Misplaced Pages

#393606

59-503: Erewhon: or, Over the Range ( / ɛ r ɛ hw ɒ n / ) is a novel by English writer Samuel Butler , first published anonymously in 1872, set in a fictional country discovered and explored by the protagonist. The book is a satire on Victorian society. The first few chapters of the novel dealing with the discovery of Erewhon are based on Butler's own experiences in New Zealand , where, as

118-733: A first in Classics in 1858. The graduate society of St John's is named the Samuel Butler Room (SBR) in his honour. After Cambridge, he went to live in a low-income parish in London 1858–1859 as preparation for his ordination into the Anglican clergy; there he discovered that infant baptism made no apparent difference to the morals and behaviour of his peers and began questioning his faith. This experience would later serve as inspiration for his work The Fair Haven . Correspondence with his father about

177-467: A utopia , yet it soon becomes clear that this is far from the case. Yet for all the failings of Erewhon, it is also clearly not a dystopia , such as that depicted in George Orwell 's Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949). As a satirical utopia, Erewhon has sometimes been compared to Gulliver's Travels (1726), by Jonathan Swift ; the image of Utopia in this latter case also bears strong parallels with

236-632: A 1945 broadcast, George Orwell praised the book and said that when Butler wrote Erewhon it needed "imagination of a very high order to see that machinery could be dangerous as well as useful". He recommended the novel, though not its sequel, Erewhon Revisited . The French philosopher Gilles Deleuze used ideas from Butler's book at various points in the development of his philosophy of difference. In Difference and Repetition (1968), Deleuze refers to what he calls "Ideas" as "Erewhon". "Ideas are not concepts", he argues, but rather "a form of eternally positive differential multiplicity , distinguished from

295-557: A day without thinking of him many times over as the man who was sure to be against me." Under his parents' influence, he was set on course to follow his father into the priesthood. He was sent to Shrewsbury at age twelve, where he did not enjoy the hard life under its headmaster Benjamin Hall Kennedy , whom he later drew as "Dr. Skinner" in The Way of All Flesh . Then, in 1854, he went up to St John's College, Cambridge , where he obtained

354-497: A handsome profit when he sold his farm, but his chief achievement during his time there consisted of drafts and source material for much of his masterpiece Erewhon . Erewhon revealed Butler's long interest in Darwin 's theories of biological evolution . In 1863, four years after Darwin published On the Origin of Species , the editor of a New Zealand newspaper, The Press , published

413-433: A large role in late Victorian cultural life: "In those days one was either a religionist or a Darwinian , but he was neither." His influence on literature, such as it was, came through The Way of All Flesh , which Butler completed in the 1880s, but left unpublished to protect his family, yet the novel, "begun in 1870 and not touched after 1885, was so modern when it was published in 1903, that it may be said to have started

472-503: A lecture entitled "The Humour of Homer", delivered at The Working Men's College in London, 1892, that Homer's deities in the Iliad are like humans, but "without the virtue", and that he "must have desired his listeners not to take them seriously." Butler translated the Iliad (1898). His other works include Shakespeare's Sonnets Reconsidered (1899), a theory that the sonnets, if rearranged, tell

531-665: A letter captioned " Darwin among the Machines ", written by Butler, but signed Cellarius . It compares human evolution to machine evolution, prophesying that machines would eventually replace humans in the supremacy of the earth: "In the course of ages we shall find ourselves the inferior race". The letter raises many of the themes now debated by proponents of the technological singularity , for example that computers evolve much faster than humans and that we are racing toward an unknowable future through explosive technological change. Butler also spent time criticizing Darwin, partly because he (in

590-672: A line of yeomen , but his scholarly aptitude being recognised at a young age, he had been sent to Rugby and Cambridge , where he distinguished himself. His only son, Thomas, wished to go into the Navy but succumbed to paternal pressure and entered the Anglican clergy, in which he led an undistinguished career, in contrast to his father's. Samuel's immediate family created for him an oppressive home environment (chronicled in The Way of All Flesh ). Thomas Butler, states one critic, "to make up for having been

