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FUNCTION
The WHOLE EARTH CATALOG functions as an evaluation and access
where and how to do the getting.
An item is listed in the CATALOG if it is deemed:
2) 3) High quality or low cost,
1) Useful as a tool,
4) Easily available by mail.
Relevant to independent education,
With it, the user should know better what is worth getting and
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We are as gods and might as well get good at it.
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So far remotely done
power and glory——as via government, big business, formal education, church——has succeeded to the point where gross defects obscure actual In response to this dilemma and to these gains a realm of intimate, personal power is developing——power of the individual to conduct his own education, find his own inspiration, shape his own environment, and share his adventure with whoever is interested. process are sought and promoted by the WHOLE EARTH CATALOG.
gains.
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All rights reserved under Pan-American and International copyright conventions.
Secohd Printing - July 1970 - 60,000 Third Printing - Sept. 1970 - 15,000
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The Cover
The photograph, courtesy Lick Observatory, shows the M-31 Andromeda galaxy, which is considered similar to our own in structure and size. Where the thought balloons originate approximates the position of Earth in this galaxy. The question-mark exclamation-mark sequence is borrowed with thanks from Robert Crumb. “We live one life...” is from p. 464 of the extraordinary Collected Poems of Kenneth Patchen, 7967, 504 pp. $3.95 from New Directions, J. B. Lippincott Co.,
East Washington Square, Philadelphia, PA 19105. The cover was designed with Peter Bailey, San Francisco.
Why haven’t we seen a photograph of our whole galaxy yet?
Th 1S 1 ssue of the CATALOG is not complete. Innumerable items that we still esteem (and still stock, if they're available from us) were left out to make room for new material. We will not attempt another comprehensive CATALOG until the final one, Spring 1977.
This CATALOG is 16 pages larger and a dollar cheaper than the last one. We lowered the price because Richard Brautigan suggested it, because we can afford it now, and because inflation is no way to live.
The shifting, whispering staff, at last census, was:
Production Store
Stewart Brand editor : J.D. Smith manager ; Mary McCabe Hal Hershey layout } Lois Brand bookkeeper : Peter Ratner Cappy McClure composer : Diana Shugart research ? Jerry Fihn Lloyd Kahn editor : Laura Besserman ordering } Leslie Acoca Fred Richardson photographer : Les Rosen bookkeeper } Mary Jo Morra Steamboat layout : John Clark mail order ? Bernie Sproch
Ellen Hershey sundry George de Alth subscriptions +: Megan Raymond Sarah Kahn editor + Russell Bass subscriptions : Pam Smith
Preparation of the CATALOG was done on an IBM Selectric Composer and Polaroid MP-3 camera. Printing by Nowels Publications, Menlo Park.
The WHOLE EARTH CATALOG is published at Portola Institute, 558 Santa Cruz Avenue, Menlo Park, California 94025 on the following schedule:
Fall CATALOG — November SpringCATALOG May $1 Catalog — January $1 Catalog — July $1 Catalog —March $1 Catalog
counter
mail order mail order subscriptions mail order sundry sundry
lunch
— September 1
i 5 4 sad
CONTENTS
Whole Systems 4 Shelter and Land Use Industry and Craft
Communications 62 Community 82 Nomadics 102 Learning 120
INDEX
* = new item
* AAA Adding Machine Company 74 * ABC of Reading 81 ACTING 69, 133 Adhesive Products 47 ADOBE 27 Adobe Construction Methods 27 Advance Electrical Sales, Inc. (tapes) 41 * Advertising Graphics 78 Age of Discontinuity 16 AGRICULTURE 7, 11, 31-34, 36, 37, 39, 61, 86, 96, 100, 130, 131 Agricultural Publications and Services 36 * An Agricultural Testament 33 * Aikido and the Dynamic Sphere 135 Airborne Sales 55 AIRPLANES 116, 118, 119 * Air Travel Bargains 118 Aladdin Kerosene Lamps 35 Alasco Rubber & Plastics Corp. 41 * Alaska Sleeping BagCo. 106 * Alaskan Mill . 25 Alicraft Tool & Supply 43 Allied Data Handbook 76 Allied Electronics for Everyone 76 Allied Industrial Electronics 76 Allied Radio 76 Altered States of Consciousness 137 * An Alternative Future for Americal! 87 * Alternatives Directories 88 ; American Booksellers Association 79 American Boys Handy Book 125 Ameriean Cinematographer 68 American Cinematographer Manual 68 * American Indian Medicine 93 AMERICAN INDIANS 51, 93, 98, 102, 125, 137 * America’s Knitting Book 49 * American Plywood Association 25 * Animal Species and Evolution 10 ANTHROPOLOGY 11-13, 19, 31, 35, 63, 65, 81, 93, 98, 132, oo * Applied World Saving 7 ARCHITECTURE 4, 18-20, 22, 24-30, 39, 51, 56, 75, 130, 140 * Architecture: A Book of Projects for Young Adults 130 Architectural Design 29 Architectural Graphic Standards 29 Architectural Research on Structural Potential of Foam Plastics for Housing in Underdeveloped Areas 40 * Arcology: The City in the Image of Man 19 Armchair Shopper's Guide 96 Arno Adhesive Tapes, Inc. 41 Arrowhead Mills, Inc. 82 ART 8, 19, 43, 46, 50, 62-65, 78, 81, 124 Art and Illusion 62 * The Art of Blacksmithing 45 * Art of Organ-Building 51 Artist's Handbook of Materials and Techniques 50 Arts & Crafts 43 Ashley Thermostatic Wood Burning Circulator 38 ASTRONOMY 5, 13, 16, 58, 115, 125, 128, 130 * The Attractive Universe 130 Audel Guides 24, 52 *® Audio Cyclopedia 77 * Auto Engines and Electrical Systems 113 AUTO REPAIR 112, 113 * Avon Inflatable Boat 114
Barbour 197
* Basic Electricity 77
* Basic Electronics 77
* Basic Graphics 66
* Basic Mathematics for Electronics 77
* BD—4 Homebuilt Airplane 116 L.L. Bean 104
*® Be Expert with Map and Compass 117 Behrend’s Book 68
* Bibliography of Basic Survival 119
* A Bicycle Page For You 111 BICYCLES 111
* Bill Boatman & Co. 99 Birth Control Handbook 92 Black's 107 BLACKSMITHING 45 Blackwell's Books, England 79 ® Boatbuilding 115 BOATS 114, 115, 119 Boffing Equipment 97 Book of Survival 119 44, 78, 79, 124 Bookmak ing BOOKS 78- 100, 128 * Bottle Cutter 97 BRAIN 67, 132, 134-38 *® Brains, Machines and Mathematics 67 *® Breaking and Training the Stock Horse Brent Potter's Wheel 46 Brookstone Tools 54 * Buchla Synthesizer 70 Building a Log House 24 Building Maintenance 24 BUILDING MATERIALS 26-28, 39-41, 43, 51, 53, 56, 115, 130 * Build-it-yourself Science Laboratory 128 BUSINESS EQUIPMENT 39, 53, 57, 74 BUYING CHEAP 36, 39, 54-56, 79, 94, 95, 100, 105, 115, 116, 118 *® Byways in Handweaving 48
* Cadco Plastics 53 H. A. Calahan, Inc. (paints) 41 Camp and Trail Outfitters 106 * Campbell Tools 55 CAMPING 24, 25, 35,84, 102-108, 110, 125 CAMPING EQUIPMENT 35, 82, 93, 104-107, 117, 119 Camping and Woodcraft 102 * Card Weaving Cards 48 CARPENTRY 22-25, 27, 42-44 * Carpentry and Building 24 * Cascades 74 CASTING 43, 47 * Catalog for Learning Things 130 Caulking Compounds 4 CeCoCo 39 * Cement Mason’s Manual for Residential Construction 23 * Centering 136 * Ceramics: Potter's Handbook 46 * Ceramic Supplies 47 CHAIN SAW 25 *® Chain Saw Parts 25 * Challenge for Survival 7 Champagne Living on a Beer Budget 94 *® Character of Physical Law 13 * Charts 114 CHEAP TRAVEL 118 CHEMISTRY 33, 52, 57, 99, 128, 129, 134 CHILDBIRTH 92, 120 Childcraft 120 * Childlife 120 CHILDREN 42, 92, 93, 120-125 *Children’s Games in Street and Playground 124 Chow Belt 82 Classic Guitar Construction 70 *Clay and Glazes for the Potter 46 Clearinghouse for Federal Scientific and Technical Information 59 *Climate Near the Ground 39 *Colonial Craftsmen 44 *®Colonial Living 44 *Commonsense Childbirth 92 COMMUNE 18, 19, 35, 39, 83, 86, 88, 89, 98, 104, 110, 126 Community Playthings 120 The Complete Walker 102 * Composition of Foods 84 * Composting 37 Concrete 41 Concrete Boatbuilding, Its Technique and Its Future 24 Concrete Improvements for Farm and Ranch 23 * Concise Guide to Library Research 128 Constantine's Wood Catalog 43 * Construction Bargaineer 39 Consumer Reports 95
COOKING 82-85, 102, 108 Cope Plastics 41 Corona Hand Mill 82 SCHOOLS 131 Cosmic View COSMOS 4, 6. 12-14, 16, 64, 65, 125, 128, 130 Craft and Hobby Book Service 51 * Craftool 44 *® Craftsman Wood Service 43 CRAFT SUPPLIES 43, 44, 46-49 Creative Playthings 120 *® Critical Path Method 75 Cuisenaire Rods 122 *® Culture is Our Business 81 * Cultivator’s Handbook of Marijuana 31 CUM Yarn Samples 49 *Current Contents 52 CYBERNETICS 4, 10, 12, 15, 63, 66, 67,
D Dear Dr. Hippocrates 90 DEATH 12, 16,89, 91, 119, 121, 132, 133, 137, 139 Deeds Design Associates (foam) 40 Defender Industries 115 * Del TradingPost 51 James L. Denier Co. (aluminum fittings) 41 * Desert Plants and People DESIGN 4, 15, 19, 20, 29, 30, 51, 56, 58, 60, 61, 64, 66, 75, 78, 79, 124, 130 Design and Control of Concrete Mixtures 23 Design of Design 61 * Design and Planning2 75 * Diderot Pictorial Encyclopedia of Trades and Industry 51 Direct Use of the Sun’s Energy 61 * Directory of Accredited Private Home Study Schools 131 Directory of Free Schools 88 * Directory for Personal Growth 88 ® Directory of Social Change 88 DOGS 99, 108, 125 * Do-It-Yourself Encyclopedia 24 * Domebook One 18 Dome Cookbook 29 DOMES 4, 15, 18-22, 29, 30, 40, 41, 98, 106, 130 * Domestic Water Supply and Sewage Disposal Guide 24 Douglas & Sturgess (foam) 40 DRAWING 43, 62, 68, 78 * Dream 67 DRUGS 31,34 134, 135 *Drugs from AtoZ: A Dictionary 134 Duo Fast California (staples) 41 DYEING 49,50 Dye Plants and Dyeing 49 21
Dyna Domes
Earth 5, 11, 13, 31, 64,80, 89, 125, 128 Earth Flag 89 Earth from Moon 5 Earth Photographs from Gemini Hl, IV and V Earth Photographs from Gemini VI through 5 Earth Poster 5 *Earth Times 8 * Eastern Mountain Sports, Inc. 106 ECOLOGY 6-11, 31-33, 37, 38, 61, 82, 89, 97, 111, 117, 118, 125, 130 ECONOMICS 4, 6-9, 17, 44, 74, 81, 87, 94 Ecotactics 9 Eddie Bauer 105 Edmund Scientific 129 * Education of Vision 64 Educator's Guide to Free Films 127 EduVision 120 Elastic Boat Paints 41 * Electrical Code for One- and Two-Family Dwellings 24 * Electric Guitar Amplifier Handbook 71 * Electric Motors 52 ELECTRICITY 23, 24, 38, 52, 77, 129, 135 ELECTRONIC MUSIC 70 ELECTRONICS 53, 70, 71, 76, 77, 112, 135 Elementary Science Study 129 * Elements of Radio 77 / EI Molino Mills 82 Emergency Medical Guide 91 Encyclopedia of Organic Gardening 32 * Encyclopedia of U.S. Government Benefits 101 ENGINEERING 4, 15, 18, 20, 26, 29, 30, 39, 57, 58, 77, 113, 115, 128, 130 * Engineer's Iilustrated Thesaurus 56 Envirom Environment 31 * Environmental Handbook 9 Erewhon Trading Company 82 * Estrin Potter’sWheels 46 EVOLUTION 4, 10-13, 15-17, 61, 64 * Evolution and Culture 10 * Excreta Disposal for Rural Areas and Small Explorers Trademart Log 117
Fair Radio SalesCo. 76
* Fannie Farmer Cookbook 83 Federal Domestic Assistance 100 FERRO-CEMENT 23, 24, 27, 41 Ferro Fiberglass Corp. 40 Fiberglass 40 Fieldbook for Boys and Men 125 FILM 7, 68, 69, 127 FIREWORKS 99, 125
121 , 53, 71, 85, 93, 97, 121,
* AFirst Abacus 122 *® First Steps in Winemaking 85 FISHING 27, 84, 104, 107, 109, 114, 125 * Fleming Bottle and JugCutter 97 Flexifirm Products 41 Flintkote Company (foam) 40 FLYING 116, 118, 119 FOAM 40 Foam Experiments 40 Foam Information 40 *® Folk Medicine 93 Follow Through Project 124 FOOD 7, 32-34, 36, 82-85, 105-107, 130 The Food Mill 82 Foods by Mail 82 Food Shopping Guide 82 FORMULAS 52, 57,99, 128, 129, 134 * The Foundation Directory 101 * Foundations of Modern Art 63 * Fountain of Light 86 * Foxfire 45 * Friends 71 * Frontier Living 44 Frostline Outdoor Equipment 104 Full Earth 5 FULLER, R. Buckminster 4, 18, 20 FullerSun Dome 18 FUND RAISING 87, 101, 143 FUTURE *; 6-9, 12, 16, 17, 19, 31, 38, 61, 64, 87,
98, 131,
Futurist 7 Futuro 21 Gaco Western, Inc. (sealants) 41 GAMES 4, 74,97, 111, 123, 125, 135 Geodesics 20 GEOGRAPHY 4, 11, 19; 31, 58, 61, 98, 117 GEOMETRY 4, 13, 15, 18, 20, 28-30, 60, 64, 72, 73, 75, 124 Gestalt Therapy Verbatim 133 GLASS 28,50 Glass Plastics Marine 40 *® Glénans Sailing Manual 115 * Golden Handbooks 125 * B. F. Goodrich Chemical Co. 41 Gourmet Cooking for Free 84 Government Printing Office 100 Government Product-News 53 Government Publications 100 Graphic Work of M.C. Escher 73 GRAPHICS 29, 42, 43, 50, 62, 66, 78, 79 * Gravely Tractor 34 Green Revolution 86 * Grow Your Own 33 G.R. T.L.Co. (Plastics) 41 Guinness Book of World Records 131 Guide Book for Rural Cottage and Small and Medium Scale Industries 39 * Guide to Filmmaking 69 *® Guide to Fresh and Salt Water Fishing 125 * Guide to the 1968 National Electrical Code 24 Guinness Book of World Records 131
GUITAR 70,71
Hallucinogens 134 * Hallwag Star Map 5 * Handbook for the Alaskan Prospector 108 Handbook for Building Homes of Earth 27 Handbook of Chemistry and Physics 57 Handbook of Mathematical Functions 75 * Handbook of Stitches 49 * Handbook of Structure 30 * Hand Woodworking Tools 42 Heathkit 76 * Henley’s 52 Herter’s 106 *® High Fidelity Systems 77 HISTORY 11, 17, 19, 31, 44, 63, 65, 117, 124, 130 HITCH HIKING 118 * Hitchhiker’s Handbook 118 * Holubar 106 * Home Appliance Servicing 52 * Home Brewing Without Failures 85 * Home Canning of Fruits and Vegetables 84 * Home Freezing of Fruits and Vegetables 84 * Home Tanning and Leather Making Guide 109 HONG KONG 95 Horses 110 * Horses, Hitches and Rocky Trails 110 HOT SPRINGS 38, 117 House Carpentry Simplified 23 How Children Learn 120 How Many? 122 * How to Build Speaker Enclosures 70 * How to Build aStill 85 How to Grow Vegetables and Fruits by the Organic Method 32 How to Have a Green Thumb Without an Aching Back 32 * How to Improve Your Cycling 111 * How to Keep Your Volkswagen Alive 113 How to Live on Nothing 94 * How to Live With Your Special Child 121 * How to Parent 120 * How to Solve It 131 * How to Travel Without Being Rich 118 * How to Work With Tools and Wood 42 * Hubble Atlas of Galaxies 5 * Hughes Co. (instrument kits) 70 * Humanitas Curriculum 122 Humanitas Systems 135 Human Use of the Earth 11
Ideas and Integrities 4 | Know aPlace 124 * illustrated Method for Flute 71
a 75, 138 “ | 4
*The Image 63
impoverished Student’s Book of Cookery, Drinkery, and Housekeepery 83
* in and Out the Garbage Pail 133
