30 research outputs found
Saint-Laurent-d'Aigouze (Gard). Ancienne abbaye Saint-Pierre et Saint-Paul de Psalmodi
No full textStoddard Whitney Snow. Saint-Laurent-d'Aigouze (Gard). Ancienne abbaye Saint-Pierre et Saint-Paul de Psalmodi. In: Archéologie médiévale, tome 18, 1988. p. 338
Saint-Laurent d'Aigouze (Gard). Ancienne Abbaye de Psalmodi
No full textStoddard Brooks W., Stoddard Whitney Snow, Dodds Jerrilyn, Young Bailey K. Saint-Laurent d'Aigouze (Gard). Ancienne Abbaye de Psalmodi. In: Archéologie médiévale, tome 13, 1983. pp. 282-284
Sarcophage paléochrétien découvert à Psalmodi (Gard)
No full textStoddard W.S. Sarcophage paléochrétien découvert à Psalmodi (Gard). In: Revue archéologique de Narbonnaise, tome 14, 1981. pp. 225-237
L'ancienne abbaye de Psalmodi (Saint-Laurent-d' Aigouze, Gard) premier bilan des fouilles (1970-1988)
No full textThe excavations carried out from 1970 to 1988, on the site of the ancient Psalmodi abbey (Gard), first of all revealed the imposing remains of the gothic church, which was never completed, and a large cloister ; a mixture of traditions was visible, Languedoc norman architecture and gothic innovations. The diggers then brought to light remains of the primitive church, a single nave edifice, and masonry which seemed to belong to two norman campaigns. The exact localisation of the norman nave was never determined, however, five sculpted fragments of excellent quality, coming mainly from stone cutters, were found on the site.Les fouilles effectuées de 1970 à 1988 sur le site de l'ancienne abbaye de Psalmodi (Gard) ont d'abord mis au jour les imposants vestiges de l'église gothique, qui ne fut jamais achevée, et d'un grand cloître ; on y voyait un mélange de traditions de l'architecture romane languedocienne et d'innovations gothiques. Puis les fouilleurs mont mis au jour les vestiges de l'église primitive, qui était un édifice à nef unique, et des maçonneries qui semblent avoir appartenu à deux campagnes romanes. La localisation exacte du cloître roman n'a pu être précisée ; mais quinze fragments sculptés d'excellente qualité, provenant en particulier de tailloirs, ont été découverts sur le site.Dodds Jerrilyn, Stoddard Brooks W., Stoddard Whitney Snow, Young Bailey K., Carter-Young Kitch. L'ancienne abbaye de Psalmodi (Saint-Laurent-d' Aigouze, Gard) premier bilan des fouilles (1970-1988). In: Archéologie médiévale, tome 19, 1989. pp. 7-55
L'ancienne abbaye de Psalmodi (Saint-Laurent-d' Aigouze, Gard) premier bilan des fouilles (1970-1988)
No full textReproductive success data of Adelie penguins in the Windmill Islands from 2011/12 - 2020/21
No full textProgress Code: completed<b>Purpose</b><br/>This data was collected to analyse the drivers of Adelie penguin reproductive success in the Windmill Islands, East Antarctica, using Cox Proportional Hazards survival models.We assessed reproductive success for the Adelie penguin colonies breeding on the Windmill Islands (Whitney Point, Odbert Island, Shirley Island, Blakeney Point 66°15' S, 110°33' E) from the 2011/12 – 2020/21 breeding seasons. We modelled nest survival against a range of potential environmental and behavioural drivers assessed over the same time period which are described below.<br/><br/>Sites:<br/>We used four different sites with five camera locations for this study: Odbert Island = Odbt1, Shirley Island = Shrl1, Blakeney Point = Blak1, Whitney Point camera site 1 = Whit1, Whitney Point camera site 2 = Whit2.<br/><br/>Individual nest identifier:<br/>For each nest, we developed a unique nest identifier (Year_Site_Nest). This includes the breeding season and camera site the nest was observed in, and also the number of the nest (1-10) observed. <br/><br/>Reproductive success data: <br/>We used two metrics of reproductive success, breeding success and nest survival to creche. Breeding success was recorded as 0, 1, or 2 for each nest (0 = no chicks, 1 = one chick, 2 = two chicks). Nest survival was measured as binomial data and collected as 0,1 where 0 = nest failure and 1 = at least one chick survived to creche (Success.Fail). Nest failure occurred when either the parents abandoned the nest, both eggs failed to hatch, or chicks died. Failure and creche dates were recorded and the number of days since October 1 were calculated (Nest_Fail_date and Creche_Date). The breeding phase when failure occurred was noted for failed nests (Fail_Period). See BehaviouralData.csv.