649-578: A military space station in David Brin's 1990 novel Earth . The ' Butlerian Jihad ' is the name of the crusade to wipe out 'thinking machines' in the novel, Dune , by Frank Herbert . Erewhon is the name of an upscale Los Angeles-based natural foods grocery chain originally founded in Boston in 1966. Erewhon is also the name of an independent speculative fiction publishing company founded in 2018 by Liz Gorinsky . A copy of Erewhon figures prominently in

SECTION 10

#1732891494394

708-563: A new school", particularly for its use of psychoanalysis in fiction, which "his treatment of Ernest Pontifex [the hero] foreshadows." Sue Zemka writes that "Among science fiction writers, The Book of the Machines has a canonical status, for it originates the conceit by which machines develop intelligent capacities and enslave mankind." For example, in Frank Herbert 's Dune the " Butlerian Jihad " – "in-universe ancient revolt against 'thinking machines' that resulted in their prohibition" –

767-587: A number of other books, including a less successful sequel, Erewhon Revisited . His semi-autobiographical novel, The Way of All Flesh , did not appear in print until after his death, as he considered its tone of satirical attack on Victorian morality too contentious at the time. Butler died on 18 June 1902, aged 66, in a nursing home in St. John's Wood Road, London. By his wish, he was cremated at Woking Crematorium and by differing accounts, his ashes were dispersed or buried in an unmarked grave. The Way of All Flesh

826-424: A regular sum, which Butler continued to do long after the friendship had cooled, until Butler had spent all his savings. On Pauli's death in 1892, Butler was shocked to learn that Pauli had benefited from similar arrangements with other men and had died wealthy, but without leaving Butler anything in his will. After 1878, Butler became close friends with Henry Festing Jones , whom he persuaded to give up his job as

885-493: A servile son, became a bullying father." Samuel Butler's relations with his parents, especially with his father, were largely antagonistic. His education began at home and included frequent beatings, as was not uncommon at the time. Samuel wrote later that his parents were "brutal and stupid by nature". He later recorded that his father "never liked me, nor I him; from my earliest recollections I can call to mind no time when I did not fear him and dislike him.... I have never passed

944-688: A single issue of a literary journal Erewhon . The 1973 movie The Day of the Dolphin features a boat named Erewhon. In Bye Bye, Earth , Belle's sword is called "Erewhon", and the story makes reference to the book. New Zealand sound art organisation, the Audio Foundation, published in 2012 an anthology edited by Bruce Russell named Erewhon Calling after Butler's book. In 2014, New Zealand artist Gavin Hipkins released his first feature film, titled Erewhon and based on Butler's book. It premiered at

1003-555: A solicitor to be his personal literary assistant and travelling companion, at a salary of £200 a year. Although Jones kept his own lodgings at Barnard's Inn , the two men saw each other daily until Butler's death in 1902, collaborating on music and writing projects in the daytime, and attending concerts and theatres in the evenings; they also frequently toured Italy and other favorite parts of Europe together. After Butler's death, Jones edited Butler's notebooks for publication and published his own biography of him in 1919. Another friendship

1062-579: A story about a homosexual affair. In a book of essays published after his death, entitled God the Known and God the Unknown , Samuel Butler argued for the existence of a single, corporeal deity, declaring belief in an incorporeal deity to be essentially the same as atheism . He asserted that this "body" of God was, in fact, composed of the bodies of all living things on earth, a belief that may be classed as " panzoism ". He later changed his views, and decided that God

1121-669: A theory that the Odyssey came from the pen of a young Sicilian woman, and that the scenes of the poem reflected the coast of Sicily (especially the territory of Trapani ) and its nearby islands. He described his evidence for this in The Authoress of the Odyssey (1897) and in the introduction and footnotes to his prose translation of the Odyssey (1900). Robert Graves elaborated on the hypothesis in his novel Homer's Daughter . Butler argued in

1180-823: A well-known figure, more because of this speculation than for its literary merits, which have been undisputed. He was less successful when he lost money investing in a Canadian steamship company and in the Canada Tanning Extract Company, in which he and his friend Charles Pauli were made nominal directors. In 1874 Butler went to Canada , "fighting fraud of every kind" in an attempt to save the company, which collapsed, reducing his own capital to £2,000. In 1839 his grandfather Dr. Butler had left Samuel property at Whitehall in Abbey Foregate, Shrewsbury, so long as he survived his own father and his aunt, Dr. Butler's daughter Harriet Lloyd. While at Cambridge in 1857 he sold

