Darwin's worms

"Darwin and Freud took God out of the big picture, leaving nothing between humankind and nature. Their ideas were met with righteous indignation. But today, whether or not we read Darwin and Freud, we speak a version of their languages." "Yet, as Adam Phillips argues, we are not merely trapped in a world of continuous loss. Taking as his examples Darwin's lifelong fascination in lowly earthworms, and Freud's lifelong antipathy to grubbing biographers, he unexpectedly finds much to celebrate. For both of these writers are interested, above all, in how destruction conserves life. They take…