Cutting edge-science2022 Shawnee, usa

CUTTING EDGE-SCIENCE 
2022 Shawnee, USA October 
while they fully understand what we consider criminal activity, such as theft. 
Sometimes the differences are almost parallel, as in the mystical belief of the 
Erewonians in the pre-life of the unborn, while most of the inhabitants of our world 
harbor the hope of an afterlife. 
In both cases, the goal is to show how illogical our own attitudes are. Butler 
does not attempt to explain how a society like Erewhon could function with such 
bizarre laws and economies. 
Sometimes he just takes the opportunity to put his theories in other people's 
mouths. Religion is one of the two great themes that engulf him. Butler was still a 
Christian when he wrote Erewhon, but in defending his beliefs to the people of 
Erewon, he reveals to us that they are no more justified than the strange beliefs of 
these inverted people. Butler's all-out critique of The Way of All Flesh is still a few 
years away, but we see him express doubts in Erewhon. Religious skepticism plays 
a role throughout history, even behind the long exposures of Erewhon's banking and 
educational systems. 
Butler's other main goal is Darwinian evolution. Although he is not a 
creationist. During the great intellectual upheaval of the late nineteenth century, 
Butler sided with the evolutionists, but proposed a variation on Darwin's theory that 
allowed habits to be inherited. This will be embodied in Butler's later popular science 
writings, which are probably best forgotten, but here he only alludes to it. 
He also reworks his earlier work on the emergence of intelligent machines in 
the future, attributing it to the Erewon philosopher, and similarly argues about 
consciousness in animals and plants. 
You really have to be interested in the ideas he brings up in order to get the 
most out of this so-called novel. 
And yet Erewhon had survived into its second century, while other utopian and 
dystopian fantasies of that fertile era—and since—came and went. 

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ISBN 978-1-64945-234-4
DOI
https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7509018
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