English Visiting Speaker Seminar Dr Bobby May, University of St Andrews

John Wyndham: Evolutionary Psychologist

‘Characters in John Wyndham's novels often talk explicitly about human evolution. They argue with each other about the role of violence in human survival, about the extent to which human natures are sexed, and to whether the ‘success' of humankind is a product of intelligence. In doing so, they engage with complex questions around what could now be called evolutionary psychology.

Wyndham wrote in the 1930s–60s, when scientific understanding of evolutionary processes was in flux and the ‘Modern Synthesis' — which combined formerly disparate strands of research to form a more-or-less unified field of evolutionary biology — was still under construction. Wyndham was therefore not responding to Evolutionary Psychology (with a big E and a big P) as the specific paradigm popularised in the 1980s and 1990s. I will argue, though, that Wyndham's work engages with the subject in a more expansive sense.

By speculating on human development in science-fiction scenarios, Wyndham's novels reflect a process of inquiry into the question “Humankind has an evolutionary history. So what?” In this talk, I will outline how the ambivalences and ambiguities in those novels hold open the “So what?” question. I will also argue that holding open the “So what?” question is — by a happy coincidence — the most scientifically honest thing to do.