New conversations for the Natural Histories Project
At the end of March, the Natural History Initiative held its second and third workshops, focused on the themes of education and research. We documented the first of these workshops, which explored the topic of natural history and society, back in January – creating a series of broadsides and the interactive website, naturalhistoriesproject.org. Well, we’ve just added more than 40 new conversations about the future of natural history.
Here are quotes from a few of my favorites:
SAUL WEISBERG
“When I think of a rebirth of natural history, I’m thinking of a whole bunch more people doing it. You can always have more people doing it. I also think of people recognizing, and making the connection between, all of the branches of science and art and realizing that natural history is the root of that. I’m not trying to say we need to recognize natural history as the big umbrella, but it’s the little root tendrils of all of this, and if we get disconnected from the roots we’re going to lose something really important. If we keep connected to the roots, all those branches can keep growing and grow really strongly. When I’m thinking of a rebirth, that’s where I want to go.”
GARY MACHLIS
“He told me, rather shyly and certainly without braggadocio at all, how two years before the earthquake he had his high school students build from scratch – a seismograph. And they learned to maintain their seismograph, and read it properly, and understand earthquake physics, and geology, and history, and learn first responding, how to respond to an earthquake and how to do first aid. He taught them all that, and when the earthquake came…”
STEPHANIE HAMPTON
“Well, I have to admit that I felt a little bit alienated when people were equating natural history so much with the outdoors. . . I would argue that my connection with plankton is just as strong as somebody else’s connection with a forest. And that happened in the lab.”
ROBERT PAINE
“Anemones have odd cellular structures so that they don’t suffer from aging. I’ve watched one anemone out there; it’s sort of become a pet. My first trip to this island in 1968, there it was, the same size in the same place. And last year, there it was, same size, same place. People probably wish they could be anemone-like.”
Visit naturalhistoriesproject.org to hear the rest of these conversations, and many more. We’ll have additional new content after the fourth and final synthesis workshop in June.
ABOVE: Workshop participants sit beneath broadsides that showcase portraits and quotes from the previous day’s conversations.