Loren Eiseley (September 3, 1907 – July 9, 1977) was an
American
American(s) may refer to:
* American, something of, from, or related to the United States of America, commonly known as the "United States" or "America"
** Americans, citizens and nationals of the United States of America
** American ancestry, pe ...
anthropologist
An anthropologist is a person engaged in the practice of anthropology. Anthropology is the study of aspects of humans within past and present societies. Social anthropology, cultural anthropology and philosophical anthropology study the norms and ...
,
educator
A teacher, also called a schoolteacher or formally an educator, is a person who helps students to acquire knowledge, competence, or virtue, via the practice of teaching.
''Informally'' the role of teacher may be taken on by anyone (e.g. whe ...
,
philosopher
A philosopher is a person who practices or investigates philosophy. The term ''philosopher'' comes from the grc, φιλόσοφος, , translit=philosophos, meaning 'lover of wisdom'. The coining of the term has been attributed to the Greek th ...
, and
natural science
Natural science is one of the branches of science concerned with the description, understanding and prediction of natural phenomena, based on empirical evidence from observation and experimentation. Mechanisms such as peer review and repeatab ...
writer, who taught and published books from the 1950s through the 1970s. He received many
honorary degree
An honorary degree is an academic degree for which a university (or other degree-awarding institution) has waived all of the usual requirements. It is also known by the Latin phrases ''honoris causa'' ("for the sake of the honour") or ''ad hono ...
s and was a fellow of multiple professional societies. At his death, he was Benjamin Franklin Professor of Anthropology and History of Science at the
University of Pennsylvania
The University of Pennsylvania (also known as Penn or UPenn) is a private research university in Philadelphia. It is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and is ranked among the highest-regarded universitie ...
.
He was a "scholar and writer of imagination and grace," whose reputation and accomplishments extended far beyond the campus where he taught for 30 years. ''
Publishers Weekly
''Publishers Weekly'' (''PW'') is an American weekly trade news magazine targeted at publishers, librarians, booksellers, and literary agents. Published continuously since 1872, it has carried the tagline, "The International News Magazine of B ...
'' referred to him as "the modern
Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau (July 12, 1817May 6, 1862) was an American naturalist, essayist, poet, and philosopher. A leading transcendentalist, he is best known for his book ''Walden'', a reflection upon simple living in natural surroundings, and hi ...
." The broad scope of his writing reflected upon such topics as the mind of
Sir Francis Bacon
Francis Bacon, 1st Viscount St Alban (; 22 January 1561 – 9 April 1626), also known as Lord Verulam, was an English philosopher and statesman who served as Attorney General and Lord Chancellor of England. Bacon led the advancement of both n ...
, the
prehistoric
Prehistory, also known as pre-literary history, is the period of human history between the use of the first stone tools by hominins 3.3 million years ago and the beginning of recorded history with the invention of writing systems. The use of ...
origins of man
Human evolution is the evolutionary process within the history of primates that led to the emergence of ''Homo sapiens'' as a distinct species of the hominid family, which includes the great apes. This process involved the gradual development of ...
, and the contributions of
Charles Darwin
Charles Robert Darwin ( ; 12 February 1809 – 19 April 1882) was an English naturalist, geologist, and biologist, widely known for his contributions to evolutionary biology. His proposition that all species of life have descended fr ...
.
Eiseley's reputation was established primarily through his books, including ''The Immense Journey'' (1957), ''Darwin's Century'' (1958), ''The Unexpected Universe'' (1969), ''The Night Country'' (1971), and his memoir, ''All the Strange Hours'' (1975). Science author
Orville Prescott Orville Prescott (September 8, 1906, Cleveland, Ohio – April 28, 1996, New Canaan, Connecticut) was the main book reviewer for ''The New York Times'' for 24 years.
Born in Cleveland, Prescott graduated from Williams College in 1930. He began his ...
praised him as a scientist who "can write with poetic sensibility and with a fine sense of wonder and of reverence before the mysteries of life and nature." Naturalist author Mary Ellen Pitts saw his combination of literary and
nature writing
Nature writing is nonfiction or fiction prose or poetry about the natural environment. Nature writing encompasses a wide variety of works, ranging from those that place primary emphasis on natural history facts (such as field guides) to those in w ...
s as his "quest, not simply for bringing together science and literature ... but a continuation of what the 18th and 19th century British naturalists and Thoreau had done." In praise of "The Unexpected Universe",
Ray Bradbury
Ray Douglas Bradbury (; August 22, 1920June 5, 2012) was an American author and screenwriter. One of the most celebrated 20th-century American writers, he worked in a variety of modes, including fantasy, science fiction, horror, mystery, and r ...
remarked, "
iseleyis every writer's writer, and every human's human ... One of us, yet most uncommon ..."
According to his obituary in ''
The New York Times
''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...
'', the feeling and philosophical motivation of the entire body of Eiseley's work was best expressed in one of his essays, ''The Enchanted Glass:'' "The anthropologist wrote of the need for the contemplative
naturalist, a man who, in a less frenzied era, had time to observe, to speculate, and to dream."
[Blum, Howard. ''Loren Eiseley, Anthropologist, 69; Eloquent Writer on Man and Nature'', ''New York Times'', (Obituary) July 11, 1977.] Shortly before his death he received an award from the
Boston Museum of Science
The Museum of Science (MoS) is a science museum and indoor zoo in Boston, Massachusetts, located in Science Park, a plot of land spanning the Charles River. Along with over 700 interactive exhibits, the museum features a number of live presentat ...
for his "outstanding contribution to the public understanding of science" and another from the U.S.
Humane Society for his "significant contribution for the improvement of life and environment in this country."
Early life
Born in
Lincoln
Lincoln most commonly refers to:
* Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865), the sixteenth president of the United States
* Lincoln, England, cathedral city and county town of Lincolnshire, England
* Lincoln, Nebraska, the capital of Nebraska, U.S.
* Lincol ...
,
Nebraska
Nebraska () is a state in the Midwestern region of the United States. It is bordered by South Dakota to the north; Iowa to the east and Missouri to the southeast, both across the Missouri River; Kansas to the south; Colorado to the southwe ...
, Eiseley lived his childhood with a hardworking father and deaf mother who may have suffered from
mental illness
A mental disorder, also referred to as a mental illness or psychiatric disorder, is a behavioral or mental pattern that causes significant distress or impairment of personal functioning. Such features may be persistent, relapsing and remitti ...
. Their home was located on the outskirts of town where, as author Naomi Brill writes, it was "removed from the people and the community from which they felt set apart through poverty and family misfortune."
[Brill, Naomi]
Loren Eiseley Society (LES)
/ref> His autobiography, ''All the Strange Hours'', begins with his "childhood experiences as a sickly afterthought, weighed down by the loveless union of his parents."[
His father, Clyde, was a hardware salesman who worked long hours for little pay, writes Brill. However, as an amateur ]Shakespearean
William Shakespeare ( 26 April 1564 – 23 April 1616) was an English playwright, poet and actor. He is widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's nation ...
actor, he was able to give his son a "love for beautiful language and writing." His mother, Daisey Corey, was a self-taught prairie artist who was considered a beautiful woman. She lost her hearing as a child and sometimes exhibited irrational and destructive behavior. This left Eiseley feeling distant from her and may have contributed to his parents' unhappy marriage.
Living at the edge of town, however, led to Eiseley's early interest in the natural world, to which he turned when being at home was too difficult. There, he would play in the caves and creek banks nearby.Minnesota State University
Minnesota State University, Mankato (MNSU, MSU, or Minnesota State) is a public university in Mankato, Minnesota, United States. It is Minnesota's second-largest university and has over 123,000 living alumni worldwide. Founded in 1868, it is t ...
br>EMuseum's Eiseley biography
(Internet Archive
The Internet Archive is an American digital library with the stated mission of "universal access to all knowledge". It provides free public access to collections of digitized materials, including websites, software applications/games, music, ...
of website defunct since 2011), Retrieved 2015-10-16 Fortunately, there were others who opened the door to a happier life. His half-brother, Leo, for instance, gave him a copy of ''Robinson Crusoe
''Robinson Crusoe'' () is a novel by Daniel Defoe, first published on 25 April 1719. The first edition credited the work's protagonist Robinson Crusoe as its author, leading many readers to believe he was a real person and the book a tra ...
