My Backyard Ark

Augustine once said that a key to his conversion was when he met St Ambrose.  Augustine had regarded the Bible as full of flawed and problematic texts.  As Augustine put it, "by taking them literally, I had found them to kill."(1)  Ambrose taught Augustine that the texts of the Bible may have more than one sense.  The scriptures might speak to him in more than one way.  When he heard this, and heard it from a man who thought it important to study science and the liberal arts, Augustine found his spiritual home in Christianity.


In recent years authors like Norman Wirzba, Bill McKibben, and Scott Russell Sanders have written about the relevance of Biblical texts for thinking about ecology.  To me, they have been a little like St Ambrose.  I've found one passage in Sanders to be quite helpful personally as I think about the management of my little suburban fifth-acre plot.

In his A Conservationist Manifesto, Sanders writes about the story of Noah and the Ark.  He remembers that Noah was given the task of saving not just himself but every other species as well.  And once they were on the ark, it was his job to care for the animals and to keep them alive.  Sanders talks about books, and communities, and practices that can be like small arks in our time.  One such "ark" may be the little plots of land we maintain around our homes:

"Every unsprayed garden and unkempt yard, every meadow, marsh, and woods may become a reservoir for biological possibilities, keeping alive creatures who bear in their genes millions of years; worth of evolutionary discoveries.  Every such refuge may also become a reservoir for spiritual possibilities, keeping alive our connection with the land, reminding us of our origins in the green world."(2)

Lately I've been surveying my yard more closely, looking to see whom I'm sharing it with, and how.  I've been trying to do some phenology, like Thoreau did.  I also wander my garden with lenses: a hand lens for close inspection; my phone camera and my SLR for keeping records of what lives and grows there; and I've recently set up an infrared game camera to see who passes through at night.  For the curious, I've posted some photos below of what I've seen there.

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(1) Augustine, Confessions.  Henry Chadwick's translation. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998) p. 88.
(2) Scott Russell Sanders, A Conservationist Manifesto. (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2009) p. 16.

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All of these images were taken by David O'Hara in the fall of 2013.  You may use them elsewhere but please mention where you found them and give credit where it is due. Thanks.

What Are Philosophy's Flaws?

Last week I suggested to one of my students that she would make a good philosophy major.  A few days later she came to my office and asked me, "What are philosophy's flaws?"

She wanted to know, she said, because she was thinking seriously about studying more philosophy, and for her, thinking seriously about something means considering something from all angles.  She knows that ideas give birth to other ideas, and to practical consequences.

I don't think I gave her a very good answer at the time, but I've continued to think about it because it strikes me as a good question asked for a good reason.

Not long ago I was re-reading the Stoic philosopher Gaius Musonius Rufus.  Of the four major Roman Stoics, he's probably the least well-known.  Epictetus, Seneca and Marcus Aurelius all left substantial writings, but Musonius did not.

Rather, Musonius is known chiefly through the notes his students left behind.  In fact, this is one of the reasons I like him so well: whatever became of his writings, his life made a difference for his students.  His teaching mattered so much that they refused to let his life vanish from history.

There's another reason I like Musonius: he insisted that philosophy is for women, not just for men. Since the student whom I invited to study philosophy is also a woman, I want to try to give a better answer to her question by turning to Musonius now.

Once, when Musonius made the bold invitation for women to join the Stoic philosophers, someone asked him: won't studying philosophy make the women obstinate, independent, and opinionated?

He replied that in fact, it might do just that.  Musonius recognized that the question was a question about the same thing my student was asking about: philosophy's flaws.  Philosophy often makes us better thinkers, but it can also make us obnoxious to our neighbors when we care more about the ideas than about the people whose lives are connected to the ideas.

Musonius then quickly pointed out that the question is irrelevant, however, because what is true of women is also true of men in this regard.  Like Augustine several centuries later, Musonius argued that women and men have equal intellectual powers. If philosophy entails the development and strengthening of our native intellect, then surely women will benefit from it just as much as men.