<br/><br/>Environmental covariates: <br/>Southern Oscillation Index (SOI) and Southern Annular Mode (SAM)<br/>SOI and SAM values were averaged for the October – January (SOI_OctJan and SAM_OctJan) and the April to October (SOI_JulyJune, SAM_JulyJune) periods to correlate with the Adelie penguin reproductive cycle and the winter season respectively. The NOAA Climate Prediction Centre https://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/precip/CWlink/daily_ao_index/aao/monthly.aao.index.b79.current.ascii.table provided the SAM values, while the Australian Bureau of Meteorology http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/enso/soi/ provided the SOI data. SOI values range from ~-35 - +35, and the value is quoted as a whole number, and we used monthly values to obtain our reproductive cycle and winter value averages. SAM values are collected on an index where positive and negative values relate to different polar pressures, and similarly to SOI, values we used for reproductive cycle and winter season averages were collected monthly. See file BehaviouralData.csv. <br/><br/>Fast ice extent (Fast_Ice)<br/>Shapefiles of fast-ice distribution in the Windmill Islands were obtained from the Natice website www.natice.noaa.gov. We measured the shortest distance between the four study sites and the fast-ice edge in ArcGIS during mid-November for each breeding season during the study (2011/12 – 2020/21). See file BehaviouralData.csv.<br/><br/>Potential foraging overlap (Foraging_Intensity)<br/>Here, values were based on those presented in Southwell et al. (2021). This data is estimated using the ‘foraging radius approach’ developed by Critchley et al. (2018) and Handley et al. (2021) and recent population estimates for the region’s breeding sites, the distance between penguin breeding sites, and foraging distances from colonies to estimate the degree of potential overlaps between local breeding penguins when foraging at sea. See file BehaviouralData.csv. <br/><br/>Windchill (WC)<br/>Mean windchill (°C) was calculated for incubation, guard, and creche for each breeding season. These are calculated from ambient air temperature, wind speed, and relative humidity recorded at Casey Station using the formula provided by the Australian Bureau of Meteorology http://www.bom.gov.au/info/ thermal_stress/. We calculated values for incubation, guard, and creche during each breeding season, and also for the period of time prior to incubation when penguins are arriving at the nest (arrival windchill: AWC; incubation: IWC; guard windchill: GWC; creche windchill: CWC). See file BehaviouralData.csv.<br/><br/>Wind speed (MWS, km/h), Air Temperature (MAT, °C), Sum of snow days (SMS)<br/>Mean wind speed, mean air temperature, and sum of mean snow days were all collected through the Bureau of Meteorology at Casey Station. Means were calculated for incubation (IMWS: Incubation mean wind speed; IMAT: Incubation mean air temperature; ISMS: Incubation sum of mean snow days; GMWS: Guard mean wind speed; GMAT: Guard mean air temperature; GSMS: Guard sum of mean snow days; CMWS: Creche mean wind speed; CMAT: Creche mean air temperature; CSMS: Creche sum of mean snow days; AMWS: Arrival mean wind speed; AMAT: Arrival mean air temperature; ASMS: Arrival sum of mean snow days). See file BehaviouralData.csv.<br/><br/>Snow cover and ground moisture<br/>These covariates were recorded daily throughout each breeding season in categories of 0 -3. 0 is no snow cover or dry ground, 1 is light snow cover or low moisture, 2 is a moderate snow cover or moderate moisture, and 3 is a heavy snow cover or high moisture. These values were obtained from assessing the immediate ground surrounding the nest and also within the nest (~30 cm range outside of the nest). See EnvironmentalData.csv. Using these values, the individual nest’s propensity to have snow cover or be wet was calculated by determining the proportion of days during the observation period when each nest had snow or was moist (proportion of snow days = Prop.snowdays; Proportion of days with moisture = Prop.moist.days). Alongside this, we also calculated the number of days of snow cover or ground moisture for each category (1, 2, or 3) during incubation, guard, and creche (Number of days with snow cover = Num.snowdays; Number of days with ground moisture = Num.Moist.days). Here, we also took note of the number of nest observations per nest (Num.nest.obs). See Moisture_Snow_propensity_Data.csv. <br/><br/>Behavioural covariates<br/>Nest occupation date<br/>NOD was recorded for individual nests for each breeding season. It was recorded as the first day of a continuous period of five days with a penguin present at the nest and the number of days since October 1 and this date was calculated (NOD). See file BehaviouralData.csv.<br/><br/>First foraging trip (FFT)<br/>FFT was recorded as the date when the female left the nest for more than five consecutive days. The first day the female was first absent from the nest was the date recorded and the number of days since October 1 and this date was calculated (FFT). See file BehaviouralData.csv.