Picturing evolution and extinction
Subtitle: regeneration and degeneration in modern visual culture
By: edited by Fae Brauer and Serena Keshavjee
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
Published: 2015
Place of publication: Newcastle upon Tyne, UK
Language: eng
ISBN-13: 9781443884372; 9781443872539
Copyright date: 2015
Subjects: Art and science; Art and technology; Evolution; Extinction (Biology); Biological Extinction; Art et sciences; Art et technologie; Évolution; Extinction (Biologie); Theory of art; History of art & design styles: c 1800 to c 1900; ART; Performance; Reference
Description: With the increasing loss of biological diversity in this sixth age of mass extinction, it is timely to show that devolutionary paranoia is not new, but rather stretches back to the time of Charles Darwin. The halcyon days of European industrial progress, colonial expansion and scientific revolution trumpeted from the Great Exhibition of 1851 until the Great Depression of 1929 were constantly marred by fears of rampant degeneration, depopulation, national decline, environmental devastation and racial extinction. This is demonstrated by the discourses of catastrophism charted in this book that percolated across Europe in response to the theories of Darwin and Jean Baptiste Lamarck, as well as Marcellin Berthelot, Camille Flammarion, Ernst Haeckel, Felix Le Dantec, Cesare Lombroso, Thomas Huxley, Benedite-Augustin Morel, Louis Pasteur, Elisee Reclus, Rudolf Steiner, and Wilhelm Wundt, amongst others.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index.