Discordant Harmonies
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Discordant Harmonies:
A New Ecology for the 21st Century
Daniel B. Botkin
Oxford University Press, USA; New Ed edition (March 11, 1992)
ISBN 0195074696
Read an excerpt from Discordant Harmonies
Thesis of Discordant Harmonies
Our ideas about nature are 4,000 years old, dominated by the ancient myth of the Balance of Nature. Even our “scientific” approaches to understanding nature and solving environmental problems are based on this belief, rather than on scientific fact
The ancient idea of the Balance of Nature is:
- Nature undisturbed by people achieves a permanent form and structure that would remain for countless ages.
- When disturbed by human action but then left alone, nature recovers to exactly the same balance it had before.
- That balance is best for nature and for us. It is most diverse. It has the most organic matter.
- Within this great balance is a great chain of being — a place for every creature and every creature is in its place.
The consequence of these ideas is that:
- Nature is best without human intervention.
- Only people are bad for nature.
- People and nature are separate. What people do is unnatural.
Modern science demonstrates that:
- Nature is always changing.
- Many species are adapted to these changes and require them.
- When we prevent natural changes, many species therefore decline and may become extinct.
- The way to “save” nature and to solve environmental problems is to accept natural changes, let them occur.
- People are integrated into nature. Many places that we think of as “primeval” nature are in fact heavily affected by people and have been so for a long time.
Perhaps even the famous annual migration of millions of wildebeests in the Serengeti Plains is, in part, a product of human actions — in the form of human-lit fires that promote the grasslands on which the wildebeest and so many other large mammals in East Africa depend.
Discordant Harmonies tells stories about successes and failures in our attempts to solve environmental problems, and how new scientific understanding leads us to successes.
A concise, lucidly penetrating examination of mankind’s maddening mix of feelings — love, hate, fear and infatuation — for the multitude of other residents of the planet….Speaks eloquently to the issues raised as the exploding human population pushes on every habitable corner of earth.
-San Francisco Chronicle
This book is well-written and deeply provocative. It presents a realistic point of view of the world we live in. If this is going to be the environmental decade, then Botkin has given us a marvelous opening statement suggesting what we have to do and what we have to learn. Every scientist who is concerned with the environment ought to read this book and make sure his or her friends do so as well.
-Bio Science
See also, 360 Degrees: Restoring Nature in a Naturally Changing World. This article, originally published in The Nature Conservancy Magazine, explains some of the key ideas in Discordant Harmonies.