The Historical Roots of Our Ecological Crisis, Lynn White, Jr.

The Historical Roots of Our Ecological Crisis

Lynn White, Jr.

BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE ON LYNN WHITE   (Cited from the internet)

Lynn Townsend White Jr. (April 29, 1907 – March 30, 1987) was a professor of medieval history at Princeton from 1933 to 1937, and at Stanford from 1937 to 1943. He was president of Mills College, Oakland, from 1943 to 1958 and a professor at University of California, Los Angeles from 1958 until 1987. Lynn White helped to found The Society of History and Technology (SHOT) and was its president from 1960 to 1962. He won the Pfizer Award for "Medieval Technology and Social Change" from the History of Science Society (HSS) and the Leonardo da Vinci medal and Dexter prize from SHOT in 1964 and 1970. He was president of the History of Science Society from 1971 to 1972, of The Medieval Academy of America from 1972-1973, and the American Historical Association in 1973.

White began his career as medieval historian focusing on the history of Latin monasticism in Sicily during the Norman Period but realized the coming conflict in Europe would interfere with his access to source materials. While at Princeton he read the works of Lefebvre des Noëttes, and Marc Bloch. This led to his first work in the history of technology, "Technology and Invention in the Middle Ages" in 1940.

White pointed to new methods of crop rotation and plowing and tied them to the rise of manor-based collective farming and the shift in European prosperity and power from the Mediterranean to the North. White also touched on the stirrup, the lateen sail, the wheel barrow, the spinning wheel, the hand crank, water-driven mills and wind mills.

At Mills College, White published on education and women, including "Women's Colleges and the Male Dominance" (1947), "Unfitting Women for Life" (1949), "Educating Women in a Man's World" (1950), and "The Future of Women's Education" (1953).

Critical summary of the essay (from http://humanities.exeter.ac.uk/theology/research/projects/beyondstewardship/blame/)

In 1967, medieval historian Lynn White Jr. published an article called 'The Historical Roots of our Ecologic Crisis'. This provocative article has become the most cited piece of writing within theological debate about the environment.

White argued that the Western Christian worldview supports and encourages humanity’s aggressive project to dominate and exploit nature. Previously, people had believed that spirits lived in objects such as trees and so thought that nature was sacred. Christianity swept away these older views and replaced them with the idea that all things were made for humanity's 'benefit and rule'. Humanity came to be seen as uniquely made in the image of God and as having ‘dominion’ or control over all the creatures of the earth (Genesis 1.26-30).

He says:

...[Christianity] not only established a dualism of man and nature but also insisted that it is God’s will that man exploit nature for his proper ends… Man’s effective monopoly…was confirmed and the old inhibitions to the exploitation of nature crumbled… Christianity made it possible to exploit nature in a mood of indifference to the feelings of natural objects.

White argued that '[Western] Christianity is the most anthropocentric religion the world has seen'. He concludes that the modern technological conquest of nature that has led to our environmental crisis has in large part been made possible by the dominance in the West of this Christian world-view. Christianity therefore 'bears a huge burden of guilt'.

However, White does not think that secularism is the answer to our environmental problems. He does not want to reject Christianity but rather to radically change it:

What people do about their ecology depends on what they think about themselves in relation to things around them. Human ecology is deeply conditioned by beliefs about our nature and destiny - that is, by religion…  More science and more technology are not going to get us out of the present ecologic crisis until we find a new religion, or rethink our old one.

He also appeals to the figure of Francis of Assisi as a positive model - a potential 'patron saint for ecologists'. In this way, White points to the potential for a renewed kind of Franciscanism - a spirituality that focuses on humanity's kinship with all other creatures in a community of creation.

Detailed summary

Dr. S. Sreekumar

Lynn White begins this piece by quoting from one of the speeches of Aldous Huxley. To illustrate Man’s unnatural treatment of nature and its sad results, Huxley cites an example from rural England.

·        The delightful grassy valleys of England had disappeared under bushes because the rabbits that controlled the bushes were killed by the farmers.

·         The farmers did so to prevent the destruction of crops by the rabbits.

·        White says that the rabbits themselves were brought into England to improve the protein diet of the farmers.

·        Thus quite unintentionally, changes in human ways often affect nonhuman nature.

All forms of life modify their contexts

The history of ecologic change is still so basic that we know little about what really happened, or what the results were.  Ever since man became ‘a numerous species’ he has affected his environment notably.

It has been noted, for example, that the advent of the automobile eliminated huge flocks of sparrows that once fed on the horse manure littering every street.

For a thousand years or more the Frisians and Hollanders have been pushing back the North Sea, and the process is culminating in our own time in the reclamation of the Zuider Zee. What, if any, species of animals, birds, fish, shore life, or plants have died out in the process? There is every possibility that the ecological damage might have affected the quality of life of the Netherlands.

Today, concern for the problem of ecologic backlash is increasing. Natural science, the effort to understand the nature of things, had flourished in several eras and among several peoples. Similarly there had been an age-old accumulation of technological skills, sometimes growing rapidly, sometimes slowly. But it was not until about four generations ago that Western Europe and North America arranged a marriage between science and technology, a union of the theoretical and the practical approaches to our natural environment.