* Indecks Information Retrieval System 74 Indian Tipi 35 Index to 16mm Educational Films 127 INFLATABLE STRUCTURES 28, 30 Information 66 Initial Teaching Alphabet 122 Intelligent Life in the Universe 64
* Internal Factors in Evolution 10
* Introduction to Caving 109
* Introduction to Cybernetics 66 Introduction to Engineering Design 60
* Israel Army Physical Fitness Book 97
JEWELRY 43, 44, 47 *TheJob 1
Joy of Cooking 83 * Jug and Bottle Cutter 97 * Justice Without Trial 88
Kaiser Aluminum News 127 Kama Sutra Oil 97 Karry-Kit 82 Kelty Packs 107 KEROSENE LAMP 35 *Kilns 46 KITCHEN EQUIPMENT 82, 84 KITS 44, 46, 76, 85, 104, 116, 129, 130 * Klepper Folding Boat 114 * Klopfenstein Potter’s Wheel 46 * Knight's Modern Seamanship 115 KNITTING 49 * Knowing Your Trees 31 * Koehler Method of Dog Training 99
LABORATORY EQUIPMENT 53, 57, 74, 76, 85, 90, 128, 129, 134 * Laboratory Supplies Co. 53 Lafayette Radio Electronics 76 LAND USE 7, 19, 31, 34, 36, 37, 61, 86, 87, 98, 117 LANGUAGE 64, 65, 78, 123, 135 Lawsof Form 14 Lee Electric Flour Mills 82 LETTERING 43, 66, 78 LIBRARY 36, 51,52, 57, 59, 79, 80, 88, 98, 100, 101, 128, 129, 131, 136 *Liferaft Earth 7 LIFE Science Library 128 Life Support Technology, Inc. 119 Light Weight ets Equipment and How to Make lt 104 * Listening Incorporated 70 LITERATURE 8,80, 81, 139 The Lives of Children 121 LOG HOUSE 24, 25 Looking and Seeing 124 *® Love and Will 133 LOVEMAKING 6,92,97 Low-Cost Wood Homes for Rural America— Construction Manual Lucis Trust Library 136
MACHINERY 39, 45, 52-57, 60, 76, 109, 116, 130 * The Machinery of the-Brain 67 Machinery’s Handbook 57 Macramé, The Art of Creative Knotting 49 MAIL ORDER SHOPPING 40, 41, 43, 53-55 76, 79, 80, 82, 95, 96, 104-107, 112, 114, 115, 116, 120, 129, 131 *Mankind 2000 17 Man-Made Fiber Producers Association 41 * Man-Made Object 64 Man‘s Presumptuous Brain 136 Man’s Role in Changing the Face of the Earth 31 Manual of Simple Burial 89 * Manual of Ski Mountaineering 103 MAPS 5, 13, 36, 72, 73, 75, 114, 116-118, 125 Marine & Construction Products (Rubber) 41 MASONRY 22, 24, 130 * Masons and Builders Guide 24 * Master Mechanics Mfg. 55 Mathematical Models 72 Mathematical Snapshots 72 MATHEMATICS 4, 14, 20, 30, 57, 72, 73, 75, 77, 122, 128, 131 Mathematics, Its Content, Methods and Meaning 73 * Matheson Scientific 53 MEDIA 68, 69, 78, 79, 81, 127, 135 Media and Methods 127 MEDICINE 13, 16, 34, 53, 9093, 97, 119-121, 133, 134, 136, 137 MEDITATION 14, 15, 87, 98, 103, 136-138 Meditation Cushions and Mats 136 * Meditation in Action 136 * Megavitamin Therapy 134 Membranes 41 Merck Index 90 Merck Manual 90 Metal Techniques for Craftsmen 47 * Michelin Maps and Guides 118 * Mildred Hatch Loan Library 82 Miracle Adhesive Corp (Tapes) 41 Mobay Chemical Co. (Foam) 40 Modern Plastics
Modern Plastics Encyclopedia 26 %* Modern Reading 122 Modern Utopian 86 *® Module Proportion Symmetry Rhythm 64 Moog Synthesizer * Morgan's Tarot 65 * Mother Earth News 86 MOTORCYCLES 113 * Motorcycle Troubleshooting Guide 113 * Motor CycleWorld 113 Motor’s Truck Repair Manual 112 Motor Trend Basic Auto Repair Manual 112 Mountaineering: The Freedom of the Hills 103 * Movement Speakers Bureau 80 W. E. Mushet Co. (foam) 40 MUSIC 70,71 MUSIC INSTRUMENTS 51, 70,71 * Music Synthesizers 70 MYTH 12, 16, 19, 65, 81, 132, 139
* National Camera, Inc. 54 National Electrical Code 1968 24 National Fisherman 27 The Natural Way to Draw 62 * Nature and Art of Motion 64 * Nature and Man’s Fate 10 * Netcraft Fishing Tackle 114 New Age Natural Foods 82 * New England Divers 109 *® The New Gravity 13 * New Key to Weaving 48 New Mathematics Dictionary and Handbook 73 New Schools Exchange 126 New Scientist 58 New Sources of Energy 38 Nine Chains to the Moon 4 No More Secondhand God 4 NOSTALGIA 25, 35, 44, 45, 51, 74, 86, 93, 102, 107, 110, 124, 125
Observer's Handbook 5 *Ocaté Sleeping Bag 104 *O'’Dome 21 Olin Plastics (foam) 40 Olson Electronics 76 *Omen 8 *On Death and Dying 89 On Free Money 101 On Growth and Form 15 * Open Classroom 127 Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth 4 * Order inSpace 30 ORGANIC GARDENING 31-34, 36, 37, 83, 84 Organic Gardening and Farming 32 ORGANIZATION 4,9, 12, 15, 60, 61, 63, 64, 66, 75, 88, 89, 98, 126, 127 Ornyte Fiberglass Panels 41 Owner-Built Home 22
* Pacifica Potter's Wheel 46 *Palley’s Supply Co. 56 * Paprikas Weiss Gourmet Shop 84 * Parable of the Beast 11 PARAPSYCHOLOGY 16, 64, 65, 67, 78, 86, 132, 134, 136-139 PARTS 25, 53-56, 68, 77, 111-113, 116, 129 * Paxton Lumber 43 * Penn State Correspondence School 131 Perma-Pak 82 * The Peter serge 88 PHI ag ged 4,7,8, 12, 14, 15, 33, 65, 72, 73, 87, PHYSICS. yy 13, 57-59, 77, 128, 129 * Piaget and Knowledge: Theoretical Foundations 123 *PIC Design Corp. 53 Pioneer Posters 124 *Planecraft 42 Plans and the Structure of Behavior 138 *Plants and Gardens 34 *Plants and Man 130 PLASTIC 26, 40, 41, 50, 53 Plasticraft, Inc. (plastics) 41 * Plastics as an Art Form 50 * Plastics for Architects and Builders 26 PLUMBING 23, 24, 37, 96 * Pole, Paddle and Portage 114
POLITICS 4, 6-12, 14, 16, 17, 31, 80, 81, 86-89,
119, 135, 139 Poptent 107 Popular Science 59 POPULATION 6-11, 17, 31,92 The Population Bomb 6 Population, Evolution, and Birth Control 10 * Population, Resources, Environment 6 * A Potter's Book 46 *®Potter’s Wheels 46 Pottery 46 POTTERY MAKING 43, 46, 47 Practical Handbook of Plumbing and Heating 23 Practical Western Training 110 PRECISION TOOLS 52-54 Pregnancy, Childbirth and the Newborn, A Manual for Rural Midwives 92 Harold A. Price & Co., Inc. (sealants) 41 * Procion Fiber Reactive Dyes 48 Product Engineering 58 * Professional Guide’s Manual 108 Protective Treatments, Inc. (tapes) 41 *® Psychological Exercises 132 PSYCHOLOGY 67, 88, 89, 93, 121-123, 132-134, 136, 137 * Psychology of the Child 123 * Psychology Today: An'tIntroduction 132 * Psychophysics Labs 135
* Putney Synthesizer 70
*Pyrotechnics 99
Quantity Recipes 83
RADIO 76, 77 * The Reader's Adviser 80 Recreational Equipment, Inc. 105 RELIGION 5,8, 11, 12, 14, 16, 65, 136-139 * Resources and Man * Rise of the West 11 Rohm & Haas Co. (Plastics) 41 Rolling Stone 71 Rural Industry 39
*Saga Technical Associates 24 Sanitation and Health 37 * Sanitation Manual for Isolated Regions 37 Sauna: The Finnish Bath 93 * The Savage Mind 132 Savcote of California (paints) 41 SCHEDULING 60, 61, 75 SCHOOL MATERIALS 18, 21, 42-44, 46, 70, 74, 76, 83, 97, 98, 100, 101, 120, 122, 124, 127-130, 134 SCHOOLS 88, 98, 120, 121, 126, 127, 131 Abe Schuster Fiberglass 41 SCIENCE 4-7, 10-13, 15, 53, 57-59, 80, 117, 128-130 *Science Books 80 Science Magazine 59 Science Materials Catalog 129 Scientific American 58 Scientific American Offprints 129 *SCR Manual 77 SCUBA 1 * Sculpture in Plastics 50 Sealants 41 Sears 41,96 Security Parachute Co. 41 Seeds and Trees by Mail 36 700 Science Experiments for Everyone 129 SEWING 48 * Shelter and Society 19 * Ship Captain’s Medical Guide 91 * The Sierra Club Wilderness Handbook 103 Sierra Designs 105 SILK SCREEN 50 Silvo Hardware 54 * Simple Working Models of Historic Machines 130 Simplified Carpentry Estimating 23 SkiHut 105 * Skills for Taming the Wilds 108 Skin and Scuba Diving 109 Skylights 41 * Sky Observer’s Guide 125 SLEEPING BAG 104, 105 * Small Parts, Inc. 54 Smilie Company 106 Snugli Baby Carrier 93 SOCIAL CHANGE 8, 12, 13, 16, 19, 71, 80, 86, 88, 89, 98, 101, 119, 121, 126, 133, 135 *So Human an Animal 13 Soil-Cement—Its Use in Building 27 * Soil Conservation Service—USDA 34 Soil Test Kit 33 SOLAR ENERGY 38, 61, 107, 129 Solar Stills 38 Soldner Potter’s Wheel 46 *Sole-Saver 118 SOUND EQUIPMENT 51, 70, 71, 77 * Sourcebook on the Space Sciences 128 * Soybean Cookbook 83 * So You'd Like to Buy an Airplane 116 * Space Enclosure Systems 30 Space Grid Structures 20 * Spanish Mustang Horse 110 SPEAKERS 71,80 * Sportsman's Trading Posts of America, Inc. 115 Standard Products Co. (Neoprene gaskets) 41 Star Maker Start Your Own School 126 Star Maker 16 * Starrett Book for Student Machinists 57 * Start Your Own School 126 , * Step-by-Step Jewelry 42 Step-by-Step Macramé 42 *® Step-by-Step Printmaking 42 * Step-by-Step Weaving 42 Step toMan 12 Stick and Rudder 116 Stokes Molded Products (hinges) 41 * Stone Shelters 22 * Stoneware and Porcelain 46 * The Story of Language 65 STOVES 38, 104-107 * Strategy & Tactics 74 * The Stress of Life 16 *Structural Design in Architecture 20 *Structure in Art and in Science 64 The Subversive Science 7 *Successful Sewing 49 * Successful Wine Making at Home 85 *Superior Bulk Film 68 Supply and Demand 74 SURPLUS 39, 54-56, 68, 74, 76, 100, 115 Surplus Center Equipment Catalogs 54 Surplus Defense Supply 100 SURVIVAL 82, 84, 91, 93, 102, 103, 107, 108, 114, 117, 119 . Survival Book 119 * Survival Evasion and Escape 119 Sweet's Files 28 *Synergy 98 Syntercrete Corporation 41
*® Take One * The Tao of Science 15 Tao Teh King 14 * TAP (fiberglass tapes) 41 Tapes 41 Teaching as a Subversive Activity 126 The Teachings of Don Juan 137 Technicians of the Sacred 65 * Technique of Stained Glass 50 * Technology and Change 61 Teg’s 1994 Tektronix 76 Tensile Structures 28 TENT 35, 106 THEATER 69 Thermal Springs of the United States and other Countries of the World 117 *Things Maps Don’t Tell Us 13 This Magazine is About Schools 126 Thomas Register of American Manufacturers 57 *Thought Forms 78 *Threads in Action 49 3m Company 41 *Three Pillars of Zen 136 *Tie and Dye 50 *Timelock 4 TIP! 35 TOOL CATALOGS 339, 43, 53-56, 68, 76, 84, 96, 107, 112, 115, 116, 129, 130 *Tools and Rules for Precision Measuring 52 *Towards a Poor Theater 69 TOYS 43, 44, 76,99, 120, 122, 125 TRACTOR 34 Trade-a-Plane 116 Transparent Products Corp (Mylar) 41 Travaco Laboratories (paints) 41 TRAVEL 16,95, 117-119, 134 Traveler's Directory 118 Traditional Country Craftsmen 45 Tri-Wall Containers, Inc. (Laminite cardboard) * Two Factor Theory 87
* Understanding Foundations 101 * Underwater Prospecting Techniques 109 * Underwater Work 109 Unexpected Universe 12 Unistrut Unity Buying Service 95 Untitled Epic of Industrialization 4 * Up the Organization Used Plane Buying Guide 116 * U.S. Divers 109 U.S. General Supply Corp 55 U.S. G.S. Topographic Maps 117 U.S. GOVERNMENT STUFF 34, 36, 53, 59, 100, 101, 116, 117, 119 * U.S. Plywood Corp. 41 *® Utopia or Oblivion 4
4
* Valtox Drug Identification Kit 134 *®Velodur 51 * Venison Book 84 Village Planning in the Primitive World 98 Village Technology Hand’ * Vision and Value Series 64 VITA—USA 39 Vocations for Social Change 89 Volkswagen Technical Manual 112
*Walden 87
Walnut Acres 82 Wards 41, 96 Warmlite Tent 107 Wasco Skydome 41 WATER SUPPLY 24, 37-39, 96, 119 * Water Supply for Rural Areas and Small Communities 37 The Way Things Work 60 WEATHER 31, 39, 115, 116, 125 *Weather 125 WEAVING 48, 49 *Weaving is for Anyone 48 West Point Pepperell (Nylon fabrics) 41 *West Products 115 Western Distributors 113 * White Water Handbook for Canoe and Kayak 114 J.C. Whitney Automotive Accessories and Parts 112 * Whole Earth Catalog 80 Whole Earth Rising 5 WILD FOOD 34, 84, 93, 102, 108, 109, 114, 119 The Wilderness Cabin 25 Windmills 38 WINE-BEER MAKING 32,53, 85, 107 WIRING 23, 24, 76, 77 Wiring Simplified 23 Wittenborn and Co. 79 WOOD 24, 25, 27,43 Woodcraft Supply 43 World of Mathematics 72 * Writing and !iuminating and Lettering 78
YARN 49 A Yaqui Way of Knowledge 137 Year 2000 17
* Your Futureln... 131
* Your Handspinning 48 Yurt 25
| ! \ 37, q ; | | | | , | af | =
Whole Systems
Buckminster Fuller
The insights of Buckminster Fuller initiated this catalog.
Among his books listed here, Utopia or Oblivion is now probably the most direct introduction. It’s a collection of his talks and papers from 1964 to 1967, at a bargain price. An Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth is his most recent, and succinct, statement. Nine Chains to the Moon is early, and openly metaphysical. The Untitled Epic of Industrialization is /yrical and strong. Ideas and Integrities is his most autobiographical, and perhaps the most self- contained of his books. No More Secondhand God is
the most generalized, leading into the geometry of thought.
People who beef about Fuller mainly complain about his repetition—
*
Utopia or Oblivion R. Buckminster Fuller 1969; 366 pp.
$1.25 postpaid
from:
Bantam Books
666 Fifth Avenue
New York, N. Y. 10019
or WHOLE EARTH CATALOG
Don’t attempt to reform man. An adequately organized environment will permit humanity’s original, innate capabilities to become success- ful. Politics and conventionalized education have sought erroneously to mold or reform humanity, i.e., the collective individual.
the same ideas again and again, it’s embarrassing. It is embarrassing,
also illuminating, because the same notions take on different uses when re-approached from different angles or with different contexts.
Fuller's lectures have a raga quality of rich nonlinear endless improvisation full of convergent surprises.
Some are put off by his language, which makes demands on your head like suddenly discovering an extra engine in your car——if you don't let it drive you faster, it'll drag you. Fuller won’t wait. He
spent two years silent after illusory language got him in trouble,
and he returned to human communication with a redesigned instrument.
Ideas and Integrities
Buckminster Fu Buckminster Fuller
1963; 318 pp. 1963; 163 pp.
$1.95 postpaid $2.25 postpaid
from: from:
Collier Books Southern IIlinois University Press The MacMillan Company 600 West Grand
Order Dept Carbondale, Illinois 62903
Front and Brown Streets Riverside, N. J. 08075
or WHOLE EARTH CATALOG
You belong to the universe. The significance of you will forever remain obscure to you, but you may assume that you are fulfilling your significance if you apply yourself to converting all your experiences to highest advantage of others. You
and all men are here for the sake of other men. e
| define “synergy” as follows: Synergy is the unique behavior of whole systems,
unpredicted by behavior of their respective sub-systems’ events.
[Ideas and Integrities]
No More Secondhand God
or WHOLE EARTH CATALOG
(Utopia or Oblivion] Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth Buckminster Fuller 1969; 143 pp.
