Essay - Environmental Science Four Pivotal People - Whose Collective Positive Impact...

Environmental Science

Four pivotal people - whose collective positive impact on the environment and on society's underst*****ing of ***** natural world is powerful ***** are featured in th***** paper. They are John Muir, Aldo Leopold, Henry David Thoreau, and Rachel Carson; an underst*****ding of *****eir lives and pr*****essional contributions is necessary for any student who wishes to become in*****med as to the effect the expansion of American cities and technologies has had on ***** planet.

***** David Thoreau, it should be understood out in front, was not a cheerleader for ecological policies he agreed with, and not a scientist *****vestig*****ting man's abuse ***** the l*****; he was instead a writer and a critic, a "transcendentalist" and a philosophical person who wrestled with ***** question of how humankind ***** the ***** world are supposed to interact and coexist. His "transcendental inclinations" (page 134), according to the text, led him on a p*****th of discovery "revolving around the ideas ***** self, society, ***** ***** wilderness and the interrelations among them."

If that sounds a little esoteric, what the author is basically saying ***** ***** Thoreau was very experienced in the ways of humans and ***** wilderness; he lived next ***** Walden Pond ***** more than two years; he climbed mountains; ***** explored forests and hiked a gre*****t deal; ***** yet his "excursions...were not mere physical journeys but contemplative odysseys through which he gradually overcame t***** alienation of the person..." (137). When he wrote about his journeys into nature, he certainly *****n't writing a travelogue; he was in fact expressing ***** the creative genius of his mind's eye the many ways the bright spirit can interpret an experience with the wilderness.

In society you will not find health," Thoreau wrote in "Natural *****tory ***** Massachusetts"; "but ***** nature...Society is al***** d*****eased, and the best is the most so." Clearly Thoreau saw that ***** ***** a way of poisoning or disturbing nature, and also, he was intolerant of social small talk, as he is quoted (139) ***** ***** "We fancy that th***** din of religion, literature, and philosophy, which is hear in pulpits, lyceums, and parl*****s, vibrates ********** the universe, and is as catholic a sound as the creak*****g ***** the earth's axle."

***** while he ***** putting down all the chatter in ***** the venues of his public life, he asserted (*****) that the "...***** man of science ***** know ***** better by ***** finer organization; he will smell, taste, see, *****ar, feel, better than other men. His will be a deeper *****nd finer experience." He isn't really ***** science down, but he saying ***** books and classroom learning cannot lead to t***** same unders*****anding as actually being out into the wild one's self. And, he was angry at ***** negative effect society ***** having on the environ*****t; "The bear, wolf, lynx, wildcat, deer, beaver, and marten have disappeared," he wrote, in "Natural History." One wonders what Thoreau would write today, if he were alive and could see ***** widespread destruction to the