To be human is to be interested in origins.
Articles from April 2022
Artist's rendering of the Extremely Large Telescope, which has supplanted the proposed OWL instrument • Swinburne Astronomy Productions/ESO (CC BY 4.0)
Photo by Aaron Burden on Unsplash
Snow falling on the senses
One fat flake. Then two. Then dozens dancing in the air. One lands on the sleeve of my jacket — a perfect hexagon, an icon of some great ordering principle in nature.
John J. Audubon's illustration of Columbian hummingbirds
A lively debate among humanists
E. O. Wilson and Wendell Berry are unlikely opponents in the cultural wars.
Photo by Milad Fakurian on Unsplash
We’re studying our thinking
“It is not easy to live in that continuous awareness of things which alone is true living,” writes the naturalist Joseph Wood Krutch. And, of course, he is right. Our brains are separated from the world by a permeable membrane. Attention flows outward. Sense impressions flow inwards. Of this two-way traffic we create a soul.
Photo by Elena Mozhvilo on Unsplash
Ecological world view offers vision of cosmic harmony
Two weeks ago I attended a meeting of nature writers who had gathered to consider the relationship between ecology and spirituality, convened by the Forum on Religion and Ecology.
DDT being sprayed over an Oregon forest in 1955 • USDA Forest Service (Public Domain)
Balancing perils against blessings
Not long ago, I was sitting with students on a high outcrop of rock in the woods near our college campus. A deep screen of color on every side — oaks, maples, and hickories in their autumn glory — absorbed the sounds of highway and town.
The fruiting bodies of Lycogala epidendrum • Photo by Benny Mazur (CC BY 2.0)
To Peattie, nature was the miracle
Donald Culross Peattie was a different sort of nature writer.
The first-generation Apple AirPort wireless basestation • Copyright Museums Victoria / CC BY
Into the woods, wired to wireless
I’m wired. Or I should say, I’m wired wireless.
The asteroid Eros imaged by the NEAR spacecraft • NASA/JPL/JHUAPL (Public Domain)
Eros is NASA’s Little Prince
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s “Little Prince” lived on an asteroid scarcely larger than himself. As readers of the childhood classic will remember, his companions were a sheep and a rose, and some baobab seedlings that he carefully weeded, lest they grow into giant trees that would split his tiny world.
Photo by Selvan B on Unsplash
Some cold water for cold fusion
The grand old man of science fiction, Sir Arthur C. Clarke, recently weighed in once again with the opinion that there may be something to cold fusion.