<br/><br/>Nest structure (NS)<br/>NS was recorded on three separate dates throughout each breeding season on December 1, January 1, and January 15, representing the beginning of incubation (NSDec1), guard (NSJan1), and creche (NSJan15) respectively. NS was assessed on whether the stones were stacked to create a nest bowl with a score of 1, 2, or 3. 1 represents a nest with few or no stones, 2 a nest with some stones but not stacked off the ground, and 3 where the nest bowl is off the ground. See file BehaviouralData.csv.<br/><br/>Nest location (NL)<br/>NL was recorded on three separate dates throughout each breeding season on December 1, January 1, and January 15, representing the beginning of incubation (NLDec1), guard (NLJan1), and creche (NLJan15) respectively. This was recorded as the number of active nests from the periphery of the colony, where 1 is the edge of the colony, and the location number increases towards the colony centre as a continuous variable. See file BehaviouralData.csv
Using an Ecohydrology Model to Explore the Role of Biological Soil Crusts on Soil Hydrologic Conditions at the Canyonlands Research Station, Utah
No full textabstract: Biological soil crusts (BSCs) dominate the soil surface of drylands in the western United States and possess properties thought to influence local hydrology. Little agreement exists, however, on the effects of BSCs on runoff, infiltration, and evaporative rates. This study aims to improve the predictive capability of an ecohydrology model in order to understand how BSCs affect the storage, retention, and infiltration of water into soils characteristic of the Colorado Plateau. A set of soil moisture measurements obtained at a climate manipulation experiment near Moab, Utah, are used for model development and testing. Over five years, different rainfall treatments over experimental plots resulted in the development of BSC cover with different properties that influence soil moisture differently. This study used numerical simulations to isolate the relative roles of different BSC properties on the hydrologic response at the plot-scale. On-site meteorological, soil texture and vegetation property datasets are utilized as inputs into a ecohydrology model, modified to include local processes: (1) temperature-dependent precipitation partitioning, snow accumulation and melt, (2) seasonally-variable potential evapotranspiration, (3) plant species-specific transpiration factors, and (4) a new module to account for the water balance of the BSC. Soil, BSC and vegetation parameters were determined from field measurements or through model calibration to the soil moisture observations using the Shuffled Complex Evolution algorithm. Model performance is assessed against five years of soil moisture measurements at each experimental site, representing a wide range of crust cover properties. Simulation experiments were then carried out using the calibrated ecohydrology model in which BSC parameters were varied according to the level of development of the BSC, as represented by the BSC roughness. These results indicate that BSCs act to both buffer against evaporative soil moisture losses by enhancing BSC moisture evaporation and significantly alter the rates of soil water infiltration by reducing moisture storage and increasing conductivity in the BSC. The simulation results for soil water infiltration, storage and retention across a wide range of meteorological events help explain the conflicting hydrologic outcomes present in the literature on BSCs. In addition, identifying how BSCs mediate infiltration and evaporation processes has implications for dryland ecosystem function in the western United States.Dissertation/ThesisMasters Thesis Geological Sciences 201
How Can International Staff Exchange be Implemented as Part of the Execution of an Internationalisation Strategy in UK Higher Education? The Case of a Strategic Entrepreneur
No full textThis work constructs a bridge across the "knowing-doing gap" of international staff exchange: the gap between strategy formulation and its execution within the constraints of a post-1992 university business school in the UK. It goes beyond the common, well-intentioned and yet vague statements involving the "encouragement" of international staff exchange to propose a model of execution through strategic entrepreneurship.
The promotion of international staff mobility is a founding principle of the "Bologna Process", designed to create a converged system of higher education across Europe. Many UK "new" (ie post-1992) universities are engaged in the development of internationalisation strategies which include staff exchange. Meanwhile, the failure to execute strategy is increasingly acknowledged as a major problem in organisational performance.
