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Memory, Heredity and Machines: From Darwinism to Lamarckism in Samuel Butler’s Erewhon


 In 1872 Butler published Erewhon, a novel set in a utopian land inspired by the New Zealand countryside. Erewhon parodied some of the main social issues of the Victorian era including political, economic, scientific and social ideas, offering its readers a critical overview not only of Britain and its inhabitants, but also of the cultural revolution triggered by Darwin’s theory of natural selection. Leaving aside the utopian and satirical dimensions of the novel, this article focuses on the meaning of evolutionary science in Erewhon through a discussion of the three chapters called ‘The Book of the Machines’. I suggest that the hypothesis of evolution advanced in ‘The Book of the Machines’ can only be fully understood in relation to Butler’s scientific writings more generally. In ‘The Book of the Machines’, I will argue, Butler pioneered the idea of memory as heredity.