It would appear that the questioner wasn't concerned about people becoming opinionated, independent thinkers, but about women becoming opinionated, independent thinkers.  What began as a question about the vices of philosophy quickly exposes itself as a question that reveals the bias of the questioner -- a bias that philosophy would be more than happy to correct.

This brings me to my student's question: Yes, philosophy has flaws, and one of its chief flaws is that when it is combined with a lack of kindness, it can amplify that unkindness.

But it also has the power to expose that unkindness in a pretty keen way.  And when it is combined with kindness and positive regard for our neighbors --  with what we sometimes call agapé, or love -- it can be something that causes kindness to grow.

I don't mean that philosophy is a panacaea, or that it will do all good things for us, all on its unattended own.

But I do mean that you, my student, have very real native intelligence, and it pleases me to see it in you.  And I would love to see it grow.  To point to Augustine once more: Augustine found philosophy to be helpful for his own self-understanding, for his seeking after God, and for keeping his church from descending into irrationality.  He regarded it as a way to "love God with his mind."

I wouldn't ask you, my student, to give up your nursing major.  Quite the opposite!  Just as surely as women need philosophy, I think nurses and business majors and scientists and poets need philosophy, too.  I think that studying philosophy will make you a better nurse, one more able to improve the nursing profession and to improve your workplace.

And let me add one more thing.  When you came into my office the other day to ask me that brilliant question, one thing was quite clear to me: whether or not you choose to make philosophy your formal major, you are already becoming a philosopher.  And that makes me very happy indeed.

20,000: Two Stories Of Water Pollution In The Dakotas

Two stories in the Sioux Falls Argus Leader in the past week have caught my attention.  Coincidentally, both have to do with pollution of groundwater and with 20,000 units lost.

The first was a story about an oil pipeline leak in which 20,000 barrels of crude oil contaminated over seven acres of farmland.  The Argus reports that in major oil-producing states like North Dakota oil spills must be reported to the state, but state law does not mandate the release of this information to the public.  In other words, the state is free to keep this news quiet.  One has to assume that the state legislators who wrote that law thought it was in the public interest to keep news of toxic spills quiet.  It's better for us not to know about such things, I guess.

Anyway, the Argus lets us know that some state officials think there's no cause for concern: "state regulators say no water sources were contaminated, no wildlife was hurt and no one was injured." Oh, good.

The second story is about the disposal of some 20,000 cattle that died in a surprisingly early and heavy snowstorm earlier this month.  This is a devastating loss for ranchers across western South Dakota.  It represents an enormous financial loss, and it also creates a very difficult cleanup problem.  The best solution for disposal of all the carcasses so far has been to dig two large pits.  The Argus reports that there are strict regulations concerning the depth and soil of the pits.

According to the Argus, the reason for the pits is to make sure the dead cattle don't contaminate streams.

Which makes me wonder why there is so little concern for the oil spill in North Dakota.  Obviously there is an important difference between bacterial and viral infections entering streams, on the one hand, and oil entering streams on the other hand.  But surely both represent serious health hazards?

We are left with a peculiar contrast: a few cattle on the ground - something that happens in nature all the time - are a serious threat to the water, while a million gallons of crude oil spread across seven acres of farmland (presumably some rain falls there and washes into streams?) is barely worth telling the public about.


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Update: Since a number of people have asked me just what happened to the cattle in South Dakota, I am posting this link that I found to be a helpful reply to some questions about the storm and the loss of the cattle.

In Defense of Insects

Cloudless Sulphur in my asters.

I'm reviewing David Clough's On Animals and I just came across a gem in its pages.  The "gem" is from Edward Payson Evans’ book The Criminal Prosecution and Capital Punishment of Animals.  I had no idea Evans' book existed, so part of the fun was simply learning that there have been hundreds of criminal cases in human history where animals have been placed on trial and given court-appointed lawyers.  Another part of the fun was learning that someone took the time to compile them in a book.