$4.25 postpaid from: Southern Illinois University Press 600 West Grand Carbondale, Illinois 62903
or WHOLE EARTH CATALOG
For $4.95 you can get a paperback called Environment and Change which has an identical “Operating Manual” along with 24 other futuristic articles, including fine pieces by R. G. H. Siu, John R. Platt, Herman Kahn, Robert Theobald, Gunnar Myrdal, David Buzelon, and John Turner.
from:
University of Indiana Press
P.O. Box 369 Bloomington, Indiana 47401
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Nine Chains to the Moon Buckminster Fuller 1938, 1963; 375 pp.
$2.45 postpaid from: Southern Illinois University Press 600 West Grand Carbondale, Illinois 62903
or WHOLE EARTH CATALOG
Common to all such “human” mechanisms—and without which they are
imbecile contraptions—is their guidance by a phantom captain.
To begin our position-fixing aboard our Spaceship Earth we must first acknowledge that the abundance of immediately consumable, obviously desirable or utterly essential resources have been sufficient until now to allow us to carry on despite our ignorance. Being eventually exhaustible and spoilable, they have been adequate only up to this critical moment. This cushion-for-error of humanity’s survival and growth up to now was apparently provided just as a bird inside of the egg,is provided with liquid nutriment to develop it to a certain point. But then by design the nutriment is exhausted at just the time when the chick is large enough to be able to locomote on its own legs. And so as the chick pecks at the shell seeking more nutriment it inadvertently breaks open the shell. Stepping forth from its initial sanctuary, the young bird must now forage on its own legs and wings to discover the next phase of its regenerative sustenance.
Brain deals exclusively with the physical, and mind exclusively with the metaphysical. Wealth is the progressive mastery of matter by mind. ...
A new, physically uncomprised, metaphysical initiative of unbiased integrity could unify the world. It could and probably will be provided by the utterly impersonal problem solutions of the computers.
Possession is becoming progressively burdensome and wasteful and therefore obsolete.
* You and | are inherently different and complementary.
Together we average as zero—that is, as eternity. [Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth]
The Untitled 7 of Industrialization R. Buckminster Fuller 1963; 227 pp.
$1.95 postpaid from Simon & Schuster, Inc. 630 Fifth Avenue New York, N.Y. 10020
However,
man unconcernedly sorting mail on an express train. with unuttered faith that
the engineer is competent,
that the switchmen are not asleep,
that the track walkers are doing their job, that the technologists
who designed the train and the rails
knew their stuff,
that the thousands of others
whom he may never know by face or name are collecting tariffs,
paying for repairs,
and so handling assets
that he will be paid a week from today and again the week after that,
and that all the time
his family is safe and in well being without his personal protection constitutes a whole new era of evolution— the first really ‘‘new”
This phantom captain has neither weight nor sensorial tangibility, as has often been scientifically proven by careful weighing operations at the
moment of abandonment of the ship by the phantom captain, i.e., at the
instant of ‘‘death.”’ He may be likened to the variant of polarity dominance in our bipolar electric world which, when balanced and unit, vanishes as abstract unity 1 or 0. With the phantom captain's departure, the mechanism becomes inoperative and very quickly disintegrates into
since the beginning of the spoken word. In fact, out of the understanding
innate in the spoken word
was Industrialization wrought
after milleniums
of seemingly whitherless spade work.
basic chemical elements.
An illuminating rationalization indicated that captains—being phantom, abstract, infinite, and bound to other captains by a bond of understanding as proven by their recognition of each other's signals and the meaning thereof by reference to acommon direction (toward “‘perfect’’)— are not only all related, but are one and the same captain. Mathematically, since characteristics of unity exist, they can- not be non-identical.
Thinking is a putting-aside, rather than a putting-in discipline, e.g., putting aside the tall grasses in order to isolate the trail into informative viewability. Thinking is FM—frequency modulation—for it results in tuning-out of irrelevancies as a result of definitive resolution of the exclusively tuned-in or accepted feed-back
messages’ pattern differentiability.
[“Omnidirectional Halo’’ No More Secondhand God] general. Christ and his counterparts
Since Yogi is a personalized art, the art dies with the person. The abstract power involved remains as real and*true, always, but it cannot be made utilizable in increasing continuity for the world in
realized this and were unique in their
My recommendations for a curriculum of design science:
1. Synergetics 7. Communications
2. General systems theory 8. Meteorology
3. Theory of games (Von 9. Geology Neumann) 10. Biology
4. Chemistry and physics 11. Sciences of energy
5. Topology, projective 12. Political geography geometry 13. Ergonomics
6. Cybernetics 14. Production engineering
Here on Southern Illinois’ campus we are going to set up a great computer program. We are going to introduce the many variables now known to be operative in economics. We will store all the basic data in the machine’s memory bank; where and how much of each class of the physical resources; where are the people, what are the trendings——all kinds of trendings of world man?
Next we are going to set up a computer feeding game, called “How Do We Make the World Work?” We will start playing relatively soon. We will bring people from all over the world to play it. There will be competitive teams from all around earth to test their theories on how to make the world work. {f a team resorts to political pressures to accelerate their advantages and is not able to wait for the going gestation rates to validate their theory they are apt to be in trouble. When you get into politics you are very liable to get into war. War is the ultimate tool of politics. If war develops the
side inducing it loses the game.
[Utopia or Oblivion]
refusal to apply this power to self ends. It was this personal limitation of the Yogi art which led the prosaic philosophers to search further. They sought a means of limitless articulation.
[Nine Chains to the Moon]
Timelock
42 years ago this prime statement on industrially produced housing apparently fell on deaf ears. Except for the boom in house-trailers (unexpected, unsubsidized, and still harassed by laws), we are still far from realization of this economic and ecological path of least resistance. Americans continue
to build fortresses to live in. [Suggested by Steve Baer] from: Lama/Cookbook Fund Corrales, NM 87048 $1 postpaid
or WHOLE EARTH CATALOG
[Untitled Epic of Industrialization]
Your greatest artists today are designing for mass production in print, fabric and even radio, etc. Industry makes possible one more dimension in design, fourth dimension. In all design today we use synthetic materials, or recomposition of elements, to perform best a given function. A material before it reaches its final lodging, Passes through many hands, and over much space, and therefore to be efficient and pleasing, must have no unnecessary weight. When it reaches its destiny, how long will it stay there? For the time limit of its existence. The fourth dimension is time.
WE WILL HAVE ARRIVED AT OUR NEW ARTISTIC ERA OF ARCHITECTURAL EXPRESSION, WHEN OUR BUILDINGS HAVE LOST THEIR LAST TRACE OF FEUDALISTIC OPPRESSIVE- NESS; WHEN OUR BUILDINGS ARISE IN CONCENTRATED CENTRAL HIDDEN AREA OF COMPRESSION, IN OPPOSITION TO GRAVITY, BY MEANS OF MAST OR CAISON’ REACH OUT IN SPACE FROM THE VERTICAL BY TENSION AND COM- PRESSION, COMPRESSION DIMINISHING DIRECTLY AS WE RECEDED FROM THE VERTICAL UNTIL THE BUILDING FINALLY FLOWS DOWNWARD IN PURE TENSION.
ay
Ss “ TF
> |
‘ i a Sore — | y/ - 4 ss re ss se se ss me = ee ee ao se se ee os ee 3
Cosmic View
“The Universe in 40 Jumps” is the subtitle of the book, /t delivers.
The man who conceived and rendered it, a Dutch schoolmaster named Kees Boeke, gave years of work to perfecting the information in his pictures. The result is one of the sim- plest, most thorough, inescapable mind blows ever printed. Your mind and you advance in and out through the universe, changing scale by a factor of ten. It very quickly becomes hard to breathe, and you realize how magnitude-bound we've been.
1957; 48 pp.
$4.50 postpaid from: The John Day Company 257 Park Avenue South New York, N. Y. 10010
or WHOLE EARTH CATALOG
* Hallwag Star Map
For two years I’ve been looking for an inexpensive, accurate, spectacular map of the heavens. This is it,
in color. Double and variable stars are indicated, clusters, novae, nebulae, galaxies, and radio sources. Science could have begun with metallurgy, or weather study, or
The Stars 48% x 33”
$2.50 postpaid
from:
Crown Publishers
419 Park Avenue South New York, N. Y. 10016
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The Observer’s Handbook
For those who like to stare stars straight in the eye, this is the vest amateur astronomer’s handbook. Asteroids, clusters, constellations, eclipses, galaxies, planets, nebulae, occultations, radio sources, precession, star maps, sun spots, meteors. Published annually in November.
* The Hubble Atlas of Galaxies
This book is a series of superb photographs which is $3; the definition of Edwin Hubble’s classification of 1961; 50 plates
$3 galaxies. Galaxies come in a variety of shapes from
3 round blurry ones through the familiar spiral in $10.00 postpaid from:
#3 Andromeda to fantastic blazing pinwheels like M101.
Hubble has lined them up in a sequence according to shape. The meaning of this sequence has not yet been determined. /t may indicate a series of stages in the life on one galaxy which progresses from blurred youngster to majestic
spiral or vice versa. More likely vice versa, since the spirals contain hot young blue stars which we know will burn out in a few million years or so, while the blurry ones contain many ancient red giants. It is also possible that the sequence is not an age sequence at all, but merely reflects conditions at that place in the universe when that galaxy was formed.
But besides being a tool for scientists, this book is like a guided tour through our own miraculous universe. When this planet gets you down, leaf through the Atlas and feast your spirit on galaxy after galaxy, as beautiful and varied as snow flakes. Some galaxies are so far away that the graininess of the photograph shows in the blow up. Some photographs show small blurred objects in the background which one suddenly realizes are more galaxies.
[Reviewed by Jenny Deupree. Suggested by Jordan Belson]
Earth Photographs
Full Earth
Mandala Earth, the high noon color image shot from a synchronous satellite over South America in November 1967, is available as a poster from WHOLE EARTH CATALOG for $2 postpaid. It’s the same as the cover of the Fall “68 CATALOG, 22” x 27”. An order of five or more gets 50% discount.
"Suggested by Lee Anderson] The Observer’s Handbook # 197° $1.50 postpsia cost $25. It costs $7. Royal Astronomical Society of Canada 22" 20* 16" we
Whole Earth Rising
Bigger and Setter color Earth Posters than ours. Good ones are: Giant Earth (shown below), Earth Over Moon, Astronaut White.
Earth Photo
hs from Gemini Ill, IV, and V NASA 1967; 266 pp. $7.00 postpaid both from:
U.S. Govt. Printing Office Bookstore 710 North Capitol Street Washington, D. C. 20402
$3.00 postpaid
U.S. Govt. Printing Office Bookstore from: Rm. 1463, 14th Floor Celestial Arts Federal Office Building
219 S. Dearborn Street Chicago, Illinois 60604
or WHOLE EARTH CATALOG
1345 Howard Street San Francisco, CA 94103
or WHOLE EARTH CATALOG
Carnegie Institution of Washington 1530 P Street, N.W. Washington, D.C. 20005
or WHOLE EARTH CATALOG
NASA SP. 129 is a hell of a book. Two hundred forty-three full page color photographs of our planet from the Gemini flights of 1965. If it were a Sierra Club book, and it could be, it would
There are numerous discoveries in the book. One is that this beautiful place is scarcely inhabited and scarcely inhabitable.
Recently NASA has published a second volume of Gemini pictures.
Earth from
Gemini V
rough X
U.S. Govt. Printing Office Bookstore Rm. 135, Federal Building
601 East 12th Street
Kansas City, Missouri 64106
U.S. Govt. Printing Office Bookstore Federal Building
450 Golden Gate Avenue
Rm. 1023, Box 36104
San Francisco, California 94102
2 ‘ se ee ee ss ee q q plant breeding. It began with astronomy. | se se } ae es 3 ee fas: se i ee es ‘
...*The battle to feed all of humanity is over. in the ship has hit the rocks and_is.sinking. T the will famines—hundreds Passengers scream for help. Some 4 of millions of people are going to starve to death in and are devoured by the circling sharks. A group There’s a shit storm coming. Not a nice clean earthquake or spite of any crash programs embarked upon now. —_ distinguished scientists is on board. One of their “ satisfying revolution but pain in new dimensions: world pain, At this late date nothing can prevent a substantial number suggests that they can help man the pumps. eri sub-continents that starve and sub-continents that eat unable eat > the ea teeumn ore although many ‘Oh, “wi } won the others. “That might hurt the th i, . ‘ es could be rou ‘amatic programs to captain's feelings. Besides, pumping is not our other, f ‘stretch’ the carrying capacity of the earth by in- business, outside our field of competence.’ You ives, In bad heart of the pro vo EFS WE SO lutions, and the creasing food production. But these programs will | can guess what they do. They appoint a committee mn sooner we're clear about what’s happening the sooner the only provide a stay of execution unless they are to study the problem, with subcommittees on marine ‘solutions can work their:way out. This book is the best first by and engineering They to Al 4 j i y at population control. Population control is Passengers that in two or three years comm hard look that - around. The author is a well-regarded eups 4 conscious regulation of the numbers.of human will produce a wonderful report which will be su population biologist and ecologist who freaked out of his lab i j i beings to meet the needs, not just of individual acceptable to the passengers, the captain, and the Al and into the media with the bad news. Besides freaking well families, but of society as a whole. steamship line. Not so passive are the politicians, we he reports well. ‘ Some jump up to say that the pamengere don’t liv . , understand the political realities of the situation. The Population Bomb then Our present affluent society” They will inherit OtheF more progressive politicians grab thimbles and 1 Dr. Paul R. Ehrlich 8 totally different worid, a world in which the start bailing, stopping every few seconds to accept of __ 1968; 223 pp. standards, politics, and economics of the 1960's are for their valiant efforts. sir dead. As the most powerful nation in the world vie $.95 postpaid from today, and its largest consumer, the United States e Ballantine Books, Inc, cannot stand isolated. We are today involved in the pe c/o Simon & Schuster, Inc, events leading to famine; tomorrow we may be Careless overuse of DDT has promoted to ‘ SCI 630 Fifth Avenue destroyed by its consequences. category many species of mites, little insectlike New York, N. Y. 10020 © eee of spiders. The insects which ate the mites or Remember also that in eloped were illed by the DDT, and the mites were resis- WHOLE EARTH CATALOG countries, people have Eaubtne waa abees the tant to DDT. There you have it—instant pests, and
It is, of course, socially very acceptable to reduce the death rate. Billions of years of evolution have given us all a powerful will to live. Intervening in the birth rate goes against our evolutionary values. During all those centuries of our evolutionary past, the individuals who had the most children passed on their genetic endowment in greater quantities than those who reproduced less. Their genes dominate
The reproductive function of sex must be shown as _just one of its functions, and one that must be care- lly regulated in relation to the needs of the
vidual and society. Much emphasis must be placed on sex as an interpersonal relationship, as an important and extremely pleasurable aspect of being human, as mankind’s major and most enduring recreation, as e fountainhead of his humor, as a phenomenon
better life it is possible to have. They have seen colored pictures in magazines of the miracles of Western technology. They have seen automobiles and airplanes. They have seen American and Euro- pean movies. Many have seen refrigerators, tractors, and even TV sets. Aimost all have heard transistor radios. They know that a better life is possible. They hae what we like to call ‘rising expectations.’ ™ ? If twice as many people are to be happy, the miracle
more profits for the agricultural chemical industry
in fighting these Frankensteins of their own creation. What's more, some of the more potent miticides the chemists have developed with which to do battle seem to be powerful carcinoge an oduci substances.
eer. ‘Cencer-pr ig
our heredity today. that affects every aspect of hisbeing = doubling what now have will not be enou The old idea that industry could create the mess and E they gh. {t will only maintain today’s standard of living. then the taxpayers must clean it up has to go. The There will have to be a tripling or better. Needless garbage produced by an industry is the responsibility P; to say, they are not going to be happy. of that industry. D 1 Population, Resources, Environment The global polluting and exploiting activities of the DCs are even ° fr more serious than their internal problems. Spaceship Earth is now H . , - filled to capacity or beyond and is running out of food. And yet ecause, as indicated in the acknowledgments, the various drafts o Ww In Population Bomb Ehrlich spared us the customary the people traveling first class are, without thinking, demolishing our manuscript were thoroughly reviewed by a large number of B Statistics and graphs, and he was accused of being no the ship's already overstrained life-support systems. The food- critics who are competent in the various areas covered, we believe scientist. So here are the statistics and graphs and much producing mechanism is being sabotaged. The devices that main- that the factual basis of the book is sound throughout. We do not or
besides——a 400-page textbook on the population- ecology crisis. Don’t bother taking a course. The lab is the world.
P ation, Resources, Environment
Paul R. Ehrlich, Anne H. Ehrlich
1970; 400 pp. vinced that everything will turn out all right. in the face of such uncertainty. Possible benefits will have to be % weighed against possible risks, and a great deal of thought given $8.95 postpaid 1877-1878 North China. “‘Appalling famine raging throughout de four provinces [of] North China. Nine million people reported from: aa hs hi _ pte lve for mankind if all people could know the general state of the world W. H. Freeman and Company weit: ildren daily sold in markets for [raising means to and could be informed as to just what chances are being taken with 660Market Street procure] food. ... Total population of districts affected, 70 their lives and the lives of future generations.
