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42 ssss1 In the Torah, Genesis 2−3 there is a forbidden tree in the Garden of Eden: it is the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. Adam and Eve are told to forbear eating of this fruit. Since John Milton in Paradise Lost, this prohibition was extended to technology that might verge Nature (para phusin): the “new science” of the seventeenth century, op. cit. n. 37.

43 ssss1 A very safe ploy against censorship since Eve was the “fallen woman” who doomed humankind. You could put almost anything in her mouth. This is Milton playing it cautious.

44 ssss1 There were a number of individuals in the nineteenth century Britain advocating some form of evolutionary theory. For examples of these see: W.J. Dempster, Evolutionary Concepts in the Nineteenth Century: Natural Selection and Patrick Matthew (Bel Air, CA: The Pentland Press, 1995); and Evolution and its Influence, ed. by the staff of Humanities in the Modern World (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1954). In the context of controlling Nature as a cultural event in this era see: Martin Fichman, Controlling Nature: Evolutionary Theory and Victorian Culture (Amherst, NY: Humanity Books, 2002).