This article was downloaded by: [North Dakota State University]On: 06 December 2014, At: 16:54Publisher: RoutledgeInforma Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954Registered office: Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UK

The European Legacy: Toward NewParadigmsPublication details, including instructions for authors andsubscription information:http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/cele20

Nature now and thenSvend Erik Larsen aa Department of Comparative Literature , Aarhus University ,Langelandsgade 139, Aarhus C, DK 8000, DenmarkPublished online: 23 Jun 2008.

To cite this article: Svend Erik Larsen (1999) Nature now and then, The European Legacy:Toward New Paradigms, 4:5, 110-112, DOI: 10.1080/10848779908580001

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10848779908580001

PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE

Taylor & Francis makes every effort to ensure the accuracy of all the information (the“Content”) contained in the publications on our platform. However, Taylor & Francis,our agents, and our licensors make no representations or warranties whatsoeveras to the accuracy, completeness, or suitability for any purpose of the Content. Anyopinions and views expressed in this publication are the opinions and views of theauthors, and are not the views of or endorsed by Taylor & Francis. The accuracyof the Content should not be relied upon and should be independently verifiedwith primary sources of information. Taylor and Francis shall not be liable for anylosses, actions, claims, proceedings, demands, costs, expenses, damages, and otherliabilities whatsoever or howsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in connectionwith, in relation to or arising out of the use of the Content.

This article may be used for research, teaching, and private study purposes. Anysubstantial or systematic reproduction, redistribution, reselling, loan, sub-licensing,systematic supply, or distribution in any form to anyone is expressly forbidden. Terms& Conditions of access and use can be found at http://www.tandfonline.com/page/terms-and-conditions

Nature Now and Then

Science Incarnate: Historical Embodiments of Natural Knowledge. Edited by ChristopherLawrence and Steven Shapin (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1998) vii + 342 pp.$55.00 cloth, $15.25 paper.

Modern Environmentalism: An Introduction. By David Pepper (London: Routledge, 1996)viii +376 pp. £40 cloth, £13.99 paper.

SVEND ERIK LARSEN

It happens in the life of readers that books that are in no way interconnected never-theless enter in a mutual dialog by the very fact that they, due to the metonymicalcollage-reality of our everyday lives, are brought together on the same desk and, subse-quently, in the same mind. Such is the case with the two volumes under review. They areboth a product of the general reconsideration of the man-nature relationship on an intel-lectual and practical level that we have being witnessing over the last 25 years in variousdisciplines and humane practices.

Geographer David Pepper's detailed and very informative Modern Environmentalismoffers a panorama of actual attitudes—practical, scientific, political—to environmental is-sues. He mainly tries to establish a series of platforms for various future-oriented choicesfor ways of studying and living, winding it up with an indication of his own mildly tonedsocialist position. The future is inscribed in the present as different possibilities for futureattitudes and actions, addressed to a readership of students who eventually will embodythe future.

In the collection of articles Science Incarnate, carefully edited by historians StevenShapin and Christopher Lawrence and initiated by the Wellcome Institute, a group of inno-vative historians discuss how the embodiment of natural knowledge has been conceived inthe past. The project is carried out in eight lucid, well written, and well researched chapterswith examples taken from the professional (doctors, philosophers, and others) and indi-vidual embodiments of natural knowledge (Newton, Descartes, Boyle, Darwin, and others).From the past preoccupation with the practical relationship between body and mind—howdo you have to live and take care of your body in order to be a great thinker?—a lesson is tobe learned in the context of the present obsession with disembodied knowledge, which, inits objectivity, is seen as detached from any bodily processes: From wisdom contained in asubject we move to expertise performed in repeatable practices that can be learned by anyskilled person. Here, the past is, as it were, inscribed in the present.

Department of Comparative Literature, Aarhus University, Langelandsgade 139, DK 8000 Aarhus C,Denmark.

