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The Moon in the Nautilus Shell

Discordant Harmonies Reconsidered

By Daniel B. Botkin

Hardcover and Ebook Available now.

Daniel Botkin’s Discordant Harmonies (1990) is considered by many to be the classic text of the environmental movement. Now, with The Moon in the Nautilus Shell: Discordant Harmonies Reconsidered, Botkin brings his famous work into the twenty-first century. The new book is updated with new research and statistics, case studies on climate change, and a new introduction. The ideas expressed, considered ahead of their time in 1990, are now timelier than ever. The belief in a balanced nature is alive and well, though those who hold it are constantly confronted by scientific evidence that stands in opposition.

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More About the Book
Dan Botkin’s book, Discordant Harmonies, was the first to challenge the then dominant view that nature remained constant over time unless disturbed by human influence. Nature was believed to achieve a form and structure that would persist forever; if disturbed, it would recover, returning to that state of perfect balance. Discordant Harmonies argued that natural ecological systems are constantly fluctuating and our plans, policies, and laws governing the environment must change to reflect this new understanding.

The Moon in the Nautilus Shell presents a fully updated version of this modern classic, revised and re-examined by the author, with new research and statistics, case studies on climate change, and a new introduction.

Table of Contents
Introduction
Preface to the 1990 edition
Part I: The Current Dilemma
Chapter 1: A View From a Marsh: Myths and Facts about Nature
Chapter 2: Why the Elephants Died: Breakdown in the Management of Living resources
Chapter 3: Moose In the Wilderness: The Instability of Populations
Chapter 4: Oaks in New Jersey: Machine Age Forests
Part II: Background to Crisis
Chapter 5: Mountain Lions and Mule Deer: Nature as Divine Order
Chapter 6: Earth as a Fellow Creature: Organic Views of Nature
Chapter 7: In Mill Hollow: Nature as the Great Machine
Part III: Evolving Images
Chapter 8:The Forest in the Computer: New Metaphors for Nature
Chapter 9: Within the Moose’s Stomach: Nature as the Biosphere
Part IV: Resolutions for Our Time
Chapter 10: Fire In The Forest: Managing Living Resources
Chapter 11: Salmon in Wild Rivers and Grizzlies in Yellowstone: Managing Wildlife and Conserving Endangered Species
Chapter 12: Winds on Mauna Loa: How to Approach Managing the Biosphere
Chapter 13 Life on a globally Warmed Planet
Chapter 14: The Moon in the Nautilus Shell: Nature in the Twenty-First Century
Postscript: A Guide to Action
Notes
Index

Hardcover, Oxford University Press; 1st edition, $29.95 (August 22, 2012)
ISBN13: 978-0-19-991391-6
ISBN10: 0-19-991391-9

SHORT QUOTES FROM THE MOON IN THE NAUTILUS SHELL
Daniel B. Botkin

We interact with nature in two ways: rationally and through an inner, personal, nonintellectual response. The inner, personal, nonintellectual includes, in the largest sense, all that is outside of rationality—our folkways, our myths, our spiritual feelings that arise from deep within us, our religious sensitivities. Both ways of interacting with nature are important.

However, we get ourselves into trouble when we confuse the two, letting the inner personal determine what we tell ourselves are rational decisions and actions, and believing that rationality can replace the nonrational— that we moderns, are so immersed in the rationality of science and its offspring, modern technology, that we don’t need, don’t even have, a nonrational side of our existence when it comes to nature or our connection with nature.

Copyright © Daniel B. Botkin 2012