The “Great Story” of Life as a Bittersweet Symphony in Michel Serres’ Philosophy and in Robert Morgan’s Late Poetry

Abstract: Adopting an interdisciplinary approach, this study demonstrates how the French epistemologist and philosopher of science Michel Serres and the Appalachian poet Robert Morgan recount the Great Story of life in a remarkably similar way. Informed and inspired by scientific knowledge of the universe and our small place in it, Serres and Morgan decenter dominant anthropocentric metanarratives by exploring the bittersweet laws that govern the existence of all species. Eviscerating mechanistic explanations of the biosphere through the metaphor of music and a reevaluation of “background noise,” they put the final proverbial nail in the coffin of the animal-machine hypothesis. Nonetheless, on an interconnected planet where all material beings are “Kudzu cousins,” Serres and Morgan’s reflections about the doctrine of universal predation caution us to not idealize indiscriminate, ecological forces. Despite the unavoidability of anguish and mortality in a given ontological shape, they also adamantly maintain that the elemental concert of which we are a tiny part can at times be beautiful. For the philosopher and the poet, we can tap into this cosmic grandeur by rehabilitating our numbed senses, thereby permitting us to catch a glimpse of the Divine in the process. Unfortunately, Serres and Morgan recognize that it is becoming harder with each passing day to envision a more viable path for preserving the musical refrains that sustain all life in the Anthropocene.