The first paragraph below is from Clough, the second from Evans.  This is one for the office door, I think, since it details a court case in 1545 in which weevils were put on trial, and had a court-appointed lawyer.  I like the way the judge decides that the earth is not for us only, but also for the weevils:

“One example will serve to indicate the seriousness with which the court proceedings against animals were taken.  Evans records the case of the wine-growers of St Julien in 1545, who complained that weevils were ravaging their vineyards.  The official, François Bonnivard, heard the arguments of Pierre Falcon for the plaintiffs and Claude Morel in defence of the weevils, before deciding to issue a proclamation rather than passing sentence.  The proclamation was as follows:

“Inasmuch as God, the supreme author of all that exists, hath ordained that the earth should bring forth fruits and herbs not solely for the sustenance of rational human beings, but likewise for the preservation and support of insects, which fly about on the surface of the soil, therefore it would be unbecoming to proceed with rashness and precipitance against the animals now actually accused and indicted; on the contrary, it would be more fitting for us to have recourse to the mercy of heaven and to implore pardon for our sins.”  (Clough, p. 110; citation from Evans, 38-39; boldface emphasis is mine.)

This is a reminder that while theology can have terrible consequences, theologies and other stories we tell about ourselves can have fascinating, helpful, and thought-broadening consequences as well.  Here the story of creation is deployed to remind us that we are not sole masters of the world.  God is invoked as creator of everything to insist that the world is there for God - and so for everything God made - and not just for us.  The world is, apparently, even there for the insects.  Haldane's famous quip about God's "inordinate fondness for beetles" finds serious support here.

Demosthenes' "Against Meidias"

Tonight I am reading Demosthenes' Against Meidias.  Why? Because nothing prevents me from doing so, and books like this repay the reader many times over for the little effort it takes to read them.

The text is full of citations of Athenian law, and both its structure and content tell us a great deal about ancient jurisprudence.

Demosthenes also gives us some gems of ancient legal reasoning, reminding us that there is very little new under the sun.  For instance: Meidias, a wealthy and brutish man, assaulted Demosthenes while Demosthenes was performing a sacred state function.  Meidias then claimed that such assaults happen all the time, and therefore his was unimportant.  Demosthenes replied that the decision of the court will affect not only this single case but that it will have the effect of deterring future assaults as well.

But on this reading I am especially enjoying Demosthenes as a handbook of erudite Attic insults.  His repeated epithet against Euctemon, Ευκτημων ο κονιορτος, "dust-raising Euctemon" or "Dirty old Euctemon" is a minor example.

A far better one is this one, aimed at Meidias:

“If, men of Athens, public service consists in saying to you at all the meetings of the Assembly and on every possible occasion, ‘We are the men who perform the public services; we are those who advance your tax-money; we are the capitalists” – if that is all it means, then I confess that Meidias has shown himself the most distinguished citizen of Athens.” (Section 153; Taken from the Loeb edition. J.H. Vince, Trans. (Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1956) p.107)

He hardly needs to say what follows: of course, public service consists in much more than that, and by offering these public rebukes against a man like this I am fulfilling one of my highest duties.  Powerful people who use their power to abuse their fellow citizens deserve no less.

The Best Watchmen Of Our Thoughts

"And, finally, I suppose they took the acropolis of the young man's soul, perceiving that it was empty of fair studies and practices and true speeches, and it's these that are the best watchmen and guardians in the thought of men whom the gods love."

Plato, Republic 560b. Allan Bloom's translation. (Basic Books, 1991)

Pragmatic Stoic Theology

In preparing a class on later Stoicism, I came across a passage from Cicero's De Natura Deorum, or On The Nature Of The Gods.  Cicero himself is not one to take sides, but he attempts to practice that virtue of presenting the views of others as fairly as he can.  As part of this practice, Cicero attributes a god-argument to the Stoic Chrysippus in Book 2, section 16 (Latin text here) of his De Natura Deorum.

Chrysippus' god-argument is not, strictly speaking, a proof of the existence of a god.  It is rather an appeal to what he thinks is common sense, and to the consequences of not believing.

The first part, the appeal to common sense, goes something like this:

1) If there is anything in nature that we can't have made then something greater than us made it;

2) That something is what we call a god.

Of course, he is assuming that everything that exists must exist because it was made, and that it was made designedly by a single cause.  We could object that natural arrangements might have more than one lesser natural cause; or we could contest the whole notion of greater and lesser and dismiss this part of his argument fairly easily.

