This is an outdated version published on 2021-12-31. Read the most recent version.

Extinction and the Repeatability of the End: Wells, Cuvier, Nietzsche

Authors

  • Marisa Žele ZRC SAZU, Filozofski inštitut, Ljubljana

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.3986/fv.42.3.04

Keywords:

extinction, the end, eternal return, repetition

Abstract

The paper explores the contact between the literary notion of the end of the world as depicted in H.G. Wells’s science fiction novel The Time Machine and the concept of extinction, in the sense developed by the French naturalist Georges Cuvier, who at the turn of the 19th century formulated a thesis about the structure of the world with a built-in end. The time traveller in Wells’s novel is driven into the distant future by an obsessive desire to know the fate of the world. He encounters it on the shores of an already dead sea, where he is greeted by the image of a dying world, unmoving in the dull red light of a never-setting sun. Cuvier, on the other hand, encounters the end of the world as a reader of traces of history as told by nature through its layering and piling up. Within these layers, Cuvier recognises moments of repetitive interruptions that have left behind not only whole species and genera, but also entire worlds in the great natural history. The key question, then, is the status of the end within the proposed mechanism of return and repetition.

Downloads

Download data is not yet available.

References

Bachelard, Gaston, Voda in sanje: Esej o imaginaciji snovi, prev. M. Žbona in L. Uršič, Ljubljana, Studia Humanitatis, 2011, str.11.

Bois-Reymond, Emil du, »Darwin and Copernicus«, Popular Science Monthly, 23 (1883), str. 249–251, https://archive.org/details/popularsciencemo23newy/page/250/mode/2up

Bunta, Aleš, »Večno vračanje enakega v Nietzschejevem zvezku M III. Začetek doktrine in sledi izvora njenega molka«, Filozofski vestnik, 43 (3/2021), str. 25–52.

Cuvier, Georges, »Discours préliminaire«, v Recherches sur les ossemens fossiles de quadrupèdes: où l‘on rétablit les caractères de plusieurs espèces d‘animaux que les révolutions du globe peroissent avoir détruites, zv. I., Pariz, 1812. https://library.si.edu/digital-library/book/recherchessurles11812cuvi

Cuvier, Georges, »Elegy of Lamarck«, New Philosophical Journal, 20 (1826), str. 1–22.

Cuvier, Georges, »Mémoire sur les espèces d'éléphans vivantes et fossiles, lu le premier pluviôse an 4 [21. januar 1796]«, Mémoires de l’Institut National des Sciences et des Arts, sciences mathématiques et physiques, Mémoires, Article II., Pariz, 1799. Natural History Museum Library, London.

Cuvier, Georges »General Summary of the [Natural] History of Fossil Elephants (1806)«, v M. J. S. Rudwick (ur.), Georges Cuvier, Fossil Bones, and Geological Catastrophes, Chicago in London, The University of Chicago Press, 1997, str. 91–94.

Cuvier, Georges »General Summary of the [Natural] History of Fossil Bones of Pachyderms from the Superficial Deposits and Alluvium (1806)«, v M. J. S. Rudwick (ur.), Georges Cuvier, Fossil Bones, and Geological Catastrophes, Chicago in London, The University of Chicago Press, 1997, str. 94–97.

Cuvier, Georges, »Note on the skeleton of a very large species of quadruped, hitherto unknown, found in paraguay and deposited in the Cabinet of Natural History in Madrid (1796)«, v M. J. S. Rudwick (ur.), Georges Cuvier, Fossil Bones, and Geological Catastrophes, Chicago in London, The University of Chicago Press, 1997, str. 27–32.

Cuvier, Georges, »Memoir of the Species of Elephants, Both Living and Fossil (1796)«, v M. J. S. Rudwick (ur.), Georges Cuvier, Fossil Bone,s and Geological Catastrophes, Chicago in London, The University of Chicago Press, 1997, str. 18–24.

Cuvier, Georges, »Extract from a memoir on an animal of which the bones are found in the plaster stone around Paris, and which appears no longer to exist alive today (1798)«, v M. J. S. Rudwick (ur.), Georges Cuvier, Fossil Bones, and Geological Catastrophes, Chicago in London, The University of Chicago Press, 1997, str. 35–41.

Cuvier, Georges, »Extract from a work on the species of quadrupeds of which the bones have been found in the interior of the earth (1800)«, v M. J. S. Rudwick (ur.), Georges Cuvier, Fossil Bones, and Geological Catastrophes, Chicago in London, The University of Chicago Press, 1997, str. 45–58.

Cuvier, Georges, »Preliminary Discourse (1812)«, v M. J. S. Rudwick (ur.), Georges Cuvier, Fossil Bones, and Geological Catastrophes, Chicago in London, The University of Chicago Press, 1997, str. 183–252.

Deleuze, Gilles, Nietzsche in filozofija, prev. A. Kravanja, Ljubljana, Krtina, 2011.

Freud, Sigmund, Predavanja za uvod v psihoanalizo, prev. M. Volčič Cvetko, J. Razpotnik, V. Klabus, Ljubljana, Državna založba Slovenije, 1977.

Jefferson, Thomas, Notes on the state of Virginia, Boston, Lilly and Wait, 1832.

Lacan, Jacques, Štirje temeljni koncepti psihoanalize, prev. R. Močnik, Z. Skušek, S. Žižek, Ljubljana, Društvo za teoretsko psihoanalizo, 1996.

Nietzsche, Friedrich, Onstran dobrega in zlega, v Friedrich Nietzsche, Onstran dobrega in zlega; H genealogiji morale, prev. J. Moder, Ljubljana, Slovenska Matica, 1988.

Nietzsche, Friedrich, Rojstvo tragedije iz duha glasbe, prev. J. Moder, Ljubljana, Karantanija, 1995.

Nietzsche, Friedrich, Tako je govoril Zaratustra, prev. J. Moder, Ljubljana, Slovenska matica, 1999.

Nietzsche, Friedrich, Nachgelassene Fragmente 1880–1882, v G. Colli, M. Montinari (ur.), Friedrich Nietzsche, Sämtliche Werke, Kritische Studienausgabe in 15 Bänden, Berlin in New York, Verlag de Gruyter, 1999.

Nietzsche, Friedrich, Času neprimerna premišljevanja, prev. V. Kalan, Ljubljana, Slovenska Matica, 2007.

Nietzsche, Friederich, »Fragmenti iz zapuščine: pomlad – jesen 1881 [odlomki]«, prev. T. Troha, Filozofski vestnik, 43 (3/2021), str. 7–24.

Rudwick, Martin J.S., Bursting the Limits of Time, The Reconstruction of Geohistory in the Age of Revolution, Chicago in London, The University of Chicago Press, Chicago in London, 2005.

Wells, H.G. Časovni stroj, prev. S.Skok, Ljubljana, Prešernova družba, 1964.

Wells, H.G., R. Philmus, D.Y. Hughes (ur.), Early Writing in Science and Fiction, California, University of California Press, 1975.

Published

2021-12-31

Versions

How to Cite

Žele, M. (2021). Extinction and the Repeatability of the End: Wells, Cuvier, Nietzsche. Filozofski Vestnik, 42(3). https://doi.org/10.3986/fv.42.3.04