1239-461: A woman, Lucie Dumas. Herbert Sussman, having arrived at the conclusion that Butler was homosexual, opined that Butler's sexual association with Dumas was merely an outlet for his "intense same-sex desire". Sussman's theory calls Butler's assumption of "bachelorhood" merely a means to retain middle-class respectability in the absence of matrimony; he observes that there is no evidence of Butler's having any "genital contact with other men", but alleges that

SECTION 20

#1732891494394

1298-539: A young man, he worked as a sheep farmer on Mesopotamia Station for four years (1860–1864), exploring parts of the interior of the South Island and writing about it in his A First Year in Canterbury Settlement (1863). The novel is one of the first to explore ideas of artificial intelligence , as influenced by Darwin's recently published On the Origin of Species (1859) and the machines developed out of

1357-436: Is Peter Raby's Samuel Butler: A Biography (Hogarth Press, 1991; University of Iowa Press, 1991). Butler belonged to no literary school and spawned no followers in his lifetime. He was a serious but amateur student of the subjects he undertook, especially religious orthodoxy and evolutionary thought , and his controversial assertions effectively shut him out from both the opposing factions of church and science that played such

1416-536: Is a philosophical concept developed by Edmund Husserl and Henri Bergson from Riemann 's description of the mathematical concept . In his essay The Idea of Duration , Bergson discusses multiplicity in light of the notion of unity. Whereas a unity refers to a given thing in as far as it is a whole, multiplicity refers to the "parts [of the unity] which can be considered separately." Bergson distinguishes two kinds of multiplicity: one form of multiplicity refers to parts which are quantitative, distinct, and countable, and

1475-489: Is named after Butler. The English novelist Aldous Huxley acknowledged the influence of Erewhon on his novel Brave New World . Huxley's Utopian counterpart to Brave New World , Island , also refers prominently to Erewhon . In From Dawn to Decadence , Jacques Barzun asks, "Could a man do more to bewilder the public?" Multiplicity (philosophy) Philosophical concept Multiplicity ( French : multiplicité )

1534-432: Is not content to say that organisms are machines, but asserts that they contain such an abundance of parts that they must be compared to very different parts of distinct machines, each relating to the others, engendered in combination with the others ... He shatters the vitalist argument by calling in question the specific or personal unity of the organism, and the mechanist argument even more decisively, by calling in question

1593-518: Is the absence of machines; this is due to the widely shared perception by the Erewhonians that machines are potentially dangerous. Butler developed the three chapters of Erewhon that make up "The Book of the Machines" from a number of articles he had contributed to The Press , which had just begun publication in Christchurch , New Zealand, beginning with " Darwin among the Machines " (1863). Butler

1652-466: The Industrial Revolution (late 18th to early 19th centuries). Specifically, it concerns itself, in the three-chapter "Book of the Machines", with the potentially dangerous ideas of machine consciousness and self-replicating machines . The greater part of the book consists of a description of Erewhon. The nature of this nation is intended to be ambiguous. At first glance, Erewhon appears to be

1711-637: The New Zealand International Film Festival and the Edinburgh Art Festival . In " Smile ", the second episode of the 2017 season of Doctor Who , the Doctor and Bill explore a spaceship named Erehwon . Despite the slightly different spelling, the episode writer Frank Cottrell-Boyce confirmed that this was a reference to Butler's novel. The book The Open Society and Its Enemies , by Karl Popper , reproduces on its first page

1770-592: The Oscar Wilde trial began in the spring of that year, with revelations of homosexual behaviour among the literati, Butler feared being associated with the widely reported scandal and in a panic wrote to all the magazines, withdrawing his poem. Some critics, beginning with Malcolm Muggeridge in The Earnest Atheist: A Study of Samuel Butler (1936), concluded that Butler was a sublimated or repressed homosexual and that his lifelong status as an "incarnate bachelor"

