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Re: Victor Fet on symmetry in biology and VN
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Victor,
I appreciate your comments, and I'd like to take you up on your
invitation to comment about the morphology of literary texts. There is,
of course, the great classic structuralist text, Morphology of the
Folktale by Vladimr Propp that avails itself of a kind of theoretical
biology. I've commented in the past (on this list and in Nabokov
Studies) on the relationship between transcendental morphology and
Nabokov's critiques of Darwin so I won't go into it again here. But I
will quote a passage from my NS article on symmetry which is relevant
to our present topic.
Nabokov's controversial method of classification ... was based more on
internal anatomical structure than external appearance; importantly,
... his interest in the symmetrical nature of certain structures
derives from his interests in teleology and its search for the laws of
biological form. One of Nabokov's specialties was describing the
relative shapes and sizes of butterfly reproductive organs, the basic
shape of which is triangular. Aberrant members of a species tend to be
less symmetrical, but the "main peaks of speciation" argued Nabokov,
exhibit a "convenient constant in the structural proportions,"
conforming to an equilateral triangle (Nabokov's Butterflies 321). It
seemed as if symmetry were a goal toward which species strive. Rather
than ignore this apparent directedness, Nabokov chose to search for the
laws of biological form that might explain it. Such was the approach of
the morphologist-teleomechanists in
the 19th century....
Victoria
Victoria N. Alexander, Ph.D.
Dactyl Foundation for the Arts & Humanities
64 Grand Street
New York, NY 10013
Office 212 696-7800
Gallery 646 329-5398
Fax 212 591-6226
www.dactyl.org
Support the arts! Go to http://www.dactyl.org/members.html to donate to
Dactyl Foundation.
On Sep 20, 2006, at 12:59 PM, NABOKV-L wrote:
>
> I suspect that all these enigmatic bio-math academic concepts
(mirrors,
> duplications, redundancy, branching, asymmetry, disorder/order) are
> mirrored by existing philological terminology relevant to structure
and
> morphology of literary texts, about which I know much less but other
> people may find it interesting to comment
>
> Victor Fet
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I appreciate your comments, and I'd like to take you up on your
invitation to comment about the morphology of literary texts. There is,
of course, the great classic structuralist text, Morphology of the
Folktale by Vladimr Propp that avails itself of a kind of theoretical
biology. I've commented in the past (on this list and in Nabokov
Studies) on the relationship between transcendental morphology and
Nabokov's critiques of Darwin so I won't go into it again here. But I
will quote a passage from my NS article on symmetry which is relevant
to our present topic.
Nabokov's controversial method of classification ... was based more on
internal anatomical structure than external appearance; importantly,
... his interest in the symmetrical nature of certain structures
derives from his interests in teleology and its search for the laws of
biological form. One of Nabokov's specialties was describing the
relative shapes and sizes of butterfly reproductive organs, the basic
shape of which is triangular. Aberrant members of a species tend to be
less symmetrical, but the "main peaks of speciation" argued Nabokov,
exhibit a "convenient constant in the structural proportions,"
conforming to an equilateral triangle (Nabokov's Butterflies 321). It
seemed as if symmetry were a goal toward which species strive. Rather
than ignore this apparent directedness, Nabokov chose to search for the
laws of biological form that might explain it. Such was the approach of
the morphologist-teleomechanists in
the 19th century....
Victoria
Victoria N. Alexander, Ph.D.
Dactyl Foundation for the Arts & Humanities
64 Grand Street
New York, NY 10013
Office 212 696-7800
Gallery 646 329-5398
Fax 212 591-6226
www.dactyl.org
Support the arts! Go to http://www.dactyl.org/members.html to donate to
Dactyl Foundation.
On Sep 20, 2006, at 12:59 PM, NABOKV-L wrote:
>
> I suspect that all these enigmatic bio-math academic concepts
(mirrors,
> duplications, redundancy, branching, asymmetry, disorder/order) are
> mirrored by existing philological terminology relevant to structure
and
> morphology of literary texts, about which I know much less but other
> people may find it interesting to comment
>
> Victor Fet
Search the archive: http://listserv.ucsb.edu/archives/nabokv-l.html
Contact the Editors: mailto:nabokv-l@utk.edu,nabokv-l@holycross.edu
Visit Zembla: http://www.libraries.psu.edu/nabokov/zembla.htm
View Nabokv-L policies: http://web.utk.edu/~sblackwe/EDNote.htm