San Francisco, CA $4104 or WHOLE EARTH CATALOG
* Resources and Man
A fugue of finiteness, this just-published work portrays the true size of our North American yard. How much of the depletables there is, and how long they will last at present
__ tain the atmosphere are being turned off. The temperature-
control system is being altered at random. Thermonuclear bombs, poison gases, and super-germs have been manufactured and stock- piled by people in the few first-class compartments for possible future use against other first-class passengers in their competitive struggles for dwindling resources——or perhaps even against the expectant but weaker masses of humanity in steerage. But, unaware that there is no one at the controls of their ship, many of the Passengers ignore the chaos or view it with cheerful optimism, con-
millions. ..."" The people's faces are black with hunger; they are dying by thousands upon thousands. Women and girls and boys are openly offered for sale to any chance wayfarer. When | left the country, a respectable married woman could be easily bought for six dollars, and a little girl for two. In cases, however, where it was found impossible to dispose of their children, parents have been known to kill them sooner than witness their prolonged suffering, in many instances throwing themselves afterwards down wells, or committing suicide by arsenic.
* All flesh is grass. This simple phrase summarizes a basic principle of biology that is essential to an understanding of the world food prob- lem. The basic source of food for all animal population is green plants——‘‘grass."’ Human beings and all other animals with which we share this planet obtain the energy and nutrients for growth, development, and sustenance by eating plants directly, by eating other animals that have eaten plants, or by eating animals that
have eaten animals that have eaten plants, and so forth.
That the fossil fuels be conserved for uses which cannot be met by other sources. The fossil fuels (petroleum, natural gas, coal) are
believe that such minor errors as may be revealed in any of our figures, estimates, or interpretations will change the thrust of our major conclusions. In many areas, of course, it is impossible to determine exactly. what has happened, or to know what the sig- nificance of certain trends may be. Data are often unreliable or unavailable, and our understanding of the complexities of ecological systems and human behavior is still fragmentary. But in dealing with the population-resource-environment crisis, it is important to recognize that people are going to have to learn to make decisions
From the almost limitless number of subjects which might have been included in this book, choices of those that were to be treated in detail had to be made. We have tried to emphasize those which seemed to us to be of the most general importance, and we make
no apology either for our selection of subjects or for the personal style and approach we have used throughout. We have not attempted to give equal weight to both sides of all controversial issues;
where we think one side is correct we have so indicated. We also make no claim to having tried to detail all exceptions to general rules. We hope that this book will provide concerned readers with enough background to enable them to make informed political decisions about environmental issues and to combat what C. P. Snow has referred to as the ‘excessive unsimplicity” which, in
his words, “crops up whenever anyone makes a proposal which opens up a prospect, however distant, of new action. It involves
a skill which all conservative functionaries are masters of, as they ingeniously protect the status quo: it is called the ‘technique of
the intricate defensive.’ “
“In the West, our desire to conquer nature often means simply that
needed for petrochemicals, synthetic polymers, and essential liquid fuels, for which suitable substitutes are as yet unknown. They might also play a part in synthetic or bacterial food production
we diminish the probability of small inconveniences at the cost of increasing the probability of very large disasters.”
Kenneth E. Boulding
{although such a use is also limited). They should not be spent in
the generation of electricity, for heating, and for industrial purposes where substitutes can qualify. The Department of the Interior e should be authorized and directed to develop and institute a practicable and effective hydrocarbon conservation program.
or projected rates. Some indications of the levels of
exploitation where the “non-depletables” start to give up
on regeneration. For what might have been a dry book,
the writing has considerable hair on. —, ie Some of the major tisheries whose take has declined import-
| antly are listed below; the dates indicate (approximately) the
60 beginning of a major slump from which there has been no } 250 x109N| important recovery as yet: . be 80 (64 YEARS) bbls Antarctic blue whales 1935 | 50 + H East Asian sardine 1945 Resources and Man > | | | California sardine 1946 Cloud, Bates, Chapman, Hendricks, > P80 PERCENT (58 YEARS)» Northwest Pacific ssimon 1960 | Atlanto-Scandian herring 1961 Hubbert, Keyfitz, Lovering, Ricker 2 | 1969; 159 pp. 2 40 | tT | Berents Sea cod 1962 . 2 | “Ts. | ' Antarctic fin whales 1962 $2.95 postpaid = { | Species now showing signs of strain include the Newfound- = 30 + / \S +++ land cod, North Sea herring, menhaden, British Columbia from: « | | / \% | herring, Bering Sea flatfishes, and yellowfin tuna in the W. H. Freeman and Co. 5 | es os \ ar eastern Pacific. Even if these are not yet being fished to the 660 Market Street 3 ‘7 ye ote point where sustainable yield has been reduced, there is San Francisco, CA 94104 3 20 + a Wi little prospect of their yield being increased appreciably. | NO . or WHOLE EARTH CATALOG | A N 1 7a4x109) |“ “SL “The optimist proclaims that we live in the best of al! Peace, population, pollution, one resources are ‘ wry Bad ee possible worlds; and the pessimist fears this is true.’’ — 2025 2050 2075 2100 James Branch Cabell
FIGURE 8.23 Complete cycles of world crude-oil production for two values of G,
ES v YN 4 1 see eee te
The Subversive Science
“So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. And God blessed them, and God said to them, ‘Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves upon the earth.’ ” Genesis 1, 27-28.
And we have been fruitful, and we have filled the earth and subdued it, and we have dominion over every living thing. And what is subversive about ecology is that we know now we must turn aside from that ancient narrow edict, and
live with, and not upon, the earth.
The Subversive Science is thirty-seven essays on the shape of life. By its very breadth it creates a depth of truth no single point of view could ever make. There is a new world view within this book, a new sense of ourselves and our position on and within this earth. /t is rigorous and scientific and yet in its vibrant complexity almost mystic.
[Reviewed by Cary James]
The Subversive Science— Essays Toward an Ecology of Man
Paul Shepard Daniel McKinley, eds. 1969; 453 pp.
$5.95 postpaid
from: ‘ Houghton Mifflin Co. Wayside Road Burlington, Mass. 01803
or WHOLE EARTH CATALOG
igloos, tepees, prairie sod-huts, hogans, pueblos—have ecology in their roof-lines.
These shelters for families, like such individual protectors as sunbonnets, sombreros, serapis, are oriented to a landscape, to weather, and to local materials.
The desire to maintain absolute constancy in any system must be recognized as deeply pathological. Engineering theory indicates that excessive restraints can produce instability.
In psychiatry also, the desire for complete certainty is recognized as a most destructive compulsion. And in the history of nations, attempts to control rigidly all economic variables have uniformly led to chaos. The psychologically healthy human recognizes that fluctuations are unavoidable, that waste is normal, and that one should institute only such explicit controls as are required to keep each system on its homeostatic plateau. We must devise and use such controls as are needed to keep the social system on the homeostatic plateau. On this plateau—but not beyond it—freedom produces stability.
* Challenge for Survival
Jesus, there are a lot of ecological anthologies coming out. This one’s value is that it focuses on the devil himself. The city.
Challenge for Survival Pierre Dansereau, Ed. 1970; 235 pp.
$7.95 postpaid
from:
Columbia University Press 440 West 110th Street New York, N. Y. 10025
or WHOLE EARTH CATALOG
Although there are several good textbooks of plant ecology, of animal ecology, and a few that attempt to cover both and, almost as an afterthought, to include man, we do not seem to be ready for a total apprehension of the acquisitions of ecology. A formal recognition of a limited number of /aws, encompassing the facts and processes of environmental structures and dynamics, is yet
to come.
One of the greatest of the technical social inventions of ancient
Athens was that of ostracism, which was invented by Cleisthenes.
We are told: Once a year the popular Assembly deliberated on whether any citizen should be required to go into exile for ten years on the grounds that his presence in Athens was a threat to the constitution. If the
Variable Characteristic
(Upper Region ol Positive Death
Feedback)
Homeostatic / Plateau
(Region of Negative Feedback)
(Lower Region of Death Positive Feedback)
(—) 0(:-) Stress
We who were close to the Indians watched the disappearance of boys from public view. Even their father saw them no more. After sometimes a year, sometimes eighteen months, the boys returned— from the underground kivas, from the pathless areas of the Sangre de Cristo range, from the hidden crag where perhaps burns the mystical everlasting fire. Radiant of face, full-rounded and powerful of body, modest, detached: they were men now, keepers of the secrets, houses of the Spirit, reincarnations of the countless generations of their race; with “reconditional reflexes,” with emotions organized toward their community, with a connection formed until death between their individual beings and that mythopoeic universe—that cosmic illusion—that real world—as the case may be, which both makes man through its dreams and is made by man’s dreams.
Perhaps the most serious obstacle impeding the evolution of a land ethic is the fact that our educational and economic system is headed away
But he did not lose his citizenship, his goods were not confiscated, he did not even suffer disgrace. In fact, it was Only the man of great ability who was likely to be
ostracized, yet the possibility of ostracism was a constant
deterrent to overwhelming political ambition.
This ts the dog that bit the «at that killed the rat that ate the malt thal came from the grain that Jack sprayed” Reproduced by ut Pum h)
Long ago, floods were described as Acts of God. Today, these are
known quite often to be consequences of the acts of man. As long ago, droughts were thought to be Acts of God, too, but these, 11 is now known, are exacerbated by the acts of man.
What will be left of the plant world if we allow the basically village culture, founded on aclose symbiotic partnership between man and plants, to disappear? For some twelve thousand years, all the higher achievements of civilization have rested on this culture, one devoted to the constructive improvement of the habitat and the loving care of plants——their selection, their nurture, their breeding, their enjoyment. That culture, as Edgar Anderson suggested, originally made some of its best discoveries in breeding by being equally concerned with the color, the odor, the taste, the flower and
leaf patterns, the sexual functions, and the nutritive qualities of plants, valuing them not only for food and medicine, but for esthetic delight. There are plenty of people working in scientific laboratories today who, though they may still call themselves biologists, have no knowledge of this culture, except by vague hearsay, and no respect for its achievements. They dream of a world composed mainly of synthetics and plastics, in which no creatures above the rank of algae or yeasts would be encouraged
to grow.
Mere survival is not good enough: we must devise a strategy to ensure the further development of plants and men.
Assembly voted to hold an ostracism, a second vote was taken. Then, if six thousand citizens wrote the same name on an ostrakon, or potsherd, the man named must leave Athens for ten years.
from, rather than toward, an intense consciousness of land. Your true modern is separated from the land by many middlemen, and by innumerable physical gadgets. He has no vital relation to it;
to him it is the space between cities on which crops grow.
When we think in terms of systems, we see that a fundamental misconception is embedded in the popular term “side-effects” (as has been pointed out to me by James W. Wiggins). This phrase means roughly ‘effects which | hadn't foreseen, or don’t want to think about.”" As concerns the basic mechanism, side-effects no more deserve the adjective “’side’’ than does the “principal” effect. It is hard to think in terms of systems, and we eagerly warp our language to protect ourselves from the necessity of doing so.
Whether you will or not
You are a King, Tristram, for you are one
Of the time-tested few that leave the world, When they are gone, not the same place it was. Mark what you leave.
* Applied World Saving
For a world-scale journal of ecology, try Intecol Bulletin (S3/yr from Black well Scientific Publications Ltd.,
5 Alfred Street, Oxford, OX1 4HB). A recent report
of what’s happening with the new strains of wheat and
rice is Seeds of Change (Lester R. Brown, 1970, 205 pp; $6.95 from Frederick A. Praeger, 111 Fourth Avenue, N.Y., N. Y. 10003). For wilder possibilities in food production, see Food Resources Conventional and Novel (N. W. Pirie, 1969; 208 pp; $1.25 from Penguin Books, Inc., 7110 Ambassador Road, Baltimore, Md. 21207).
* Liferaft Earth
Robert Frank’s 37-minute 16mm color sound film of the Hunger Show staged last October by Portola Institute may
be rented for S30 from WHOLE EARTH CATALOG. “I’m sorry, Leon,” said Bonnie Jean, “I’m hungry and I’m crazy.”
. = f pe \. RE 3 7 ‘ — j ‘ : +; T > - ~ | = = se se ae ee ee ae se oo ss ee ee ° ee se es ee * 33 ese = ee 4 ees <= HH se ss a ss ee ee ee i ss 2 se ee ee se 3
* Earth Times
Just in time, a newspaper for sure-enough world-savers. /t has a good wide scope, and intelligence to match its fervor.
If the format and art-work looks identical to Rolling Stone, that’s because it comes out of the same offices.
Earth Times Stephanie Mills, ed
$5.00 /year (monthly) 00 in Canada $8.00 overseas
from:
_ Earth Times 625 Third Street San Francisco, CA 94107
KW: It’s really incredible that | get a lot of press coverage because of the fact that | come out and make startling pronouncements. The amusing thing is that there isn’t even any follow-up to figure out if they're true or not. You would think that the media itself would peel off a reporter, just for fun, to go look at the records and see if what I'm saying is correct. The newspapers don’t do this. You know, people go away from my lectures convinced that what I've said is true, but they don’t know what it is that I've said——it’s the damnedest situation, and my feeling is that this is what we've got to work on. We've got to learn how to communicate an idea that sticks.
KW: One of the conclusions that comes out of models of this
sort is that most large-scale social systems are counter-intuitive. SM: Counter-intuitive?
KW: Counter-intuitive. That is, the properties of complex modern social systems are such that the intuitively obvious solutions to various problems are typically wrong.
Remember that, as a lady hitchhiker,
KW: | think it’s going to take economic types of factors to get people to change. One thing that could produce a gigantic change would be hard evidence that we are not going into a recession but a deep depression. The red flags are up. We're not quite sure any- more that this i isa se n we're going to be out of ina
ink that it’s something of a very llenging the fundamental idea of and necessary and inevitable. to uncontrolled growth?
g that the idea that growth is inevitable is a lot of oney. The stock market is now where it was six years ago. That's not a great big lot of galloping growth. The air lines and air- plane manufacturers have been pursuing the idea that bigger and faster is better for some time now, and they're falling on their faces on that one. The jumbo jets and the air buses are going to cream the airlines and the SST will just wipe them out.
KW: The only thing that will get people to change is the severity of the problems. Like at the moment when | say that we're moving into an ice age, most people say, ‘Hah. That types him—— you know, he’s nuts.” But ten years from now, things will be weird enough that people will be saying, ‘‘By God, so that’s why it’s snowing in May!”’ The impression | get is that on one hand, everyone is fed up with hearing about the environment, and on the other, we haven't really communicated anything yet. The whole situation just baffles me. Everybody is alerted to the
fact that there is a large and obviously educated group frightened stiff. All kinds of people are running around making dire and legitimate projections. But | don’t think that the public is
really alarmed. An ice age is a six-degree drop in temperature, and we've already got a third of that in New York City, and nobody even notices. | think you have to drop blocks of ice on people before they become aware that the weather's changing.
Let us join together with free wolves and watch them explore the sweet and secret territory of our imagination and their wild homes. Watch the sky change with them in the long slow arctic winter. See them briskly home from the evening's hunt carrying a belly- ful of caribou meat for the cubs. Or sleeping in front of the den
at noon, resting but mindful of the fresh wind and the scent of
the change of seasons. !|n play, in greeting, exploring the ever new possibilities of being alive and intact in a world still whole. We can have wolves, and they can have us——and we need never meet—— except in the silent pact that we make together.
Creatures under a common moon.
Kenneth Watt
Hitchhiking in Numbers:
If you find someone firmly entrenched in your chosen thumb-site, extend greet- ings and ask if you can share territory. And, yes, there is safety in joining forces. If there’s a gentleman your radar indi- cates you can trust, stick with him as long as your paths hang together. This has multiple advantages: Next to a single female, the male-female combination at- tracts the widest range of people. Even little old ladies will pick you up if you look vaguely in love. With the added protection, you get to relax and enjoy the ride. Very few (even horny and male) drivers will molest an accompanied fe- male. Another female is better than no companionship at all, although it’s just possible that, however innocently, she may hang you up by agreeing to a side- trip to the beach.
it’s not only your absolute prerogative to be choosy, but absolutely necessary. There’s no social convention in the world which says that you can’t turn down a ride, or ask to be let out of a car the minute things strike you as potentially uncomfortable. You may also, in certain circumstances, lie like mad about your marital and social status, your health (nobody’s going to bug a chick who’s just announced that she may vomit), your phone number (memorize that of the local police station or SPCA), your ad- dress (if he offers to take you home, but you don’t want to see him ever again, ask to be let out two or three blocks away). As a matter of fact, if you find your life, your chastity, your peace of mind, or even just your sense of humor in danger, you may tell any story your nimble mind gan concoct on short notice.
Still hunted, poisoned, trapped, captured & polluted, the wild wolf is almost extinct.
*
Omen
This here is a big beautiful inexpensive magazine about the religion of ecology. I’m not sure you can get religion from a magazine. Omen does give good annotated access to its sources of inspiration; in fact it stocks them for mail order sale, which is handy.
Walter H. Bowart, Ed - $8.00 /year (9 issues)
REVERSER
from:
Omen Press
Box 12457
Tucson, Arizona 85711
The best things cannot be told, the second best are cnieetioed. After that comes civilized conversation; after that, mass indoctrin- ation; after that, intercultural exchange. And so, proceeding, we come to the problem of communication: the opening of one’s own truth and depth to the depth and truth of another in such a way as to establish an authentic community of existence. Joseph Campbell The Masks of God, Creative Mythology
One must admire the Japanese system of education for giving its school children a chance to visit and live on every island of Japan during the summers at government expense.
