Anglo

Anglo Although, it now became a commonplace practice among particularly ‘progressive’ social activists to blame Western civilization on account of its environmental unfriendliness, the objective analysis points out to the fact that it is namely in Western societies, where people have traditionally been concerned with trying to preserve nature. The soundness of this suggestion can be well illustrated even today.Advertising We will write a custom research paper sample on Anglo-Germanic Writers’ Influence on Popular Environmental Thinking specifically for you for only $16.05 $11/page Learn More For example; whereas, in Nigeria it is being considered absolutely normal by the residents of country’s even biggest cities to dump garbage onto the street, right in front of their shabby houses1, in such Western countries as Britain, Sweden and Germany, one may very well end up facing administrative charges for even as little as throwing a cigarette butt anywhere else but into specially designed garbage bins. And, the reason why, as compared to the people from Third World countries, Westerners appear to grow ever more environmentally aware is simple. As history indicates, the more a particular society is being affected by scientific progress, the less its members require natural resources to sustain their physical existence, which in its turn creates objective preconditions for them to consider adopting friendly stance towards the nature. In other words, the notions of environmental friendliness and scientific progress are very much.2 This is precisely the reason why it is specifically Anglo-Saxon societies, which have traditionally been considered the most technologically advanced, that continue to feature world’s highest environmental standards. In our paper, we will aim to substantiate the full soundness of this suggestion by exploring how creative writings and visual artworks from Anglo/Germanic authors, concerned w ith popularizing the objective essence of natural laws, contributed towards increasing the extent of public’s environmental awareness in 19th and 20th centuries. When we assess the qualitative subtleties of Western civilization’s socio-cultural and scientific progress, from the time of antiquity until today, a very striking picture will emerge – the pace of this progress appears to have been gaining exponential momentum during the time of antiquity (5th century B.C. 5th century A.D.) and during the time of comparatively modern era (15th-20th centuries). However, during the course of so-called Dark Ages (6th – 14th centuries), the pace of Western socio-cultural and scientific progress came to virtually a complete stall – all thanks to Catholic Christianity.3 Therefore, it comes as not a particular surprise that it was specifically the exposure of Biblical fables’ anti-scientific essence, on the part of European most prominent intellectuals, which created the initial preconditions for Western civilization to be set back on its natural track of development.4 And, there can be very little doubt that Erasmus Darwin (1731-1802) was one of these intellectuals. In his poetical work The Botanic Garden; a Poem in Two Parts, supplemented by scientific commentaries, Darwin went about promoting a revolutionary idea that people and plants are being subjected to the same laws of nature.Advertising Looking for research paper on environmental studies? Let's see if we can help you! Get your first paper with 15% OFF Learn More In its turn, this implied plants’ sexuality: â€Å"The first buds of tree raised from seed die annually and are succeeded by new buds by solitary reproduction; which are larger or more perfect for several suc ­cessive years, and then they produce sexual flowers, which are succeeded by seminal repro ­duction†.5 Nevertheless, it were not the explicit references to the very n otion of sexuality, quite unconventional for its time, which ensured Darwin poem’s progressive sounding, but the fact that this poem suggested the physiological origins of a number of purely metaphysical notions, such as ‘soul’. As a result, Darwin’s poem ended up promoting clearly positivist message that it is the existence that defines consciousnesses, and not the other way around. As it was noted by Reed: â€Å"If life, mind, and feeling are concomitants of the arrangement of organs and of a fluid ether in animal bodies, what role was left for either God or the soul? Erasmus Darwin†¦ argued that the way we act is a function of our upbringing- of social, not divine intervention†.6 It goes without saying, of course, that such Darwin’s botanical stance was wholly inconsistent with the very spirit of anthropocentrism, based upon Judeo-Christian tradition, which contributed rather substantially to poem’s scientific value. After all, even during the course of 18th century, Church continued to exert a strong influence onto the essence of socio-political dynamics in British society. And yet, Darwin proved himself intellectually honest and courageous enough to utilize his poetic talent for the purposes of enlightenment, while defying the conventions of anthropocentrism. What is particularly interesting, in this respect, is the fact that he went about accomplishing it by the mean of endowing plants with clearly anthropocentric psychological traits – whatever the ironic it might sound. In The Botanic Garden; a Poem in Two Parts, flowers are being represented as such that can experience a variety of different emotions: Whilst erythrina oer her tender flowerAdvertising We will write a custom research paper sample on Anglo-Germanic Writers’ Influence on Popular Environmental Thinking specifically for you for only $16.05 $11/page Learn More Bends all her leaves, and braves the sul try hour;- Shield, when cold hesper sheds his dewy light, Mimosa’s soft sensations from the night.7 Thus, even though in Darwin’s poem, plants can be formally referred to as God’s creations, under no circumstances can they be referred to as some sort of God’s commodity. Just as it is being the case with people, in this poem, plants