Science books for professional pleasure reading: round out your content knowledge and foster interest in science with this list

The article lists several science books, including The Origin of Species, by Charles Darwin, The Whole Shebang: A State-of-the-Universes Report, by Timothy Ferris and Silent Spring, by Rachel Carson

Salma Monani, Associate Professor of Environmental Studies

In this first Next Page column of 2017, Salma Monani, Associate Professor of Environmental Studies, shares which films first ignited her passion for research in the environmental humanities – in particular, the intersections of cinema, environmental, and Indigenous studies; how her recent time as a Carson Fellow at the Rachel Carson Center for Environment and Society (Munich, Germany) reinforced this passion; suggested reads that range from science fiction and mystery to seminal works in ecocriticism; and which Netflix series she will dive into next

Rachel Carson, a Voice for Organics - the First Hundred Years

Rachel Carson has been described as "an early supporter of organic farming". Publishing in 1962, she awoke a generation past, to the false promises of the “war on weeds”, the “war against the insects” and “better living through chemistry”. Carson wrote to a friend: “there would be no peace for me if I kept silent”. She asked the world to consider: “Can anyone believe it is possible to lay down such a barrage of poisons on the surface of the earth without making it unfit for all life?”. Carson has been described by TIME Magazine as one of “the 100 most influential people of the 20th century” and her book has been described as “the most influential book of the past 50 years”- yet on the occasion of the centenary of her birth, the author found that university students had "no idea" who she was, or what was "Silent Spring"

(Another) Battle in the Clouds

At age ten, in 1918, Rachel Carson entered a writing contest and won. In Battle in the Clouds , Carson wrote about the sky as a battlefield, where a soldier’s life is momentarily spared because of an act of bravery undeniable even by his enemies. They watch in awe and admiration rather than shoot. For my reimagining of the present as womb rather than grave, I reflect on the current use of the cloud in “cloud computing” to discuss the role of the internet and its material infrastructures in shaping earthly possibilities. I imagine the pace and place of awe rather than angst, while challenging dominant technological imaginaries

Rachel Carson, sensitive and perceptive interpreter of nature

En complir-se els cinquanta anys de la publicació de Silent Spring (1962) sembla totalment oportú retre un merescut homenatge a la seva autora, una magnífica escriptora i divulgadora de les meravelles de la natura, i recordar el que va significar per a la consciència ambiental, primer americana i després mundial, la denúncia dels disbarats que la fumigació indiscriminada de diclorodifeniltricloroetà (DDT) i altres biocides va provocar en les espècies, els hàbitats i la salut humana. Mentre que s'ha atribuït, justament, a Rachel Carson el paper de precursora del moviment ecologista, no és tan conegut que la denúncia la feia sobre bases científiques sòlides iamb uns excel·lents coneixements de l'ecologia de les espècies i els ecosistemes, tant els terrestres com els aquàtics.On the occasion of the 50th aniversary of the publication of Silent Spring (1962), this well-deserved homage to its author is a particularly timely one. Rachel Carson was a talented writer, able to excellently convey the marvels of nature. But it was her disclosure, first to the American public and afterwards to the whole world, of the havoc wreaked on organisms, habitats, and human health by the indiscriminate spraying of DDT and other biocides, by which she will always be remembered. Rachel Carson is credited, and justly so, as being one of the founder’s of the environmentalist movement. What is less well known is that her claims were based on solid science and that she was highly knowledgeable about the ecology of species and ecosystems, both terrestrial and aquatic

Property and financial matters upon the breakdown of de facto relationships

Summary: Reforms introduced in 2009 to the Family Law Act 1975 (Cth) have meant that most samesex and opposite-sex de facto couples (in all states and territories except Western Australia) who end their relationships can now have their property and financial matters dealt with in substantially the same way as married people. This paper aims to provide non-legal professionals in the family law sector with a general outline of the relevant reforms, their genesis, and the arguments in favour of and against their introduction. Key messages The 2009 reforms to the Family Law Act (Cth) brought most Australian same-sex and opposite-sex de facto couples within the federal family law system for the resolution of their property and financial matters upon separation. The reforms introduced a definition of de facto relationship and provided guidance to assist in determining whether a de facto relationship may be said to exist. The reforms enable access to property settlement and maintenance for most separated de facto couples in terms substantially the same as those available for married couples. The reforms enable most de facto couples to enter into Binding Financial Agreements, prior to commencing their relationship, during their relationship and upon separation. The reforms were aimed at extending the federal family law property and financial settlements regime to opposite-sex and same-sex de facto couples. They received strong support but have also been subject to criticism, including on the basis of their imposition of the consequences of marriage upon people who have made a conscious decision not to marry

Judith Merril and Rachel Carson: Reflections on Their “Potent Fictions” of Science

Donna Haraway has argued that women’s engagement with the masculine domain of science and modern culture usually occurs at the peripheries and from the depths, not from the platform of the powerful. This paper considers the popular culture fields of science fiction and nature writing, exploring the contributions of two American women writers who both operated at the peripheries of science and landed on the ‘platform of the powerful’: Judith Merril and Rachel Carson. Their domestic Cold War envisioning and conflation of literature and science and their insights into the inherently political nature of science anticipated the foundational feminist discussions on the intersections of feminism, literature, and science that followed in the 1970s and 1980s. Merril’s postwar, literary avant-garde ideas together with the stories of the later American feminist science fiction writers prompted Haraway’s challenging suggestion in her transformative study, Primate Visions: Gender, Race, and Nature in the World of Modern Science (1989) that we might read natural science as a narrative—potent fictions of science—and listen to scientists as storytellers. Rachel Carson, considered the founder of the modern American environmental movement and the author of the famous polemic Silent Spring (1962), had advocated the idea of natural science as narrative decades earlier. The paper traces how Carson links to Merril indirectly and Haraway to Merril directly. In the Cold War decades, both Merril and Carson struggled successfully from and within the margins of science to reshape literatures dealing with possible futures and alternative presents

The Rachel Carson Letters and the Making of Silent Spring

Environment, conservation, green, and kindred movements look back to Rachel Carson’s 1962 book Silent Spring as a milestone. The impact of the book, including on government, industry, and civil society, was immediate and substantial, and has been extensively described; however, the provenance of the book has been less thoroughly examined. Using Carson’s personal correspondence, this paper reveals that the primary source for Carson’s book was the extensive evidence and contacts compiled by two biodynamic farmers, Marjorie Spock and Mary T. Richards, of Long Island, New York. Their evidence was compiled for a suite of legal actions (1957-1960) against the U.S. Government and that contested the aerial spraying of dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane (DDT). During Rudolf Steiner’s lifetime, Spock and Richards both studied at Steiner’s Goetheanum, the headquarters of Anthroposophy, located in Dornach, Switzerland. Spock and Richards were prominent U.S. anthroposophists, and established a biodynamic farm under the tutelage of the leading biodynamics exponent of the time, Dr. Ehrenfried Pfeiffer. When their property was under threat from a government program of DDT spraying, they brought their case, eventually lost it, in the process spent US$100,000, and compiled the evidence that they then shared with Carson, who used it, and their extensive contacts and the trial transcripts, as the primary input for Silent Spring. Carson attributed to Spock, Richards, and Pfeiffer, no credit whatsoever in her book. As a consequence, the organics movement has not received the recognition, that is its due, as the primary impulse for Silent Spring, and it is, itself, unaware of this provenance

Review of "Rachel Carson: A Witness for Nature"

Not peer reviewedBook Revie