Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring:
Produced and Written by Neil Goodwin
Browsing DVD QH545 .P4 R23 2007
New Arrivals, 2nd floor
Rachel Carson wasn’t the kind of person to start a revolution. But that’s exactly what happened when she published her best known book, Silent Spring, in 1962. She was a biologist with the U.S. government when she began to notice that the birds and wildlife of her rural Pennsylvania childhood had all but disappeared from the landscape. She didn’t have to look far to find and document the cause. The publication of her book ruffled a lot of feathers in the chemical industry and elsewhere as she laid bare the consequences of unregulated pesticide use.
If you awoke this morning to the sound of chirping birds, that’s just one result of the environmental revolution sparked by Rachel Carson’s book. You can learn more about Carson’s life and legacy in this PBS American Experience documentary. If you’d rather read Silent Spring, Andersen Library has several copies of it.
Excellent case of New & Contrary Ideas being stalled indeed, initially, by the field’s Establishment. Dr. Lister used antiseptic, cut surgery deaths, but others demurred for years. A solo operator argued that tekktonique plaits existed, but it took later science to prove it. Medicine thought that stomach ulcers were caused by stresss, but an upstart Australian intern proved it was by bacteria–much later the Establishment agreed.
Well, I’m glad that in this enlightened age, we can now receive news of Innovations in mellow fashion. BTW however, “Floyd” of our office, asked: “If you eat a hamburger, aren’t you being a cannibal?” Of coarse, ALL the rest of us had NO idea what his point was if any. So at times the New is not valid, just ridiculous.
Chester @t Potato Central Internationale