Planeta Fresco, 14, Via Manzoni, 20121 Milano, Italy. Editor: Nando Sottsass Pivano.
This Italian magazine of poetry and art is worth the pictures even if you don’t read Italian.
“We live in a metaphysical mediterranean island, plenty of priests, police, fascist and communist congressmen, memories of glorious millenia which no one ever saw, which everyone keeps invoking as a magic alibi.
“We will always send to you all we do.and please give us your help with your mags and thoughts. We love you, we love all the world,” says Planeta Fresco.
When | first encountered the images of The Tarot for the Aquarian Age | was immediately struck by their evocative force. Unlike the images of the old Tarot deck, which (to me) had appeared lifeless, these had a kind of direct electric-emotional ‘charge,’ and some of them were strongly reminiscent of images found in dreams or under the effects of certain chemicals. | started to “work” with them—— that is, | put the ones | was most drawn to up on the wall and began to meditate and reflect on their meanings. Over a period of a few weeks they would become strikingly ‘‘familiar’’——they would intrude suddenly in my waking thoughts, fragments might appear in dreams or during quiet moments. They appeared to work a kind of subtle transformation of unconscious, prerational ‘‘complexes’’ (to use the Jungian terminology). A fixed image-complex, surrounded by anxious feelings, could, by contact with one of these Tarot images evolve into an enlarging, affirmative, enlightening vision. Then
after a time, another one of the series might emerge as an indicator
of the “‘next step.”
1 Wal ¢ fror Bal 101 Nev En en Ec in am = me co col an
tt
* The Environmental Handbook
The Environmental Handbook as “the bible’’ of New Con- servation. Paul Ehrlich, the others, as prophets predicting the literal end of the world. Ecology Action, the others, as young disciples working zealously to save it. The Survival Walk from Sacramento to L.A. as a modern version of the crusades. The public outcry against pollution as an evan- gelical call to cast out evil. San Jose State students actually burying a devil alive, in the form of a new Maverick.
While Lynn White Jr. says: “Human ecology is deeply con- ditioned by beliefs about our nature and destiny——that is, by religion. . The victory of Christianity over paganism was the greatest psychic revolution in the history of our culture. ... We continue today to live, as we have lived for about 1700 years, very largely in a context of Christian axioms. ... Christianity, in absolute contrast to ancient paganism and Asia’s religions . . . not only established a dualism of man and nature but also insisted that it is God’s will that man exploit nature for his proper ends. . [Christians] are superior to nature, contemptuous of it, willing to use it for our slightest whim.”
Conservation asking Christian America to quit being Christian America, America saying can't, | need the money.
Psychic revolution. Beginnings of religious war. Christ a space-age anti-Christ. Battle in the cockpit. Veer left, veer right. 66,000 miles an hour. Off course! Quick! Somebody grab the wheel! 2
[Reviewed by Gurney Norman]
The Environmental
Handbook Garrett De Bell, Ed. EAVRORMENTAL $.95 postpaid ms HANDBOOK from:
Ballantine Books, Inc. 101 Fifth Avenue New York, N. Y. 10003
or WHOLE EARTH CATALOG
The phrase “health of the environment” is not a literary con- vention. It has a real biological meaning, because the surface of the earth is truly a living organism. Without the countless and immensely varied forms of life that the earth harbors, our planet would be just another fragment of the universe with a surface as drab as that of the moon and an atmosphere inhospitable to man. We human beings exist and enjoy life only by virtue of the conditions created and maintained on the surface of the earth by the microbes, plants, and animals that have converted its inanimate matter into a highly integrated living structure. Any profound disturbance in the ecological equilibrium is a threat
to the maintenance of human life as we know it now.
Rene DuBos
* Ecotactics
The Sierra Club’s new paperback, Ecotactics, was published two months after Friends of the Earth brought out The Environmental Handbook. The difference shows, but not enough to hurt. If The Handbook hadn’‘t got there first, Ecotactics would be a hot item indeed. It’s not quite as punchy as The Handbook but it’s got a /ot of good stuff
in it, most of it by ecology writers | hadn‘t heard of before, which | consider a virtue. | mean, I’ve heard Paul Ehrlich and Rene DuBos and other big guns who appear prominently in The Handbook. / know what they have to say. It’s encouraging to see just how many good young writers the whole ecology thing is producing. Since both books cost only 95 cents, the serious ecology revolutionary by all means ought to have copies of each. They complement each other, sort of fill in each other’s holes. For example, The Handbook contains Gary Snyder’s now-famous environmental manifesto, “Four Changes,” while Ecotactics presents a short article about Snyder himself, as a man, a poet and a naturalist. Both statements deserve wide audiences. So do both the books as wholes.
[Reviewed by Gurney Norman]
To deal with a system of oppression and suppression, which charac- terizes the environmental violence in this country, the first priority is to deprive the polluters of their unfounded legitimacy. Too often they assume a conservative, patriotic posture when in reality they are radical destroyers of a nation’s resources and the most funda- mental rights of people. Their power to block or manipulate existing laws permits them, as perpetrators, to keep the burden
of proof on the victims. In a country whose people have always valued the “open book,’ corporate and government polluters Crave secrecy and deny citizens access to the records of that which is harming their health and safety.
Youth must develop an investigative approach to the problems of pollution. It is one of the most basic prerequisites. Not only
must there be aclose analysis of corporate statements, and period- icals, annual reports, patents, correspondence, court records, regulations, technical papers, Congressional hearings and agency reports and transcripts, but there must be a search for the dissenting company engineer, the conscience-stricken house lawyer, the concerned retiree or ex-employee, the knowledgeable worker
and the fact-laden supplier of the industry or company under study. They are there somewhere. They must be located.
Ralph Nader
You can imagine hearing someone say, “ Remember the subaivision that used to be where that orange grove is?’’ You can see a web of parks throughout the cities replacing the freeways and streets that once dominated. You can see agriculture become diversified again, with a great variety of crops grown together, replacing the old reliance on mass-produced single crop operations that are highly dependent on pesticides, machines, and cheap farm labor. The traditional American values of rural life come back, and many more people grow their own food on smaller holdings and with a better quality of existence for the farm workers——and for everyone else.
More fruits and vegetables have insects on them instead of poisons. They can be brushed off or swallowed accidentally without harm. They are not mutagenic. They eat very little themselves, and because there is no monocrop, they can’t wipe it out.
We see an end to some of the contradictions in American life. Where we once burned fossil fuels and polluted the air to provide electricity to run the escalators and other labor-saving devices that fattened us and sent us to the electric exercise machines and calorie-free soft drinks, we can rediscover walking. Where we overheated or over- conditioned our air, we rely again on the human adaptability to Stress that shaped us and gave us our physical integrity over a million years of.living. Although the small labor-saving devices did not use much power, their aggregate use increased the demand for electricity, and with it the need for more dams, more oxidizing of fossil fuel, and more proliferation of nuclear power plants and their radionuclides. We find that diminishing dependence upon electric devices diminishes the need to build dams on wild rivers, pollute the air and sea with fossil fuels, and poison the ecosphere with dispersing nuclear waste.
With conspicuous consumption eliminated, we have more leisure time and a shorter work week. There are fewer automobiles, less reliance upon wasteful packaging, and less need for the labor saving devices that exploited natural resources in order to save time to spend with little reward in our overdepleted world. We produce what we need and not a surplus. We allocate limited resources. New economists adjust economic sights to accommodate the requirements of our spaceship Earth, limited closed system that it is. The economists ‘rethink about growth and know that “growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell,’ as Edward Abbey pointed out.
There is less spectator sport and more participating. The American people, once a nation of watchers, are ‘do-it-yourself people” again. They ski where the snowmobiles took them, walk where trail bikes crudded the wilderness and swim where motorboats droned over lakes they oiled. The people buy less music and make more of their own. There is a world quiet enough to hear it in.
People are healthier. Fewer coronaries strike them because walking and bicycling and swimming keep them fitter. There are fewer people in hospitals because the old murderous automobile-oriented transportation system has been brought under control. Even the former automobile manufacturers, salesmen, and service people live longer, better lives. One major change is that every product
we buy includes in its price the cost of its ultimate disposal. The many products that once were cheap because they were dumped
at will have become so expensive that they no longer end up cluttering the environment.
Many of the people who were producing automobiles have been shifted into the housing or building industry. Their main job
is restructuring the urban wastes to planned cities, restoring
land to good agricultural use, building high-quality clustered dwellings at the edges of the good agricultural land, using recycled material from the old buildings. People ride the short distance
to their work and have a chance to farm a little in the sun. There are legs and arms and abdomens where the flab was, and the
air is once again transparent.
The idea that a steady state works is commonplace. The population is declining slowly toward a balance between man and the other living things upon which his own life depends. The need for, and number of, schools, doctors, highways, roads, public parks, recrea- tional facilities, swimming pools, and other facilities is roughly the same from year to year. People work enough to service equipment and to replace things that wear out. They devote energy to increasing the quality of life rather than to providing more and more possessions. The job of the garbage man and junk man is elevated to the stature of recycling engineer, looping systems in such a way that materials cause no environmental deterioration. Many power plants and dams are dis-
* mantied as the amount of energy needed each year declines and people
develop sensible ways of living that require much less power, pollution, and environmental disruption. There is decentralization of many basic services. Ecologically sound food stores prosper, offering pesticide- free produce in returnable containers.
Advertising serves to inform, not to overstimulate, and is believable again. Wilderness areas are no longer under attack, and retread wild- erness increases substantially each year; less land is needed for com- mercial timber production because of effective recycling of wood products, reduction of conspicuous consumption and the lessening of need as the population drops. Poisoning of the ecosystem by
the leaded automobile gasoline has ceased because engine redesign eliminates the need for lead additives.
Ecotactics 1970; 287 pp.
$.95 postpaid
from:
Simon and Schuster, Inc. 630 Fifth Avenue
New York, N. Y. 10020
or WHOLE EARTH CATALOG
Though the medium may be the message, the event itself is a very crucial part of what's transmitted. So strive for far-out symbolic actions on meaningful, relevant issues that will seize the imagination and commitment of the press and the public. The overall! rule of thumb is to localize the greater issues at hand in the ecology move- ment. Don’t just demonstrate against water pollution; pick a nearby polluted stream and wage a cleanup campaign. Everybody knows industry kills; indentify which industries. Shine a giant searchlight on beiching smokestacks at night. Give DiS-honor awards to polluters. Picket. Have a mock funeral for an internal combustion engine. A simple idea can blossom into a great publicity-getter, and accomplish something in its own right. Pete Seeger set out last summer with songs and a sailing sloop on the befouled Hudson River and turned on thousands to the problem of water pollution.
John Zeh
Emphysema and tung cancer caused by smog are eliminated and the smog goes. People learn how to garden again, and allow the recovery to take place of the natural forms of “pest” control instead of heavy doses of pesticides.
People are learning progressively more about relying less on gadgets. They have long since refused to buy ten cents worth of food in a T.V. dinner on an aluminum platter that will outlast the food for generations.
Many of the things built in the past in the name of conservation are being unbuilt. The Army Corps of Engineers is spending its time undoing the damage it has done over the past decades. Cities no longer ask the Corps to build a dam to prevent flooding of houses unwisely built on a flood plain. Instead, they ask the Corps to restore the flood plain to a vegetative cover that accommodates floods——good creative work for engineers.
And that technological mistake, the supersonic transport, has long since been a strange delusion, the few that were built having been dismantled and forgotten.
Garrett De Bell
Micronesian “out-islander” in particular——that is, those who live across a hundred miles or more of sea from any neighboring islands, and whose contact with the rest of the world is limited to the few souls who arrive on the eighty foot government boat every six months——simply don't think about infinity, or to put it more accurately, the idea that everything is possible.
In order to survive out there by themselves, they've had to gain a pretty good feeling for pacing the breadfruit production and the coconut eating. In some of those places the highest crime is cut- ting down a coconut tree without communal permission.
Jerry Mander
Education, particularly higher education, is critically important to solving our ecological crisis. ... The whole direction and purpose
and thrust of our culture is toward greater production, greater exploitation. In many if not in most of our universities, there is
little criticism of the basic assumptions and value judgments that .“~ underlie our current priorities. The university is quite capable of developing an automated machine to harvest almost any crop, but
it is unable to evaluate the long-term social costs of such a development.
Garrett De Bell
By conventiona txokkeeping methods, for example, the coal companies strip-mining away the hillsides of Kentucky and West Virginia show a handsome profit. “heir ledgers, however, show only a fraction of the true cost of their operations. They take no account of destroyed land which can never bear another crop; of rivers poisoned by mud and seeping acid from the spoil banks; of floods which sweep over farms and towns downstream, because the ravaged slopes can no longer hold the rainfall.
John Fischer
When writing press releases or dealing with reporters, remember the media are always looking for new metaphors and good ideas. Ques tions such as: What is ecology? Why are you involved in it? What do you hope to accomplish by holding a teach-in? are going to be asked again and again. Be prepared to answer very broad questions like these in one or two sentences which are concise and interesting. The person doing PR should not only be informed and able to handle a variety of rhetoric but should also be interesting or unusual in his own right. Put yourself in the reporter’s shoes: what is it about you, your group, and your activities that would make a good story?
Barbara Parker
| personally doubt that disastrous ecologic backlash can be avoided simply by applying to our problems more science and more tech- nology. Our science and technology have grown out of Christian attitudes toward man’s relation to nature which are almost uni- versally held not only by Christians and neo-Christians but also by those who fondly regard themselves as post-Christians. Despite Copernicus, all the cosmos rotates around our little globe. Despite Darwin, we are not, in our heads, part of the natural process. We are superior to nature, contemptuous of it, willing to use it for our slightest whim.
Lynn White, Jr.
Eco-Pornography of How to Spot an Ecological Phony
1. Is (insert name of company) advertising in this voice to solve a problem or to prolong it?
2. Does a press conference fog up what counts?
3. Does an ad obscure the issue?
4. Does the ad sell pie before it is in the sky?
5. Is the ad really suggesting more dangerous alternatives? Check it out. If the advertiser fails, tell him and your friends.
Tom Turner
| am interested in the way that a man looks at a given landscape and takes possession of it in his blood and brain. For this happens, | am certain, in the ordinary motion of life. None of us lives apart from the land entirely; such an isolation is unimaginable. We have sooner or later to come to terms with the world around us——and | } mean especially the physical world, not only as it is revealed to us j immediately through our senses, but also as it is perceived more 1 truly in the long turn of seasons and of years. And we must come to moral terms. There is no alternative, | believe, if we are to realize and maintain our humanity, for our humanity must consist in part in the ethical as well as the practical ideal of preservation. And Particularly here and now is that true. We Americans need now more than ever before——and indeed more than we know——to imagine who and what we are with respect to the earth and sky. | am talking about an act of the imagination essentially, and the concept of an American land ethic.
N. Scott Momaday
The great enemy of open space is not the Federal government. It's the local governments. There’s no local government in this country that is suited to turn down a new payroll or a new property tax base. Our country’s built on a property tax supporting local gov- ernment. Every impoverished county that has lovely open space, every city that wants to expand is going to permit development. After all, it wasn't the local but the Federal government that got
in and stopped the jetport. When you say there was no outpouring for the jetport, what you really mean is there wasn’t any sentiment in Florida against the jetport.
Paul McCloskey
A q | NAN, d se ee se es ss ee ee ee ee se ss se se ee ee se ee oe se ae se se oe se oe se ss ee se ee i] ss ss se se se a > at
*
It is not easy to define “play” precisely, but whatever it is, it is
‘ Nature and Man’s Fate something that is in some sense non-competitive, non-rational, non-economic. Ht is also productive of novelty im viewpoints, THE introduction to theoretical and applied evolution. open ing doing
efficient approaches were employed. Play, for many men, is by
evolution and cybernetics into what may be an embryonic no means confined to childhood: it extends into the adult state, science of general development. Still it’s a completely only changing its form. Freud has said, ‘The child has-toys; the earthly book. The specific history of Darwin and his mature man has art and science.” Out of the play called science
—~—which is possible only to a society rich enough to suspend idea. The specific application of evolutionary under partially the laws of competition——out of the economically non-
standing to human survival now. competitive intellectual play called science there comes, in fact, a competitive weapon of the most powerful sort, technology. Competition has its own dialectic.
Nature and Man’s Fate
Garrett Hardin 1959; 320 pp. In order to make a perfect and beautiful machine, it is not requisite , to know how to make it. Quite so. $.95 postpaid . .. To Darwinians, Design emerges from blind Waste. “To be an from: . Error and to be cast out is a part of God's Design,” said William
The New American Library, Inc. Blake.
1301 Avenue of the Americas
New York, N. Y. 10019 * or WHOLE EARTH CATALOG i PLAvIA | So we see that the concept of progress, for all its historical importance eulegutr aettie/ a (exeypanthemeides
in sheltering the idea of evolution, is not easily applicable to facts of biology.
4. J At Jone a.
lomerati latyglosse sativa} racilis { (ucopappa
adiata
All men are, by nature, unequal——this is the censored truth of our century. We are as afraid of the consequences of admitting this truth as the Victorians were of the consequences of admitting that men are animals. Yet surely history will ultimately show that, in both instances, the consequences are good and compatible with human decency.