Using a first-, second and third-person Insider Action Research (AR) approach, the author initiated, planned, organised and implemented an international staff exchange between universities in the UK and France. Data generated were subjected to a double process of analysis in order to construct the new model. A policy of "subjectivity with transparency" and transcontextual credibility throughout enables the reader to judge transferability. Duality is the nature of this "bridge" and the simplistic transplant of the expatriation policies of commercial organisations is avoided. Concepts from the theoretical literature in three domains - strategic management and entrepreneurship in higher education, internationalisation of higher education and strategy execution through strategic entrepreneurship - are combined with the research analysis to propose that "strategic entrepreneurs" can execute the riskier elements of an internationalisation strategy, such as staff exchange. Members of the creative class, strategic entrepreneurs are attracted and motivated by the foundation of a diverse environment and entrepreneurial culture promoted by a university's values-driven, holistic approach to internationalisation. Their autonomous strategic behaviour must be facilitated by an execution-focussed organisational architecture. In a university, the overall approach to staff exchange should combine central and local (school-based) functions and resource both to develop strategic initiatives and to exploit tactical opportunities.
This work broadens AR from education into strategic management, specifically linking the areas of strategic execution and strategic entrepreneurship
Ketchup and Blood: Documents, Institutions and Effects in the Performances of Paul McCarthy 1974-2013
No full textSince the 1970s, the work of Los Angeles-based artist Paul McCarthy (b. 1945) has included live performance, video, sculpture, kinetic tableaux, and installation. Tracing the development of McCarthy’s work between 1974 and 2013, I undertake a critical discussion of the development of performance in relation to visual art practices. Using one artist’s work as a guide through a number of key discussions in the history of performance art, I argue that performance has influenced every aspect of McCarthy’s artistic practice, and continues to inform critical readings of his work.
My thesis follows the trajectory of McCarthy’s performance practice as it has developed through different contexts. I begin with the early documentation and dissemination of performance in the Los Angeles-based magazine High Performance (1978-83), which established a context for the reception of performance art, and for McCarthy’s early work. I then examine specific examples of McCarthy’s practice in relation to his critical reception: live performances and videos from the 1970s are discussed alongside critical readings of his work influenced by psychoanalysis; and the wider public recognition of McCarthy’s object-based art in the 1980s and early 1990s. I then look more broadly at the recent trend of re-enacting historical performances in the Getty’s Pacific Standard Time project (2011-12), as a mode of engaging with performance history and exploring how histories of ephemeral art are re-iterated over time. Finally, I discuss a number of McCarthy’s recent exhibitions and installations that mobilises a wider consideration of the histories of performance and ephemeral practices in art institutions.
McCarthy’s work is firmly established in the art world, and I argue that his work also provides a significant touchstone for histories of performance. I look historically at how McCarthy’s work has been documented, disseminated, curated, and re-performed, and open wider discussions about ways of engaging with performance history. In turn, I complicate the relationship between performance and the art world; between ephemeral art and object-based art practices; and between scholarly engagements with performance history, and the public presentation of performance in curatorial practices and institutional contexts.This project was funded by a College Studentship from Queen Mary, University of London. Additional financial support for a research trip to Los Angeles in 2012 to undertake primary research and conduct interviews was provided by the Queen Mary Central Research Fund (now the Postgraduate Research Fund). I would also like to acknowledge the support of the Glynne Wickham Scholarship fund, which contributed to travel expenses for a conference presentation at Stanford University in 2013
The John Muir Newsletter, Fall/Winter 2011/2012
