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The Moon in the Nautilus Shell: Discordant Harmonies Reconsidered by Daniel B. Botkin
In a world constantly confronted by global environmental problems, establishing effective ecological policies is more important than ever. Our natural ecological systems are constantly fluctuating and our plans, policies, and laws governing the environment must change to reflect our new understanding.Poised to be a core text of the twenty-first century environmental movement, The Moon in the Nautilus Shell challenges us to think critically about our role in nature. It expands upon the ideas put forth in Daniel Botkin's Discordant Harmonies (1990), the book considered by many to be the classic text of the environmental movement. Botkin was among the first to challenge the then dominant view that nature ideally exists in a state of perfect balance, remaining constant over time unless disturbed by human influence. He argues that nature has no ideal state of balance, but is instead constantly evolving and fluctuating. It is critical to the success of our future initiatives that we acknowledge that fact. The Moon in the Nautilus Shell brings Botkin's ideas into the twenty-first century. Readers will learn that the belief in a balanced nature is alive and well, though those who hold it are constantly confronted by scientific evidence that stands in opposition. This book will challenge us to rethink our current conservation policies and to more fully appreciate the complexities of the world in which we
Hardcover
First published January 1, 2012
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About the author
Daniel B. Botkin
66 books7 followersDaniel Botkin is a scientist, biologist, ecologist, physicist, professor, author and journalist. Renowned for his scientific contributions in ecology and environment, he has also worked as a professional journalist and has degrees in physics, biology, and literature. He is best known for the development of the first successful computer simulation in ecology, a computer model of forest growth that has developed into a sub-discipline in this field, with more than 50 versions in use worldwide. Botkin has also been a pioneer in the study of ecosystems and wilderness and the application of advanced technology to ecology. He has helped develop major national programs in ecology, including the National Science Foundation’s Long-term Ecological Research Program and NASA’s Mission to Earth. He has directed research on wilderness and natural parks around the world and is a leader in the application of environmental sciences to solve complex environmental problems.
Botkin has been a professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara since 1979. Currently, he is Professor Emeritus, Department of Ecology, Evolution, and Marine Biology, University of California, Santa Barbara. He has been President and Founder of The Center for the Study of the Environment, a non-profit research and educational corporation. He serves on the board of the Environmental Literacy Council, the Board of Trustees of the American Folklife Center of the Library of Congress, and is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He has also been a fellow at the Rockefeller Bellagio Institute in Italy and the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars.
Among his awards are the The 2012 The Honorable John C. Pritzlaff Conservation Award; Astor Lectureship, Oxford University; The 2004 Tex and Academic Authors Association Texty Award for best textbook of 2003; The Fernow Award for Outstanding Contributions in International Forestry; and the Mitchell International Prize for Sustainable Development.
For more information visit www.danielbotkin.com or follow him on Twitter @danielbotkin.
Botkin has been a professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara since 1979. Currently, he is Professor Emeritus, Department of Ecology, Evolution, and Marine Biology, University of California, Santa Barbara. He has been President and Founder of The Center for the Study of the Environment, a non-profit research and educational corporation. He serves on the board of the Environmental Literacy Council, the Board of Trustees of the American Folklife Center of the Library of Congress, and is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He has also been a fellow at the Rockefeller Bellagio Institute in Italy and the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars.
Among his awards are the The 2012 The Honorable John C. Pritzlaff Conservation Award; Astor Lectureship, Oxford University; The 2004 Tex and Academic Authors Association Texty Award for best textbook of 2003; The Fernow Award for Outstanding Contributions in International Forestry; and the Mitchell International Prize for Sustainable Development.
For more information visit www.danielbotkin.com or follow him on Twitter @danielbotkin.
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
March 5, 2021
I was really into this at first. I realize that the ideas I have are in no way original, of course, but it's still always fun to hear someone validate the particular synthesis you've come to from other reading. The first quarter of this book makes an argument very similar to the one I made in my overpopulation article/video last year. The difference is that Botkin takes a very broad approach and doesn't bother getting into any detail at all about how population equations from theory fail to align with real data. He glosses it with this "reality is complicated" handwave, which I guess is fine, but personally I found understanding the theory in detail pretty illuminating here.
The other big difference is that where I focused on humans, Botkin focuses on everything else. And honestly it's kind of even more depressing. The idea that real ecologists, government managers, and conversationists are out there using the concept of logistic carrying capacity as if it were an in any way reasonable or actionable model of population changes, is just stunning to me. At least carrying capacity activists in humans are widely stigmatized and rarely hold unchallenged decision-making power. In wildlife management, this model is often the literal law! It sucks!