1829-555: The "temptations of overstepping the line strained his close male relationships." His first significant male friendship was with the young Charles Pauli, son of a German businessman in London, whom Butler met in New Zealand. They returned to England together in 1864 and took neighbouring apartments in Clifford's Inn. Butler had made a large profit from the sale of his New Zealand farm and undertook to finance Pauli's study of law by paying him

Erewhon - Misplaced Pages Continue

1888-698: The 1870s his old Shrewsbury School proposed to relocate to a site at Whitehall, Butler publicly opposed it and the school ultimately moved elsewhere. Butler indulged himself, holidaying in Italy every summer and while there, producing his works on the Italian landscape and art. His close interest in the art of the Sacri Monti is reflected in Alps and Sanctuaries of Piedmont and the Canton Ticino (1881) and Ex Voto (1888). He wrote

1947-477: The Machines" to "go beyond" the "usual polemic between vitalism and mechanism " as it relates to their concept of " desiring-machines ": For one thing, Butler is not content to say that machines extend the organism , but asserts that they are really limbs and organs lying on the body without organs of a society, which men will appropriate according to their power and their wealth, and whose poverty deprives them as if they were mutilated organisms. For another, he

2006-628: The Whitehall mansion and six acres to his cousin Thomas Bucknall Lloyd , but kept the remaining land surrounding the mansion. His aunt died in 1880 and his father's death in 1886 resolved his financial problems for the last 16 years of his own life. The land at Whitehall was sold for housing development; he laid out and named four roads – Bishop and Canon Streets after his grandfather's and father's clerical titles, Clifford Street after his London home, and Alfred Street in gratitude to his clerk. When in

2065-500: The authoritative biography : the two-volume Samuel Butler, Author of Erewhon (1835–1902): A Memoir (commonly known as Jones's Memoir ), published in 1919, and reissued by HardPress Publishing in 2013. Project Gutenberg hosts a shorter "Sketch" by Jones, first published in 1913 in The Humour of Homer and Other Essays and reissued in its own volume 1921 by Jonathan Cape as Samuel Butler: A Sketch . The most recent biography of Butler

2124-406: The biologist Vernon Kellogg summed up Butler's views: Butler, though strongly anti-Darwinian (that is, anti-natural selection and anti-Charles Darwin) is not anti-evolutionist. He professes, indeed, to be very much of an evolutionist, and in particular one who has taken it upon his shoulders to reinstate Buffon and Erasmus Darwin, and, as a follower of these two, Lamarck, in their rightful place as

2183-660: The efficiencies of habit formation (patterns of behaviour and mental processes) in adapting to an environment: [M]ind and pattern as the explanatory principles, which, above all, required investigation, were pushed out of biological thinking in the later evolutionary theories, which were developed in the mid-nineteenth century by Darwin, Huxley, etc. There were still some naughty boys, like Samuel Butler, who said that mind could not be ignored in this way – but they were weak voices, and, incidentally, they never looked at organisms. I don't think Butler ever looked at anything except his own cat, but he still knew more about evolution than some of

2242-437: The following citation of Butler: "It will be seen ... that the Erewhonians are a meek and long-suffering people easily led by the nose, and quick to offer up common sense at the shrine of logic, when a philosopher arises among them who carries them away ... by convincing them that their existing institutions are not based on the strictest principles of morality". "Erewhon" is the unofficial name US astronauts gave Regan Station,

2301-463: The identity of concepts." "Erewhon" refers to the "nomadic distributions" that pertain to simulacra , which "are not universals like the categories , nor are they the hic et nunc or nowhere , the diversity to which categories apply in representation." "Erewhon", in this reading, is "not only a disguised no-where but a rearranged now-here ." In his collaboration with Félix Guattari , Anti-Oedipus (1972), Deleuze draws on Butler's "The Book of

2360-506: The issue failed to set his mind at peace, instead inciting his father's wrath. As a result, in September 1859, on the ship Roman Emperor , he emigrated to New Zealand . Butler went there, like many early British settlers of materially privileged origins, to maximise distance between himself and his family. He wrote of his arrival and life as a sheep farmer on Mesopotamia Station in A First Year in Canterbury Settlement (1863), and he made

