Darwin's Pharmacy: Sex, Plants, and the Evolution of the Noosphere

by Richard M. Doyle

Overview

Are humans unwitting partners in evolution with psychedelic plants? Darwin’s Pharmacy shows they are by weaving the evolutionary theory of sexual selection and the study of rhetoric together with the science and literature of psychedelic drugs. Long suppressed as components of the human tool kit, psychedelic plants can be usefully modeled as “eloquence adjuncts” that intensify a crucial component of sexual selection in humans: discourse.

Psychedelic plants seduce us to interact with them, building an ongoing interdependence: rhetoric as evolutionary mechanism. In doing so, they engage our awareness of the noosphere, or thinking stratum of the earth. The realization that the human organism is part of an interconnected ecosystem is an apprehension of immanence that could ultimately benefit the planet and its inhabitants.

To explore the rhetoric of the psychedelic experience and its significance to evolution, Doyle takes his readers on an epic journey through the writings of William Burroughs and Kary Mullis, the work of ethnobotanists and anthropologists, and anonymous trip reports. The results offer surprising insights into evolutionary theory, the war on drugs, the internet, and the nature of human consciousness itself.

Watch the book trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xof-t2cAob4

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780295990958
Publisher:	University of Washington Press
Publication date:	10/01/2011
Series:	In Vivo: The Cultural Mediations of Biomedical Science
Pages:	336
Product dimensions:	7.00(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.90(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Richard M. Doyle is professor of English and science, technology, and society at Pennsylvania State University. He is the author of On Beyond Living and Wetwares

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction | Glimpsing the Peacock Angel

1. The Flowers of Perception: Trip Reports, Stigmergy, and the Nth Person Plural

2. Rhetorical Mycelium: Psychedelics as Eloquence Adjuncts?

3. Rhetorical Adjuncts and the Evolution of Rhetoric: Darwin’s Impassioned Speech

4. LSDNA : Creative Problem Solving, Consciousness Expansion, and the Emergence of Biotechnology

5. Hyperbolic: Divining Ayahuasca

6. The Transgenic Involution

7. From Zero to One: Metaprogramming Noise, with Special Reference to Plant Intelligence



Epilogue: In Darwin’s Dreams

Notes

References

Index

What People are Saying About This

Stanley Shostak

This is a book for all readers who have ever wondered whether dreams are another form of wakened consciousness. Doyle expands wonder from dreams to ecodelic states and the possibilities of communication about these states via language.

Brian Rotman

A brilliant, ambitious, original piece of pedagogy. I can't imagine anybody but Doyle who could control and mobilize in the name of a single vision the range and dizzying variety of the material on offer.

Editorial Reviews

". . . offer[s] unique insights into the pleasures and desires that animate our relationships . . . The diverse source material Doyle uses serves as a model for the kind of commons he celebrates. He offers wonderfully attentive readings of trip reports from famous users . . ."—Jenna Supp-Montgomerie, Women's Studies Quarterly

From the Publisher

... offer[s] unique insights into the pleasures and desires that animate our relationships... The diverse source material Doyle uses serves as a model for the kind of commons he celebrates. He offers wonderfully attentive readings of trip reports from famous users...

Women's Studies Quarterly - Jenna Supp-Montgomerie