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House in the Sun a Natural History of the Sonoran Desert
A natural history of the Sonoran Desert, describing the richness of life and delicat balance of the desert.
- GenresNatureNonfiction
210 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1994
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April 17, 2020
The book is a good introduction to the natural life in the Sonoran desert, and it is filled with pictures, accompanied by a few drawings and graphs.*
Olin excels in his descriptions, but I think he portrays an inaccurate view of the human place in nature's scheme. He writes that "Many of the higher mammals are concerned with finding homes, establishing territories, raising families, hunting food; in short, many of the same activities we pursue in our everyday life. It does not follow that animals do this in the same manner than humans would. Much of it is carried out through instinct." Continuing, he states that "in nature there is no good or bad. Morality came along with humans. Actions in nature are based on needs, not on conscious reasoning on what ought to be done about those needs." And, he adds that survival of the fittest is "a perfectly ordered system of checks and balances. It is a system that only fails when the genus Homo, with the unique ability to reason, figures out some way to manage it to his own advantage and the detriment of others who share this world with him."
This is more or less a standard, conventional view of humans in nature, but it is one that separates us from it. Olin correctly states that we have the same needs as higher mammals at least, but that we go about satisfying them in not "the same manner." Well, of course that's true. All species go about the satisfying the basics of life in different ways. That - behavioral differences - is a large part of what defines a species. But what we do and why we do it is shared not only with higher mammals but with life itself. Despite giving lip service to our animal heritage (e.g., "genus Homo"), Olin elevates us into something other than nature by emphasizing our largely non-instinctive, reason-based way of satisfying our common needs. Why would a naturalist do that? His emphasis is on the wrong beat, which probably contributes to our grating relationship with nature.
It's the same with morality. Olin says there's no good or bad in nature. Really? What is adaptation? Isn't survival (actually replication) not only a "good," but one that is built into the definition of life? Unlike humans, animals don't verbalize this as good or bad. That value standard, though, is applied externally, as we look at life (i.e., the life "force"). But really, aren't we the same as the rest of life that way? For "territory," we have countries; for "homes," we have "houses"; for "families," we have married life; for "hunting food," we have going to Safeway. Same needs are present, but now addressed in a trans-instinctual, reason-based way that coordinates the "how" with the "what" and "why." In other words, with reason, we don't transcend values, but serve them.
Olin is correct to say that a scientist-naturalist type can and must look at nature "rationally," and "objectively," but this appropriate stipulation sheds light on what is involved in "conscious reasoning." Adaptation-survival (not literally survival as such, but the satisfaction and defense of basic needs that are the equivalent of survival) can occur either through cooperating with others and respecting their ends or through the opposite way, through purely ego-based actions that take without giving and that screw others. No objective Platonic standard will solve that problem for us. It's a war between the two ways we go about the business of survival and who has the power to enforce these different worldviews - the good of the whole versus the good of one at the expense of the whole.
Olin gets at this way of looking at humans in nature when he says that the human species with its vaunted reason is serving itself at the expense of nature.** But here again, we are not really separate from nature. In time, nature will get its turn and we - or our succeeding generations - will pay the consequences. Earth will move on without us for nature's "checks and balances" applies to us too. And then, of course, the Earth itself dies when our star, in its dying throes, engulfs it. What then?
*Interestingly, Olin puts the human arrival here way back, to 30-35,000 BCE, which is much earlier than most current estimates indicate.
**Survival went hand-in-hand with replication until now, when the latter took off on its own that, in time, will overrun the capacity of the Earth to provide for our survival needs. This is the implication of Olin's commentary that the basic problem of humans in nature is that we are over-running it and ourselves: "On March 28, 1976 the human race reached a population of four billion persons. Experts tell us that it took 80 years for the world's population to go from one to two billion, only 31 years more to go to three billion, another 15 to reach the four billion at which we now stand, and that the five billion mark, as now projected, will arrive in 1989." His book was written in 1977.
Olin excels in his descriptions, but I think he portrays an inaccurate view of the human place in nature's scheme. He writes that "Many of the higher mammals are concerned with finding homes, establishing territories, raising families, hunting food; in short, many of the same activities we pursue in our everyday life. It does not follow that animals do this in the same manner than humans would. Much of it is carried out through instinct." Continuing, he states that "in nature there is no good or bad. Morality came along with humans. Actions in nature are based on needs, not on conscious reasoning on what ought to be done about those needs." And, he adds that survival of the fittest is "a perfectly ordered system of checks and balances. It is a system that only fails when the genus Homo, with the unique ability to reason, figures out some way to manage it to his own advantage and the detriment of others who share this world with him."
This is more or less a standard, conventional view of humans in nature, but it is one that separates us from it. Olin correctly states that we have the same needs as higher mammals at least, but that we go about satisfying them in not "the same manner." Well, of course that's true. All species go about the satisfying the basics of life in different ways. That - behavioral differences - is a large part of what defines a species. But what we do and why we do it is shared not only with higher mammals but with life itself. Despite giving lip service to our animal heritage (e.g., "genus Homo"), Olin elevates us into something other than nature by emphasizing our largely non-instinctive, reason-based way of satisfying our common needs. Why would a naturalist do that? His emphasis is on the wrong beat, which probably contributes to our grating relationship with nature.
It's the same with morality. Olin says there's no good or bad in nature. Really? What is adaptation? Isn't survival (actually replication) not only a "good," but one that is built into the definition of life? Unlike humans, animals don't verbalize this as good or bad. That value standard, though, is applied externally, as we look at life (i.e., the life "force"). But really, aren't we the same as the rest of life that way? For "territory," we have countries; for "homes," we have "houses"; for "families," we have married life; for "hunting food," we have going to Safeway. Same needs are present, but now addressed in a trans-instinctual, reason-based way that coordinates the "how" with the "what" and "why." In other words, with reason, we don't transcend values, but serve them.
Olin is correct to say that a scientist-naturalist type can and must look at nature "rationally," and "objectively," but this appropriate stipulation sheds light on what is involved in "conscious reasoning." Adaptation-survival (not literally survival as such, but the satisfaction and defense of basic needs that are the equivalent of survival) can occur either through cooperating with others and respecting their ends or through the opposite way, through purely ego-based actions that take without giving and that screw others. No objective Platonic standard will solve that problem for us. It's a war between the two ways we go about the business of survival and who has the power to enforce these different worldviews - the good of the whole versus the good of one at the expense of the whole.
Olin gets at this way of looking at humans in nature when he says that the human species with its vaunted reason is serving itself at the expense of nature.** But here again, we are not really separate from nature. In time, nature will get its turn and we - or our succeeding generations - will pay the consequences. Earth will move on without us for nature's "checks and balances" applies to us too. And then, of course, the Earth itself dies when our star, in its dying throes, engulfs it. What then?
*Interestingly, Olin puts the human arrival here way back, to 30-35,000 BCE, which is much earlier than most current estimates indicate.
**Survival went hand-in-hand with replication until now, when the latter took off on its own that, in time, will overrun the capacity of the Earth to provide for our survival needs. This is the implication of Olin's commentary that the basic problem of humans in nature is that we are over-running it and ourselves: "On March 28, 1976 the human race reached a population of four billion persons. Experts tell us that it took 80 years for the world's population to go from one to two billion, only 31 years more to go to three billion, another 15 to reach the four billion at which we now stand, and that the five billion mark, as now projected, will arrive in 1989." His book was written in 1977.
January 22, 2021
5 stars for content. 1 star off for some clumsy grammatical structure.
Great scientific overview of the Sonoran Desert.
Great scientific overview of the Sonoran Desert.
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