ABSTRACT
In 'The End of Metanarratives in Evolutionary Biology', from which this quotation is taken, Eric White argues that many contemporary narratives of evolution are characterised by a postmodern attitude towards time. The cultural ethos of modernity stressed the 'attainability of perfection', 2 and so saw change over time as progress toward this perfect state. Postmodern narratives, on the other hand, suggest that there is no intrinsic direction to history, and therefore renounce this sort of progress: 'history, from the standpoint of modernity . . . approximates to a comic romance in which the hero's final triumph is assured from the beginning of the tale. Postmodernity, on the other hand, entails the view that no fixed direction has been inscribed in history from its outset' .3 White goes on to argue that these differences dictate that modernist narratives of evolution employ one of two narrative forms (comic romance, or tragic romance), both of which imply a mastery (either symbolic or actual) of nature, whereas postmodernist versions, which replace them, tend to adopt a picaresque form which eschews mastery.
