s attempts to think beyond the divisions of culture from nature and to reconcile empirical science with metaphysical truth. This dissertation argues that these three thinkers sought to find a ‘common grammar’ between natural and human practices, in what this thesis identifies as the biosemiotic imagination. It argues that their ideas contributed to the cultural milieu that gave rise to the semiotic theoretical biology (which arose in the second half of the twentieth century) and its view of the continuity between the natural and cultural world through semiosis. Newman, Eliot and Welby lived in an era, which in 1858 sir Henry Holland, Charles Darwin’s cousin, defined as ‘a period of great transition.’2 Although each historical era is an age of transition, as Walter E. Houghton points out, many people seemed to be especially aware of the profound changes that were taking place on a social and intellectual level, where traditional political, social, moral and religious beliefs were challenged by a new, emerging worldview.3 The latter was partly indebted 1 J. Hoffmeyer. Signs of Meaning in the Universe. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1996, p. viii. 2 H. Holland.Quoted in Walter E. Houghton. The Victorian Frame of Mind 1830-1870. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1957, p. 1. 3 See for instance Walter E. Houghton. The Victorian Frame of Mind 1830-1870. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1957; T. W. Heyck. The Transformation of Intellectual Life in Victorian England. New York: St .Martin’s Press, 1982; A. Briggs. The Age of Improvement 1783-1867. 2nd ed. London: Routledge, 1979; P. Davies. The Victorians. Vol.8. 1830-1880. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002; A. Cruttenden. The Victorians: English Literature in Its Historical, Cultural and Social Contexts. New York: Facts on File, 2003 and R. Gilmour. The Victorian Period: The Intellectual and 1 to rapid industrialization, the transition from a rural, agrarian society to an industrial and democratic one. With the development that came with the use of new machines and communication, a sense of faster living brought about a change in the very form of experience of life and fostered a sense of displacement and anxiety which took firm hold in the various frames through which the Victorians thought about their world. Where industrialisation was at the heart of societal transformations, science, or rather, scientific assumptions and methods were at the core of the changing intellectual frameworks and the emerging understanding of culture in Victorian England.4 As Suzy Anger points out, Victorian science transformed people’s relation to almost everything, from travelling to communicating, and perhaps most importantly to the perception of self.5 Indeed, concepts of human identity and agency – central to the idea of culture – were changing in the framework of nineteenth-century scientific naturalism. The idea of human culture as a natural, adaptive condition originating in a remote past drew on this naturalist tradition which developed over centuries of observations of organisms, including human beings. The nineteenth century contributed to this framework with the geological idea of a deep time and an increasing understanding of instinct as a source of human behaviour.6 As a consequence, culture was increasingly understood as an expression of the natural order, and it was believed, that its purposes and qualities, could be understood through the study of developmental Cultural Context of English Literature, 1830-1890, London; New York: Longman, 1993. 4 Raymond Williams observes that the term culture was only starting to be seen as a ‘thing in itself’ in the nineteenth century.