As early as 1920, the philosopher, Bertrand Russell, s>>:ied out the nightmare qualities of the Russian dream in term: i:nat he never needed to revise in the light of later facts. For his pais and his honesty Russell was quietly ousted from his position as the phil- osophic spokesman of the liberal elements. (Since he was patently unfit to speak for the conservatives either, he was henceforth a pr C urred in a roup of comfortable of all positions, but for a living philosopher it has its aa oh. to find cfanteat phyleneete trees” and uni-
—— directional evolution everywhere. (From Clausen, Stages in the Evolution of Plant Species, Cornell University
: Press, Ithaca, N. Y.; 1951. By permission.)
As a species becomes increasingly “‘successful,”’ its struggle for existence ceases to be one of struggle with the physical environment or with other species and comes to be almost exclusively competition with its own kind. We call that species most successful that has made its own kind its worst enemy. Man enjoys this kind of success.
The Competitive Exclusion Principle. No two organisms that compete in every activity can coexist indefinitely in the same environment. To coexist in time, organisms that are potentially completely competitive must be geographically isolated from each other. Otherwise, the one that is the less efficient yields to the more efficient, no matter how slight the difference. When two competing organisms coexist in the same geographical region, close examination always shows that they are not complete competitors, that one of them draws on a resource of the environment that is not available to the other. The corollary of the principle is that where there is no geographical isolation of genetically and reproductively isolated populations, there must be
as many ecological niches as there are populations. The necessary condition for geographical coexistence is ecological specialization.
It is one of the few rules of evolution that extreme specialization results in eventual extinction. Environmental changes are inevitable, and the specialist-species is too strongly committed to one way of life to be able rapidly enough to “back up” genetically and take off in another “direction.”’ All the evidence of comparative morphology and paleontology, fragmentary though it is, indicates that each great new group of organisms arises from very unspecialized species of
the group “below” it, not from the conspicuously specialized ones. .
And concepts themselves occur in various grades of generality, si forming a hierarchal complex that has not yet been explicitly described. Language is a wondrously subtle and complicated tool; by far the greater part of it is to be found only in mathe- matics. That which most men call “language” is only a small part of man’s concept-handling machinery, scarcely the ABC’s
<8 MUTATION
~ GAUSSIAN
% FREQUENCY
DISTRIBUTION
DN For more details on organic evolution, see Ernst Mayr’s recent as classic Animal Species and Evolution (1963; 797 pp. $11.95 gs postpaid from Harvard University Press, 79 Garden Street, Fig.
tw Cambridge, Mass. 02138). The promising, if heretical, hypo- Kx thesis that evolution may be directly affected by changes
within the cells is presented in Lancelot Law Whyte’s /nternal
RY iMEAN | Factors in Evolution (1965; 120 pp. $4.00 postpaid from
N t.. “A George Braziller, Inc., 215 Park Avenue South, New York,
NS VALUE OF N. Y. 10003). For a non-too-satisfactory but still tantalizing
MEASURABLE look into cultural evolution, see Sahlins and Service, Evolution VARIABLE and Culture (1960; 131 pp. $3. 95 postpaid from The University
of Michigan Press, 615 East University, Ann Arbor, Michigan
106). Fig. 7. The effects of mutation and selection on a Gaussian ore (“normal”) distribution curve.
Population, Evolution, and Birth Control
Once youve woken up to the population squeeze and the blindness of most of your fellow men, it’s worth looking around. Garrett Hardin has assembled a strong selection of eyes to look around with. Here are the ingredients for understanding. Now, how do we get the mule’s attention?
The closed earth of the future ‘requires economic principles which are somewhat different from those of the open earth
of the past. For the sake of picturesqueness, | am tempted to call the open economy the ‘cowboy economy,’ the cowboy being symbolic of the illimitable plains and also associated with reckless, exploitative, romantic, and violent behavior, which
is characteristic of open societies. The closed economy of the future might similarly be called the ‘spaceman’ economy, in which, therefore, man must find his place in a cyclical ecologi- cal system which is capable of continuous reproduction of material form even though it cannot escape having inputs of
Kenneth E. Boulding
and Birth Control Garrett Hardin, ed. 1964, 1969; 386 pp.
$2.95 postpaid
from: W. H. Freeman & Co. 660 Market Street
San Francisco, CA 94104
or WHOLE EARTH CATALOG
Among the impotence principles of socio-biology is surely this:, competition is inescapable. That species which has succeeded in eliminating all other species as competitors, ends by becoming its own competitor. The world, in spite. of comic-strip science,
is alimited one. Man, freed of the population-controlling factors of predators and disease organisms, must——willy-nilly, like it
or not——control his own numbers by competition with his own kind. By taking thought he can elect the kind of competition
he employs; but he cannot escape all kinds. This is not to imply that the election is a trivial matter.
To the biologist it is clear that the best chances for man’s long- time survival depend on the fragmentation of the species into well-separated populations. But it would be foolhardy to say
what form the separation should take. It might be a matter of nations, as we know them; or some sort of caste system, that would permit genetic isolation with geographic unity; or——far more likely——some new kind of communities that are neither nation
nor caste nor anything that has yet been conceived of.
The crowd-diseases——smallpox, cholera, typhoid, plague, etc.—— are, by the ecologist, labeled “‘density-dependent factors,’’ whose effectiveness in reducing population is a power function of the density of the population. No growth of population could get
out of hand as long as the crowd-diseases were unconquered, which means that man did not have to sit in judgment on man, to decide who should have a cover at Nature’s feast and who should not. With the development of bacteriological medicine, all this has been changed. Now, the feedback control is man himself.
Darwin’‘s life is symbolic. His Autobiography clearly and unconsciously reveals two elements that are needed to produce any creative genius: irresponsibility and alienation. . .
He who is to see what other men have not seen must, in a real sense, become alienated from the crowd. The manner in which this alienation occurs is subject to an infinity of permutations. ...
The wealthy eccentric is a nearly extinct dodo. The man of wealth
is now an other-directed man. He may become a lawyer or a doctor. But not a scientist. He is too much a part of the world to achieve the alienation required to be creative. (What millionaire today would have the nerve to do what Darwin did——retire to a ‘‘non-productiye” life in the country to think?)
. . We can hardly expect a committee to acquiesce in the dethronement of tradition. Only an individual can do that, an individual who is not responsible to the mob. Now that the truly independent man of wealth has disappeared, now that the independence of the academic man is fast disappearing, where are we to find the conditions of partial alienation and irresponsibility needed for the highest creativity?
25. A large Population, which is very sensitive to selection pressure, is narrowly confined to an adaptive peak (Mount Tory). A species broken up into many separate small breeding populations is much less responsive to selection pressures; its populations will wander widely from their adaptive peak (Mount Risky)—some to perish, some, per- haps, to find the way to new adaptive peaks like Mount Opportunity. As before, the water represents the threaten- ing natural selection.
If the food supply is falling short, or a new disease threatens us, inventions to relieve it must be made before famine and pestilence have done their work. Now, we are far nearer to famine and pestilence than we like to think. Let there be an interruption of the water supply of New York for six hours, and it will show in the death rate. Let the usual trains bring- ing supplies into the city be interrupted for forty-eight hours,
Population, Evolution 4nd some people will die of hunger. Every engineer who has
to deal with the administration of the public facilities of a great city has been struck with terror at the risks which people are willing to undergo and must undergo every day, and at the complacent ignorance of these risks on the part of his charges...
Norbert Wiener
The rest of the night | lay there sleepless, trapped between the quavering human cry in the night and the cold fact that forced me to know | could not save him or the thousands of others whose cries | could not hear. The next morning they came and told us that the beggar was dead.
Gerald Winfield
B
4 * if si SE hi re ANY ° Mt. Opportunity Me } AS ‘ wy 7° es ee se se
sly
nt
*
Parable of the Beast
if you are into molecular memory, chemical communication, slime mold colonies, time pulse perception, third eyes, acid, serotonin, intramural aggression, and other types of meta- mysticism, then bleibtreu probably has something for you, too.
he’s trying to put instincts back into science and take a little of the speculation out of the name “Homo sapiens”, through an introduction to the study of ethology. ;
readable, maybe reliable.
[Reviewed by J. D. Smith. Suggested by David Schwartz]
The Parable of the Beast John N. Bleibtreu 1968; 304 pp.
from:
Collier Books
866 Third Avenue- New York, N. Y. 10022
or WHOLE EARTH CATALOG society, and they understood at some infinitely deep intuitive level that if they went so far as to share food with the Negro, they could no longer effectively exclude him from the societal Organism. * The Rise of the West
One humanity, one history, one fat little book. Some familiarity with world history will not help you to avoid mistakes, but it may help you recognize them and thus move on to more original ones.
[Suggested by Jib Fowles]
The Rise of the West W. H. McNeill 1963; 896 pp. A HISTORY THE HUMAN $1.65 Postpaid cOoMMUYELY from:
The New American Library, Inc. 1301 Avenue of the Americas
W. H. Mc NEILL mes New York, N. Y. 10019
or WHOLE EARTH CATALOG
Human Use of the Earth
There is no longer any doubt whatever that among existing verte- brates anatomical structures are homologous, and that those two bones——the radius and the ulna——are homologous in the wing
of a bird, the foreleg of.a dog, and the arm of a human. The whole science of ethology is committed tothe accumulation of sufficient behavioral data from all animal phyia,.so that theoretical models of the evolution of behavior may be constructed.
Our technological control of our environment puts us into an ambiguous relationship with that environment; similar to that odd and destructive relationship that arises between a jailer and his prisoner. !t seems as though the more control the jailer exercises, the more a strange kind of perverse love, a love that thrives on injury, grows between him and his charge. As the relationship develops, the prisoner often becomes the stronger of the two, inflicting by his very passivity the greater hurt.
So we, as we control the environment, have gradually become the victims of our own control. The role of cycles in our lives, being natural, should be a joyous source of strength. Generally, how- ever, we do not acknowledge their existence at all, and when we do, we see these cyclical changes in ourselves as impediments to our efficiency.
The act of sharing food with one another seems to be one of the principal bases for creating societies, whether they be of the insect or human variety. !t was over this ancient issue of sharing food that human being: in twentieth-century America suddenly found themselves behaving more like insects than like creatures in God's image and endowed (at least by Linnaeus) with sapience.
White Americans did not want to include Negroes within their
In the New World, the so-called ‘classic’ period of the Amerindian civilizations continued in full bloom for several centuries after 600 A.D. In Guatemala and adjacent parts of Mexico, classic Mayan
cult centers increased in number and complexity. Then, about the middle of the ninth century, Mayan temples began to be abandoned, one by one, and jungle grew back over the vast courtyards, roadways, and steps pyramids. Yet there is no reason to suppose that the Mayan populations abandoned the region. Perhaps raids from the north destroyed the prestige of gods who failed to protect their people from merely human enemies. Or invaders may have captured and sacrificed the corps of ritual experts, thus preventing the
continuance of the old elaborate cults, even if the common people
still retained full faith in them. But, in view of the absence of any signs of violence at the deserted sites, it is more probably that the priestly specialists simply failed to prevent the spread of a simpler, popular religion that allowed individual farmers to assure the fertility of their maize fields by appropriate private ceremonies, thus render- ing the priests’ costly ritual services otiose. In the sixteenth century, European intruders found just such a private cult among the Mayan peoples, which (whenever it was introduced) obviously made the elaborate temple centers of an earlier age permanently unnecessary.
The fact that even the best laid plans for directing human affairs still often fail may turn out to be humanity’s saving grace.
As we shall see, one of the strategies by which supplies of goods and
services become available for actual use is the movement of the would- be consumers themselves to the sources of goods or services. There are even objects that act as containers of man himself, which move over land, across water or through the air, delivering the individual
To get a handle on your future you've got to get outside your- self, because only from outside can you see your space-time environment whole. One way is to identify out into another culture, Indian or whatever (this is Jim Nixon’s idea). Another to the piaces at which he can obtain goods he desires, or where he way is to take Philip Wagner's trip into fascinated objectivity will be served as he wishes.
about Earthly doings. In this book he merges some of the | e
best of geographical and anthropological perspective into a The madern inhabitant of commercial country doce net his detailed treatise on the Earth as tool, how it is used and how world; he buys it. The material circumstances of his life are not the
to understand it better to use it better. outcome of his individual encounter with the natural order, but arise out of his relations with the social order.
THE HUMAN USE
Ecologically speaking, even very primitive man is an extremely far- ranging creature. Men have migrated far more widely than almost any other animals. _
The Human Use of the Earth Man has been described as a ‘tool-using animal,’ but as is well known, Philip Wagner . many other higher mammals can employ natural objects spontane- 1960; 270 pp. ously as tools. Tool making, however, is peculiar to man.
$1 .95 postpaid e
from:
Free Press Manufacture adds vastly to the wealth upon which men can draw by
making more things usable. It confers the status of resources upon
Macmillan Com yd things that are of no benefit to any other animal.
Front and Brown Streets Riverside, N. J. 08075
or WHOLE EARTH CATALOG
In ordinary human affairs, a breakdown in communication is generally considered catastrophic. But from the point of view . . of the taxonomist something new and different can only begin to occur just at that moment when communications finally do break down for good, when a splinter portion of the population finds itself so alienated from the parent group that it turns away and in upon itself, and in the process develops some new and special characters.
That traces of territorial marking instincts still persist among humans ,can be established by a wealth of detail. For example the ‘Kilroy Was Here” drawings of World War I! are undoubtedly territorial markings. The keepers of public monuments fight a losing battle against the scrawled, carved, scratched legends that visitors leave.
But perhaps the most directly territorial marking by humans is
the urinal graffiti. As with animals, it is the male of the human species who is the most ardent marker; and the compulsion to
mark insulting legends on the walls of urinals seemingly transects
all economic classes and educational levels.
It is as one ascends the ladder of psychological complexity, as one observes animals up through the class of mammals, up through the order of primates, finally reaching man, that one finds what seems to be a progressive blurring of that which is innate, or given
by the genetic heritage, and what is the individual response to individual experience.
But “blurring” is a poor metaphor; it seems more like an alternation, or oscillation——an oscillation between the historical past embedded within the very flesh and bone, and the perceived existential present. At each moment of our becoming (becoming older, wiser, other
than what we were in the previous moment) we are being acted upon alternately by a pulse of autochthonous existence and a pulse of = consciously perceived and intellectually evaluated existence; each alternating pulse modifying the next, so that, as with the sound of
a flute, we are conscious, finally, only of the continuum, the thin, beautiful, and resonant sound of the self——the self, alive.
Once their intellectual curiosity *
had been aroused, Westerners ’ discovered that the Mosiems pos-
sessed a sophistication of mind and - ‘<4 richness of learning far surpassing that available in Latin. Regular
schools of translators therefore
set eagerly to work to bring the
treasures of Arabic learning to the
Latin world. Toledo became the
principal seat of this activity; but
parallel work was done also in
Sicily and, on a smaller scale, at z Salerno, Salamanca, and Venice. 4 The translators sought useful : knowledge and were little con- x cerned with belles-iettres. Hence
they concentrated on works of
medicine, mathematics, astronomy,
optics, philosophy, and encyclopedic = F collections of information about
the natural and supernatural world.
Men some centuries from now will surely look back upon our time as a golden age of unparalleled tech- nical, intellectual, institutional, and perhaps even of artistic creativity. Life in Demosthenes’ Athens, in Confucius’ China, and in Mohammed's Arabia was violent, risky, and uncertain; hopes strug- gled with fears, greatness teetered perilously on the brim of disaster. We belong in this high company and should count ourselves for- tunate to live in one of the great ages of the world.
Those same features of the most complex human communities which indicate their ecological advantages also suggest an unusual degree of inherent ecological risk. Such communities are complex and delicate- ly balanced, and depend utterly upon their artificiality. They and the individuals in them are threatened by the same biological penalties that attend any highly specialized system or species. Their very technical perfection may destroy them in time as other high —" have destroyed many former species of animals and plants.
The individual organism must, on the one hand, be specialized
enough in function to exploit some particular conditions in the habitat, so as to occupy a niche that no other organism can contest with it; and it must, on the other hand, possess enough versatility to adapt to any conditions of environment that may impinge upon its life activities. These two requirements may be thought of as polar extremes of a continuous scale, and every species may be placed somewhere along the scale between specialization and versatility. Some of the disadvantages of commitment to either specialization or versatility are overcome by aggregation of organisms into larger groups
within the community.
i Entremety relevent q of a , q
The Step to Man
ll be damned. | thought this was another yessir-things-are- changing technological social treatise thing. No such. It’s a manual of strategies for changing the world, if you have a mind to do that. Not heavy stuff about what is terrible
or what should happen, but how to remake life and stay alive in the process. Strategies like multiple working hypotheses so you don’t get infatuated with your first idea. Like seed operations where one phone call makes the whole thing happen. Like self-stabilizing provisions so a process
is safe from its own too-quick successes.
[Suggested by Steve Baer]
The Step to Man John R. Platt 1966; 216 pp.
$6.95 postpaid
from:
John Wiley and Sons Publishing Co. 1 Wiley Drive
Somerset, N. J. 08873
Western Distribution: 1530 South Redwood Road Salt Lake City, Utah 84104
or WHOLE EARTH CATALOG
Strong inference consists of applying the following steps to every problem in science, formally and explicitly and regularly:
(1) devising alternative hypotheses;
(2) devising a crucial experiment ( or several of them), with alternative possible outcomes, each of which will, as nearly as possible, exclude one or more of the hypotheses;
(3) carrying out the experiment so as to get a clean result;
(1') recycling the procedure, making subhypotheses or sequen- tial hypotheses to refine the possibilities that remain; and so on.