The second part makes a case that at least invites us to be cautious about dismissing it too readily.  It goes like this:

3) Unless there is divine power, human reason is the greatest thing we know of and can possess;

4) So if there are no gods, then we are the greatest beings in the cosmos.  In which case, we are the gods.

Of course there might be other things we don't know of that are more powerful than we are; or we might (wisely) regard nature as more powerful than we are.

But the most helpful part, I think, is (4), which stands as an invitation to consider who we are as we face the cosmos.  We think of ourselves as natural, but we also think of ourselves as standing somehow apart from nature.

So it may be that there is nothing in the cosmos wiser or more clever than we are.  We should be honest about this and acknowledge the real possibility that this is the case.

But Chrysippus invites us also to consider the consequences of that belief, since it could be taken as license to act as we will. The danger, as he sees it, is that we might become the sort of people who worship ourselves.  This is dangerous in part because it impedes growth; we become like what we worship, and if we worship only ourselves, then we become our own best ideal.  I will speak for myself when I say that I, at least, am a cramped and stingy ideal. 

Many of the Stoics are content to name nature as god; what matters is that there always be something worth our attention and admiration.  I'm reminded of the wise words of David Foster Wallace, who said that

There is no such thing as not worshipping. Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship. And an outstanding reason for choosing some sort of god or spiritual-type thing to worship - be it JC or Allah, be it Yahweh or the Wiccan mother-goddess or the Four Noble Truths or some infrangible set of ethical principles - is that pretty much anything else you worship will eat you alive.

You can read the rest of his brief, insightful talk here (or by searching for "This Is Water.")

Wallace comes pretty close to Chrysippus.  Neither is trying to convert you to a religion, neither is trying to set the rules for your life, but both are reporting on what they have seen when they have ventured in the direction of denying all the gods: off in that direction, they found they could escape all the gods except the god they then found that they forced themselves to become.

Which, to paraphrase Wallace, is a good reason for choosing to posit some god which, if it existed, would be worth your worship.  And then, maybe, to test it by trying to worship it as though it were really there. 

Trained By Trains - Thoreau on Technology

I'm teaching Thoreau's Walden this semester, and tomorrow my class will discuss the chapter entitled "Sounds."  While re-reading it tonight I was struck by two passages about trains and the way this new technology was changing the people who lived near it.

Here's the first passage:

"Far through unfrequented woods on the confines of towns, where once only the hunter penetrated by day, in the darkest night dart these bright saloons without the knowledge of their inhabitants….They go and come with such regularity and precision, and their whistle can be heard so far, that the farmers set their clocks by them, and thus one well-conducted institution regulates a whole country.  Have not men improved somewhat in punctuality since the railroad was invented?  Do they not talk and think faster in the depot than they did in the stage-office?  There is something electrifying in the former place."

The Fitchburg Railroad had been very recently built in his time.  Despite the short time it had been in existence, already it had begun to change the way people who lived near it regarded time.

It may sound like Thoreau admires this change, but he does not.  Just a little earlier he wrote that when he was at Walden his "days were not days of the week, bearing the stamp of any heathen deity, nor were they minced into hours and fretted by the ticking of a clock."  His Walden-time is not "minced into hours."  That is, it is not governed by any clock but Thoreau himself. 

The other passage is one where he imagines the trains as "bolts" or arrows:

"We live the steadier for it.  We are all educated thus to be sons of Tell. The air is full of invisible bolts."

To be a son of William Tell is no pleasant thing. To be a son of Tell is to be constantly in mortal peril.  One's schoolmaster is the permanent risk of sudden death.

A hundred and seventy years ago Thoreau was already seeing the ways that a single technology - one heralded as beneficent and neutral - was remaking us in its image, changing our sense of time, speeding us up, educating us to stay out of its way and so confining us to the spaces between the spaces it occupies.

And it's not just those who ride the railroad who are conditioned by it; everyone is conditioned by it.  The technology is not neutral, not a mere thing we can wield with no effect upon the wielder.  We may devise tools, but we are ignorant if we think that the tools do not also come to change us.