No full textFall/Winter 2011/2012 ; LA--/*. ; oJW J\\AAAA, uLwtiAjU)OlGA, THE JOHN MUIR CENTER SPECIAL POINTS OF INTEREST: The present is the key to the past. Muir would apply geological formation and specifically the action of glacial ice to the handiwork of God. Muir chose to live to entice people to look at Nature\u27s loveliness. In the beginning and to the end botany was the foundation upon which Muir\u27s work as a preservationist grew and glacial studies were seamlessly connected to his study of plants. An Essay P h e n o m on John E N A L S C I Muir E N C E IN THIS ISSUE An Essay on John Muir\u27s Phenomenal Science by 1 Bonnie J. Gisel 59th California History Institute to focus on . Women as History- Makers in California John Muir Class Visits A Walk in the Wild and the Muir House By Bonnie Johanna Gisel Curator, LeConte Memorial Lodge, Yosemite National Park Author, Nature\u27s Beloved Son: Rediscovering John Muir\u27s Botanical Legacy I. Origins of Muir\u27s Scientific Self The world John Muir sauntered through was one in which the distribution of erratics was attributed to a diluvial theory, a wave of sea ice due to catastrophic sudden and violent floods released from the interior of the Earth or caused by the upheaval of -^F * \u3e mountains. This diluvial theory gave way to a theory that provided a more rational explanation to account for the appearance of erratic boulders, and that theory was that erratics had been moved by vast sheets of moving glaciers. A debate—sea ice vs. land ice-remained a feature of geological discussion until about 1902. As well Muir found himself inquiring into the inner workings of science when fossil remnants—relicts of a world of unusual and exceptional creatures and plants, and the study of strata, continued to expand upon what James Hutton of Edinburgh regarded as an Earth im- James Hutton From http://etc.usf.edu/ clipart/60973/60973James hutton.htm mensely older than the thousands of years allowed by the chronology of the Old Testa- ment.1 Then, too, up from the sod of science, a Scotsman, uniformitarian, and friend of Charles Darwin, Charles Lyell, who parented modern geology, examined an inorganic Earth in perpetual change, eroding, and reforming. He explained the former changes of the Earth\u27s surface by reference to causes now in operation. The present, he would say, is the key to the past. While a student at the University of Wisconsin, Muir was introduced to Lyell\u27s Principles, perhaps the 1853 ninth edition which created quite a sensation. Lyell banished any doubts about a glacial epoch, fully supporting the work of Louis Agassiz, an expert on fossil fish and the preeminent glaciologist, who happened to be an unabashed catastrophist. Disagreement would erupt over the rate of environmental change between those who supported change gradual and uniform, uniformitarians, of which Muir was one, and those who supported intermittent cataclysm, catastrophists. There was also Lyell\u27s Elements of Geology, published in 1838- the first modern textbook of geology, a systematic treatment based on the assumption that all the phenomena of geology can be explained naturally and discussed scientifically. In Yosemite, in 1872, Muir would request that Jeanne Carr send a copy of Lyell\u27s work. He would have opened the familiar volume to the frontispiece-a diagram of a vertical section through a volcanic island surrounded by sea and showing dia- grammatically how the four great classes of rocks were produced.2 Muir would apply geological formation and specifically the action of glacial ice to the handiwork of God. An exaggerated theory of a single polar cap, an Ice Age traveling from the North Pole over the northern hemisphere, was the brain-child (continued on page 3)
PAGE 2 59th California H To focus on Women in Calif I S T O R Y I N S T I T U T E A S H I S T O R Y ■ M A K E O R N A ?» R S On March 23, 24, students, faculty and guests of the University will gather for the 59th California History Institute. This year\u27s theme focuses on women who continue to be history- makers. Highlights include a field trip to the California State Museum by coach from Stockton on March 23 to two exhibits: Women and the Vote, and Notable Women in California History, the latter featuring 120 individuals. Papers and panels on March 24 will focus on the historiography of women\u27s history in the Golden State; the role of Latina, Filipina, Asian, and Native American women; women of note in Stockton\u27s own history; women\u27s organizations at Pacific; and a panel on women and environmental justice and activism. The luncheon keynote will be delivered by Judy Yung, Professor Emerita, U. C. Santa Cruz, whose publications include : Unbound Feet: A Social History of Chinese Women in San Francisco (1995); Chinese American Voices; From the Gold Rush to the Present (2006); and (with Erika Lee) Angel Island: Immigrant Gateway to America (2010). For more information and to register for the symposium please contact Juliann Hilton i [email protected] or call Muir Center and leave a message at 209 946-2527. JOHN MUIR C WILD lass Visits A Walk and the Muir House IN THE On January 19, twenty- one students in Pacific\u27s John Muir and the Rise of the Conservation Movement class visited the Oakland Museum of California and John Muir National Historic Site in Martinez. In Oakland the class toured the exhibit, A Walk in the Wild: Continuing John Muir\u27s Journey. Cu- rated by Dorris Welch, the exhibit focused on John Muir and science, using original materials from the John Muir Papers as well as furniture and artifacts from various institutions and family members. While there the