The main reason why our solution of social problems lags so far behind our magnificent technology today may be that we have not yet organized the same deliberate search for ideas to deal with them.
Privacy-indeterminacy is the result of the fact that the nervous system
greatly amplifies the tiny light signals or other signals that it detects.
The Unexpected Universe
Loren Eiseley celebrates our grandest ignorances, the places in human experience where if you stare into them, the
void stares back. City dumps; the open end of evolution; the unexplored continent in your mind; stars; a Pharaoh’s dead gesture; edges of oceans. Strong useful prose from
an old guy who knows something clear and bleak about regeneration.
The Unexpected Universe
Loren Eiseley
1969; 239 pp.
from:
Harcourt, Brace & World, Inc. 757 Third Avenue New York, N. Y. 10017
or WHOLE EARTH CATALOG
In the end the sea rejects its offspring. They cannot fight their way home through the surf which casts them repeatedly back upon the shore. The tiny breathing pores of starfish are stuffed with sand. The rising sun shrivels the mucilaginous bodies of the unprotected. The seabeach and its endless war are soundless. Nothing screams but the gulls. ..
... The sun behind me was pressing upward at the horizon’s rim—— an ominous red glare amidst the tumbling blackness of the clouds. Ahead of me, over the projecting point, a gigantic rainbow of incredible perfection had sprung shimmering into existence. Some- where toward its foot | discerned a human figure standing, as it seemed to me, within the rainbow, though unconscious of his position. He was gazing fixedly at something in the sand.
12
Could it be that there is in cultural dynamies e great need for real physical fuel——say, in the old days, the supply of timber that built the houses and ships and chariots, and fed the evening fires for poetry and analysis? There is some evidence in this direction. The Greeks had mighty pines where only olives grow today; the early Roman legends were forest legends; the old Chinese scrolls show densely wooded landscapes where barren hills are now; the early Egyptian tomb paintings show the kings hunting in forests. And in the last stages of all these cultures, conservation measures for the remaining woodland rise high on the list of laws.
| suspect that at any given time the boundary of a culture where negative feedback set in was determined to a considerable degree
by technical considerations, and was where the marginal expense
of further expansion against hostile nature or man became too great for the energy and construction supply and the associated organi- zational technology developed up to that time; and that decadence and retreat may have set in as much because of the dwindling of physical energy supply at the center as because of social factors.
Various personal incentive feedbacks to help solve the population problem have been put forward, but they are often of exactly the wrong kind. In India, some districts now pay men to be sterilized, but this is both hopelessly inadequate and has the worst of effects on individual psychology and public opinion. The same is true of the suggestion of taxing parents for ‘‘excess’’ children, which is a suggestion sometimes heard in the United States.
But if we turn the problem around and think of giving a bonus of one or two hundred dollars a year every year that a couple, of child-bearing age, does not have an additional child, this would be mathematically equivalent in total economic terms, but would be psychologically much more satisfactory and compelling. National and local governments and school districts would soon find the payment of such bonuses far cheaper than the cost of added schools and roads and city services would have been for each additional child. If the parents are saving society money, why not pay them part of it? This puts the cash benefits of reduced population in the right columns on the books.
The Jew said, ‘‘God must be very intelligent because he has created all these wonderful things——DNA molecules and fish and professors.’ The atheist said, ‘Nonsense. God is very stupid. In the first place,
it has taken him six billion years. And in the second place, he has done it by the clumsiest possible method, natural selection, just throwing away everything he couldn't use.”
The Hungarian said, ‘“Gentlemen, gentlemen! You don’t understand your own question. What !.Q. stands for is Intelligence Quotient. And a quotient is the ratio of two numbers. In this case, it is the ratio of the mental age to the geological age. Now God is almost infinitely wise, but he is also almost infinitely old: and the ratio
of these two infinities may be a small finite number!”
It was so transparent that we all fell to laughing and burst out together, ““—You mean, about the same as the |.Q. of a smart Hungarian!”
The thermodynamics of the solar system, and our prediction of what may happen in it, is incomplete if it does not provide for the evolution of intelligent men, including Hungarians.
Eventually he stooped and flung the object beyond the breaking surf. | labored toward him over a half mile of uncertain footing. By the time | reached him the rainbow had receded ahead of us, but something of its color still ran hastily in many changing lights across his features. He was starting to kneel again.
In a pool of sand and silt a starfish had thrust its arms up stiffly and was holding its body away from the stifling mud.
“It's still alive,” | ventured.
“Yes,” he said, and with a quick yet gentle movement he picked up the star and spun it over my head and far out into the sea. It sank in a burst of spume, and the waters roared once more.
“It may live,” he said, “if the offshore pull is strong enough.”” He spoke gently, and across his bronzed worn face the light still came and went in subtly altering colors.
“There are not many come this far,’’ | said, groping in a sudden embarrassment for words. ‘‘Do you collect?”
“Only like this,” he said softly, gesturing amidst the wreckage of the shore. “‘And only for the living.”” He stooped again, oblivious of my curiosity, and skipped another star neatly across the water.
“The stars,”’ he said, ‘throw well. One can help them”
...|t is as if at our backs, masked and demonic, moved the trick- ster as | have seen his role performed among the remnant of a savage people long ago. It was that of the jokester present at
the most devout of ceremonies. This creature never laughed; he never made a sound. Painted in black, he followed silently behind the officiating priest, mimicking, with the added flourish of a little whip, the gestures of the devout one. His timed and stylized posturings conveyed a derision infinitely more formidable than actual laughter. ...
We had been safe in the enchanted forest only because of our weakness. When the powers of that gloomy region were given to us, immediately, as in a witch's house, things began to fly about unbidden. The tools, if not science itself, were linked intangibly to the subconscious poltergeist aspect of man’s nature. The closer man and the natural world drew together, the more erratic became the behavior of each. Huge shadows leaped triumphantly after every blinding illumination. It was a magnified but clearly recognizable version of the black trickster’s antics behind the solemn backs of the priesthood. Here, there was one difference. The shadows had passed out of ali human semblance; no societal ritual safely contained their posturings, as in the warning dance
of the trickster. Instead, unseen by many because it was so gigantically real, the multiplied darkness threatened to submerge the carriers of the light.
| think we may now be in the time of the most rapid change in the whole evolution of the human race, either past or to come. It isa kind of cultural ‘‘shock-front,”’ like the shock-fronts that occur in aerodynamics when the leading edge of an airplane wing moves faster than the speed of sound and generates the sharp pressure wave that causes the well-known sonic boom.
In many ways, it is like a child learning to ride a bicycle. There you were, up until that day, riding on the three-wheeler where you couldn't hurt yourself very much. But then you get the two- wheeler, and it seems terribly scary, and perhaps you fall and skin a knee or an elbow. But you get up again, and your father holds the handlebars running along beside you, and suddenly you are riding alone. At one instant you are incompetent, falling to one side or the other and steering wrong, and the next instant it comes right and you are in control, safe and balanced not because you are fearful and slow but because you are going faster than ever. Wobbling and weaving but nevertheless choosing your own path and balancing safely at every turn. So, | think, in 30 or 40 years, if we survive, the human race will come through this time of wobbling conflict and uncertainty and falling, and will suddenly be riding in its own chosen direction, free, as only a coordinated and confident organism can be.
Beware of the man of one method or one instrument, either experimental or theoretical. He tends to become method- oriented rather than problem-oriented. The method-oriented man is shackled; the problem-oriented man is at least reaching freely toward what is most important. Strong inference redirects a man to probler-orientation, but it requires him
to be willing repeatedly to put aside his last methods and teach
himself new ones.
In order to carry out any great project, the future good of the group must be anticipated and turned into present and individual good, into a reward for every step that is taken in the right direction.
| am beginning to believe that in any social endeavor, it is the analysis of chain-reacting social processes that will enable us to choose the best course and will indicate the most effective ways for our intelligence to multiply its feeble energies. The future
is waiting to respond to a touch, if it is the right touch. It is ingenuity we need, not lamentations. The world’s future becomes almost plastic in the light of these possibilities.
We begin to realize that our brains are the most complex and self-determining things in the known universe. After all the measurements of atoms and galaxies are folded into laws in some corner of our networks, there will still be universes of interrelation- ships in the rest of our networks to be discovered. If this property of complexity could somehow be transformed into visible brightness so that it would stand forth more clearly to our senses, the biological world would become a walking field of light compared to the physical world. The sun with its great eruptions would fade to a pale simplicity compared to a rosebush. An earthworm would be a beacon, a dog would be a city of light,
and human, beings would stand out like blazing suns of complexity, flashing bursts of meaning to each other through the dull night
of the physical world between. We would hurt each other's
eyes. Look at the haloed heads of your rare and complex companions. Is it not so?
... Out of the depths of a seemingly empty universe had grown an eye, like the eye in my room, but an eye on a vastly larger scale.
It looked out upon what | can only call itself. It searched the skies and it searched the depths of being. In the shape of man it had ascended like a vaporous emanation from the depths of night.
The nothing had miraculously gazed upon the nothing and was
not content. It was an intrusion into, or a projection out of, nature for which no precedent existed. Tne act was, in short, an assertion of value arisen from the domain of absolute zero. A little whirl- wind of commingling molecules had succeeded in confronting its own universe.
Here, at last, was the rift that lay beyond Darwin's tangled bank. .. .
| picked up a star whose tube feet ventured timidly among my fingers while, like a true star, it cried soundlessly for life. | saw
it with an unaccustomed clarity and cast far out. -With it, | flung myself as forfeit, for the first time, into some unknown dimension of existence.
Around me in the gloom dark shapes worked ceaselessly at the dampened fires. My eyes were growing accustomed to their light.
“We get it all,”” the dump philosopher repeated. ‘‘Just give it time to travel, we get it all.”
Men, unknowingly, and whether for good or ill, appear to be making their last decisions about human destiny. To pursue the biological analogy, it is as though, instead of many adaptive organisms, a single gigantic animal embodied the only organic future of the world.
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. It was the failures who had always won, but by the time they won
they had come to be called successes. This is the final paradox, which men call evolution.
e e a e ‘ eh BY JOHN R. PLATT “ and - © = ‘ . THE 3 Ske exe
* So Human an Animal
Dubos has a combined medical and evolutionary perspective that prepares him perfectly to diagnose and prescribe for the new ills of mankind, the macro-maladies of cities and pollution and panic. Unlike other Generalsystem Prac- titioners, he supports his thoughts with a wealth of fascin- ating facts and anecdotes presented with a good cheer
that makes health look quite attractive.
As the year 2000 approaches, an epidemic of sinister predictions is spreading all over the world, as happened among Christians during the period preceding the year 1000.
So Human An Animal
We behave often as if we were the last generation to inhabit the earth. René Dubos
1968; 267 pp. If the rebellious young succeed in discovering a formula of life as $2 45 ¥ attractive as that of the troubadours, we may witness in the twenty- «49 postpaid first century a new departure in civilization as occurred in Europe after it recovered from the fears of the tenth century. To be from: : ’ humanly successful, the new ages will have to overcome the present Charles Scribner's Sons intoxication with the use.of power for the conquest of the cosmos, 597 Fifth Avenue and to rise above the simple-minded and degrading concept of man New York, N.Y. 10017 as amachine. The first move toward a richér and more human , philosphy of life should be to rediscover man’s partnership with or WHOLE EARTH CATALOG nature.
The ancient arts and crafts have all but disappeared, in part because the Indians no longer believe in their ancestral gods, but also because they do not find the time to carve and to paint now that they have accepted the efficient ways of technological civilization!
Because of the crucial role that water played in the early history of the Near East, conflicts continuously arose over water rights. Etymologically the world “rivalry” derives from the Latin rivus, a stream.
Considered broadly, evolution always involves learning from exper- ience. The learning may take place by storage of genetic information in the chromosomes, by accumulation of knowledge and skills in the individual organism, or by transmission of practices and wisdom in institutions or in society as a whole.
Certain evolutionary changes probably had their primary origin in an exploratory curiosity that made animals discover new ways of sustenance and of life. In Great Britain during the past few years, the birds known as tits have developed the habit of pecking through the cardboard tops of milk bottles delivered in the morning at doorsteps. Apparently, the birds open the bottles to get at the cream. As one tit tends to imitate another, the habit has progressively spread from a few centers in Britain to other parts of Europe.
Under natural conditions, birds learn their song patterns from their parents and from other birds of the same species around them. In the laboratory, newly hatched birds can also learn from playbacks of recorded songs. . Japanese teenagers are now much taller than their parents and differ in behavior from prewar teenagers because the conditions of life in postwar Japan are different from those of the past. This finding is in agreement with the fact that first-generation Nisea children in America approach average American children in their growth and development. History shows that cultures of a sort can emerge from the most improbable ways of life, provided these last long enough to become integrated into an organic whole. The emergence of a new culture is rarely if ever the result of a conscious choice with a definite goal in mind
* The Character of Physical Law
/f you look larger or smaller than the skinny realm of life, all you see is physics. It is our substratum and superstratum. These famous Feynman lectures introduce the subject as no other book has.
[Suggested by Lyle Burkhead] i The Character of Physical Law = Richard Feynman 1965; 173 pp. M.1.T. Press $2.45 postpaid 50 Ames Street, Room 765
Cambridge, Mass. 02142 or WHOLE EARTH CATALOG
If we take a fundamental particle such as an electron——any different
o Mew one will give a different number, but to give an idea say electrons—— two electrons are two fundamental particles, and they repel each Water pulled parity other inversely as the square of the distance due to electricity, way fran Zatth by mom and they attract each other inversely as the square of the distance due to gravitation. Between Two Execraows
Gravitation Attraction
Question: What is the ratio of the gravitational force to the electrical
force? That is illustrated in figure 7. The ratio of the gravitational uae rede mam attraction to electrical repulsion is given by a number with 42 digits ‘ Oe tailing off. Now therein lies a very deep mystery. Where could such
a tremendous number come from? If you ever had a theory from
which both of these things are to come, how could they come in
CO») 0 such disproportion? What equation has a solution which has for two kinds of forces an attraction and repulsion with that fantastic ratio? AuN Situstion People have looked for such a large ratio in other places. They hope,
for example, that there is another large number, and if you want a The water at y is closer to the large number why not take the diameter of the Universe to the moon and the water at x is diameter of a proton——amazingly enough it also is a number with farther from the moon than 42 digits. And so an interesting proposal is made that this ratio the rigid earth. The water is is the same as the ratio of the size of the Universe to the diameter pulled more towards the moon of a proton. But the Universe is expanding with time and that means at y, and at x is less towards that the gravitational constant is changing with time, and although the moon than the earth, so that is a possibility there is no evidence to indicate that it is a fact. there is a combination of those There are several partial indications that the gravitational constant two pictures that makes a has not changed in that way. So this tremendous number remains double tide. a mystery.
is rising or diminishing. The lakes are lined up because
: and then sank. Geology cycles slow, but big.
* The New Gravity
/‘m not competent to evaluate this ambitious set of new hypotheses about gravity and time. | can only be delighted that the authors have published in comic book format.
The New Gravity
Aman Ben Abraham 1969; 64pp.
$1 .00 postpaid from: San Francisco Comic Book Co. 3339 23rd Street San Francisco, CA 94110
*
Things Maps Don’t Tell Us
This seductive book——each page has a big simple illustra- tion and accompanying text——teaches you to see what's happening jn a piece of landscape. The mountain range
the strata are. The atoll is there because a volcano was, '
Things Maps Don’t Tell Us Armin K. Lobeck 1956; 160 pp.
$5.95 postpaid from: Macmillan Company Front and Brown Streets Riverside, N. J. 08075
or WHOLE EARTH CATALOG
Haversiraw_-
The CROTON DELTA of Present remnant of ON, DEL Glactal times porting Croton Point
The clue to the origin of Croton Point is the Croton Following the final disappearance of the ice and
River. During the waning stages of Glacial Time, the removal of this great weight, the crust of the when this part of the continent stood somewhat earth in this part of the United States gradually lower than it does now, because of the great rose above sea level. In the Croton Delta region weight of ice upon it, the Hudson River was about the elevation was about 80 feet, with the result 80 feet deeper in Haverstraw Bay than it is at that the flat top of Croton Point stands now 80 present. The Croton River, pouring out from the feet above sea level. An important result of this melting ice front, carried great quantities of sand —_rising was the invigorating effect it had upon and gravel into Haverstraw Bay and built there a the Croton River. This stream, therefore, flowed, large delta which reached halfway across the more swiftly, and eroded its valley extensively. river. Like most deltas built into quiet estuaries, Much of the delta was removed by the river, so the Croton Delta was more or less round in shape, that now only the northern half remains. This with distributary streams flowing outward in all is clearly revealed by its present shape.
directions toward its margins.
STAGE 2. A BARRIER REEF, ENCLOSING A PARTIALLY SUBMERGED VOLCANIC ISLAND
Animal \ se ee 4 «DONT TELLUS ee q se 4 ee ee es se as # “Ga Ti Tappan = es ese es Fi es = ee ee ee ee ee se se ee ses ee i ee ee ee es se ¢ ee se ee se ee ee ee ss es es es id ee 4 ee es ees ss se | $s es ee ss ss ss
Laws of Form
The laws of form have finally been written! With a “Spencer Brown” transistorized power razor (a Twentieth Century model of Occam’s razor). G. Spencer Brown cuts smoothly through two millennia of growth of the most prolific and persistent of semantic weeds, presenting us with his superbly written Laws of Form. This Herculean task which now, in retrospect, is of profound simplicity rests on his discovery of the form of laws. Laws are not descriptions, they are commands, injunctions: “Do!” Thus, the first constructive proposition in this book (page 3) is the injunction: “Draw a distinction!” an exhortation to perform the primordial creative act.
