Missing Link: The Evolution of Metaphor and the Metaphor of Evolution

by Jeffery Donaldson

Overview

We look for missing links in the sciences and humanities, but the essential missing link - metaphor - is always in front of us. In Missing Link, Jeffery Donaldson unites literary criticism and evolutionary and cognitive science to show how metaphor has been with us since the beginning of time as a seed in the nature of things. With examples from centuries of poets, critics, philosophers, and scientists, he details how metaphor is a chemistry, an exchange of energies forming and dissolving, and an openness in the spaces between things. He considers the ways in which DNA learns how to liken things that have been, how mutation makes errors and then tries them on, and how evolution is hypothesis - nature's way of "thinking more." The mind is a matrix of relations: neural synapses cascade into ever-changing pathways and patterns. Metaphor is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. It is the unbroken thread between matter and spirit. Whether offering analysis of a turn of phrase or chemical reaction, Missing Link presents a vision of literature that is also a vision of the cosmos, and vice versa. It enters the debate between evolution and religion, and challenges scientists, literary theorists, and religious advocates to rethink the relations between their disciplines.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780773582118
Publisher:	McGill-Queens University Press
Publication date:	04/01/2015
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
File size:	3 MB

About the Author

Jeffery Donaldson is professor of English at McMaster University and the author of five volumes of poetry, including Palilalia and Waterglass.
Author of two previous collections, Waterglass and Once Out of Nature, Jeffery Donaldson teaches poetry, poetic theory, and problem-based learning at McMaster University.

Table of Contents

Figures ix

Acknowledgments xi

Introduction 3

Part 1

1 "Combinatorial Algorithms" 33

2 "Peyne and Wo": Metaphor among the Discourses 66

3 Chemistry: Dualities that Enliven 89

4 DNA and the Three "R's 121

5 Graceful Errors: The Mutation of Metaphor 153

6 Possibility Naturalized: The Story of Evolution 182

Part 2

7 Metaphor and Cognition 217

8 A Word Aside: The Detour that Became a Thoroughfare 237

9 The Metaphor of Consciousness 245

10 Megaphors: The Seeing As Tool 284

11 Natural and Design Evolution in Culture 309

12 The Evolution of Literature 328

13 Spirit and Its Metaphoric Environment 356

14 "Til the Ductile Anchor Hold": The Allowing Conditions of Metaphor 397

Notes 437

Bibliography 467

Index 477

Editorial Reviews

"Donaldson provides meticulously developed and arranged arguments in support of his positions through a conceptual and evolving metaphorical procedure. Missing Link is a highly original and deeply exciting book." Adam Dickinson, Brock University


“His ambitious, 494-page tour de force pursues [its] thesis with reference to works of literature, criticism, philosophy, and science across the centuries, from Aristotle to Daniel Dennett. As a firm believer in evolutionary biology who posits a universe devoid of intentional or "intelligent design;' he sees instead the human experience of the transcendent as an aspect of creative expression. Much like Emerson, Thoreau, and Whitman, he entertains a notion of the universe that is fundamentally semiotic.” Canadian Literature

From the Publisher