president's column: revisiting the two cultures

I opened my Facebook page this past week to see a post by a history of science colleague with the tag line, "Here we go again!!!" The subject was an unfortunate article that appeared in the May 27th issue of The Chronicle of Higher Education. In a rather select sampling of the field, the reporter Paul Voosen argues that history of science, a "field suspended between the two cultures," has drifted from its intellectual origins as "science's explanatory sidekick," and, in so doing, has severed its ties from science, eroding its authority in the process.

Voosen's article conjures up visions of the "science wars" of the 1990s. I remember those days vividly.  As a young scholar, I was thrilled to be invited by the Wenner-Gren Foundation to be part of a weeklong workshop in 1996 on the history of primatology.  Twenty-three scholars at various stages in their careers from across the fields of primatology, anthropology, history of science and science studies met in a mountain resort above Rio de Janeiro to debate and discuss why scientific understanding about primate societies had changed so drastically over the course of the twentieth century. You could cut the tension in the room with a knife. In the large group setting, a fault line divided the scientists from the humanists in the room. Did relativists really believe that gravity was a social construct," one primatologist quipped, caricaturing the state of the field. In one-on-one interactions, over shared drinks and walks, barriers were broken down, and productive exchanges were had. But as someone trained in ecology, with a deep love for biological science and its history, it offered a painful reminder of the kind of damage done by cultural misunderstanding and the kind of work that needs to happen to build trust and interaction across disciplines.

What, you might ask, does this have to do with environmental history? As an ecologist, turned historian of science, who came into environmental history through an interest in the history of ecology, my scholarship has long been motivated by an interest in how questions of knowledge have shaped interactions between people and environments over time. Science has been a significant cultural force in mediating relationships between humans and the natural world in Western societies since the so-called Scientific Revolution.

Yet, the place of scientific knowledge and its history has had a rather ambiguous relationship in environmental history. In the past, environmental historians have looked to the environmental sciences to give voice to nature as actor. Others have dismissed scientific ideas of the past when they do not conform to contemporary understanding. Such approaches, however, risk neglecting the important material histories of long-forgotten ideas, like miasmatic theories of disease, in shaping human-environment relationships. We need, I suggest, a much more rigorous and engaged discussion about the relationship of environmental history to past and present knowledge, be it science, or other forms of knowing in the Western and non-Western worlds.

At the same time, the lessons of the science wars, as the most recent article in The Chronicle for Higher Education attests, should offer a cautionary tale about the place of science in the historical narratives we write. Shedding light on the economic, material, and social relationships at play in the historical production of scientific knowledge can be a great asset in understanding how particular forms of knowledge have been instrumental in mediating human interactions with the nonhuman world. Such narratives gain strength when they are respectful of, seek to discern, and comprehend the epistemologies and past worlds of the historical actors with whom we are engaged. Jacob Hamblin's recent book, Arming Mother Nature, is just one among a number of examples I could cite in which a history of science, deeply informed by the technical content of science, has been mobilized to good effect in the writing of environmental history. In it, he offers a far-reaching and provocative account of just how dependent narratives of global climate change are upon the military support, apocalyptic scenarios, and political ideology that shaped the growth of the modern environmental sciences during the Cold War. It is a history that both scientists and humanists would do well to understand if we are to comprehend the current political, scientific, and social contours of the climate change debate within the United States.

 
As environmental historians join arms in solidarity with our colleagues in literary studies, philosophy, and anthropology, among other disciplines, to affirm the importance of the environmental humanities, my recollections of the "science wars" of the 1990s prompts me to ask what place, if any, the environmental sciences have to play in this new intellectual commons. Or are we in danger of reaffirming the two cultures divide that history of science was long ago supposed to heal?  The politics of disciplines appear petty compared to the environmental issues faced by the diversity of people and other living beings on this planet.  More than ever, the sciences and humanities need each other in helping to build more equitable and just environmental futures across the globe.

Gregg Mitman, ASEH President

Teresa Sabol Spezio, Colby College

Sustainability as a concept and practice has become a key touchstone in solving global environmental issues. Corporations, governments and non-profit institutions use its concepts to develop goals to address global climate change, water shortages, natural resources damage and myriad other issues. Its reliance on concepts relating to people, profit and planet meshed well with my interests in both engineering and history. As an engineer, I was trained to solve the problem in front of me. If groundwater became contaminated, I needed to create a system to remove the contamination.

Teresa Sabol Spezio is the chair of ASEH's Sustainability Committee and can be reached at tsspezio@ucdavis.edu

member news

Lincoln Bramwell has published Wilderburbs: Communities on Nature's Edge (University of Washington Press). 

Gregory T. Cushman's book Guano & the Opening of the Pacific World: A Global Ecological History was awarded the Henry A. Wallace Award for best book on agricultural history outside the United States published in 2013 by the Agricultural History Society. A review of his and David Igler's new books was featured on the cover of the 6 Dec. 2013 issue of The Times Literary Supplement.
 
Stephen A. Laubach has published Living a Land Ethic: A History of Cooperative Conservation on the Leopold Memorial Reserve (University of Wisconsin Press).

Robert Lifset, University of Oklahoma, was recently promoted to Associate Professor. Look for his book, Power on the Hudson: Storm King Mountain and The Emergence of Modern American Environmentalism (to be published by Pittsburgh University Press this summer).

On May 16, 2014, at the U.S. Supreme Court, more than 200 people gathered to celebrate the 75th anniversary of William O. Douglas's appointment to the Court. His widow, Cathleen Douglas Stone, invited Adam Sowards to speak about his environmental legacy, based on his book The Environmental Justice: William O. Douglas and American Conservation. Other panelists included Laurence Tribe (Harvard Law) and George Frampton (former president of the Wilderness Society and CEQ head under Clinton). 

announcements

Final Notice - Call for Proposals for ASEH's 2015 Conference in DC

Join our 2015 conference in DC - proposals for panels, roundtables, and posters are due July 20, 2014. Click here for more info.

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for graduate students

Attending the World Congress in Portugal?

Margot Higgins and Adam Sundberg have volunteered to co-organize an informal student get-together in Portugal this July. Please contact them if you're interested in participating:

margothiggins@gmail.com and ads135@gmail.com 

Invitation to Join Graduate Student Caucus

The ASEH grad student caucus organizes events, conference sessions, workshops, career seminars, and more. If you would like to join and participate, e-mail ASEH Graduate Student Liaison Bathsheba Demuth
 at Bathsheba.demuth@berkeley.edu