Science and Nature: Essays in the History of the Environmental Sciences ed. by Michael Shortland, and: The Norton History of the Environmental Sciences by Peter J. Bowler

Abstract

196 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Science and Nature: Essays in the History ofthe Environmental Sciences. Edited by Michael Shortland. Faringdon: British Society for the History of Science, 1993. Pp. viii+ 291; notes, index. £8.00 (paper). The Norton History of the Environmental Sciences. By PeterJ. Bowler. New York: W. W. Norton, 1993. Pp. xxi+634; illustrations, notes, bibliogra­ phy, index. $35.00 (cloth); $15.95 (paper). Michael Shortland’s monograph comprises ten essays covering largely unrelated subjects—though “political” difficulties do play a consider­ able part in most of them. Shortland’s editorial foreword is hard-pressed to find links among them, thus they are unlikely to appeal equally to many readers. The two that I found most interesting wereJohn Sheail on “Pollution and the Protection of Inland Fisheries in Inter-War Britain” and Timothy Boon on “The Smoke Menace: Cinema, Sponsorship and the Social Relations of Science in 1937,” also confined to the British case. The first examines the effects ofwater pollution in rivers and their consequent economic and social costs; it sets out the difficulties in persuading ministers of the crown that action by them was necessary. It is salutary to contrast the lofty Olympian indifference and detachment of U.K. ministers in the interwar years with the frenetic efforts of their present-day successors to do nothing about desirable cleanups or their determination to reverse such progress as has occurred, all in the name of deregulation. The second article discusses the use of a then compara­ tively new technology, the film, to expose and explain the health effects and social costs of air pollution in order to influence public opinion. It took twenty years more before an individual parliamentarian, Gerald Nabarro, forced through an effective control measure, with ministers and senior civil servants afterward claiming the credit. Peter Bowler has assayed a more ambitious task in the second volume, to produce the first comprehensive account of the history of the environmental sciences (note the plural). As he admits in his preface, he has emphasized the history of biology, especially evolutionary theory, and that of geology; there is much less on the rest of biology, oceanography, climatology, and meteorology. However, this imbalance is generally offset by successive chapters concentrating on the principal characteristics and issues of each period. In this way, he can be said to have discussed the environmental sciences of the time. Not the least interesting parts are the digressions, part explanatory, part philosophical, which enliven many chapters. These are brought together in the last chapter, which sets out the current position, though many elements are missing. Pollution is not the sole present-day worry; Bowler himselfincludes resource depletion earlier. I add the ozone layer and global warming. These omissions are all the more surprising becauseJames Lovelock’s Gaia hypothesis, or to my mind poetic fantasy, is discussed not unfavorably in several places. Does Bowler believe that these threats are Gaia’s way of defending herself? I cannot find the more TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Book Reviews 197 orthodox Darwinian response set out at all: that mankind’s environmen­ tal irresponsibility, linked to revival of a disease or two, could render the planet uninhabitable or have, say, the same effect as bubonic plague had on the later Middle Ages. The other difficulty I have with this otherwise stimulating and provocative chapter is the discussion of rival attitudes to, and conclu­ sions about, so many environmental problems. Bowler’s exposition emphasizes that there are opposing views among scientists employed by industry and those who appear to be in independent postions and that their conflicting evidence has shaken public confidence in both of them. Writing as someone who was originally in the latter position, but found himself in later life advising governments on pollution and related problems, I miss in his analysis the fact that most environmental problems are not cut and dried, so that science can rarely be certain about their origins and even less about their solutions. The conflict between industrialists and environmentalists arises in part because of those uncertainties. The two essays noted above in Science and Nature, and several of the others as well, reveal just how complex are the factors that make up...