class met John Muir Reid, the great-grandson of Margaret Muir-Reid, one of Muir\u27s older sisters. Reid is a professional artist who reports he has painted with the great- grandson of Muir\u27s close friend and fellow Scotsman, William Keith. His watercolors focus on landscapes of the Delta, Sierra, and Bay, as well as Yosemite, scenes that would be familiar to John Muir. In Martinez, Park Guide Daniel Prial gave the group an inspired talk and a memorable tour of the Muir House. Prial focused on Muir\u27s interest in bringing Nature into his residence, rather than keeping Nature out. The interpretation helped all to understand the rationale for planting trees exotic to the Alhambra Valley (including the famous redwood in front of the house), the large number of William Keith landscapes in the house, as well as architectural features incorporated by Muir into the house after it was remodeled, post-1906 San Francisco earthquake. These include the large modified central fireplace where he could burn logs instead of coal. Each student is researching one aspect of Muir\u27s life from the Muir Papers and all are following one major contemporary environmental issue keeping the class up-to-date on current events that relate to Muir\u27s legacy. This trip was made possible through a generous grant from Holt-Atherton Special Collections. John Muir Class, 2012, in front of the Muir House, Martinez, CA Photo by Bob Dash
PAGE 3 (continued from page 1) ;■;;,\u27.: -•• c, i; o i. o c; v. CatlU.Ee LYt.I.l. IWJ LDKbON ILIeJUT, Al.aHUAHl.C STULCr. kea.uiH^ Elements of Geo/ogy From: library.sc.edu/spcoll/nathist/ darwin/darwin5.html J\Luvid, IXoAidXic iawcneAt heaian an JtLiah (DViaet in UunhaA,, &cottand in a aaAden ad, much lihe, &acn an, of Louis Agassiz; and, in 1840, he published his definitive work on glaciers, Etude sur les Glaciers. Agassiz believed that not books but experience was wherein the answers to scientific inquiry resided. To this end and to his credit, he undertook the empirical study of glaciers, establishing a camp on a glacier of the Aar. God\u27s great plough, he called them. The glacial period was for Agassiz, a magnificent demonstration of the power of God in causing catastrophic Louis Agassiz From: www.eoearth.org/article/Agassiz_Louis events that wiped out life and replaced it with new flora and fauna—in this he disagreed with Darwin\u27s theory of natural selection. At the University of Wisconsin Muir studied Agassiz\u27s work with Ezra Carr. Carr ventured with students out into what he called Nature\u27s basement rooms, out over the glaciated landscape around Madison, equating the love of nature with the love of God. He reminded students to touch with something of reverence, the hem of that marvelous robe of living green, the Forests. Muir spoke of Carr as having been the first to place before him the Book of Nature. Later, Agassiz would speak of Muir as the first to have an adequate concept of glacial action. A world not for the faint of heart, Muir was resilient. Struggle and change were everywhere. A Civil War (that Muir referred to as unchristian), was followed by tense, ambitious, and controversial mending of a nation that drove Joseph and John LeConte, respectively, geologist and physicist, from Georgia and South Carolina to California and the burgeoning University of California. There was a quickening professionalization of science and competition between scientists on the east and west coasts of America. Muir was drawn into the fray over the fair apostles-Flora.3 Muir\u27s floristic journey began on High Street in Dunbar, Scotland in a garden as much like Eden as possible, and blossomed into an enthusiasm for botany during the nineteenth century\u27s flurry of amateur plant collecting and as botany took on the mantle of a professional science. With the aid of Alphonso Wood\u27s Class- Book of Botany, in which Wood suggested that the study of plants held higher purpose expanding the soul through beauty, purity, and wisdom, Muir became skilled at identifying plants and their habitats. He would agree with Wood, to study plants was to see God\u27s plans unfold. Through plants Muir gained an inordinate sense of the complexity of life and found that when he picked out anything by itself, it was hitched to everything else in the universe. Were not, he thought, all plants beautiful? Or in some way useful? Would not the world suffer by the banishment of a single weed? We encounter a faithful Muir drafted like so many others—among them his colleague and friend Joseph LeConte-into the Age of Darwin\u27s Origin of Species by Natural Selection, published in 1859. Darwin had not intended to argue either for or against God; nonetheless, he concluded there was no need for divine creation, and there was no divine goal-natural selection took care of everything-was responsible for the gradual but steady emergence of organisms. His theory destroyed for some, dampened or attempted to awash the sea of Christian faith for others, and crippled natural theology, provoking a major philosophical and theological debate that outlived the century. Muir read Darwin while in Yosemite.
