Environmental & Architectural
Phenomenology Newsletter
Selected Reviews
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Paul Krapfel, 1998. Seeing Nature: Deliberate Encounter with the Visible World (Burlington, VT: Chelsea Green). |
Reviewed by David Seamon
Note: This book was originally entitled Shiftings and published privately by the author in 1989. It is this edition of the book reviewed here, thus the use of the title Shiftings.
Written by a naturalist, this book is a valuable contribution to environmental ethics. Through stories and perceptive observation and thinking, Krapfel tells how he gradually became aware of the experiential and ethical implications of the two laws of thermodynamics, the first of which says that energy is neither created nor destroyed; the second of which says that all activities, left to their own devices, tend toward greater disorder and fewer possibilities.
As Krapfel comes to understand the second law of thermodynamics more deeply, he also comes to wonder whether human beings can do nothing but consume and destroy the earth: "I despair at not being able to do more than live at the expense of the world" (p. 107). His book depicts his personal efforts to find ways whereby is is more attunded to the second law so that he less often consumes possibilities faster than they are created, especially in regard to the natural environment.
Krapfel describes this style of conduct by contrasting it with its opposite‑-a style of excess and entropy that dominates environmental action today and divides the landscape into incompatible and conflicting "zones":
It is easy to start on the path of taking too much [from nature] because the rewards are immediate and can be spectacular.... The more we harvest the more we think we will have. But this is true only in the short run. the living things we harvest are more than just resources for us.... They maintain balances which sustain the environment. If we harvest too much, relative balances shift and the environment begins to shift. Possibilities diminish....
As resources diminish, more areas must be sacrificed. The sacrificed areas must expand and draw closer to the areas of benefit. As the discrepancy between the two areas increases, maintaining the border between them requires more energy. Neighborhoods are built with walls and gates. People begin thinking in terms of "us" versus "them" to rationalize the sacrifice that permits one's own luxury (p. 172, pp. 173-174).
As expressed by the book's title, Krapfel's aim is a shifting whereby human beings increase, rather than decrease, the possibilities of the world through intentional, caring actions grounded in firsthand awareness and understanding. Much of his book describes ways to facilitate this understanding, which begins, he claims, with efforts to see in new ways.
Most generally, these "tools for seeing" involve ways whereby there are shifts in one's taken-for-granted assumptions and perceptions.
Chapter by chapter, Krapfel relates different ways whereby he has taught himself to shift his sense of the world‑-for example, seeing through the eyes of animals, recognizing edges as indicators of gradients, or understanding flows as a relationship between inflow and outflow and between individual parts and the parts as a whole. Krapfel illustrates each principle with firsthand life experiences‑-for example, the technique of finding commonality between near and distant patterns by alternating attention:
Shifting back and forth between a distant view and the immediate world around me becomes a technique for seeing more. While gazing into the distance one day, I noticed that the distant clouds had flat bottoms. This was easy to see because I was seeing the distant clouds from the side. I tried seeing if the closer clouds overhead had flattened bottoms but the shape of a cloud's bottom is not obvious from below; it is best seen from the side. However, as I studied a cloud's mosaics of greys and whites I realized that the greys were shaded portions lying within the cloud's own shadow while the bright white surfaces caught the full sunlight. When I considered the Sun's position and the direction it cast shadows, the clouds ceased to be fluffy shapes against the blue sky. They took on their true shapes within the sky and I could see the flattened bottoms of clouds overhead.
....The more flat bottoms I could see, the more easily I could see this layers extending through the atmosphere. As my eyes followed the layer toward more distant clouds, I saw this layer curving over the horizon. Rarely can I see the curve of the solid Earth itself because the Earth curves out of sight to form a horizon. But the cloud-marked layer in the transparent air revealed the curve of the atmosphere embracing our planet (pp. 75-76).
Perhaps the most powerful part of the book is Krapfel's efforts to transform his understanding into action by struggling to heal an overgrazed field badly eroded by six-foot gullies near a school where he taught in suburban Los Angeles. Krapfel seeks to create a series of dams that will split the large torrents of rain-fed water and weaken their erosive power.
How he slowly learns to work with the water and, eventually, to transform the field into stretches of green teeming with plant and animal life is an inspirational lesson in firsthand doing and understanding.
Especially, his depiction of a "spiral of learning" between person and environment appears to be a central starting point for any phenomenological environmental ethics that would somehow find practical ways whereby environmental awareness and concern could be transfigured into practical, effective ecological action like Krapfel's.
This book is the author's first and it has its share of stylistic and conceptual awkwardnesses. On the other hand, the book is written from a deep love for nature and an informed hope for the future of the earth and humankind. The book asks each reader to consider personally how he or she relates to the environment and how he or she might find ways to contribute order, rather than disorder, to the world.
In this sense, the book says much about a phenomenology of the laws of thermodynamics‑-a topic that must be a foundation for any environmental ethics that would really seek to shift human attitudes and actions toward nature, place, and environment.
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