2419-657: The more conventional thinkers. In Ernest Pontifex or The Way of All Flesh , protagonist Ernest Pontifex says that he had been trying all his life to like modern music but succeeded less and less as he grew older. On being asked when he considers modern music to have begun, he says, "with Sebastian Bach ". Butler liked only Handel , and in a letter to Miss Savage said, "I only want Handel's Oratorios. I would have said and things of that sort, but there are no 'things of that sort' except Handel's." With Henry Festing Jones, Butler composed choral works that Eric Blom characterised as "imitation Handel", although with satirical texts. Two of

Erewhon - Misplaced Pages Continue

2478-507: The most believable explainers of the factors and method of evolution. His evolution belief is a sort of Butlerized Lamarckism, tracing back originally to Buffon and Erasmus Darwin. Historian Peter J. Bowler has described Butler as a defender of neo-Lamarckian evolution. Bowler noted that "Butler began to see in Lamarckism the prospect of retaining an indirect form of the design argument. Instead of creating from without, God might exist within

2537-991: The notion of 'multiplicity' and other different kinds of multiplicities. The philosophical importance of this notion then appeared in Husserl's Formal and Transcendental Logic , as well as in Bergson's Essay on the Immediate Given of Awareness " (Deleuze 1986, 13). ^ Bergson (2002, 49). ^ Bergson (2002,72-74) Sources [ edit ] Bergson, Henri . 2002. Henri Bergson. Key Writings. Edited by Keith Ansell Pearson and John Mullarkey. New York and London: Continuum. Nicholas Tampio , ["Multiplicity"] "Sage Encyclopedia of Political Theory" (2010). Retrieved from " https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Multiplicity_(philosophy)&oldid=1253221059 " Category : Phenomenology Hidden categories: Articles with short description Short description

2596-433: The other form of multiplicity refers to parts that are qualitative, which interpenetrate, and which each can give rise to qualitatively different perception of the whole. See also [ edit ] [REDACTED] Philosophy portal Contextualism Perspectivism Rhizome (philosophy) References [ edit ] ^ "It was Riemann in the field of physics and mathematics who dreamed about

2655-717: The process of living development, represented by its innate creativity." Butler's writings on evolution were criticised by scientists. Critics have pointed out that Butler admitted to be writing entertainment rather than science, and his writings were not taken seriously by most professional biologists. Butler's books were negatively reviewed in Nature by George Romanes and Alfred Russel Wallace . Romanes stated that Butler's views on evolution had no basis in science. Gregory Bateson often mentioned Butler and saw value in some of his ideas, calling him "the ablest contemporary critic of Darwinian evolution". He noted Butler's insight into

2714-573: The self-view of the British Empire at the time. It can also be compared to the William Morris novel, News from Nowhere (1890) and Thomas More 's Utopia (1516). Erewhon satirises various aspects of Victorian society , including criminal punishment, religion, and anthropocentrism . For example, according to Erewhonian law, offenders are treated as if they were ill, whereas ill people are looked upon as criminals. Another feature of Erewhon

2773-560: The shadow of a previous Samuel Butler) believed that Darwin had not sufficiently acknowledged his grandfather Erasmus Darwin 's contribution to his theory. Butler returned to England in 1864, settling in rooms in Clifford's Inn (near Fleet Street ), where he lived for the rest of his life. In 1872, the Utopian novel Erewhon appeared anonymously, causing some speculation as to who the author was. When Butler revealed himself, Erewhon made him

2832-455: The structural unity of the machine. C. S. Lewis alludes to the book in his essay, The Humanitarian Theory of Punishment in the posthumously published collection, God in the Dock (1970). Alan M. Turing references the book in his posthumously published paper, "Intelligent Machinery, A Heretical Theory". He writes, "At some stage therefore we should have to expect the machines to take control, in

2891-427: The video for "A Barely Lit Path," the lead single from Oneohtrix Point Never 's 2023 album Again. Samuel Butler (novelist) Butler was born on 4 December 1835 at the rectory in the village of Langar, Nottinghamshire . His father was Rev. Thomas Butler, son of Dr. Samuel Butler , then headmaster of Shrewsbury School and later Bishop of Lichfield . Dr. Butler was the son of a tradesman and descended from