'', with which he taught himself to read. Thereafter, he managed to find ways to get to the public library and became a voracious reader.[
Eiseley later attended the ]Lincoln Public Schools
Lincoln Public Schools was founded in 1923, and is the second largest public school district in the U.S. state of Nebraska, located in the heart of the Great Plains. The school district of over 40,000 students is home to more than 60 schools and p ...
; in high school, he wrote that he wanted to be a nature writer
Nature writing is nonfiction or fiction prose or poetry about the natural environment. Nature writing encompasses a wide variety of works, ranging from those that place primary emphasis on natural history facts (such as field guides) to those in ...
. He would later describe the lands around Lincoln as "flat and grass-covered and smiling so serenely up at the sun that they seemed forever youthful, untouched by mind or time—a sunlit, timeless prairie over which nothing passed but antelope or wandering bird."[ But, disturbed by his home situation and the illness and recent death of his father, he dropped out of school and worked at menial jobs.
Eiseley enrolled in the ]University of Nebraska
A university () is an institution of higher (or tertiary) education and research which awards academic degrees in several academic disciplines. Universities typically offer both undergraduate and postgraduate programs. In the United States, ...
, where he wrote for the newly formed journal, ''Prairie Schooner
''Prairie Schooner'' is a literary magazine published quarterly at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln with the cooperation of UNL's English Department and the University of Nebraska Press. It is based in Lincoln, Nebraska and was first publish ...
'', and went on archaeology
Archaeology or archeology is the scientific study of human activity through the recovery and analysis of material culture. The archaeological record consists of artifacts, architecture, biofacts or ecofacts, sites, and cultural landscap ...
digs for the school's natural history museum
A museum ( ; plural museums or, rarely, musea) is a building or institution that cares for and displays a collection of artifacts and other objects of artistic, cultural, historical, or scientific importance. Many public museums make these ...
, Morrill Hall Morrill Hall may refer to (all are buildings named for Justin Smith Morrill):
*Morrill Hall (Cornell University), the building at Cornell University
*Morrill Hall, a campus building located at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign
*Morri ...
.[ In 1927, however, he was diagnosed with ]tuberculosis
Tuberculosis (TB) is an infectious disease usually caused by '' Mycobacterium tuberculosis'' (MTB) bacteria. Tuberculosis generally affects the lungs, but it can also affect other parts of the body. Most infections show no symptoms, in ...
and left the university to move to the western desert
A desert is a barren area of landscape where little precipitation occurs and, consequently, living conditions are hostile for plant and animal life. The lack of vegetation exposes the unprotected surface of the ground to denudation. About on ...
, believing the drier air would improve his condition. While there, he soon became restless and unhappy, which led him to hoboing around the country by hopping on freight trains (as many did during the Great Depression
The Great Depression (19291939) was an economic shock that impacted most countries across the world. It was a period of economic depression that became evident after a major fall in stock prices in the United States. The economic contagio ...
).[Eiseley, Loren. ''All the Strange Hours'', (1975) Scribner] Professor of religion, Richard Wentz, writes about this period:
Loren Eiseley had been a drifter in his youth. From the plains of Nebraska he had wandered across the American West. Sometimes sickly, at other times testing his strength with that curious band of roving exiles who searched the land above the rippling railroad ties, he explored his soul as he sought to touch the distant past. He became a naturalist and a bone hunter because something about the landscape had linked his mind to the birth and death of life itself.[Wentz, Richard E.]
The American Spirituality of Loren Eiseley
''Christian Century'', April 25, 1984,
Academic career
Eiseley eventually returned to the University of Nebraska and received a B.A.
Bachelor of arts (BA or AB; from the Latin ', ', or ') is a bachelor's degree awarded for an undergraduate program in the arts, or, in some cases, other disciplines. A Bachelor of Arts degree course is generally completed in three or four yea ...
degree in English
English usually refers to:
* English language
* English people
English may also refer to:
Peoples, culture, and language
* ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England
** English national ide ...
and a B.S.
A Bachelor of Science (BS, BSc, SB, or ScB; from the Latin ') is a bachelor's degree awarded for programs that generally last three to five years.
The first university to admit a student to the degree of Bachelor of Science was the University ...
degree in Geology
Geology () is a branch of natural science concerned with Earth and other astronomical objects, the features or rocks of which it is composed, and the processes by which they change over time. Modern geology significantly overlaps all other Ear ...
/Anthropology
Anthropology is the scientific study of humanity, concerned with human behavior, human biology, cultures, societies, and linguistics, in both the present and past, including past human species. Social anthropology studies patterns of behavi ...
. While at the university, he served as editor of the literary magazine ''The Prairie Schooner'', and published his poetry and short stories. Undergraduate expeditions to western Nebraska and the southwest to hunt for fossils and human artifacts provided the inspiration for much of his early work. He later noted that he came to anthropology from paleontology, preferring to leave human burial sites undisturbed unless destruction threatened them.
Eiseley received his Ph.D.
A Doctor of Philosophy (PhD, Ph.D., or DPhil; Latin: or ') is the most common degree at the highest academic level awarded following a course of study. PhDs are awarded for programs across the whole breadth of academic fields. Because it is ...
degree from the University of Pennsylvania
The University of Pennsylvania (also known as Penn or UPenn) is a private research university in Philadelphia. It is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and is ranked among the highest-regarded universitie ...
in 1937 and wrote his dissertation entitled "Three Indices of Quaternary Time and Their Bearing Upon Pre-History: a Critique", which launched his academic career.[ He began teaching at the ]University of Kansas
The University of Kansas (KU) is a public research university with its main campus in Lawrence, Kansas, United States, and several satellite campuses, research and educational centers, medical centers, and classes across the state of Kansas. Tw ...
that same year. During World War II
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...
, Eiseley taught anatomy to reservist pre-med students at Kansas.
In 1944 he left the University of Kansas to assume the role of head of the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at Oberlin College
Oberlin College is a Private university, private Liberal arts colleges in the United States, liberal arts college and conservatory of music in Oberlin, Ohio. It is the oldest Mixed-sex education, coeducational liberal arts college in the United S ...
in Ohio
Ohio () is a state in the Midwestern region of the United States. Of the fifty U.S. states, it is the 34th-largest by area, and with a population of nearly 11.8 million, is the seventh-most populous and tenth-most densely populated. The sta ...
. In 1947 he returned to the University of Pennsylvania to head its anthropology department. He was elected president of the American Institute of Human Paleontology
Paleontology (), also spelled palaeontology or palæontology, is the scientific study of life that existed prior to, and sometimes including, the start of the Holocene epoch (roughly 11,700 years before present). It includes the study of fossi ...
in 1949. From 1959 to 1961, he was provost at the University of Pennsylvania, and in 1961 the University of Pennsylvania created a special interdisciplinary professorial chair for him.
Eiseley was also a fellow of many distinguished professional societies, including the American Association for the Advancement of Science
The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) is an American international non-profit organization with the stated goals of promoting cooperation among scientists, defending scientific freedom, encouraging scientific respons ...
, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
The American Academy of Arts and Sciences (abbreviation: AAA&S) is one of the oldest learned societies in the United States. It was founded in 1780 during the American Revolution by John Adams, John Hancock, James Bowdoin, Andrew Oliver, and ...
, the National Institute of Arts and Letters
The American Academy of Arts and Letters is a 300-member honor society whose goal is to "foster, assist, and sustain excellence" in American literature, music, and art. Its fixed number membership is elected for lifetime appointments. Its headqu ...
and the American Philosophical Society
The American Philosophical Society (APS), founded in 1743 in Philadelphia, is a scholarly organization that promotes knowledge in the sciences and humanities through research, professional meetings, publications, library resources, and communit ...
.[
At the time of his death in 1977, he was Benjamin Franklin Professor of Anthropology and History of Science, and the curator of the Early Man section at the ]University of Pennsylvania Museum
The University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology—commonly known as the Penn Museum—is an archaeology and anthropology museum at the University of Pennsylvania. It is located on Penn's campus in the University City neighb ...
.[University of Pennsylvania Almanac]
Loren Eiseley’s 100th Birthday Celebration at the Penn Museum
October 30, 2007 He had received thirty-six honorary degrees
An honorary degree is an academic degree for which a university (or other degree-awarding institution) has waived all of the usual requirements. It is also known by the Latin phrases ''honoris causa'' ("for the sake of the honour") or ''ad hono ...
over a period of twenty years, and was the most honored member of the University of Pennsylvania since Benjamin Franklin
Benjamin Franklin ( April 17, 1790) was an American polymath who was active as a writer, scientist, inventor, statesman, diplomat, printer, publisher, and political philosopher. Encyclopædia Britannica, Wood, 2021 Among the leading inte ...
. In 1976 he won the Bradford Washburn
Henry Bradford Washburn Jr. (June 7, 1910 – January 10, 2007) was an American explorer, mountaineer, photographer, and cartographer. He established the Boston Museum of Science, served as its director from 1939–1980, and from 1985 until his ...
Award of the Boston Museum of Science
The Museum of Science (MoS) is a science museum and indoor zoo in Boston, Massachusetts, located in Science Park, a plot of land spanning the Charles River. Along with over 700 interactive exhibits, the museum features a number of live presentat ...
for his "outstanding contribution to the public understanding of science" and the Joseph Wood Krutch
Joseph Wood Krutch (; November 25, 1893 – May 22, 1970) was an American author, critic, and naturalist who wrote nature books on the American Southwest. He is known for developing a pantheistic philosophy.
Biography
Born in Knoxville, Tenne ...
Medal from the Humane Society of the United States
The Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) is an American nonprofit organization that focuses on animal welfare and opposes animal-related cruelties of national scope. It uses strategies that are beyond the abilities of local organizations. ...
for his "significant contribution for the improvement of life and the environment in this country."[
]
Books
In addition to his scientific and academic work, Eiseley began in the mid-1940s to publish the essays which brought him to the attention of a wider audience. Anthropologist Pat Shipman writes,
the words that flowed from his pen ... the images and insights he revealed, the genius of the man as a writer, outweigh his social disability. The words were what kept him in various honored posts; the words were what caused the students to flock to his often aborted courses; the words were what earned him esteemed lectureships and prizes. His contemporaries failed to see the duality of the man, confusing the deep, wise voice of Eiseley's writings with his own personal voice. He was a natural fugitive, a fox at the wood's edge (in his own metaphor) ...[Shipman, Pat]
An Anthropologist With Bite
'New York Times'', August 19, 1990
Eiseley published works in a number of different genres including poetry, autobiography, history of science, biography, and nonfictional essays. In each piece of writing, he consistently used a poetic writing style. Eiseley's style mirrors what he called the concealed essay—a piece of writing that unites the personal dimension with more scientific thoughts.[Wisner, William. "The Perilous Self: Loren Eiseley And The Reticence Of Autobiography." Sewanee Review 113.1, 2005] His writing was unique in that it could convey complex ideas about human origin and the relationship between humans and the natural world to a nonscientific audience. Robert G. Franke describes Eiseley's essays as theatrical and dramatic. He also notes the influence his father's hobby as an amateur Shakespearean
William Shakespeare ( 26 April 1564 – 23 April 1616) was an English playwright, poet and actor. He is widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's nation ...
actor may have had on Eiseley's writing, pointing out that his essays often contain dramatic elements that are usually present in plays.[Franke, Robert. Journal of American Culture. "A Great Stage, A Great Play: The Theatrical And Tragic In Loren Eiseley's Essays.", 1995]
In describing Eiseley's writing, Richard Wentz wrote, "As the works of any naturalist might, Eiseley's essays and poems deal with the flora and fauna of North America
North America is a continent in the Northern Hemisphere and almost entirely within the Western Hemisphere. It is bordered to the north by the Arctic Ocean, to the east by the Atlantic Ocean, to the southeast by South America and the Car ...
. They probe the concept of evolution, which consumed so much of his scholarly attention, examining the bones and shards, the arrowpoints and buried treasures. Every scientific observation leads to reflection."
In an interview on National Public Radio
National Public Radio (NPR, stylized in all lowercase) is an American privately and state funded nonprofit media organization headquartered in Washington, D.C., with its NPR West headquarters in Culver City, California. It differs from other n ...
(NPR), author Michael Lind
Michael Lind (born April 23, 1962) is an American writer and academic. He has explained and defended the tradition of American democratic nationalism in a number of books, beginning with '' The Next American Nation'' (1995). He is currently a pro ...
said,
Before the rise of a self-conscious intelligentsia, most educated people – as well as the unlettered majority – spent most of their time in the countryside or, if they lived in cities, were a few blocks away from farmland or wilderness ... At the risk of sounding countercultural, I suspect that thinkers who live in sealed, air-conditioned boxes and work by artificial light (I am one) are as unnatural as apes in cages at zoos. Naturalists like Eiseley in that sense are the most normal human beings to be found among intellectuals, because they spend a lot of time outdoors and know the names of the plants and animals they see ... For all of his scientific erudition, Eiseley has a poetic, even cinematic, imagination.[Lind, Michael]
NPR radio interview
October 17, 2006
Purposes of his writings
Richard Wentz describes what he feels are the significance and purposes of Eiseley's writings:["For Loren Eiseley, writing itself becomes a form of contemplation. Contemplation is a kind of human activity in which the mind, spirit and body are directed in solitude toward some other. Scholars and critics have not yet taken the full measure of contemplation as an art that is related to the purpose of all scholarly activity – to see things as they really are ... Using narrative, parable and exposition, Eiseley has the uncanny ability to make us feel that we are accompanying him on a journey into the very heart of the universe. Whether he is explicating history or commenting on the ideas of a philosopher, a scientist or a theologian, he takes us with him on a personal visit."
However, because of Eiseley's intense and poetic writing style and his focus on nature and ]cosmology
Cosmology () is a branch of physics and metaphysics dealing with the nature of the universe. The term ''cosmology'' was first used in English in 1656 in Thomas Blount (lexicographer), Thomas Blount's ''Glossographia'', and in 1731 taken up in ...
, he was not accepted or understood by most of his colleagues. "You," a friend told him, "are a freak, you know. A God-damned freak, and life is never going to be easy for you. You like scholarship, but the scholars, some of them, anyhow, are not going to like you because you don't stay in the hole where God supposedly put you. You keep sticking your head out and looking around. In a university that's inadvisable."[
]
1950s
;''The Immense Journey'' (1957)
His first book, ''The Immense Journey'', was a collection of writings about the history of humanity, and it proved to be that rare science book that appealed to a mass audience. It has sold over a million copies and has been published in at least 16 languages.[ Besides being his first book, ''The Immense Journey'' was also Eiseley's most well known book and established him as a writer with the ability to combine science and humanity in a poetic way.] This book was originally published in 1946. Then, it was published again in 1957, a few years after the Piltdown Man
The Piltdown Man was a paleoanthropological fraud in which bone fragments were presented as the fossilised remains of a previously unknown early human. Although there were doubts about its authenticity virtually from the beginning, the remains ...
hoax discovery.
In the book Eiseley conveys his sense of wonder at the depth of time and the vastness of the universe. He uses his own experiences, reactions to the paleontological record, and wonderment at the world to address the topic of evolution. More specifically, the text concentrates on human evolution and human ignorance. In ''The Immense Journey'', Eiseley follows the journey from human ignorance at the beginning of life to his own wonderment about the future of mankind. Marston Bates
Marston Bates (July 23, 1906 – April 3, 1974) was an American zoologist and environmental author. Bates' studies on mosquitoes contributed to the understanding of the epidemiology of yellow fever in northern South America.
Born in Michigan, Ba ...
writes,
It seems to me ... that Eiseley is looking at man in a quite hard-headed fashion, because he is willing to sketch problems for which he has no present and sure solution. We are not going to find the answers in human evolution until we have framed the right questions, and the questions are difficult because they involve both body and mind, physique and culture—tools and symbols as well as cerebral configurations.[Bates, Marston. "Science", 1958]
Author Orville Prescott Orville Prescott (September 8, 1906, Cleveland, Ohio – April 28, 1996, New Canaan, Connecticut) was the main book reviewer for ''The New York Times'' for 24 years.
Born in Cleveland, Prescott graduated from Williams College in 1930. He began his ...
wrote,
Consider the case of Loren Eiseley, author of ''The Immense Journey'', who can sit on a mountain slope beside a prairie-dog town and imagine himself back in the dawn of the Age of mammals
The Cenozoic ( ; ) is Earth's current geological era, representing the last 66million years of Earth's history. It is characterised by the dominance of mammals, birds and flowering plants, a cooling and drying climate, and the current configura ...
eighty million years ago: 'There by a tree root I could almost make him out, that shabby little Paleocene
The Paleocene, ( ) or Palaeocene, is a geological epoch (geology), epoch that lasted from about 66 to 56 mya (unit), million years ago (mya). It is the first epoch of the Paleogene Period (geology), Period in the modern Cenozoic Era (geology), E ...
rat, eternal tramp and world wanderer, father of all mankind.' ... his prose is often lyrically beautiful, something that considerable reading in the works of anthropologists had not led me to expect. ... The subjects discussed here include the human ancestral tree, water and its significance to life, the mysteries of cellular life, 'the secret and remote abysses' of the sea, the riddle of why human beings alone among living creatures have brains capable of abstract thought and are far superior to their mere needs for survival, the reasons why Dr. Eiseley is convinced that there are no men or man-like animals on other planets, . ...
He offers an example of Eiseley's style: "There is no logical reason for the existence of a snowflake any more than there is for evolution. It is an apparition from that mysterious shadow world beyond nature, that final world which contains—if anything contains—the explanation of men and catfish and green leaves."[Prescott, Orville. "Books of the Times," ''The New York Times'', December 27, 1957]
;''Darwin's Century'' (1958)
This book's subtitle is, "Evolution and the Men Who Discovered It." Eiseley documented that animal variation, extinction, and a lengthy history of the earth were observed from the 1600s onward. Scientists groped towards a theory with increasingly detailed observations. They became aware that evolution had occurred without knowing how. Evolution was "in the air" and part of the intellectual discourse both before and after ''On the Origin of Species
''On the Origin of Species'' (or, more completely, ''On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life''),The book's full original title was ''On the Origin of Species by Me ...
'' was published. The publisher describes it thus:
At the heart of the account is Charles Darwin, but the story neither begins nor ends with him. Starting with the seventeenth-century notion of the Great Chain of Being
The great chain of being is a hierarchical structure of all matter and life, thought by medieval Christianity to have been decreed by God. The chain begins with God and descends through angels, humans, animals and plants to minerals.
The great ...
, Dr. Eiseley traces the achievements and discoveries of men in many fields of science who paved the way for Darwin; and the book concludes with an extensive discussion of the ways in which Darwin's work has been challenged, improved upon, and occasionally refuted during the past hundred years.
Persons whose contributions are discussed include Sir Thomas Browne, Sir Francis Bacon
Francis Bacon, 1st Viscount St Alban (; 22 January 1561 – 9 April 1626), also known as Lord Verulam, was an English philosopher and statesman who served as Attorney General and Lord Chancellor of England. Bacon led the advancement of both n ...
, Carl Linnaeus
Carl Linnaeus (; 23 May 1707 – 10 January 1778), also known after his ennoblement in 1761 as Carl von Linné Blunt (2004), p. 171. (), was a Swedish botanist, zoologist, taxonomist, and physician who formalised binomial nomenclature, the ...
, Benoît de Maillet
Benoît de Maillet (Saint-Mihiel, 12 April 1656 – Marseille, 30 January 1738) was a well-travelled French diplomat and natural historian. He was French consul general at Cairo, and overseer in the Levant. He formulated an evolutionary hypothesi ...
, the Comte de Buffon
Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon (; 7 September 1707 – 16 April 1788) was a French naturalist, mathematician, cosmologist, and encyclopédiste.
His works influenced the next two generations of naturalists, including two prominent F ...
, Erasmus Darwin, Louis Agassiz, Jean-Baptiste Lamarck
Jean-Baptiste Pierre Antoine de Monet, chevalier de Lamarck (1 August 1744 – 18 December 1829), often known simply as Lamarck (; ), was a French naturalist, biologist, academic, and soldier. He was an early proponent of the idea that biologi ...
, James Hutton
James Hutton (; 3 June O.S.172614 June 1726 New Style. – 26 March 1797) was a Scottish geologist, agriculturalist, chemical manufacturer, naturalist and physician. Often referred to as the father of modern geology, he played a key role i ...
, William Smith, Georges Cuvier
Jean Léopold Nicolas Frédéric, Baron Cuvier (; 23 August 1769 – 13 May 1832), known as Georges Cuvier, was a French natural history, naturalist and zoology, zoologist, sometimes referred to as the "founding father of paleontology". Cuvier ...
, Étienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire
Étienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire (15 April 177219 June 1844) was a French naturalist who established the principle of "unity of composition". He was a colleague of Jean-Baptiste Lamarck and expanded and defended Lamarck's evolutionary theories ...
, Sir Charles Lyell
Sir Charles Lyell, 1st Baronet, (14 November 1797 – 22 February 1875) was a Scottish geologist who demonstrated the power of known natural causes in explaining the earth's history. He is best known as the author of ''Principles of Geolo ...
, Thomas Robert Malthus
Thomas Robert Malthus (; 13/14 February 1766 – 29 December 1834) was an English cleric, scholar and influential economist in the fields of political economy and demography.
In his 1798 book '' An Essay on the Principle of Population'', Mal ...
, William Wells, Patrick Matthew
Patrick Matthew (20 October 1790 – 8 June 1874) was a Scottish grain merchant, fruit farmer, forester, and landowner, who contributed to the understanding of horticulture, silviculture, and agriculture in general, with a focus on maintaining t ...
, Karl von Baer
Karl Ernst Ritter von Baer Edler von Huthorn ( – ) was a Baltic German scientist and explorer. Baer was a naturalist, biologist, geologist, meteorologist, geographer, and is considered a, or the, founding father of embryology. He was a m ...
, Robert Chambers, Thomas Henry Huxley
Thomas Henry Huxley (4 May 1825 – 29 June 1895) was an English biologist and anthropologist specialising in comparative anatomy. He has become known as "Darwin's Bulldog" for his advocacy of Charles Darwin's theory of evolution.
The stori ...
, Sir John Richardson, Alexander Humboldt
Friedrich Wilhelm Heinrich Alexander von Humboldt (14 September 17696 May 1859) was a German polymath, geographer, naturalist, explorer, and proponent of Romantic philosophy and science. He was the younger brother of the Prussian minister ...
, Gregor Mendel
Gregor Johann Mendel, Augustinians, OSA (; cs, Řehoř Jan Mendel; 20 July 1822 – 6 January 1884) was a biologist, meteorologist, mathematician, Augustinians, Augustinian friar and abbot of St Thomas's Abbey, Brno, St. Thomas' Abbey in Br ...
, Hugo De Vries
Hugo Marie de Vries () (16 February 1848 – 21 May 1935) was a Dutch botanist and one of the first geneticists. He is known chiefly for suggesting the concept of genes, rediscovering the laws of heredity in the 1890s while apparently unaware o ...
, W. L. Johannsen, Lambert Quételet, and Alfred Russel Wallace
Alfred Russel Wallace (8 January 1823 – 7 November 1913) was a British naturalist, explorer, geographer, anthropologist, biologist and illustrator. He is best known for independently conceiving the theory of evolution through natural se ...
. Critics discussed include Fleeming Jenkin
Henry Charles Fleeming Jenkin FRS FRSE LLD (; 25 March 1833 – 12 June 1885) was Regius Professor of Engineering at the University of Edinburgh, remarkable for his versatility. Known to the world as the inventor of the cable car or telphera ...
, A.W. Bennett, Lord Kelvin
William Thomson, 1st Baron Kelvin, (26 June 182417 December 1907) was a British mathematician, Mathematical physics, mathematical physicist and engineer born in Belfast. Professor of Natural Philosophy (Glasgow), Professor of Natural Philoso ...
, and Adam Sedgwick, both a mentor and a critic.
According to naturalist author Mary Ellen Pitts, in the "seminal" ''Darwin's Century'', Eiseley was studying the history of evolutionary thinking, and he came to see that "as a result of scientific studies, nature has become externalized, particularized, mechanized, separated from the human and fragmented, reduced to conflict without consideration of cooperation, confined to reductionist and positivist study." The results for humankind, "as part of the ' biota' – Eiseley's concern as a writer – are far reaching." In the book, his unique impact as a thinker and a literary figure emerges as he reexamines science and the way man understands science. She concludes that, for Eiseley, "Nature emerges as a metonym
Metonymy () is a figure of speech in which a concept is referred to by the name of something closely associated with that thing or concept.
Etymology
The words ''metonymy'' and ''metonym'' come from grc, μετωνυμία, 'a change of name' ...
for a view of the physical world, of the 'biota,' and of humankind that must be reexamined if life is to survive."[Pitts, Mary Ellen. ''Toward a Dialogue of Understandings: Loren Eiseley and the Critique of Science'', Lehigh University Press (1995)]
In his conclusion, Eiseley quotes Darwin: "If we choose to let conjecture run wild, then animals, our fellow brethren in pain, disease, suffering and famine—our slaves in the most laborious works, our companions in our amusements—they may partake of our origin in one common ancestor—we may be all melted together." Eiseley adds, "If he had never conceived of natural selection, if he had never written the ''Origin,'' it would still stand as a statement of almost clairvoyant perception."
The book won the Phi Beta Kappa prize for best book in science in 1958.
1960s
;''The Firmament of Time'' (1960
Read excerpts online
In discussing ''The Firmament of Time'', Professor of Zoology Leslie Dunn wrote, "How can man of 1960, burdened with the knowledge of the world external to him, and with the consciousness that scientific knowledge is attained through continually interfering with nature, 'bear his part' and gain the hope and confidence to live in the new world to which natural science has given birth? ... The answer comes in the eloquent, moving central essay of his new book."[Dunn, Leslie C. "Natural Law and Science," ''The New York Times'', August 7, 1960] ''The New Yorker'' wrote, "Dr. Eiseley describes with zest and admiration the giant steps that have led man, in a scant three hundred years, to grasp the nature of his extraordinary past and to substitute a natural world for a world of divine creation and intervention ... An irresistible inducement to partake of the almost forgotten excitements of reflection." A review in the ''Chicago Tribune'' added, "his book
His or HIS may refer to:
Computing
* Hightech Information System, a Hong Kong graphics card company
* Honeywell Information Systems
* Hybrid intelligent system
* Microsoft Host Integration Server
Education
* Hangzhou International School, in ...
has a warm feeling for all natural phenomena; it has a rapport with man and his world and his problems; ... it has hope and belief. And it has the beauty of prose that characterizes Eiseley's philosophical moods."
''The Firmament of Time'' was awarded the 1961 John Burroughs Medal for the best publication in the field of Nature Writing.
;''The Unexpected Universe'' (1969
Read excerpts online
Poet W.H. Auden
Wystan Hugh Auden (; 21 February 1907 – 29 September 1973) was a British-American poet. Auden's poetry was noted for its stylistic and technical achievement, its engagement with politics, morals, love, and religion, and its variety in ...
wrote, "The main theme of ''The Unexpected Universe'' is Man as the Quest Hero, the wanderer, the voyager, the seeker after adventure, knowledge, power, meaning, and righteousness."[Auden, W.]
Introduction to ''The Star Thrower''
/ref> He quotes from the book:
Every time we walk along a beach some ancient urge disturbs us so that we find ourselves shedding shoes and garments or scavenging among seaweed and whitened timbers like the homesick refugees of a long war ... Mostly the animals understand their roles, but man, by comparison, seems troubled by a message that, it is often said, he cannot quite remember or has gotten wrong ... Bereft of instinct, he must search continually for meanings ... Man was a reader before he became a writer, a reader of what Coleridge
Samuel Taylor Coleridge (; 21 October 177225 July 1834) was an English poet, literary critic, philosopher, and theologian who, with his friend William Wordsworth, was a founder of the Romantic Movement in England and a member of the Lake ...
once called the mighty alphabet of the universe.
Evolutionary biologist Theodosius Dobzhansky
Theodosius Grigorievich Dobzhansky (russian: Феодо́сий Григо́рьевич Добржа́нский; uk, Теодо́сій Григо́рович Добржа́нський; January 25, 1900 – December 18, 1975) was a prominent ...
described Dr. Eiseley as
1970s
;''The Invisible Pyramid (1971
Read excerpts online
Gregory McNamee of Amazon.com writes, "In 1910 young Loren Eiseley watched the passage of Halley's Comet
Halley's Comet or Comet Halley, officially designated 1P/Halley, is a short-period comet visible from Earth every 75–79 years. Halley is the only known short-period comet that is regularly visible to the naked eye from Earth, and thus the o ...
with his father. The boy who became a famous naturalist was never again to see the spectacle except in his imagination. That childhood event contributed to the profound sense of time and space that marks ''The Invisible Pyramid''. This collection of essays, first published shortly after Americans landed on the moon, explores inner and outer space, the vastness of the cosmos, and the limits of what can be known. Bringing poetic insight to scientific discipline, Eiseley makes connections between civilizations past and present, multiple universes, humankind, and nature.
Eiseley took the occasion of the lunar landing to consider how far humans had to go in understanding their own small corner of the universe, their home planet, much less what he called the 'cosmic prison' of space. Likening humans to the microscopic phagocytes that dwell within our bodies, he grumpily remarks, 'We know only a little more extended reality than the hypothetical creature below us. Above us may lie realms it is beyond our power to grasp.' Science, he suggests, would be better put to examining that which lies immediately before us, although he allows that the quest to explore space is so firmly rooted in Western technological culture that it was unlikely to be abandoned simply because of his urging. Eiseley's opinion continues to be influential among certain environmentalists, and these graceful essays show why that should be so.
Book excerpt:
Man would not be man if his dreams did not exceed his grasp. ... Like John Donne
John Donne ( ; 22 January 1572 – 31 March 1631) was an English poet, scholar, soldier and secretary born into a recusant family, who later became a clergy, cleric in the Church of England. Under royal patronage, he was made Dean of St Paul's ...
, man lies in a close prison, yet it is dear to him. Like Donne's, his thoughts at times overleap the sun and pace beyond the body. If I term humanity a slime mold
Slime mold or slime mould is an informal name given to several kinds of unrelated eukaryotic organisms with a life cycle that includes a free-living single-celled stage and the formation of spores. Spores are often produced in macroscopic mul ...
organism it is because our present environment suggest it. If I remember the sunflower forest it is because from its hidden reaches man arose. The green world is his sacred center. In moments of sanity he must still seek refuge there. ... If I dream by contrast of the eventual drift of the star voyagers through the dilated time of the universe, it is because I have seen thistle
Thistle is the common name of a group of flowering plants characterised by leaves with sharp prickles on the margins, mostly in the family Asteraceae. Prickles can also occur all over the planton the stem and on the flat parts of the leaves ...
down off to new worlds and am at heart a voyager who, in this modern time, still yearns for the lost country of his birth.
;''The Night Country (1971
Read excerpts online
Kirkus Reviews
''Kirkus Reviews'' (or ''Kirkus Media'') is an American book review magazine founded in 1933 by Virginia Kirkus (1893–1980). The magazine is headquartered in New York City. ''Kirkus Reviews'' confers the annual Kirkus Prize to authors of fic ...
wrote,
In a published essay, University of Pennsylvania alumnus Carl Hoffman wrote,
An old man who had done almost all of his writing late, late at night, was speaking to a younger man who liked to read in those same dark hours. In a chapter entitled 'One Night's Dying,' Eiseley said to me: 'It is thus that one day and the next are welded together, and that one night's dying becomes tomorrow's birth. I, who do not sleep, can tell you this.' Today, well into my fifties, in the midst of a lifetime of almost compulsive reading, I still regard ''The Night Country'' as my all-time favorite book.
;''All the Strange Hours: The Excavation of a Life'' (1975
Read excerpts online
"In ''All the Strange Hours''," states Amazon.com,
Eiseley turns his considerable powers of reflection and discovery on his own life to weave a compelling story, related with the modesty, grace, and keen eye for a telling anecdote that distinguish his work. His story begins with his childhood experiences as a sickly afterthought, weighed down by the loveless union of his parents. From there he traces the odyssey that led to his search for early postglacial man—and into inspiriting philosophical territory—culminating in his uneasy achievement of world renown. Eiseley crafts an absorbing self-portrait of a man who has thought deeply about his place in society as well as humanity's place in the natural world.
;''The Star Thrower'' (1978)
His friend and science fiction author Ray Bradbury
Ray Douglas Bradbury (; August 22, 1920June 5, 2012) was an American author and screenwriter. One of the most celebrated 20th-century American writers, he worked in a variety of modes, including fantasy, science fiction, horror, mystery, and r ...
wrote, "The book will be read and cherished in the year 2001. It will go to the Moon and Mars with future generations. Loren Eiseley's work changed my life." And from the ''Philadelphia Sunday Bulletin'': "An astonishing breadth of knowledge, infinite capacity for wonder and compassionate interest for everyone and everything in the universe.
;''Darwin and the Mysterious Mr. X'' (1979)
''Darwin and the Mysterious Mr. X'' attempts to solve a mystery: " Samuel Butler, a master of acrimonious polemic, confronted Charles Darwin
Charles Robert Darwin ( ; 12 February 1809 – 19 April 1882) was an English naturalist, geologist, and biologist, widely known for his contributions to evolutionary biology. His proposition that all species of life have descended fr ...
with the sorest of all scientific subjects—a dispute about priority. In ''Evolution
Evolution is change in the heritable characteristics of biological populations over successive generations. These characteristics are the expressions of genes, which are passed on from parent to offspring during reproduction. Variation ...
Old and New'' (1879), Butler accused Darwin of slighting the evolutionary speculations of Buffon, Lamarck
Jean-Baptiste Pierre Antoine de Monet, chevalier de Lamarck (1 August 1744 – 18 December 1829), often known simply as Lamarck (; ), was a French naturalist, biologist, academic, and soldier. He was an early proponent of the idea that biolo ...
, and his own grandfather, Erasmus Darwin." The Kirkus Reviews
''Kirkus Reviews'' (or ''Kirkus Media'') is an American book review magazine founded in 1933 by Virginia Kirkus (1893–1980). The magazine is headquartered in New York City. ''Kirkus Reviews'' confers the annual Kirkus Prize to authors of fic ...
calls it, "... an essay devoted to resurrecting the name and importance of Edward Blyth, a 19th-century naturalist. Eiseley credits Blyth with the development of the idea, and even the coining of the words "natural selection
Natural selection is the differential survival and reproduction of individuals due to differences in phenotype. It is a key mechanism of evolution, the change in the heritable traits characteristic of a population over generations. Charle ...
," which Darwin absorbed and enlarged upon ... ndsome thoughts on Darwin's ''The Descent of Man
''The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex'' is a book by English naturalist Charles Darwin, first published in 1871, which applies evolutionary theory to human evolution, and details his theory of sexual selection, a form of biol ...
''; and a concluding speculation on the meaning of evolution. The last piece is very much Eiseley's poetic from-whence-do-we come/whither-do-we-go vein." Many experts on Darwin such as Stephen Jay Gould
Stephen Jay Gould (; September 10, 1941 – May 20, 2002) was an American paleontologist, evolutionary biologist, and historian of science. He was one of the most influential and widely read authors of popular science of his generation. Gould sp ...
disagreed with Eiseley. Michael Ruse, a philosopher of science, even stated "If a work like this was handed into me for a course. I would give it a failing grade." Howard Gruber wrote that "Eiseley was wrong on every count, both in the broad picture he painted of the Darwin‐Blyth relationship and in the minutiae he scratched up to support his claims."
Posthumous
;''The Lost Notebooks of Loren Eiseley'' (1987
Read excerpts online
Just before his death Eiseley asked his wife to destroy the personal notebooks which he had kept since 1953. However, she compromised by disassembling them so they couldn't be used. Later, after great effort, his good friend Kenneth Heuer managed to reassemble most of his notebooks into readable form. ''The Lost Notebooks of Loren Eiseley'' includes a variety of Eiseley's writings including childhood stories, sketches while he was a vagabond, old family pictures, unpublished poems, portions of unfinished novels, and letters to and from literary admirers like W.H. Auden
Wystan Hugh Auden (; 21 February 1907 – 29 September 1973) was a British-American poet. Auden's poetry was noted for its stylistic and technical achievement, its engagement with politics, morals, love, and religion, and its variety in ...
, Howard Nemerov
Howard Nemerov (March 1, 1920 – July 5, 1991) was an American poet. He was twice Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress, from 1963 to 1964 and again from 1988 to 1990. For ''The Collected Poems of Howard Nemerov'' (1977) ...
, Lewis Mumford
Lewis Mumford (October 19, 1895 – January 26, 1990) was an American historian, sociologist, philosopher of technology, and literary critic. Particularly noted for his study of cities and urban architecture, he had a broad career as a wr ...
and Ray Bradbury
Ray Douglas Bradbury (; August 22, 1920June 5, 2012) was an American author and screenwriter. One of the most celebrated 20th-century American writers, he worked in a variety of modes, including fantasy, science fiction, horror, mystery, and r ...
.
In a review of the book, author Robert Finch writes, "Like Melville, Eiseley thought of himself, and by extension all mankind, as 'an orphan, a wood child, a changeling
A changeling, also historically referred to as an auf or oaf, is a human-like creature found in folklore throughout Europe. A changeling was believed to be a fairy that had been left in place of a human (typically a child) stolen by other fairi ...
,' a cosmic outcast born into a world that afforded him no true home." He adds that his "distinctive gift as a writer was to take powerfully formative personal influences of family and place and fuse them with his intellectual meditations on universal topics such as evolution, human consciousness and the weight of time. ... he found metaphors that released a powerful view of man's fate in the modern world." As Kenneth Heuer writes, "there are countless examples of Eiseley's empathy with life in all its forms, and particularly with its lost outcasts ... the love that transcends the boundaries of species was the highest spiritual expression he knew.[Finch, Robert. ''New York Times'', September 20, 1987]
Finch adds, "We are grateful for a life and a sensibility that would be welcome in any age, but never more so than in our increasingly depersonalized world. ... he made a generation of readers 'see the world through his eyes.' In an undated passage, circa 1959, Eiseley wrote, 'Man is alone in the universe ... Only in the act of love, in rare and hidden communion with nature, does man escape himself.'" ''The Lost Notebooks'' contains numerous examples of his "creative and sympathetic imagination, even when that creation takes place in the solitude of journals never meant for public eyes."[
From other reviews: "Eiseley has rightly been called 'the modern ]Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau (July 12, 1817May 6, 1862) was an American naturalist, essayist, poet, and philosopher. A leading transcendentalist, he is best known for his book ''Walden'', a reflection upon simple living in natural surroundings, and hi ...
.'" –''Publishers Weekly;'' " nextensive and enlightening glimpses ... into the intellectual and emotional workshop of one of the most original and influential American essayists of this century." –''New York Times Book Review;'' "Eiseley's great genius for the art of the word coupled with a poetic insight into the connection between science and humanism shines through in page after page ... This is a book that will be read and quoted and whose pages will grow thin with wear from hands in continued search of new meaning within its words and images." –''Los Angeles Times;'' "it will enhance any dedicated reader's knowledge of this most remarkable literary naturalist ... They provide more than a glimpse into Eiseley's mind and imagination." –''The Bloomsbury Review;'' "It is a joy, like finding a lost Rembrandt in the attic, to discover that Eiseley left behind a legacy." –''San Francisco Examiner-Chronicle.''
Philosophical significance
Religion
Richard Wentz, professor of religious studies, noted that ''The Christian Century'' magazine called attention to a study of Loren Eiseley by saying: "The religious chord did not sound in him, but he vibrated to many of the concerns historically related to religion." Wentz adds, "Although Eiseley may not have considered his writing as an expression of American spiritually, one feels that he was quite mindful of its religious character. As an heir of Emerson and Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau (July 12, 1817May 6, 1862) was an American naturalist, essayist, poet, and philosopher. A leading transcendentalist, he is best known for his book ''Walden'', a reflection upon simple living in natural surroundings, and hi ...
, he is at home among the poets and philosopher
A philosopher is a person who practices or investigates philosophy. The term ''philosopher'' comes from the grc, φιλόσοφος, , translit=philosophos, meaning 'lover of wisdom'. The coining of the term has been attributed to the Greek th ...
s and among those scientists whose observations also were a form of contemplation of the universe."
But Wentz considered the inherent contradictions in the statements: "We do not really know what to do with religiousness when it expresses itself outside those enclosures which historians and social scientists have carefully labeled religions. What, after all, does it mean to say, "the religious chord does not sound in someone," but that the person vibrates to the concerns historically related to religion? If the person vibrates to such concerns, the chord is religious whether or not it manages to resound in the temples and prayer houses of the devout."[
Wentz quotes Eiseley, from ''All the Strange Hours'' and ''The Star Thrower'', to indicate that he was, in fact, a religious thinker:
Wentz encompasses such quotes in his partial conclusion:
]He was indeed a scientist – a bone hunter, he called himself. Archaeologist
Archaeology or archeology is the scientific study of human activity through the recovery and analysis of material culture. The archaeological record consists of artifacts, architecture, biofacts or ecofacts, sites, and cultural landscap ...
, anthropologist
An anthropologist is a person engaged in the practice of anthropology. Anthropology is the study of aspects of humans within past and present societies. Social anthropology, cultural anthropology and philosophical anthropology study the norms and ...
and naturalist, he devoted a great deal of time and reflection to the detective work of scientific observation. However, if we are to take seriously his essays, we cannot ignore the evidence of his constant meditation on matters of ultimate order and meaning.[ Science writer Connie Barlow says Eiseley wrote eloquent books from a perspective that today would be called ]Religious Naturalism
Religious naturalism combines a naturalist worldview with ideals, perceptions, traditions, and values that have been traditionally associated with many religions or religious institutions. "Religious naturalism is a perspective that finds religi ...
.
Evolution
Wentz writes, "Loren Eiseley is very much in the tradition of Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau (July 12, 1817May 6, 1862) was an American naturalist, essayist, poet, and philosopher. A leading Transcendentalism, transcendentalist, he is best known for his book ''Walden'', a reflection upon simple living in natural su ...
. He takes the circumstances of whatever "business" he is about as the occasion for new questioning, new searching for some sign, some glimpse into the meaning of the unknown that confronts him at every center of existence." He quotes Eiseley from ''The Star Thrower'', "We are, in actuality, students of that greater order known as nature. It is into nature that man vanishes."[
In comparing Eiseley with Thoreau, he discusses clear similarities in their life and philosophies. He notes that Eiseley was, like Thoreau, a 'spiritual wanderer through the deserts of the modern world.' However, notes Wentz, "Thoreau had left the seclusion of ]Walden Pond
Walden Pond is a pond in Concord, Massachusetts, in the United States. A famous example of a kettle hole, it was formed by retreating glaciers 10,000–12,000 years ago. The pond is protected as part of Walden Pond State Reservation, a state pa ...
in order to pace the fields of history, sorting out the artifacts that people had dropped along the way." But "it was those 'fossil thoughts' and 'mindprints' that Eiseley himself explored in his wanderings. These explorations gave depth, a tragic dimension and catharsis to what he called the 'one great drama that concerns us most, the supreme mystery, man.'"[
Eiseley's writing often includes his belief that mankind does not have enough evidence to determine exactly how humans came to be. In ''The Immense Journey'', he writes, "... many lines of seeming relatives, rather than merely one, lead to man. It is as though we stood at the heart of a maze and no longer remembered how we had come there." According to Wentz, Eiseley realized that there is nothing below a certain depth that can truly be explained, and quotes Eiseley as saying that there is "nothing to explain the necessity of life, nothing to explain the hunger of the elements to become life. ... " and that "the human version of evolutionary events sperhaps too simplistic for belief."][
]
Science and progress
Eiseley talked about the illusions of science in his book, ''The Firmament of Time'':
A scientist writing around the turn of the century remarked that all of the past generations of men have lived and died in a world of illusion. The unconscious irony in his observation consists in the fact that this man assumed the progress of science to have been so great that a clear vision of the world without illusion was, by his own time, possible. It is needless to add that he wrote before Einstein ... at a time when Mendel was just about to be rediscovered, and before the advances in the study of radioactivity ...
Wentz noted Eiseley's belief that science may have become misguided in its goals: "Loren Eiseley thought that much of the modern scientific enterprise had removed humanity ever farther from its sense of responsibility to the natural world it had left in order to create an artificial world to satisfy its own insatiable appetites." Interpreting Eiseley's messages, he adds, "It would be well, he tells us, to heed the message of the Buddha
Siddhartha Gautama, most commonly referred to as the Buddha, was a śramaṇa, wandering ascetic and religious teacher who lived in South Asia during the 6th or 5th century BCE and founded Buddhism.
According to Buddhist tradition, he was ...
, who knew that 'one cannot proceed upon the path of human transcendence until one has made interiorly in one's soul a road into the future.' Spaces within stretch as far as those without."[
]
Purpose for mankind
"In essay after essay," writes Wentz, "he writes as a magus
Magi (; singular magus ; from Latin '' magus'', cf. fa, مغ ) were priests in Zoroastrianism and the earlier religions of the western Iranians. The earliest known use of the word ''magi'' is in the trilingual inscription written by Darius th ...
, a spiritual master or a shaman
Shamanism is a religious practice that involves a practitioner (shaman) interacting with what they believe to be a spirit world through altered states of consciousness, such as trance. The goal of this is usually to direct spirits or spiritu ...
who has seen into the very heart of the universe and shares his healing vision with those who live in a world of feeble sight. We must learn to see again, he tells us; we must rediscover the true center of the self in the otherness of nature."[
]
Death and burial
Loren Eiseley died July 9, 1977, of cardiac arrest following surgery at the University of Pennsylvania Hospital. He was buried in West Laurel Hill Cemetery
West Laurel Hill Cemetery is a historic rural cemetery located in Bala Cynwyd, Pennsylvania. It was founded in 1869, is 200 acres in size and contains the burials of many notable people. It is affiliated with Laurel Hill Cemetery in neighboring P ...
in Bala Cynwyd, Pennsylvania
Bala Cynwyd ( ) is a community in Lower Merion Township, Pennsylvania. It is located on the Philadelphia Main Line in Southeastern Pennsylvania, bordering the western edge of Philadelphia at U.S. Route 1 (City Avenue). It was originally two sep ...
. Eiseley's wife, Mabel Langdon Eiseley, died July 27, 1986, and is buried next to him, in the Westlawn section of the cemetery, in Lot 366. The inscription on their headstone reads, "We loved the earth but could not stay", which is a line from his poem ''The Little Treasures''.
A library in the Lincoln City Libraries public library system is named after Eiseley.
Loren Eiseley was awarded the Distinguished Nebraskan Award and inducted into the Nebraska Hall of Fame. A bust of him resides in the Nebraska State Capitol
The Nebraska State Capitol is the seat of government for the U.S. state of Nebraska and is located in downtown Lincoln. Designed by New York architect Bertram Grosvenor Goodhue in 1920, it was constructed of Indiana limestone from 1922 to 19 ...
.
Legacy
In summarizing some of Eiseley's contributions, the editor of ''The Bloomsbury Review'' wrote,
There can be no question that Loren Eiseley maintains a place of eminence among nature writers. His extended explorations of human life and mind, set against the backdrop of our own and other universes are like those to be found in every book of nature writing
Nature writing is nonfiction or fiction prose or poetry about the natural environment. Nature writing encompasses a wide variety of works, ranging from those that place primary emphasis on natural history facts (such as field guides) to those in w ...
currently available ... We now routinely expect our nature writers to leap across the chasm between science, natural history, and poetry with grace and ease. Eiseley made the leap at a time when science was science, and literature was, well, literature ... His writing delivered science to nonscientists in the lyrical language of earthly metaphor, irony, simile, and narrative, all paced like a good mystery.
On October 25, 2007, the Governor of Nebraska, Dave Heineman
David Eugene Heineman (born May 12, 1948) is an American politician who served as the 39th governor of Nebraska from 2005 to 2015. A member of the Republican Party, he previously was the 39th treasurer of Nebraska from 1995 to 2001 and 37th li ...
, officially declared that year "The Centennial Year of Loren Eiseley." In a written proclamation, he encouraged all Nebraskans
to read Loren Eisely's writings and to appreciate in those writings the richness and beauty of his language, his ability to depict the long, slow passage of time and the meaning of the past in the present, his portrayal of the relationships among all living things and his concern for the future.[Heineman, Dave, Governor of Nebraska]
Proclamation: "Centennial Year of Loren Eiseley
October 25, 2007
Bibliography
;Major works
*''Charles Darwin'', (1956) W.H. Freeman
*''The Immense Journey'' (1957) Vintage Books, Random House
*''Darwin's Century'' (1958) Doubleday
*''The Firmament of Time'' (1960) Atheneum
*''The Man Who Saw Through Time'' (1973) Scribner
*''The Mind as Nature'' (1962) Harper and Row
*''Man, Time, and Prophecy'', (1966) Harcourt, Brace & World
*''The Unexpected Universe'' (1969) Harcourt, Brace and World
*''The Invisible Pyramid: A Naturalist Analyses the Rocket Century'' (1971) Devin-Adair Pub.
*''The Night Country: Reflections of a Bone-Hunting Man'' (1971) Scribner
*'' The Star Thrower'' (1978) Times Books, Random House
''Darwin and the Mysterious Mr. X: New Light on the Evolutionists''
(1979) E.P. Dutton
*''The Lost Notebooks of Loren Eiseley'', Kenneth Heuer editor, (1987) Little Brown & Co.
*''How Flowers Changed the World'', with photographs by Gerald Ackerman. (1996) Random House
;Anthology
*''Loren Eiseley: Collected Essays on Evolution, Nature, and the Cosmos'' (boxed set in 2 volumes) – edited by William Cronon
William Cronon (born September 11, 1954 in New Haven, Connecticut) is an environmental historian and the Frederick Jackson Turner and Vilas Research Professor of History, Geography, and Environmental Studies at the University of Wisconsin–Madi ...
Contains ''The Immense Journey'', ''The Firmament of Time'', ''The Unexpected Universe'', ''The Invisible Pyramid'', ''The Night Country'', essays from ''The Star Thrower'', and uncollected prose (2016) Library of America.
;Memoirs
*''All The Strange Hours: The Excavation of a Life'' (1975) Scribner
*''The Brown Wasps: A Collection of Three Essays in Autobiography'' (1969) Perishable Press, Mount Horeb, WI
;Poetry
*''Notes of an Alchemist'' (1972) Scribner, McMillan
*''The Innocent Assassins'' (1973) Scribner
*''Another Kind of Autumn'' (1977) Scribner
*''All The Night Wings'' (1978) Times Books
See also
* American philosophy
*List of American philosophers
This is a list of American philosophers; of philosophers who are either from, or spent many productive years of their lives in the United States.
{, border="0" style="margin:auto;" class="toccolours"
, -
! {{MediaWiki:Toc
, -
, style="text-al ...
* Ian McHarg
Notes
References
*Angyal, Andrew J., ''Loren Eiseley'' (Boston, MA: G. K. Hall & Co., 1983).
*Christianson, Gale E.
''Fox at the Wood's Edge: A Biography of Loren Eiseley.''
H. Holt Brown, 1990, University of Nebraska Press 2000 reissue:
* Eiseley, Loren, ''Darwin's Century: Evolution and the Men Who Discovered It'' (New York: Anchor Books, Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1961),
*Gerber, Leslie E. and Margaret McFadden, ''Loren Eiseley'' (New York: Frederick Ungar Publishing Co., 1983).
External links
Loren Eiseley's Nebraska: A Story Map
An essay exploring Eiseley's memoir ''All The Strange Hours: The Excavation of a Life''.
Searching for Loren Eiseley: An Attempt at Reconstruction from a Few Fragments
Loren Eiseley and the Nebraska Federal Writers' Project.
Archival collections relating to Loren Eiseley.
Biography-West Laurel Hill Cemetery web site
City21 Movie – Perspectives on Shaping the 21st Century City
Includes footage of Loren Eiseley
* Excerpt fro
Artifacts and Illuminations: Critical Essays on Loren Eiseley
edited and with an introduction by Tom Lynch and Susan N. Maher
{{DEFAULTSORT:Eiseley, Loren C.
1907 births
1977 deaths
20th-century American archaeologists
20th-century American educators
20th-century American essayists
20th-century American male writers
20th-century American philosophers
20th-century American poets
20th-century American anthropologists
20th-century biographers
20th-century memoirists
20th-century naturalists
American anthropology writers
American archaeologists
American autobiographers
American biographers
American cultural critics
American environmentalists
American historians
American memoirists
American naturalists
American nature writers
American male essayists
American male non-fiction writers
American male poets
American science writers
Burials at West Laurel Hill Cemetery
Charles Darwin biographers
Deaths from cancer in Pennsylvania
Deaths from pancreatic cancer
Environmental philosophers
Environmental writers
Fellows of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
Historians of science
John Burroughs Medal recipients
Paleoanthropologists
Philosophers of culture
Philosophers of religion
Philosophers of science
Philosophers of social science
Philosophy writers
Poets from Nebraska
Religious naturalists
Science activists
Science communicators
Social critics
Social philosophers
Theorists on Western civilization
University of Nebraska–Lincoln alumni
University of Pennsylvania alumni
University of Pennsylvania faculty
Writers about religion and science
Writers from Lincoln, Nebraska
Members of the American Academy of Arts and Letters
Federal Writers' Project people