Science and Environmental History
SINCE ITS INCEPTION, environmental history has embraced science as a tool because it provides a useful way to understand nature. Donald Worster has been one of the most forceful advocates for this strategy; a seminal essay he published in 1984 carries the title "History as Natural History."’ But a look at environmental histories reveals that science’s role is smaller than we might expect. In some cases, historians have explicitly demoted science by asserting that it is "just another cultured way of knowing." In others, historians have asserted the importance of science in introductions but then relied little on it in the text. This pattern is unfortunate because it means our analyses are not as informed and rich as they could be. This essay focuses on potential reasons for this pattern and suggests ways to change it.2
First, science’s demotion. Science’s star has fallen among historians as cultural studies, postmodernism, and science studies have risen in prominence. These approaches have undermined the claim that science provides objective truth. To some extent this criticism has been valid, for objectivity may be an admirable goal but a deuced hard one to achieve (if we can even define it). But to some extent the criticism has tilted at straw men and women. The view of scientists as monolithic, hidebound, and unaware of the social nature of their endeavor is rooted more in popular perception than in science itself. The scientists of my acquaintance are keenly aware that society shapes science, if for no other reason than because they rely on government grants to fund their research.
But their appreciation is deeper than that. One of the first readings assigned in my first graduate ecology course was Thomas Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, the book that popularized the idea that science underwent radical paradigm shifts as new ideas replaced old.3 It was no great leap to recognize that, if Khn was right, today’s theories would be overthrown in the future- an effort in which the professor encouraged us to enroll. Another professor emphasized that everything he learned in graduate school about the most basic "facts" of plant physiology had since been found faulty. In seminars, graduate students and faculty in science critique the work of the famous and not-so-famous with as much fervor as historians.
So scientists are keen (whether because of intellectual curiosity or careerism) to come up with ideas that challenge accepted theories and "facts." They see revision of current understanding not as a flaw but as the goal of their work. At the same time, they demand rigorous testing of ideas against data, which undermines the claim that science is "just another cultured way of knowing." It is cultured, it tries to be objective but falls short, and scientists are as prone to failings as other people. But using "just" fails to credit science’s higher standard of evidence compared to some other ways of knowing. We should not accept scientific ideas uncritically, nor should we dismiss them out of hand. Instead, we should recognize the trove of knowledge about the natural world science has created and use it with the same critical distance we apply to other sources.
If we accept the idea that we should use science, why do we not always follow through? This takes us to practical barriers. The most important seems to be the perception that science is beyond historians, either because of a lack of talent or lack of training. It is true that science demands more quantitative skill than does history, that such talent is distributed unevenly in the population, and that more than one historian has emerged from schooling with a sense of not having stood at the front of the line when the knack for numbers was handed out.
The talent barrier appears higher than it is for three reasons. First, once thrust into science, some humanists learn they have more skill than they thought. second, not all science demands high quantitative skill. Two disciplines of great use to environmental historians, biology and chemistry, encompass fields that rely little on mathematics above the high school-level. Courses in animal and plant taxonomy, for example, are accessible to anyone with the willingness to learn names of families, genera, species, and anatomical parts. Third, historians need not finish at the top of the class. Many historians develop reading competence in foreign languages without becoming fluent speakers. The same principle applies to science, where mastering even the most basic ideas makes a big difference in understanding source material.
Here are some suggestions for graduate students (or even faculty, should they find the time) who think they lack the ability or time to study science.4 Not all of these suggestions will be suited to all students or programs, and students should make sure their advisors support their plans.
First, excuse yourself from grade anxiety. Take courses pass/ fail or be prepared to accept lower grades than those to which you are accustomed. On search committees, T have yet to see a grade on an individual course outweigh the quality of an applicant’s dissertation and teaching. second, start with undergraduate courses. If you need graduate credit, ask the professor whether you can enroll for the course as an independent study and write an extra paper. Community colleges offer introductory courses at convenient hours and bargain prices, and they cater to students with a range of backgrounds and abilities. Third, find study partners, including among undergraduates. Collaborative learning is often more efficient than puzzling out answers to problem sets for yourself. Fourth, if space among required courses is tight, consider petitioning to replace some other requirement with a science course. Finally, take an introductory statistics course. The resulting knowledge has high leverage since statistics underpin findings across a range of fields relevant to environmental history, including ecology, evolution, public health, medicine, and the social sciences. Courses that emphasize practical statistics, rather than the mathematical theory behind techniques, are most accessible.5
A few modest steps like these should improve our field by enabling us to tap the pool of ideas, techniques, and data produced by science. Doing so would not threaten our independence as scholars or as a field so long as we exercise the same critical judgment we apply to any other set of ideas and sources. To the contrary, knowing more about science would increase our ability to evaluate such sources and write ever more sophisticated history.
NOTES
1. Donald Worster, "History as Natural History: An Essay on Theory and Method," Pacific Historical Review 53 (February 1984): 1- 19.
2. This essay builds on ideas in Edmund Russell, "Evolutionary History: Prospectus for a New Field," Environmental History 8 (April 2003): 204-28.
3. Thomas Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1970).
4. These suggestions are drawn from my own experience. As an undergraduate English major, I evaded all but the minimum number of courses (three) in math and science. That evasion arose largely because I lacked confidence in my ability to compete against premedical students. After college, I worked as a volunteer in the Philippines, which piqued my interest in conservation and agriculture. Knowing more biology seemed important for doing anything effective in those fields, so I took science courses at community colleges before entering graduate school in ecology. It turned out there was no special gift necessary for success in science courses. Interest and hard work produced results as reliably in science as they did in the humanities. The single most useful course I took was statistics, because it enabled me to understand data across so many fields. Two factors led me to switch into history while in graduate school. First, I realized that the questions most fascinating to me would be answered better through history than through traditional biological research. second, I discovered environmental history, which offered an ideal way to bring together the humanities and science in an especially exciting way.
5. An excellent introductory text demonstrating this approach is Neil J. Salkind, Statistics for People Who (Think They) Hate Statistics (London: Sage Publications, 2004).
Edmund Russell is associate professor of science, technology, and society and history at the University of Virginia. He is the author of War and Nature: Fighting Humans and Insects with Chemicals from World War I to Silent Spring (Cambridge University Press, 2001). His article on evolution and history (cited in this essay) won the 2004 Leopold-Hidy Prize.
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