This essay argues that the poetry of Percy Shelley may have contributed to Charles Darwin's ability to conceptualize forces of change in the natural world. The work of Shelley occupies a key position in the development of pre-Darwinian thought about change and transformation. His early interest in Lockean empiricism and his knowledge of the natural sciences have long been recognized by scholars working on romanticism and science. Less explored are the ways in which the poetry of Shelley has a bearing on the intellectual challenge Darwin faced in interpreting signs of change in the natural world. Shelley's poetry offers an account of how such change reveals itself: an account based not on a priori concepts of divine language, but on material evidence of the power of natural phenomena to convey information. In this way, poetry and science come into relation with each other. Like most young men of his time, Darwin would have been aware of Shelley's controversial reputation. What survives of the correspondence between the young Darwin and his friend the aspiring poet Henry Matthew, who was his contemporary at Cambridge, indicates that the two men had intense debates about Shelley's work, and about his notoriety as a materialist and atheist. Though no details are given, the correspondence does indicate that both of them read the poet's work and had conversations about it. Shelley's use of an evolving poetic/mythological vocabulary, putting pressure on the conventional meanings of words (a kind of linguistic change) to enable the reader to conceive of global processes of change, strongly advanced Romantic-era thinking in this regard. Shelley's enthusiasm for the materialist philosophy of Lucretius provided him with good authority for the belief that the natural world was inhabited by forces that would powerfully impinge upon the minds of humans. His mature poetics remained open to the idea that observing the operations of these natural forces, traceable in the geological record, would reveal signs of terrestrial change and prepare the awakened mind for a future transformed world. Darwin (for all his well-known anxiety about challenging Christian beliefs) would have had in Shelley's poetry a productive model for conceptualizing the processes of nature, combining in such works as “Mont Blanc” and Prometheus Unbound changes in the referentiality of linguistic signs with observed changes in the forms of nature.

中文翻译：

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变化的迹象：珀西·雪莱（Percy Shelley）的变异语言，是达尔文进化论的前身

本文认为，珀西·雪莱的诗歌可能有助于查尔斯·达尔文对自然世界的变化力量进行概念化的能力。雪莱的作品在前达尔文主义的变革和转型思想的发展中占有重要地位。他对Lockean经验主义的早期兴趣和对自然科学的了解早已为从事浪漫主义和科学研究的学者所认可。雪莱的诗歌与达尔文在解释自然世界变化迹象时面临的智力挑战有关的方式较少探索。雪莱的诗歌说明了这种变化是如何表现出来的：这种说明不是基于先验的神圣语言概念，而是基于自然现象传达信息的力量的物质证据。这样，诗歌和科学相互联系。像他那个时代的大多数年轻人一样，达尔文也会意识到雪莱饱受争议的声誉。年轻的达尔文和他的朋友，志向远大的诗人亨利·马修（Henry Matthew）在剑桥大学的当代作品之间的往来，至今还没有得到解决，这表明这两个人对雪莱的作品以及他作为唯物主义者和无神论者的声名狼藉。尽管没有给出细节，但信件确实表明他们俩都阅读了诗人的作品并进行了交谈。雪莱运用不断变化的诗意/神话词汇，对词语的传统含义（一种语言变化）施加压力，以使读者能够构想全球变化的过程，并在此方面大力推进了浪漫主义时代的思维。雪莱 卢克雷修斯（Lucretius）对唯物主义哲学的热情为他提供了良好的权威，因为他相信自然界中存在着会强烈冲击人类思想的力量。他成熟的诗学仍然对观察这些自然力量的运作持开放态度，这些力量可以追溯到地质记录中，可以揭示地球变化的迹象，并为唤醒的思想为未来的转型世界做好准备。达尔文（由于他对挑战基督教信仰的所有众所周知的忧虑）在雪莱的诗歌中将有一个生产性模型来概念化自然过程，将“勃朗峰”和普罗米修斯等作品结合起来，语言符号的指称性的无限制变化与观察到自然形态的变化。