Ecology and its modern significance

 The word ecology first appeared in the English language in 1873. Today, less than a century later, man’s impact upon the environment has so increased in force that it has changed in essence.

·        When the first cannons were fired, in the early 14th century, they affected ecology. Workers destroyed the forests and mountains for more potash, sulphur, iron ore, and charcoal, with some resulting erosion and deforestation. But today’s Hydrogen bombs are of a different order: a war fought with them might alter the genetics of all life on this planet.

·        By 1285 London had a smog problem arising from the burning of soft coal, but our present burning of fossil fuels threatens to change the chemistry of the globe's atmosphere as a whole, with consequences which we are only beginning to guess.

·        With the population explosion and plan-less urbanism, the now geological deposits of sewage and garbage, surely no creature other than man has ever managed to foul its nest in such short order.

There are many calls to action, but specific proposals, seem too partial, palliative, negative. The ‘wilderness mentality’ advocated by certain ecologists is not going to solve the problem.

What shall we do? No one yet knows. Unless we think about fundamentals, our specific measures may produce new backlashes more serious than those they are designed to remedy.

As a beginning we should try to clarify our thinking by looking, in some historical depth, at the ideas behind modern technology and science. Science was traditionally aristocratic, intellectual. Technology was lower-class, action oriented. The quite sudden union of these two, towards the middle of the 19th century, is surely related to the democratic process which reduced social barriers. The present ecologic crisis is the product of an emerging, entirely novel, democratic culture.

The Western Traditions of Technology and Science

Both modern technology and science are distinctively Western. From simple beginnings, the West rapidly expanded its skills in the development of power machinery, labor-saving devices, and automation. Western technological and scientific movements started and acquired their character in the Middle Ages. Hence we cannot understand their nature or their present impact upon ecology without examining fundamental medieval assumptions and developments.

Medieval View of Man and Nature

The Importance of Tillage

In Medieval agriculture tilling the land was important. Plows drawn by two oxen were used. They did not normally turn the sod but merely scratched it. Thus, cross- plowing was needed and fields tended to be in square shapes. This was suitable for light soils and semi-arid climates of the Near East and Mediterranean. But such a plow was inappropriate to the wet climate and often sticky soils of northern Europe. So by the latter part of the 7th century certain northern peasants were using an entirely new kind of plow, equipped with a vertical knife to cut the line of the furrow. There was a horizontal share to slice under the sod and a moldboard to turn it over. The friction of this plow with the soil was so great that it normally required not two but eight oxen. It attacked the land with such violence that cross-plowing was not needed, and fields tended to be shaped in long strips. But no peasant owned eight oxen: to use the new and more efficient plow, peasants pooled their oxen to form large plow-teams. Thus, distribution of land was based no longer on the needs of a family but, rather, on the capacity of a power machine to till the earth. Man's relation to the soil was profoundly changed. Formerly man had been part of nature; now he was the exploiter of nature.  Is it coincidence that modern technology, with its ruthlessness toward nature, has so largely been produced by descendants of these farmers of northern Europe?

 What people do about their ecology depends on what they think about themselves in relation to things around them. ‘Human ecology is deeply conditioned by beliefs about our nature and destiny--that is, by religion. To Western eyes this is very evident in, say, India or Ceylon’. It is equally true of medieval Europeans.

What did Christianity tell people about their relations with the environment?

The Greco-Roman mythology was not clear about the stories of Creation.  Like Aristotle, the intellectuals of the ancient West denied that the world had a beginning. Indeed, the idea of a beginning was impossible as they believed in cyclical notion of time. In sharp contrast, Christianity inherited from Judaism not only a concept of time as non-repetitive and linear but also a striking story of creation.

By gradual stages a loving and all- powerful God had created light and darkness, the earth and all its plants, animals, birds, and fishes. Finally, God had created Man who named all the animals, thus establishing his dominance over them. God planned everything explicitly for man's benefit and rule. No item in the physical creation had any purpose other than serving man's purposes. And, although man's body is made of clay, he is not simply part of nature: he is made in God's image. Christianity emphasized that it was God's will that man exploit nature for his proper ends.

At the level of the common people this worked out in an interesting way. In antiquity every tree, every spring, every stream, every hill had its own ‘genius loci’, its guardian spirit. These spirits were accessible to men, but were very unlike men; centaurs, fauns, and mermaids. Before one cut a tree, mined a mountain, or dammed a brook, it was important to placate the spirit in charge of that particular situation, and to keep it placated. By destroying pagan animism, Christianity made it possible to exploit nature in a mood of indifference to the feelings of natural objects. Man's effective monopoly on spirit in this world was confirmed, and the old inhibitions to the exploitation of nature crumbled.

However, at this point, White brings in a note of caution.

Christianity is a complex faith, and its consequences differ in differing contexts. What I have said may well apply to the medieval West, where in fact technology made spectacular advances. But the Greek East, a highly civilized realm of equal Christian devotion, seems to have produced no marked technological innovation. There is a difference in the tonality of piety and thought between the Greek and the Latin Churches.  Eastern theology has been intellectualist. Western theology has been voluntarist. The Greek saint contemplates; the Western saint acts.

