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Science and the Humanities
How the nature of mind is related to the processes undergone by metamorphic insects."In this book author David Spooner proposes a close connection between aspects of insect evolution and the functioning of the human intellect. By examining seemingly disparate subjects - entomology, language history, genetics, literature and music - Spooner shows how such a synthesis is possible. Once this fusion is achieved, the human species can be seen as connected not just to the great apes, but also not only via genetics and embryology, but via consciousness to metamorphic insects. The book also presents arguments on the roots and nature of the mind in the work of Daniel Dennett and Terrence Deacon."
Science and the humanities
"In this volume, Spooner makes use of the most recent data from science to strike out in an interesting direction by returning to one of the great unresolved mysteries: how to fuse science and the great works of imagination without doing violence to one or the other of these great human enterprises."
Poetry and Entomology
A consideration of poets from Darío to Rueda and Lorca; Cernuda and Aleixandre to Valente.

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Brief Foreword
Carl Spitteler`s novel IMAGO was one of the launching-pads for the work of both Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung. Both spoke highly of it, along with his two epic poems, "Prometheus and Epimetheus" and "Olympic Spring" (Olympischer Früling), this latter winning him the Nobel Prize in 1919. Indeed Freud acknowledged that he named the first psychoanalytical journal after the novel, Imago.
But a novel of course has a dynamic lacking in the theoretical works on the human psyche, and this is embodied in Spitteler`s title. This refers back to an earlier book of his poems "Schmetterlinge" (Butterflies), which was a portrait of butterflies common in Switzerland. The hero/​anti-hero, Viktor, projects his concept of perfect natural development onto his human `imago,` Theuda Wyss.
The book is set in a small Swiss town at the turn of the nineteenth into the twentieth century, and evokes much of the German-Swiss Spitteler`s frustration as a writer in his relations with the cultural establishment of the day. It also expresses his agony at renouncing his deep love for Ellen Brodbeck as incompatible with his mission to become Switzerland`s leading post-Keller poet.
D.S.
May 2006

Events

This is a PDF file. THE FIRST ENGLISH TRANSLATION OF CARL SPITTELER`S IMAGO, published 100 years ago. Created by David Spooner: May 2006 (553.4KB)
Apatura iris (Purple Emperor)




from: DR. DAVID SPOONER,
awarded American Medal of Honor for Natural History;
sponsors the DAVID EUGENE SPOONER AWARD FOUNDATION FOR ADVANCES IN ENTOMOLOGY WITH PHILOSOPHY;
founder of Butterfly Conservation East Scotland

8.10.2010

Dear Prince Charles,
Re. proposed windfarm at Fermyn Woods, Rockingham Forest

I am writing to canvass your support for the campaign to halt the installation of Wind Turbines in Fermyn Woods, Rockingham Forest, Northamptonshire.

Leaving to one side this as a manifestation of the increasing industrialization of Britain`s countryside, this wood is the main stronghold of the extremely rare Purple Emperor butterfly (Apatura iris). Indeed there are no comparable sites north of Northants, and of course it does not appear in Scotland east or west. The turbines will disturb its flight paths and, like all lepidoptera, it is of an exceptionally finicky character flying as it does at tree-top level.

With the news this week from Oxford University that one species of plant, insect or animal becomes extinct every 2 weeks in Britain, the time has surely arrived to call a halt to this depredation. Hopefully you may feel able to lend your voice to another cause against the current of change and activity for its own sake.

Yours sincerely,
Dr. David Spooner

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