The European Legacy, Vol. 4, No. 5, pp. 110-112,1999©1999 by the International Society for the Study of European Ideas

110

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Nor

th D

akot

a St

ate

Uni

vers

ity]

at 1

6:54

06

Dec

embe

r 20

14

REVIEWS O»-> i l l

The two books are both supplementary and complementarity interrelated: supple-mentary in the sense that one looks on the present from the past, the other from the fu-ture; that one addresses an audience of students, the other one of researchers; that they adda geographer's criteria of relevance in the study of the man-nature relationship to those ofhistorians. They are complementary to each other in the sense that they hardly can be kepttogether in one methodological framework: the historians work from individual cases thatthey only hesitantly generalize; the geographer presents sweeping overviews systematizedin dichotomic schemes. Thus, I take them to exemplify that the study of the man-naturerelationship has to be multidisciplinary in order to be fruitful, and that it is the job of read-ers to embody the diversity of methods in his or her own work.

This brings me to the second point of complementarity: Once the problem of em-bodiment is addressed with the intention of giving a reminder to the present institution-alization of knowledge in science and in general, the real problem of embodiment is thefuture: How does this view on the historical knowledge actually entail new ways of knowl-edge production? This problem, inherent in the topic of Science Incarnate, is not addressedby the book. On the other hand, the concern in David Pepper's book for a future knowl-edge-based—this is crucial to him—better way of organizing our material and thus bodilylives does not for one moment reflect on how this relation between body and knowledgeis conceived of in a historical perspective that still permeates our way of thinking.

The historians—to begin with the past—focus on how a number of scientists andprofessions ideologically and practically deal with the mind-body relationship (with a briefaside to Norbert Elias' cultural history on the role of the body). In the context of the theoryof humor, it is evident that there is a relationship that has to be transformed to daily bodilybehavior in order to keep a sound mind in a sound body (the role of diets and asceticism).It is also evident that the characterology adjacent to that theory—the scientist is a melan-cholic—colours the way the scientist is looked upon by himself (or herself) as well as byhis surrounding lay persons. The main point of the book is to show, amply and strikingly,how this body-mind conception and characterology continues right to the present day (al-though no references to Aristotle's conception of knowledge in his ethics is given whereembodiment of knowledge is seen in a social perspective).

On the other hand, the individual chapters also show how new ideas are introducedwith the dawn of modern science, the main focus point of the book: With Descartes thebody is regarded as separate from the mind, and knowledge, especially scientific knowl-edge, gradually becomes more true the more it transgresses the individual bodies and sub-jects; at the same time, experiments with, or at least meticulous scientific observations of,the objects of science and the scientist's own body in the same move (Ada Lovelace, Dar-win) reinscribe the body in the scientific process. The outcome of the process is the cre-ation of the modern professional expert, different from the more or less mythologizedcreative personality. For any reader, I think, each page offers a whole package of stimulat-ing ideas for self-reflection of embodiment as context for knowledge.

David Pepper's introductory book is built upon a basic dichotomy between a reform-ist, technology-oriented approach to environmental issues and an ecocentric, nature-ori-ented stance. It sounds trivial. But, for two reasons, it is not. First, Pepper registers, andrightly so, a growing awareness of environmental issues in the cultural debate at large,which entails a less dogmatic attitude to mixing viewpoints, methods, and knowledge from

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Nor

th D

akot

a St

ate

Uni

vers

ity]

at 1

6:54

06

Dec

embe

r 20

14

112 <~»*> REVIEWS

different sources. This openness is reflected in the book's choices of material. Second,Pepper's own descriptions of the different positions or 'schools', made clear with illuminat-ing systematic and contrasting listing of their basic features, are fair and accurate. That theintroduction itself actually represents embodied knowledge only becomes evident on thefinal pages, rendering 'a personal view'. A glossary and a reading list offers the reader agood service.

Although highly specialized works, the two books, here forcibly grouped together,bear witness—with due respect to their differences—to the fact the environmental issue,taken in its broadest possible sense, is pivotal for today's debate of the most fundamentalquestions in our culture: What is knowledge? What is the cultural role of the body? Whatis ethics? What are teaching and learning? What is expertise? What is obligation toward thefuture?—The two books inspire us to continue the questioning.

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Nor

th D

akot

a St

ate

Uni

vers

ity]

at 1

6:54

06

Dec

embe

r 20

14