2950-794: The way that is mentioned in Samuel Butler's Erewhon." Aldous Huxley alludes to the book in his novels Island (1962) and The Doors of Perception (1954), as does Agatha Christie in Death on the Nile (1937). A copy of the book figures in Elizabeth Bowen 's short story 'The Cat Jumps' (1934). In 1994, a group of ex- Yugoslavian writers in Amsterdam , who had established the PEN centre of Yugoslav Writers in Exile , published

3009-586: The works they collaborated on were the cantatas Narcissus (private rehearsal 1886, published 1888), and Ulysses (published posthumously in 1904), both for solo voices, chorus, and orchestra. George Bernard Shaw wrote in a private letter that the music was invested with "a ridiculously complete command of the Handelian manner and technique." Around 1871 Butler was engaged as music critic by The Drawing Room Gazette . From 1890 he took counterpoint lessons with W. S. Rockstro . Butler's friend Henry Festing Jones wrote

SECTION 50

#1732891494394

3068-546: Was comparable to that of his writer contemporaries Walter Pater , Henry James , and E. M. Forster, also thought to be closeted homosexuals. Whether in his satire or fiction , Butler's studies on the evidences for Christianity, his works on evolutionary thought, or in his miscellaneous other writings, a consistent theme runs through, stemming largely from his personal struggle against the stifling of his own nature by his parents, which led him to seek more general principles of growth, development, and purpose: "What concerned him

3127-424: Was composed not only of all living things, but of all non-living things as well . He argued, however, that "some vaster Person [may] loom ... out behind our God, and ... stand in relation to him as he to us. And behind this vaster and more unknown God there may be yet another, and another, and another." Butler argued that each organism was not, in fact, distinct from its parents. Instead, he asserted that each being

3186-644: Was merely an extension of its parents at a later stage of evolution. "Birth", he once quipped, "has been made too much of." Butler wrote four books on evolution: Life and Habit ; Evolution, Old & New ; Unconscious Memory ; and Luck, or Cunning, As the Main Means of Organic Modification? . Butler accepted evolution but rejected Darwin's theory of natural selection . In his book Evolution, Old and New (1879), he accused Darwin of borrowing heavily from Buffon , Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck , while playing down these influences and giving them little credit. In 1912,

3245-407: Was primarily a philosopher," and in particular, a philosopher who looked for biological foundations for his work: "His biology was a bridge to a philosophy of life, which sought a scientific basis for religion, and endowed a naturalistically conceived universe with a soul." Indeed, "philosophical writer" was ultimately the self-description Butler chose as most fitting to his work. Butler developed

3304-481: Was published after Butler's death by his literary executor, R. A. Streatfeild , in 1903. This version, however, altered Butler's text in many ways and cut important material. The manuscript was edited by Daniel F. Howard as Ernest Pontifex or The Way of All Flesh (Butler's original title) and published for the first time in 1964. Butler's sexuality has been the subject of academic speculation and debate. Butler never married, although for years he made regular visits to

3363-491: Was the first to write about the possibility that machines might develop consciousness by natural selection . Many dismissed this as a joke, but, in his preface to the second edition, Butler wrote, "I regret that reviewers have in some cases been inclined to treat the chapters on Machines as an attempt to reduce Mr Darwin's theory to an absurdity. Nothing could be further from my intention, and few things would be more distasteful to me than any attempt to laugh at Mr Darwin." In

3422-467: Was to establish his nature, his aspirations, and their fulfillment upon a philosophic basis, to identify them with the nature, the aspirations, the fulfillment of all humanity – and, more than that, with the fulfillment of the universe.... His struggle became generalized, symbolic, tremendous." The form that this search took was principally philosophical and – given the interests of the day – biological: "Satirist, novelist, artist, and critic that he was, he

3481-431: Was with Hans Rudolf Faesch, a Swiss student who stayed with Butler and Jones in London for two years, improving his English, before departing for Singapore . Both Butler and Jones wept when they saw him off at the railway station in early 1895, and Butler subsequently wrote an emotional poem, "In Memoriam H. R. F.", instructing his literary agent to offer it for publication to several leading English magazines. However, once

#393606