appear to have a life of their own. And, even though The Botanic Garden; a Poem in Two Parts is not being concerned with promotion of the concept of evolution, by being exposed to plants’ sexuality, readers come to suspect the existence of dialectically predetermined links between flora and fauna. Thus, it will not be much of an exaggeration, on our part, to suggest that Charles Darwin’s Theory of Evolution partially derives out of his grandfather’s insights, in regards to biological commonality between just about all life-forms. The irony lies in the fact that both: Erasmus and Charles’s insightful ness in the matters of biology appears to be of essentially Lamarckian nature. As Barlow had put it: â€Å"Erasmus’s cast of mind appears to hold special heritable qualities When we examine the achievements and characteristics of his (Charles Darwin’s) forbears and descendants, the copious mind of Erasmus appears as a vast family aggregate†.8Advertising Looking for research paper on environmental studies? Let's see if we can help you! Get your first paper with 15% OFF Learn More Apparently, the example of Erasmus Darwin shows that in 18th century, the sheer vibrancy of the process of Western empirical sciences freeing themselves out of Christian imprisonment had put era’s most prominent intellectuals at liberty to utilize just about any creative techniques, while popularizing scientific notions. The legitimacy of an earlier suggestion can be also explored in regards to one of 19th century’s most famous ornithologists John Gould (1804 – 1881). Just as it used to be the case with many intellectually advanced enthusiasts of science at the time, Gould took an interest in a number of scientific pursuits. Contemporaries considered Gould a professional in the fields of taxidermy, gardening, naval navigation and zoology.  Nevertheless, it was namely his love of birds, which did not only allow Gould to ensure its fame as ornithologist but also to contribute to the process of Charles Darwin designing the concept of natural selection. According to Pycior: â€Å"Darwin has been described as being ‘frankly stunned’ by Gould’s telling him that the Galapagos finches were a peculiar group of thirteen species, all closely related to one South American finch, that Galapagos mockingbirds belonged to three distinct species from different islands, and that twenty’, Current Anthropology, 26/4 (1985), 503. 2 Joel Mokyr, ‘Technological Progress and the Decline of European Mortality’, The American Economic Review, 83/2 (1993), 325. 3 Andrew Keitt, ‘Religious Enthusiasm, the Spanish Inquisition, and the Disenchantment of the World’,  Journal of the History of Ideas, 65/2 (2004), 233. 4 Arthur Melzer, ‘The Origin of the Counter-Enlightenment: Rousseau and the New Religion of Sincerity’, The American Political Science Review, 90/2 (1996), 350. 5 E. Darwin, Botanic Garden, a Poem, in Two Parts; Containing the Economy of Vegetation and The Loves of Plants, with Philosophica l Notes (London: Jones Company, 1825), 23. 6 E. Reed, From Soul to Mind: The Emergence of Psychology from Erasmus Darwin to William James (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1997), 15. 7 Darwin. Op. Cit. 66. 8 Nora Barlow, ‘Erasmus Darwin, F.R.S. (1731-1802)’, Notes and Records of the Royal Society of London, 14/1 (1959), 85. 9 H. Pycior, Creative Couples in the Sciences (New Brunswick, N.J: Rutgers University Press, 1996), 89. 10 J. Gould, The Birds of Australia: in Seven Volumes (London: Richard and John Taylor, 1848), 28. http://nla.gov.au/nla.aus-f4773-1. 11 S. Gliboff, H.G. Bronn, Ernst Haeckel, and the Origins of German Darwinism: a Study in Translation and Transformation (Cambridge: Mass MIT Press, 2008), 156. 12 Niles Holt, ‘Ernst Haeckels Monistic Religion’, Journal of the History of Ideas, 32/2 (1971), 270. 13 Max Rieser, ‘Three Principles of Natural Beauty’, The Journal of Philosophy, 53/11 (1956), 355. 14 Harold McWhinnie, ‘A Biological Basis for the Golden Section in Art and Design’, Leonardo, 22/1 (1989), 61. 15 Reiser, Op. Cit. 356. 16 Nicholas Kyriazis, ‘Seapower and Socioeconomic Change’, Theory and Society, 35/1 (2006), 75. 17 A. Humboldt. Aspects of Nature in Different Lands and Different Climates; with Scientific Elucidations (London: Longman, Brown, Green Longmans, 1849), ix. archive.org/stream/aspectsofnaturei01humbuoft#page/viii/mode/2up. 18 Aaron Sachs, ‘The Ultimate ‘Other’: Post-Colonialism and Alexander Von Humboldts Ecological Relationship with Nature’, History and Theory, 42/4 (2003), 119. 19 C. Rourke J. MacDonald, Audubon (New York: Harcourt Brace and Company, 1936), 284. 20 P. Murphy,T. Gifford K. Yamazato, Literature of Nature: An International Sourcebook (Chicago: Fitzroy Dearborn, 1998), 172. 21 R. Dawkins, The Selfish Gene (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1976), 3. 22 R. Dawkins. The Blind Watchmaker (London: Longmans, 1986), 13. 2 3 C. Darwin, On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favored Races in the Struggle for Life (Oxford: Oxford University Press, [1859]1996), 70. 24 R. Dawkins, The God Delusion (London: Bantam Press, 2006), 79. 25 F. Nietzsche, Thus Spake Zarathustra: A Book for All and None (New York: Algora Publishing, [1891] 2003), 75. 26 K.. Dobbelaere, Secularization: An Analysis at Three Levels (Berlin: Peter Lang, 2004), 167. 27 Christopher Hoag, ‘The Atlantic Telegraph Cable and Capital Market Information Flows’, The Journal of Economic History 66/2 (2006), 350. 28 H. Thoreau, On the Duty of Civil Disobedience, FeedBooks.Com [web page] (2007) http:// generation.feedbooks.com/book/219.pdf. 29 R. Lynn T. Vanhanen, IQ and the Wealth of Nations (Westport: Greenwood Publishing Group, 2002), 63. 30 John Leighly, ‘John Muirs Image of the West’, Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 48/4 (1958), 312. 31 J. Muir. A Thousand- Mile Walk to the Gulf (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1916), 139. 32 J. Burroughs. The Gospel of Nature, ReadBookOnline.Net [web page] (2011) readbookonline.net/readOnLine/21513/. 33 Ibid., 2011.