Prof's Choice

Nature, Science, and Consequences.

Theodore Roszak, Where theWasteland Ends (Anchor Books, 1973)—In the 1950s and '6os, scientists and commenta- tors widely touted the great technological, medical, and informational advances that had freed humans from the scourges of earlier ages and opened vast new possibilities for human culture. But in the wake of the social and environmental crises of late 19605, Roszak argued that science, with its "single vision" and reduction of the complex to the mundane, has been responsible both for rife ecological despoilation and for a despoliation of the human spirit. Although parts of this book may seem dated to some readers, many consider it to be one of the most trenchant broadranging critiques of modern science ever written.

Carolyn Merchant, TheDeath of Nature: Women,Ecology, and the ScientificRevolution (Harper, Collins, 1980)—Merchant, who studied with Roszak, argues that modern science created a worldview simultaneously at odds with nature and with women. As the scientific revolution stripped nature of her life-force and reduced her to a machine, women's place in society lost significance. Nature and women were reduced in stature, with negative consequences for both.

Evelyn Fox Keller, Reflectionson Gender and Science (Yale University Press, 1985)—This book, one of the first to examine the role of gender in the practice of science, has become a classic in the burgeoning feminist studies of science. After earning her Ph.D. in mathematical biophysics and working as a researcher, Keller questioned whether her largely male-populated profession might affect the ways in which science is practiced or shape the types of knowledge produced by science. Might social constructs like gender, she asked, fundamentally challenge the claim to "objective knowledge" which science has so long embraced?

Charles Officer and Jake Page, Tales of the Earth:Paroxysms and Perturbations ofthe Blue Planet (Oxford University Press, 1993)—In this very readable book, Page and Officer, a Dartmouth professor of earth sciences and engineering, discuss the plague and other natural cataclysms as they argue that uncontrollable events of nature have affected not only human lives but also human conceptions of the Earth.

Naomi Oreskes