Page 4 Joseph LeConte From: www.sierraclub.org/history/ leconte II. California: Perfect Pitch Arriving in California, in 1868, Muir was not more than a footstep behind the California Geological Survey under the direction of Josiah Whitney. The Survey was under funded, under appreciated, and under terrible constraints given the size and terrain of California. Support would wane for a variety of reasons. In part Whitney was opinionated, arrogant, and stubborn, and legislators believed too much emphasis had been placed on fossils and flowers. Legislative action was taken to shift focus to mineral resources, though Whitney never envisioned the survey as a prospecting party.4 Muir continued to study botany and took up the study of mountains. Influenced by Agassiz he would stress the role of glaciers in the formation of the Sierra and Yosemite Valley. Muir found deposits of glacial silt and striations etched into the granite walls and outlined the routes that carried the glaciers that shaped and scoured the Valley. It was not long before he professed to anyone who would listen that the Valley had been formed by glaciers and that there were living glaciers in the High Sierra.5 Whitney, a graduate of Yale, spoke of Muir as uneducated, called him that shepherd, an ignoramus, and of Muir\u27s findings, considered them a personal affront—given that his conventional geological wisdom held that the floor of Yosemite Valley had subsided during a series of cataclysmic events—a view he would never change. Muir\u27s disclosure of living glaciers, as well, struck scorn with both Whitney and Clarence King, who regarded the fields Muir saw as nothing more than snow. Upon graduation from Yale\u27s Sheffield Scientific School, King joined the Whitney Survey as a volunteer geologist in 1863. He soon found evidence in 1864, like Muir\u27s, (differing only in degree), that Yosemite Valley had been formed by glaciers. While Whitney initially published King\u27s findings in the first volume of the Geological Survey in 1865, he retracted when he published The Yosemite Guide-Book in 1869— noting there was insufficient evidence that the Valley had been formed by glacial action. King publicly supported Whitney. Acatastrophist, like Whitney, King, like Agassiz, disagreed with natural selection. King, essentially, towed the party- line.6 Picturing himself the quintessential field- geologist and mountaineer, King dismissed Muir as an ambitious amateur suggesting that he divert his enthusiastic love of nature into a channel, if there is one, in which his attainments would save him from hopeless floundering. Impatient with Muir\u27s poetic sensibilities and rhapsodizing without restraint, King thought Muir lacked seriousness—writing about dreaming and sleeping with glaciers with adjectives obstructing science. A writer himself, King suffered from long periods of self-doubt and leaned to exaggerate his mountain exploits. Perhaps there was proprietary jealousy and while Muir may have been poetic, King relied on hyperbole. King first serialized his adventures as a survey scientist for The Atlantic Monthly.7 Muir disagreed with King\u27s ambition to conquer the Sierra or any mountain. Mountains could and should, he thought and knew from experience, be climbed by acting in harmony with them. The harmony King lacked, had, Muir believed, contributed to his inability to reach the summit of Mount Ritter; and it was well known that King had a particular genius for climbing the wrong mountain. Muir succeeded where GEllLrWIiAl. Si till Df CAl.iritatMA. J. 1\u3e. fj —L.«iur. YOSEMITE GUIDE-BOOK: DFKOKiiTmx riv tins VtfcXRKfTE vau.v.v ASIr flit; .\u27.!\u3e\u27A8 HIS 9 v V;;. .vim. ANlr OK THE IttG TKEBS W \u3c\UmHlM.I. ILLUSTRATED 8Y MfcP9 AMD WOOOCU T?i. ^Kx\u3eUTi/tcM4iA could and dhauld...he, climhed hu aeXina, in hoAnvanu vliXh them.... Whitney\u27s Yosemite Guide-Book From: openlibrary.org/works/0L7026039W/ The-Yosemite Guide-book IThUSIlKli r.i .\i ii-M\u27irr.- iit Tin: LMUioomiltr: lSil\u27.r.
