In Rachel Carson’s novel, Silent Spring, it is clear that she is suggesting that the government has played a large and negative role on what our environment has become today. Carson believed that with the negative action that our government has taken when “protecting” the environment, our environment has unfortunately been pushed the wrong direction. The invention of chemicals that are meant to kill “pests”, such as bugs or weeds, have sacrificed the health of the human race and the environment around us. Carson does not believe that this pollution is an easy fix. “This pollution is for the most part irrecoverable; the chain of evil it initiates not only in the world that must support life but in living tissues is for the most part irreversible” (6, Carson). As you can see, she has strong views on this topic, even calling this the “chain of evil”.  She sees the government as the very problem, which led the environment to have obtained as many issues as it has.

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The lecture “Green Imaginaries: Biosemiotics, History, Memory and the Future”, led by Dr. Wheeler, discussed biosemiotics and how it affects life.  Biosemiotics strives to find meaning and purpose in the environment and life.  During the lecture, Dr. Wheeler attempted to explain biosemiotics, how it affects our life, and how and where it is found in life.

One of the points in the lecture that I found to be most interesting was when Dr. Wheeler talked about the biosemiotic theory of life.  She outlined three parts to it.  The first was that nature learns/evolves, culture forms meanings and has a history that feeds the present and the future, and nature and culture are both deep within us.  The second point was that we are semiotically made.  The third point was that life has a biosemiotic history.  Continue reading →

Throughout history, people’s attitudes about the environment have changed. European and American views about the environment progressed at different rates. The seventeenth century marked the rise of the pastoral Europe. In America people were hardly comfortable with the idea. They feared the environment for it was a vast, unfamiliar place. Early Americans associated the wilderness with Native Americans, an uncivilized people.

During the eighteenth century, French-American writer, Crevecoeur, spent ten years traveling different colonies in Europe. After settling in North America for over a decade, he moved back to Europe and published a volume of essays called Letter for an American Farmer. This book was a huge success in Europe. Crevecoeur’s book is American literature; however, we must note that it is an America dreamed by the European mind. At the time, Europeans viewed the environment as pastoral, “an idealized non-urban space Continue reading →