Botkin advances the case against static wilderness in a compelling blend of anecdote and history of science. I've often wished for good books about the history of ecology in the 20th century, and Botkin delivers some of that for sure. It's especially fun that a lot of his anecdotes are focused around Michigan. Looking back after being a bit more disenchanted with his approach at the end, I realize that I wasn't entirely satisfied with some of this content either. For instance, Botkin calls the idea that predators protect plants (the "Green world hypothesis") an instance of "divine order" thinking that has no evidence in real ecology. But this is one of the things my research did seem to support, and Botkin never explains what he thinks is happening instead or whether there's any more evidence for that.
The middle section of the book is an unusually thesis-driven deep cultural history. Botkin traces the history of the "balance of nature" idea across a wide span of time and cultural variation, identifying three core metaphors that have risen and fallen and come to inflect modern ecological debates: "earth as divinely ordered," "earth as organism," and "earth as machine." What I found most interesting about this is the way these metaphors are under selection pressure and coevolve with the scientific tools, environmental problems, and economic conditions of the people using them. Botkin doesn't really explore this perspective; he treats the evolution of these ideas in a fairly insipid dichotomy between reason and superstition, as if the right answer were simply a matter of abandoning the lazy habit of falling back on metaphors and just accessing reality through data collection.
The more interesting truth of course is that there's literally no way for us to mediate our relationship with nature that doesn't rely on such metaphors. And it simply doesn't seem possible for us to abandon the old bad ideas and replace them with new good ones. Instead, we're stuck with rearranging old ideas into new combinations that fit better with our new scientific knowledge and values. This is exactly what Botkin is attempting to achieve here. He's pointing out places where data and experience undermine currently-held concepts of nature, where new approaches are demanded, and sketching broadly what that new approach might look like.
The problem is that Botkin's thesis, and really the whole premise of the "new ecology" he helped launch with this book's predecessor, Discordant Harmonies, approaches a paradoxical singularity of epistemology and values. It's nearly impossible to put forward a clear statement of what goals humans should have for non-human nature and how we should go about achieving them. The question immediately founders on the contradictions raised by new ecology's indisputable core premises. And this is where the last half or so of the book took a bad turn for me.
Part of the issue is simply that Botkin overstays his welcome. The book is longer than it needs to be to make his point and he stops having interesting stories and examples to make it with. But the bigger problem is that he tries to apply it to climate change. I'm not entirely sure what to make of Botkin's position here. He's not saying anything particularly controversial, but he's saying it in an egregiously mealy-mouthed way. It's true that many climate models are bad. It's true that many studies attempting to use those models to project other ecological outcomes, like species extinctions and range changes, are even worse. It's true that political motives and journalistic incentives lead to a proliferation of terribly overstated catastrophizing headlines. It's even true that climate environmentalism could probably shift almost entirely to focus on habitat preservation/restoration and maintain or improve its desired outcomes.
But none of that, and nothing about Botkin's broad "nature is always changing, but the rate and kind of change can be bad given specific goals" thesis, justifies his attitude that climate change is likely to be a minimal problem for humans or other species. The way he goes about undermining the evidence and mechanisms of climate change, never explicitly doubting it but casting doubt and implying plausible alternatives, it all just feels really scummy and weird. He even goes so far as to state that the change in temperature is more closely correlated with solar intensity than CO2, and imply that CO2 simply doesn't warm the climate at all. It feels like he's taking pages out of the climate denier playbook for no good reason, which is of course bad in its own right but especially annoying in the way it discredits New Ecology in general, showing its critics it was exactly what they thought it was all along (even if that might ultimately be a bit unfair to the text).
What I find more annoying, though, is that it makes the clarity of his argument even weaker than it needed to be. Climate change is like, the perfect context to argue the case for New Ecology, and instead of making that case, he retreats to a higher layer of skepticism of computer models (which he's elsewhere claimed are effective tools and even made himself) and science in general (which has broadly been his motivating criticism of and primary solution to bad ecological ideas). His climax feels like a defeatist retreat that excuses him from really thinking about his most interesting case study. The fact that the alternative issues he points to instead, like habitat destruction, are perfectly valid and important issues on their own right, is somewhat unsatisfying since he doesn't center those issues and treat them as a focal case study of his ideas in their own right. He just uses them as a whatabout to downplay climate change. Frustrating.
The other big difference is that where I focused on humans, Botkin focuses on everything else. And honestly it's kind of even more depressing. The idea that real ecologists, government managers, and conversationists are out there using the concept of logistic carrying capacity as if it were an in any way reasonable or actionable model of population changes, is just stunning to me. At least carrying capacity activists in humans are widely stigmatized and rarely hold unchallenged decision-making power. In wildlife management, this model is often the literal law! It sucks!