PAGE 5 The California Geological Survey, December 1863. From left: Chester Averill, assistant; William M. Gabb, paleontologist; William Ashburner, field assistant; Josiah D. Whitney, State Geologist; Charles F. Hoffmann, topographer, Clarence King, geologist, and William H. Brewer, botanist. (Bancroft Library) From www.yosemite.ca.us/library/the_yo semite-book/ Clarence King From: www.yosemite.ca. us/library/up _and_down_ california/5.1.html King failed, and he was not above reprisal, publicly lashing out with his pen at King in an attempt to embarrass. I am sure, scoffed Muir, in an article for The Overland Monthly, that the Grand Canyon of the Tuolumne may be entered at more than fifty different points along the walls by mountaineers of ordinary nerve and skill. On reading King\u27s account of his Mount Tyndall climb, Muir wrote: He must have given himself a lot of trouble. When I climbed Tyndall, I ran up and back before breakfast. 8 In a climate brimming with scientific elitism and academic arrogance, Muir went about beholding to his stories of beloved glacial ice. He may not have kept to the conventions of scientific writing, but he observed geological processes at work, and interpreted a complex pattern of phenomena with insight that emerged as characteristically his own. His method of study, patient observation and constant brooding above the rocks, lying upon them as the ice did, remaining winter and summer to arrive at the truths which were graven upon them, aware there was virtually no documentation to substantiate his theories.9 Whitney and King found Muir and his ideas unkempt, and it is true that he lacked advanced academic scientific training, however, these were not barriers to scientific truth. Muir\u27s theories—the glacial formation of Yosemite Valley and the living glaciers in the High Sierra were more nearly correct than any geologist of his time.10 III. Does Ice A Scientist Make? Punctuating a Leap of Faith Whitney, who had been in Yosemite Valley and Tuolumne in 1863, knew that glaciers had played a significant role in the formation of the High Sierra. There was no disagreement with Muir on this. Whitney wrote to a colleague, G. J. Brush, July 10,1863: We are in the midst of what was once a great glacier region, the valleys all about being most superbly polished and grooved by glaciers, which once existed here in a stupendous scale having a thickness, in the Tuolumne Valley, of a thousand feet.11 Members of the Whitney Survey, however, were seemingly unaware that the snow bank upon which they climbed on Mount Lyell was actually a modern glacier. It was noted that there were no living glaciers in the Sierra Nevada. In 1872, Joseph LeConte observed the Lyell Glacier with Muir, but from a distance. He reported that such a glacier was neither true nor typical—but in some sense a glacier. Muir
Page 6 thought LeConte had made no effort to acquire adequate data—he had not seen glacial ice because he had not gone into the depths of the glacier.12 Muir poured his soul into the writing of a series of articles entitled Studies in the Sierra for The Overland Monthly that appeared in 1874—abridged for the national scientific community. Illustrated with his own drawings, the articles were intended to win converts to his theory on the glacial action at work in the formation of the Sierra and Yosemite Valley. For all the scientific truth borne of Muir\u27s empirical studies, the thread that held his glacial canon together was his faith. He found in the glacial tome answers to a deep theological need. Drawn to glaciers as the plows of God, Muir stood upon them and then within a glacial Shrund, a stranger in a stranger land, as near to the heart of the world as he could—a chamber hung with clustered icicles, subdued light, and solemn murmurs.13 God\u27s handiwork, Muir believed. Surely he had found Him in the act of creating, wielding tools, slowly shaping the Earth. There was the glory. For skeptics, here was the proof. Illuminating the indwelling of God in Creation yet being made, Muir offered up mountain bread to his readers. He hath builded the mountains... .The Master Builder chose for a tool the tender snow-flowers, noiselessly falling through unnumbered seasons, the offspring of the sun and sea. 14 IV. Where Science Ends & Faith Was Always There. Who created that tangled bank? That natural selection resulting from competition between organisms for survival, could produce human beings along with the higher flora and fauna but toward no goal, was the most disturbing of Darwin\u27s theory of evolution. Evidence pointing to evolution, including the evolution of Homo sapiens, had been accumulating for decades but had taken evolution to be a plan present from the beginning and a goal directed process.15 In 1909 during three day\u27s spent with French Strother at the Strentzel-Muir ranch in Alhambra, Muir reflected upon the meaning and purpose of evolution. Evolution, they say brought the earth through its glacial periods, caused the snow blanket to recede, and the flower carpet to follow it, raised the forests of the world, developed animal life from the jelly-fish to the thinking man. 16 But what caused evolution? To my mind, Muir noted, it is inconceivable that a plan that has worked out, through unthinkable millions of years, without one hitch or one mistake, the development of beauty that has made every microscopic particle of matter perform its function in harmony with every other in the universe—that such a plan is the blind product of an unthinking abstraction. No; somewhere, before evolution was, was an Intelligence that laid out the plan, and evolution is the process, not the origin of the harmony. You may call that Intelligence what you please. I cannot see why so many people object to call it God. For Muir Darwin\u27s evolutionary theory reduced mystery, yet, did not destroy the idea of God\u27s designing presence in Nature. What remained was one infinite mystery of existence, of every phenomena of Nature, and that Muir left to God. In the world view Muir endowed, scientific inquiry was ignited by faith, culture, and imagination from which it was birthed as well as by the truth that it sought. For him the journey was always about wildness and would endure to find the means to save parts and parcels of it. Turning always to plash in the divine light of the natural world in nature\u27s own reserve, he chose to live to entice people to look at Nature\u27s loveliness. Seeking the curious magical qualities of each present being, Muir was impelled to the life of lonely wandering solely by the love of God\u27s Earth and eternal, immortal Beauty. Eyes were important to Muir. With them he pursued the phenomena of science to solve puzzles that deepened his faith as he turned to share with others a world they could only half see. With eyes open to God\u27s
