Skip to Content.
Sympa Menu

permaculture - [permaculture] [SANET-MG] 50th anniversary of ground breaking lecture by Lynn White

permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org

Subject: permaculture

List archive

Chronological Thread  
  • From: Lawrence London <lfljvenaura@gmail.com>
  • To: permaculture <permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: [permaculture] [SANET-MG] 50th anniversary of ground breaking lecture by Lynn White
  • Date: Thu, 22 Dec 2016 21:41:14 -0500

From: Karl S North <knorth@binghamton.edu>
Date: Thu, Dec 22, 2016 at 4:57 PM
Subject: Re: [SANET-MG] 50th anniversary of ground breaking lecture by Lynn
White
To: sanet-mg@googlegroups.com


White's excellent historical account of where science went wrong is among
the few early critiques that began to recognize the problem. Other examples
were works in systems ecology beginning in the 1960s by the Odum brothers,
the 1964 sociological critique of Western technology, *The Technological
Society *by Jacques Ellul and *Ecology and the Politics of Scarcity,* based
on a 1973 Phd thesis by political ecologist William Ophuls. What these
accounts all reveal is an out-of-control avalanche of technologies most of
which have done more damage than good.

Since White wrote it has become clear to many that the problem with the way
science is done is deeper than the Western dualism of man and nature and
the anthropocentric ethics it spawned. which White evoked.

Science on the Enlightenment Model - the reductive, laboratory method whose
results are directly applied to a complex, connected world - is just not
good enough, as the frightening results over time have increasingly
revealed. The missing step - now often labeled Complexity Science -
requires the study and modeling of how technologies based on reductive
results might cause ripple effects over space and time in this larger
systemic context, effects that can be much less desirable than the initial
intended result. How the faulty direct application of reductive research
results has become the norm in science since the Enlightenment is a
question that has increasingly fascinated me as I studied its disastrous
effects in agricultural science. Those interested in a brief introduction
to the subject might find some of my explorations useful, among others on
my website:
Reductionist Science and the Rise of Capitalism: Implications for a New
Educational Program of Agricultural Science <http://karlnorth.com/?p=511>What
systems thinking reveals: from biology to political economy
<http://karlnorth.com/?p=596>
Why Systems Thinking? <http://karlnorth.com/?p=694>
​--
Karl North - http://karlnorth.com/
"Pueblo que canta no morira" - Cuban saying
"They only call it class warfare when we fight back" - Anon.
"My father rode a camel. I drive a car. My son flies a jet-plane. His son
will ride a camel."
—Saudi saying​

On Wed, Dec 21, 2016 at 8:37 PM, Kris Johnson RR <cjohnson143@woh.rr.com>
wrote:

> This looks to be White's paper?
> http://www.uvm.edu/~gflomenh/ENV-NGO-PA395/articles/Lynn-White.pdf
>
> Kris
>
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> *From:* Joel Gruver <jgruv@hotmail.com>
> *To:* SANET-MG <sanet-mg@googlegroups.com>
> *Sent:* Wednesday, December 21, 2016 4:50 PM
> *Subject:* [SANET-MG] 50th anniversary of ground breaking lecture by Lynn
> White
>
> Hello folks,
>
>
> Next Monday (26 December) is the 50th anniversary of a ground breaking
> lecture delivered by Lynn White Jr. to the American Association for the
> Advancement of Science (AAAS) that was later published in Science as “The
> Historical Roots of our Ecologic Crisis”.
>
>
> here is a link to a short article about the impact of the paper:
>
>
> https://natureecoevocommunity.nature.com/users/24738-michael
> -paul-nelson/posts/14041-the-long-reach-of-lynn-white-jr-s-t
> he-historical-roots-of-our-ecologic-crisis
>
>
> Shoot me an email if you would like for me to send you a PDF of the
> original paper.
>
>
> Joel
>
> WIU Agriculture
>
>
>
>
---
Lawrence F. London, Jr.
lfljvenaura@gmail.com
https://sites.google.com/site/avantgeared



  • [permaculture] [SANET-MG] 50th anniversary of ground breaking lecture by Lynn White, Lawrence London, 12/22/2016

Archive powered by MHonArc 2.6.24.

Top of Page