According to White this difference is visible in their attitude to nature.  In the early Greek Eastern Church, nature was conceived primarily as a symbolic system through which God speaks to men: the ant is a sermon to sluggards; rising flames are the symbol of the soul's aspiration. The view of nature was essentially artistic rather than scientific. Science as we conceive it could scarcely flourish in such an ambience.

However, in the Latin West by the early 13th century natural theology was following a very different path. It was becoming the effort to understand God's mind by discovering how his creation operates. The rainbow was no longer simply a symbol of hope first sent to Noah after the Deluge: Robert Grosseteste, Friar Roger Bacon, and Theodoric of Freiberg produced startlingly sophisticated work on the optics of the rainbow, but they did it as a venture in religious understanding. From the 13th century onward, up to and including Newton, every major scientist explained his motivations in religious terms.  And Newton seems to have regarded himself more as a theologian than as a scientist. It was not until the late 18th century that the supposition of God became unnecessary to many scientists.

An Alternative Christian View

We would seem to be headed toward conclusions unpalatable to many Christians. But, as we now recognize, somewhat over a century ago science and technology joined to give mankind powers which, to judge by many of the ecologic effects, are out of control. If so, Christianity bears a huge burden of guilt.

White says that it is not possible to avoid the disastrous ecologic backlash  simply by applying to our problems more science and more technology. Western science and technology have grown out of Christian attitudes toward man's relation to nature which is almost universally held not only by Christians and neo-Christians but also by those who fondly regard themselves as post-Christians.

Despite Copernicus, all the cosmos rotates around our little globe. Despite Darwin, we are not, in our hearts, part of the natural process. We are superior to nature, contemptuous of it, willing to use it for our slightest whim.

White points out that the newly elected Governor of California spoke for the Christian tradition when he said that "when you've seen one redwood tree, you've seen them all." To a Christian a tree can be no more than a physical fact. The whole concept of the sacred grove is alien to Christianity and to the ethos of the West. For nearly 2 millennia Christian missionaries have been chopping down sacred groves, which are idolatrous because they assume spirit in nature.

What we do about ecology depends on our ideas of the man-nature relationship. More science and more technology are not going to get us out of the present ecologic crisis until we find a new religion, or rethink our old one. Possibly we should ponder the greatest radical in Christian history since Christ: Saint Francis of Assisi.

The key to an understanding of Francis is his belief in the virtue of humility--not merely for the individual but for man as a species. Francis tried to depose man from his monarchy over creation and set up a democracy of all God's creatures. With him the ant is no longer simply a homily for the lazy, flames a sign of the thrust of the soul toward union with God; now they are Brother Ant and Sister Fire, praising the Creator in their own ways as Brother Man does in his.

Francis preached to the birds to praise God, and in spiritual ecstasy they flapped their wings and chirped rejoicing. The land around Gubbio in the Apennines was ravaged by a fierce wolf. Saint Francis, says the legend, talked to the wolf and changed his mind. The wolf repented, died in sanctity, and was buried in sacred ground.

However, the Franciscan doctrine of the animal soul was quickly suppressed. Quite possibly it was in part inspired, consciously or unconsciously, by the belief in reincarnation held by ‘the Cathar heretics’ who at that time teemed in Italy and southern France, and who presumably had got it originally from India.

Francis’s view of nature and of man rested on a unique sort of ‘pan-psychism’ of all things animate and inanimate, designed for the glorification of their Creator, who, in the ultimate gesture of cosmic humility, assumed flesh, lay helpless in a manger, and hung dying on a scaffold.

White concludes that the increasing disruption of the global environment is the product of a dynamic technology and science which originated in the Western medieval world against which Saint Francis rebelled in so original a way. Their growth cannot be understood historically apart from distinctive attitudes toward nature which are deeply grounded in Christian dogma. No new set of basic values has been accepted in our society to displace those of Christianity. Hence we shall continue to have a worsening ecologic crisis until we reject the Christian belief that nature exists only to serve man.

The greatest spiritual revolutionary in Western history, Saint Francis, proposed what he thought was an alternative Christian view of nature and man's relation to it; he tried to substitute the idea of the equality of all creatures, including man, for the idea of man's limitless rule of creation. He failed. Both our present science and our present technology are influenced by orthodox Christian arrogance toward nature that no solution for our ecologic crisis can be expected from them alone.

Since the roots of our trouble are so largely religious, the remedy must also be essentially religious, whether we call it that or not. We must rethink and re-feel our nature and destiny. The profoundly religious, but heretical, sense of the primitive Franciscans for the spiritual autonomy of all parts of nature may point a direction. I propose Francis as a patron saint for ecologists.

[This is a summary of the views of Lynn White, Jr. on Ecocriticism. The piece entitled ‘The Historical Roots of Our Ecological Crisis’ is a thought-provoking essay which tries to search for the deep roots of our ecological crisis. The essay is a ‘must-read’ for all students interested in Ecocriticism. It is summarized here for undergraduate / graduate students of Indian Universities].

Dr. S. Sreekumar