More to Earth Science Than Meets the Eye

Abstract

The curiosity that students have for geology can be nurtured by what they hear as well as by what they see. Students can be sensitized to sound with John Cage's avant-garde music. Cage opened his compositions to all natural and human-made sounds to reveal the universe without human-imposed limits. I challenge my students to collect sounds with a tape recorder or audio/video camera, and to explain in a short written essay how their compositions relate to earth processes such as erosion and transport of sediments, evolution of life, or environmental issues such as pollution. Their compositions range from the sublime to the profane - waterfalls and fountains in state and city parks, the wind, birds, automobile engines, toilets flushing. We also compare Cage's music to traditional, narrative music such as Grofe's Grand Canyon Suite and learn that not everyone views the landscape in the same way. The lesson is reinforced with readings from Simon Schama's Landscape and Memory, which deals with the evolution of the concept of landscape and which ranges from views of the landscape as the ideal, pastoral sanctuary, to landscape as a formidable, primordial wilderness, to landscape as a mysterious, geological terrain that unfolds as one hikes through it. If we teach to all of the senses, earth science is bound to strike a responsive chord with our students.