Botkin advances the case against static wilderness in a compelling blend of anecdote and history of science. I've often wished for good books about the history of ecology in the 20th century, and Botkin delivers some of that for sure. It's especially fun that a lot of his anecdotes are focused around Michigan. Looking back after being a bit more disenchanted with his approach at the end, I realize that I wasn't entirely satisfied with some of this content either. For instance, Botkin calls the idea that predators protect plants (the "Green world hypothesis") an instance of "divine order" thinking that has no evidence in real ecology. But this is one of the things my research did seem to support, and Botkin never explains what he thinks is happening instead or whether there's any more evidence for that.
The middle section of the book is an unusually thesis-driven deep cultural history. Botkin traces the history of the "balance of nature" idea across a wide span of time and cultural variation, identifying three core metaphors that have risen and fallen and come to inflect modern ecological debates: "earth as divinely ordered," "earth as organism," and "earth as machine." What I found most interesting about this is the way these metaphors are under selection pressure and coevolve with the scientific tools, environmental problems, and economic conditions of the people using them. Botkin doesn't really explore this perspective; he treats the evolution of these ideas in a fairly insipid dichotomy between reason and superstition, as if the right answer were simply a matter of abandoning the lazy habit of falling back on metaphors and just accessing reality through data collection.
The more interesting truth of course is that there's literally no way for us to mediate our relationship with nature that doesn't rely on such metaphors. And it simply doesn't seem possible for us to abandon the old bad ideas and replace them with new good ones. Instead, we're stuck with rearranging old ideas into new combinations that fit better with our new scientific knowledge and values. This is exactly what Botkin is attempting to achieve here. He's pointing out places where data and experience undermine currently-held concepts of nature, where new approaches are demanded, and sketching broadly what that new approach might look like.
The problem is that Botkin's thesis, and really the whole premise of the "new ecology" he helped launch with this book's predecessor, Discordant Harmonies, approaches a paradoxical singularity of epistemology and values. It's nearly impossible to put forward a clear statement of what goals humans should have for non-human nature and how we should go about achieving them. The question immediately founders on the contradictions raised by new ecology's indisputable core premises. And this is where the last half or so of the book took a bad turn for me.
Part of the issue is simply that Botkin overstays his welcome. The book is longer than it needs to be to make his point and he stops having interesting stories and examples to make it with. But the bigger problem is that he tries to apply it to climate change. I'm not entirely sure what to make of Botkin's position here. He's not saying anything particularly controversial, but he's saying it in an egregiously mealy-mouthed way. It's true that many climate models are bad. It's true that many studies attempting to use those models to project other ecological outcomes, like species extinctions and range changes, are even worse. It's true that political motives and journalistic incentives lead to a proliferation of terribly overstated catastrophizing headlines. It's even true that climate environmentalism could probably shift almost entirely to focus on habitat preservation/restoration and maintain or improve its desired outcomes.
But none of that, and nothing about Botkin's broad "nature is always changing, but the rate and kind of change can be bad given specific goals" thesis, justifies his attitude that climate change is likely to be a minimal problem for humans or other species. The way he goes about undermining the evidence and mechanisms of climate change, never explicitly doubting it but casting doubt and implying plausible alternatives, it all just feels really scummy and weird. He even goes so far as to state that the change in temperature is more closely correlated with solar intensity than CO2, and imply that CO2 simply doesn't warm the climate at all. It feels like he's taking pages out of the climate denier playbook for no good reason, which is of course bad in its own right but especially annoying in the way it discredits New Ecology in general, showing its critics it was exactly what they thought it was all along (even if that might ultimately be a bit unfair to the text).
What I find more annoying, though, is that it makes the clarity of his argument even weaker than it needed to be. Climate change is like, the perfect context to argue the case for New Ecology, and instead of making that case, he retreats to a higher layer of skepticism of computer models (which he's elsewhere claimed are effective tools and even made himself) and science in general (which has broadly been his motivating criticism of and primary solution to bad ecological ideas). His climax feels like a defeatist retreat that excuses him from really thinking about his most interesting case study. The fact that the alternative issues he points to instead, like habitat destruction, are perfectly valid and important issues on their own right, is somewhat unsatisfying since he doesn't center those issues and treat them as a focal case study of his ideas in their own right. He just uses them as a whatabout to downplay climate change. Frustrating.
September 21, 2018
Excellent discussion of current and ongoing dilemmas, somewhat dated but still relevant.
"One can argue that it is our species that most needs and most desires constancy and has therefore formed worldviews that not only require environmental constancy but have turned it into a fundamental belief, a folkway, a series of myths"
"One can argue that it is our species that most needs and most desires constancy and has therefore formed worldviews that not only require environmental constancy but have turned it into a fundamental belief, a folkway, a series of myths"
Want to read
May 18, 2013Very technical. Am finding that I need to skim over some of the very-deep details.
August 5, 2022
I like it, but don't feel like reading the later chapters (for now).
This is incorrect.
Worth a reread.
—in modern parlance, left brain and right brain.
This is incorrect.
Worth a reread.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews