Activity 1.2 Two Main Turning Point Events for Environmental Science Rachel Carson | American Experience Silent Sprint

 

Rachel Carson | American Experience

 

      1. Point of View

I believe that this video’s point of view is from years down, the road where people, closer to modern times, have begun or already have acknowledged that Rachel Carson’s views were revolutionary. That she, despite everything against her and the odds, wanted to get the facts out there to warn people.

 

      1. Purpose

To show how the American people were shook to their core over a book titled “Silent Spring” by author Rachel Carson. To show the importance of environmental contamination and how miss treated Carson was for her attempts to warn the public. That she was ahead of her time. It shows how DDT was treated almost as though it were a miracle drug when in reality it was damaging the environment. It showed that while the evidence was there, she was the one bold enough to share it with the public.

 

 

      1. Questions at Issue

The problem presented in this video is that scientists at that time believed that we were controlling nature versus Rachel felt that we needed to maintain the balance of nature in order for mans survival. These scientists felt that our own ingenuity would triumph over nature. With her what they believed were radical views on nature they labeled her a communist, hysterical, and female luddite.

 

      1. Information

-1962 at the height of the Cold War is when Rachel Carson’s book “Silent Spring” was published

-She conducted mainly through letters

-She was a writer by inclination

-Carson was a Biologist

-She was employed at the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service

-She lived in Silver Spring not far from where research was going on for the Patuxent Research Refuge

-The research refuge was researching a synthetic pesticide known as “DDT”

-DDT was first synthesized back in the 19th century

-In 1939 a Swiss chemist named Paul Muller discovered it was a potent insecticide

-DDT effected the nervous system and coordination of insects

-They now believe farmers at the time were essentially using homicidal poison to get rid of these insects

-The chemical was not obviously toxic to people

-They sent DDT to troops in an effort to combat insect borne diseases such as Typhus

-In Naples Italy they dusted down residents with DDT in order to prevent the spread of diseases

-More than a million people were dusted with DDT in Italy

-They saturated entire islands with the chemical

-More soldiers had been sidelined by malaria than by gunshot wounds

-DDT was considered a miracle substance that saved hundreds of thousands lives

-The middle of 1944 TIME magazine had stated that DDT was “one of the greatest scientific discoveries of World War II”

-Reader’s Digest did not want Carson’s article warning the public

 

      1. Interpretation and Inference

(Explain the video’s conclusions and solutions.)

The video ultimately ends with no real solution. Her book was published but no magazines wanted to accept her work to get it pushed out to the public.

6.      Concepts

- “Anxiety about the future was leavened by an abiding faith in the power of science to secure our safety and prosperity”

- “Whereas the modern chemist, the modern biologist, the modern scientist believes that man is steadily controlling nature.”

-her books was seen as a “irresponsible breach of scientific objectivity”

 

      1. Assumptions

It’s assumed that no other scientist or person of science did anything to try and get information out to the public that DDT might not be the best thing for us. It could have been a circumstance much like Carson’s where no one would publish it. Hence why we have not heard anything from anyone about it.

      1. Consequences

We see the consequences all around us today. Society has learned that they can silence scientist if they don’t stand to make money off of the research or agree with it. It can also be manipulated or influenced by bigger fish so to speak. We see our environment wasting away in front of us but yet we are so overly saturated with information that the severity of these situations does not shine as brightly. It can also go in the other direction where we are fear mongered but information that has some truth but doesn’t hold the severity that they are presenting that it has. To this day we still do not listen to scientist if we do not personally know them, agree with them, or trust them. If any ounce of information is later rescinded, as is normal in science as the information changes so does the information put out, it is seen as a whole as a farce.



Rachel Carson Microscope

Nixon, R. (2020, July 23). Rachel Carson's prescience. The Chronicle of Higher Education. Retrieved September 6, 2022, from https://www.chronicle.com/article/rachel-carsons-prescience/


AmericanExperience. (2017, January 17). Chapter 1 | Rachel Carson | American experience | PBS. YouTube. Retrieved September 6, 2022, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SeJNRaE11A0&ab_channel=AmericanExperience%7CPBS

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