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The Solid & The Shifting: Darwinian Time, Evolutionary Form And The Greek Ideal 
In The Early Works Of Virginia Woolf, Joseph Monroe Kreutziger

Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations

ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION

“The Solid & the Shifting”: Evolutionary Form, Darwinian Time, and the Greek Ideal in the Early Works of Virginia Woolf

By

Joseph Kreutziger

Doctor of Philosophy in English and American Literature

Washington University in St. Louis, 2017

Professors Melanie Micir, Robert Milder, Steven Meyer, Vincent Sherry, Zoe Stamatopoulou

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“Now is life very solid or very shifting?” Virginia Woolf asks in her diary of 1931, a question she claims haunts her in its contradictions. This dynamism between the solid and the shifting aspects of life and temporality is fundamental to an analysis of Woolf’s writing process. …

The Emergence Of Sex, Ursula Goodenough

Biology Faculty Publications & Presentations

Biological traits, the foci of natural selection, are by definition emergent from the genes, proteins, and other “nothing-buts” that constitute them. Moreover, and with the exception of recently emergent “spandrels,” each can be accorded a teleological dimension—each is “for” some purpose conducive to an organism's continuation. Sex, which is “for” the generation of recombinant genomes, may be one of the most ancient and ubiquitous traits in biology. In the course of its evolution, many additional traits, such as gender and nurture, have emerged. Patterns of sexual exchange are the basis for patterns of biological evolution and are central to the …

Reductionism And Holism, Chance And Selection, Mechanism And Mind, Ursula Goodenough

Biology Faculty Publications & Presentations

Despite its rich and deepening panoply of empirical support, evolutionary theory continues to generate widespread concern. Some of this concern can be attributed to misunderstandings of the original concept, some to unfamiliarity with its current trajectories, and some to strongly held fears that it strips the human of cherished attributes. In this essay I seek to deconstruct such misunderstandings, lift up current concepts of what evolution entails, and address some of the existential issues it generates.

Biology: What One Needs To Know, Ursula Goodenough

Biology Faculty Publications & Presentations

Biology on this planet represents an astonishing experiment in carbon-based chemistry which, over billions of years, has generated billions of species adapted to countless major and minor fluctuations in ecological circumstances. In one sense there is no way to generalize about biology. While biological activities can all be ultimately explained by physical laws (like everything else in the universe), it is the emergent intensely particular properties of organisms that most interest us. This essay represents an attempt to describe some of the more prominent patterns that emerge from the sea of biological particularities, patterns that present many opportunities for religious …