Wallace, 1858). Two years later Darwin published his full theory in The Origin of Species. If Thomas Edison said that invention was one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration, Darwin showed that the same was true of discovery. Evolution through natural selection was a brilliant idea, and one that might be debated endlessly. The process through which one species evolved into a distinctly different species was far too time consuming to be directly demonstrated. All the naturalists had available, apart from bones, was an understanding of the state of life as it is on earth today. Essentially, The Origin of Species approached the problem of evolution through two lines of argument and interpretation, both rooted in the concept of inherited variation. Darwin showed that the distinction between species was not hard and fast. There are varieties of a given intricately adapted to different conditions, that routinely interbred along
Ameerika Kirjandus 30.01.13 Naturalism · France, Emile Zola · Put down his theory in 1879: Le Roman Experimental, attempt to explain the development of human society throuch biological laws · Outlook is deterministic, pessimistic, fatalistic (fate or biology) · Man as an animal-clever than other beasts, still explainable within the framework · Man is not a free agent, is govern by something · Unable to determine his own faith · Hereditary · Naturalists tried to apply in fiction the processes of natural sciences · Writers task is to record facts, systems of behaviour, living conditions, never revealing any natural unbiased (completely natural) · Point of view: amoral-outside the category of morality, neither good or bad · Naturalist find it absurd to blame the wicked. These criminals are doing what nature, environment, their unconscious tells them to do. Naturalists do not judge their
The chapters in which Melville discusses whales in a scientific manner, though connected with the story of Captain Ahab and the Pequod, are often omitted in abridged versions of the novel. Melville's observations are not a complete scientific study, even by standards of the day. Nevertheless, because of the general lack of knowledge about whales in the middle 19th century, the taxonomy in the novel provides a glimpse of the knowledge of whales by the whaling fleet and naturalists of the era. Though 19th century science is of only historical interest, his command of the English language, or at least of its Yankee version, is unimpeachable, so his definitions cannot be dismissed lightly. Melville somewhat famously asserts in the novel that the whale is a "spouting fish with a horizontal tail." His use of the word "fish" here, however, is not meant a denial of the mammalian characteristics of the order
to a drooping eared race of cats in China. In "The Cat" by Lady Cust (1870) it states "Bosman relates that in the province of Pe-chily, in China, there are cats with long hair and drooping ears, which are in great favour with the Chinese ladies; others say this is not a cat but an animal called 'Samxces'" In his 1885 book "The Cat: Natural History, Husbandry ["Hygiene"] and Illnesses" Gaston Percheron suggested the lop-eared cat might be a hybrid between the cat and a marten: "Certain respected naturalists even claim even that the [domestic cat] mates with the marten and produces among the hybrids those like the latter in colour and fur. In this way they explain the hanging-ear cats of China [...]" but instead of being fed delicacies by its mistress, the cat has become a delicacy to be eaten, "The Chinese Cat. It has long, silky hair and hanging ears, like those of a badger. Its flesh is highly esteemed by the inhabitants of the Celestial Empire
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