Today, meet the father of the environmental
movement. The University of Houston's College of
Engineering presents this series about the machines
that make our civilization run, and the people
whose ingenuity created them.
George Perkins Marsh
published a remarkable book in 1864. Its title was
Man and Nature. When he put out a
revised edition in 1874, he changed the title to
explain his intentions. Now he called it The
Earth as Modified by Human Action: Man and
Nature.
It was the first modern discussion of our
ecological problems. We are not passive inhabitants
of Earth, he said. We give Earth its shape and
form. We are responsibile for Earth.
Marsh was born in 1801. He was New England upper
crust -- the son of a U.S. Congressman. The Marshes
were friends of presidents. He was a bookish
schoolboy until he fell victim to a chronic eye
problem when he was eight.
His eyes kept him from reading for years at a time.
So he compensated. He developed a prodigious memory
for things other people read to him. And if he
couldn't read books, he could at least read nature.
He developed an abiding love of animals, plants,
and the world they occupy.
Few of us, he once said, could make as good a claim
to personality as a respectable oak tree.
He took up law -- then politics. He wasn't very
good at politics. He was too much the college
professor -- a little bit pompous, a little bit
withdrawn. But he was a fine organizer, lawyer, and
businessman. When Marsh was 48, Zachary Taylor
appointed him as minister to Turkey. In 1860
Lincoln made him his Ambassador to Italy. He held
that post 'til his death in 1882.
He was a good diplomat. But we remember Marsh the
scholar. He was a student of Scandinavian
languages. As a philologist, he wrote an important
book on the character of the English language. He
was an art collector. As a scientist, he gathered
reptiles for the Smithsonian. He was instrumental
in the Army's attempt to use the camel in the
American Southwest.
Finally, he wrote Man and Nature, and it was
a work of love. He picked up the theme when he saw
the damage Vermont farmers did by clearing their
land. At first, he wanted to use a more radical
title, Man the Disturber of Nature's
Harmonies.
But he backed off. He wasn't one to sit by Walden
Pond. We're destined to disturb nature's harmonies.
We have to learn to do so as good stewards -- not
as vandals.
So he ran the inventory of our assault on nature.
He told of deforestation, canal building, and water
pollution. He showed why the Sahara was advancing.
We were ill-disposed to hear his warnings in those
days of American empire building. But we hear them
today. We can no longer doubt Marsh's hard message
-- 130 years later.
I'm John Lienhard, at the University of Houston,
where we're interested in the way inventive minds
work.
(Theme music)
Marsh, G.P., Man and Nature. Cambridge:
The Harvard University Press, 1965. (This is an
anotated reprint of the original 1864 edition.)
Marsh, G.P., The Earth as Modified by Human
Action: Man and Nature. New York: Scribner,
Armstrong, and Co., 1976. (This is a straight
reprinting of the 1874 edition.)
Marsh, G.P., The Earth as Modified by Human
Action: A Last Revision of Man and Nature.
New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1885.
Marsh, G.P., Lectures on the English
Language. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons,
1859, 1884, 1887.
Marsh, G.P., The Camel -- his Organization
Habits and Uses. Boston: Gould and Lincoln,
1856, (for material on importing the camel to
America, see Chapters XVII, XVIII, and Appendix D.)
We meet George Perkins Marsh and his attempt to
introduce camels into the U.S. Army again in
Episode 807.
The Engines of Our Ingenuity is
Copyright © 1988-1997 by John H.
Lienhard.
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