After this, practically everything else follows smoothly: a rigorous foundation of arithmetic, of algebra, of logic, of a calculus of indications, intentions and desires; a rigorous development of laws of form, may they be of logical relations, of descriptions of the universe by physicists
and cosmologists, or of functions of the nervous system which generates descriptions of the universe of which it is itself a part.
The ancient and primary mystery which still puzzled Ludwig Wittgenstein (Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, A. J. Ayer (ed), Humanities Press, New York, 1961, 166 pp.), namely that the world we know is constructed in such a way as to be
able to see itself, G. Spencer Brown resolves by a most surprising turn of perception. He shows, once and for all, that the appearance of this mystery is unavoidable. But
what is unavoidable is, in one sense, no mystery. The
fate of all descriptions is “ . . . what is revealed will be concealed, but what is concealed will again be revealed.”
At this point, even the most faithful reader may turn suspicious: how can the conception of such a simple injunction as “Draw a distinction!” produce this wealth of insights? It is indeed amazing——but, in fact, it does.
The clue to all this is Spencer Brown’s ingenious choice for the notation of an operator | which does several things at one time. This mark is a token for drawing a distinction, say, by drawing a circle on a sheet of paper which creates a distinction between points inside and outside of this circle; by its asymmetry (the concave side being its inside) it provides the possibility of indication; finally, it stands for an instruction to cross the boundary of the first distinction by crossing from the state indicated on the inside of the token to the state indicated by the token
{A space with no token indicates the unmarked state). Moreover, these operations may operate on each other, generating a primary arithmetic, an opportunity which
is denied us by a faulty notation in conventional arith- metic as pointed out by Karl Menger in “Gulliver in the Land without One, Two, Three’ (The Mathematical Gazette, 53, 24-250; 1959).
These operations are defined in the two axioms (no other ones are needed) given on pages 1 and 2. They are: Axiom 1. The law of calling
The value of a call made again is the value of the call.
That is to say, if a name is called and then is called again, the value indicated by the two calls taken together is the value indicated by one of them.
That is to say, for any name, to recall is to call.
(in notation: Sa =" = |
the “form of condensation”.) Axiom 2. The law of crossing The value of a crossing made again is not the value of the crossing.
That is to say, if it is intended to cross a boundary and then it - is intended to cross it again, the value indicated by the two intentions taken together is the value indicated by none of them.
That is to say, for any boundary, to recross is not to cross.
(In notation: =
For instance, take a complex expression
Then, by the two axioms
the ‘form of cancellation’’.)
Ex
!n the beginning this calculus is developed for finite expres- sions only (involving a finite number of “T), simply because otherwise any demonstration would take an infinite number of steps, hence would never be accomplished. However, in Chapter 11, Spencer Brown tackles the problem of infinite expressions by allowing an expression to re-enter its own space. This calls for trouble, and one anticipates now the emergence of antinomies. Not so! In his notation the classical clash between a simultaneous Nay and Yea never occurs, the system becomes “bi-stable”, flipping from one to the other of the two values as a consequence of previous values, and thus generates time! Amongst the many gems in this book, this may turn out to be the shiniest.
14
Sometimes the reading gets rough because of Spencer Brown’s remarkable gift for parsimony of expression. But the 30 pages of “Notes” following the 12 Chapters of presentation come to the reader’s rescue precisely at that moment when he lost his orientation in the lattice of a complex crystal. Consequently, it is advisable to read them almost in parallel with the text, if one can suppress the urge to keep on reading Notes.
/n an introductory note Spencer Brown justifies the math- ematical approach he has taken in this book: “Unlike more superficial forms of expertise, mathematics is a way of saying less and less about more and more.” If this strategy is pushed to its limit, we shall be able to say nothing about all. This is, of course, the state of ultimate wisdom and provides a nucleus for a calculus of love, where distinctions are suspended and all is one. Spencer Brown has made a major step in this direction, and his book should be in the hands of all young people——no lower age limit required.
[Reviewed by Heinz Von Foerster. Suggested by Steve Baer]
Laws of Form G. Spencer Brown
1969; 141 pp.
$5.40 postpaid al from: Blackwell's Broad Street
Oxford, ENGLAND or WHOLE EARTH CATALOG
CONSTRUCTION Draw a distinction.
CONTENT
Call it the first distinction.
Cali the space in which it is drawn the space severed or cloven by the distinction.
Call the parts of the space shaped by the severance or cleft the sides of the distinction or, alternatively, the spaces, states, or contents distinguished by the distinction.
INTENT
Let any mark, token, or sign be taken in any way with or with regard to the distinction as a signal.
Call the use of-any signal its intent.
In all mathematics it becomes apparent, at some stage, that we have for some time been following a rule without being con- sciously aware of the fact. This might be described as the use of a covert convention. A recognizable aspect of the advancement of mathematics consists in the advancement of the consciousness of what we are doing, whereby the covert becomes overt. Mathematics is in this respect psychedelic.
One of the most beautiful facts emerging from mathematical studies is this very potent relationship between the mathematical process and ordinary language. There seems to be no mathematical idea of any importance or profundity that is not mirrored, with an almost uncanny accuracy, in the common use of words, and this appears especially true when we consider words in their original, and sometimes long forgotten, senses.
The main difficulty in translating from the written to the verbal form comes from the fact that in mathematical writing we are free to mark the two dimensions of the plane, whereas in speech we can mark only the one dimension of time.
Much that is unnecessary and obstructive in mathematics today appears to be vestigial of this limitation of the spoken word.
Any evenly subverted equation of the second degree might be called, alternatively, evenly informed. We can see it over a sub- version (turning under) of the surface upon which it is written, or alternatively, as an in-formation (formation within) of what it expresses.
Such an expression is thus informed in the sense of having its own form within it, and at the same time informed in the sense of remembering what has happened to it in the past.
We need not suppose that this is exactly how memory happens in an animal, but there are certainly memories, so-called, constructed this way in electronic computers, and engineers have constructed such in-formed memories with magnetic relays for the greater
part of the present century. ;
We may perhaps look upon such memory, in this simplified in- formation, as a precursor of the more complicated and varied forms of memory and information in man and the higher animals. We can also regard other manifestations of the classical forms of physical or biological science in the same spirit.
©
There is a tendency, especially today, to regard existence as the source of reality, and thus as a central concept. But as soon as it is formally examined (cf Appendix 2), existence [ex = out, ~ stare = stand. Thus to exist may be considered as to stand outside, to be exiled.] is seen to be highly peripheral and, as such, especially corrupt (in the formal sense) and vulnerable. The concept of truth is more central, although still recog nizably peripheral. |!f the weakness of present-day science is that it centres round existence, the weakness of present-day logic is that it centres round truth.
Throughout the essay, we find no need fo the concept of truth, apart from two avoidable appearances (true = open to proof) in the descriptive context. At-no point, to say the least, is it a necessary inhabitant of the calculating forms. These forms are thus not only precursors of existence, they are also precursors of truth.
It is, | am afraid, the intellectual block which most of us
come up against at the points where, to experience the world clearly, we must abandon existence to truth, truth to indication, indication to form, and form to void, that has so held up the development of logic and its mathematics.
Tao Teh King
Reviewing the Tao is like reviewing the Bible. As soon as you presume, it just giggles and rains on you. Nevermind.
The Tao Teh King is a very old book (500 B.C. is one date) written by a legend named Lao Tzu. It describes how the universe is and makes an excellent case for harmony as the only survival technique that works. This translation by Archie Bahm is straightforward. (For other translations, see p. 80)
[Suggested by Jack Loeffler]
Tao Teh Ki Lao Tzu; Archie Bahm ? B.C., 1958; 126 pp.
$1.25 postpaid
from: Frederick Ungar Publishing Co 250 Park Avenue South - New York, N. Y. 10003 or WHOLE EARTH CATALOG Everyone says: “Nature is great, yet Nature is simple.” It is great because it is simple. If it were not simple, long ago it would have come to little.
Nature sustains itself through three precious principles, which one does well to embrace and follow.
These are gentleness, frugality and humility.
When one is gentle, he has no fear of retaliation. When one is frugal, he can afford to be generous. When one is humble, no one challenges his leadership. But when rudeness replaces gentleness,
And extravagance replaces frugality,
And pride replaces humility,
Then one is doomed.
Since a gentle attack arouses little antagonism,
And a gentle defense provokes little anger,
Nature predisposes to gentleness those most suited for survival.
Intelligent control appears as uncontrol or freedom. And for that reason it is genuinely intelligent control. Unintelligent control appears as external domination. And for that reason it is really unintelligent control.
Intelligent control exerts influence without appearing to do so.
Unintelligent control tries to influence by making a show ot force. It is because we single out something and treat it as distinct from other things that we get the idea of its opposite. Beauty, for example, once distinguished, suggests its opposite, ugliness.
And Goodness, when we think of it, is naturally opposed to badness. In fact, all distinctions naturally appear as opposites. And opposites get their meaning from each other and find their completion only through each other. The meanings of “‘is’’ and “is not” arise from our distinguishing bet, 1 them. Likewise, “‘difficult and easy,” “long and short,” “high and low,” “loud and soft,” “before and after’’—all derive their meanings from each other. Therefore the intelligent man accepts what is as it is. In seeking to grasp what is, he does not devote himself to the making of distinctions which are then mistaken to be separate existences. In teaching, he teaches, not by describing and pointing out differences, but by example. Whatever is exists, and he sees that nothing is gained by representing what fully exists by*a description—another lesser, diluted kind of existence. If something exists which cannot be wholly revealed to him with his viewpoint, he does not demand of it that it be nothing but what it seems to him. If some one else interprets him, he does not trust that inter- pretation as being equal to his existence. If some part of him stands out as if a superior representative of his nature, he will not surrender the rest of his nature to it.
' And in not surrendering the whole of his nature to any part of it, he keeps himself intact.
This is how the intelligent man preserves his nature.
We cannot escape the fact that the world we know is constructed in order (and thus in such a way as to be able) to see itself.
This is indeed amazing.
Not so much in view of what it sees, although this may appear fantastic enough, but in respect of the fact that it can see at ail.
But in order to do so, evidently it must first cut itself up into at least one state which sees, and at least one other state which is seen. In this severed and mutilated condition, whatever it sees
is only partially itself. We may take it that the world undoubtedly is itself (i.e. is indistinct from itself), but, in any attempt to see itself as an object, it must, equally undoubtedly, act so as to make itself distinct from, and therefore false to, itself. In this condition it will always partially elude itself.
e To explain, literally to lay out in a plane where particulars can be readily seen. Thus to place or plan in flat land, sacrificing other dimensions for the sake of appearance. Thus to expound or put out at the cost of ignoring the reality or richness of what is so put out. Thus to take a view away from its prime reality or royalty, or to gain knowledge and lose the kingdom.
= = ‘ C ‘ po | Laws pia OF 4 FORM G. SPENCER BROWN
On Growth and Form
(a)
Fig. 143. (a) Harpinia plumosa Kr.; (b) Stegocephalus inflatus Kr.;
(c) Hyperia galba.
A paradigm classic. Everyone dealing with pose growth or form in any manner can use the
book. We’ve seen worn copies on the shelves
of artists, inventors, engineers, computer
systems designers, biologists. Would one of < you do a thorough review of D’Arcy Thomp- SS son’s venerable book for the CATALOG? ——}
When Plateau made the wire framework of a regular
tetrahedron and dipped it in soap-solution, he ob- tained in an instant a beautifully symmetrical system of six films, meeting three by three in four edges and these four edges running from the corners of the fig- ure to its centre of symmetry. Here they meet, two by two, at the Maraldi angle; and the films meet three by three, to form the re-entrant solid angle which we have called a ‘‘Maraldi pyramid” in our account of the architecture of the honeycomb.
The very same configuration is easily recognized in the minute siliceous skeleton of Callimitra. There are two discrepancies, neither of which need raise any difficulty. The figure is not rectilinear but a spherical tetrahedron, such as might be formed by the boundary edges of a tetrahedral cluster of four co-equal bubbles; and just as Plateau extended his experiment by blowing a small bubble in the centre of his tetrahedral system, so we have a central bub- ble also here.
This bubble may be of any size; but its situation (if
it be present at all) is always the same, and its shape is always such as to give the Maraldi angles at its own four corners. The tension of its own walls, and those of the films by which it is supported or slung, all bal- ance one another. Hence the bubble appears in plane projection as a curvilinear equilateral triangle; and we have only got to convert this plane diagram into the corresponding solid to obtain the spherical tetra- hedron we have been seeking to explain.
The geometry of the little inner tetrahedron is not less simple and elegant. Its six edges and four faces are all equal. The films attaching it to the outer skeleton are all planes. Its faces are spherical,
(a) (b)
Fig. 63. Di ic construction a cage; (b) another bubble within a skeleton of the former bubble.
and each has its centre in the opposite corner. The edges are circular | arcs, with cosine 4; each is in a plane perpendicular to the chord of'\ the arc opposite, and each has its centre in the middle of that chord. = Along each edge the two intersecting spheres meet each other at an \ YY
angle of 120°.
Fig. 150. Polyprion.
Fig. +51. Pseudopriacanthus altus.
ion of Callimitra. (a) A bubble suspended withir,
Fig. 62. A Nassellarian skeleton, Callimitra agnesae UkI\. (0-15 mm. diameter)
The engineer, who had been busy de- signing a new and powerful crane, saw in a moment that the arrangement of the bony trabeculae was nothing more nor less than a diagram of the lines of stress, or directions of tension and compression, in the. loaded structure; in short, that Na- ture was strengthening the bone in pre- cisely the manner and direction in which strength was required; and he is said to have cried out, ‘““That’s my crane!"
On Growth and Form D’Arcy Wentworth Thompson Two volume edition
1917, 1952
$27.50 postpaid
Abridged paper edition 1917, 1961; 346 pp.
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New Rochelle, N. Y. 10801
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* The Tao of Science
No high-minded bridging of East and West, this. Buta successful director of research showing how valuable an informed and experienced Taoist sense of harmony can be to the conduct of science. It can help balance the scientist, and it offers an avenue to balancing the appli- cation of what the scientist learns. Good medicine for over-specialization.
The Tao of Science R. G. H. Siu 1957; 180 pp.
$2.45 postpaid
from:
The M. |. T. Press
50 Ames Street, Room 765 Cambridge, Mass. 02142
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It is as impossible to appeal to a neutral principle to determine the rationality of competing systems, as it is to invoke a neutral vocab- ulary to characterize a language. It is in the name of one kind of logic that one rejects the logic of another. Arnold Nash illustrated this “irrational prejudice’ of reason very well in the story of a doctoral examination. The candidate, who submitted a study on Mormon history, was asked whether he, being a Mormon,
regarded himself sufficiently unprejudiced to write a thesis
on Mormon history. The student replied, “Yes, if you, not a Mormon, consider yourself unprejudiced enough to examine it.”
An important difference exists between “‘having-no’’ knowledge and having “‘no-knowledge.”’ The former is merely a state of ignorance; the latter is one of ultimate enlightenment and universal sensibilities. To the confirmed rationalist, no-knowledge may appear to be the hugger-muggery of the mystagogue. Nevertheless, it is precisely
its ineffability that lends force to its reality. The mysteries of
epee appear to be mysteries only to those who refuse to participate inthem. ...
With rational knowledge, the scientist is a spectator of nature. With no-knowledge, he becomes a participant in nature. There is acom- munion of understandings. He no longer shares that tragic suffering of many individuals, who ‘‘fear of finding oneself alone,”” as André Gide describes it, ‘‘and so they don’t find themselves at all.””
... This all-embracing applicability of no-knowledge makes it a valuable tool for the executive. It provides him with a common ground of all situations. It is his means of transcendence over specific experience of which he has not yet tasted. Versed in no-knowledge, he is at home under otherwise strange conditions; he always finds familiar strains in his management of assorted enterprises. .
The scientific West adopts the positive method and the Taoist East the negative. In the positive method the item under question is intentionally pointed out and described. In the negative method, it is specifically not discussed. By not dissecting the ineffable x
in question but merely restricting discourse to objects that it is
not, the features of the x are revealed in our dim consciousness.
Not only must the optimum be exhibited in quantity and space but also in time. According to Barnard, the art of executive decisions consists in ‘‘not deciding questions that are not now pertinent, in not deciding prematurely, in not making decisions that cannot be made effective, and in not making decisions that others should make.”
Relinquishing the intellectual throne for the life of a commoner is
a hard chore for science after three hundred years of free ranging
and a hundred years of lordship. We can fully appreciate her reluc- tance to make the sacrifice. Yet she should remember that when Christ asked the rich man to give what he had to the poor, he was not think- ing particularly about the poor.
The efficient management of organized research also demands gusto and quickened action. ‘‘He who would train in the fortress of contem- plation,”’ as the saying of Gregory the Great goes, ‘‘must first train
in the camp of action.”” It is only in participation that the final synthesis of knowledge can be embodied in a unitary attitude to
life. A faulty execution of a sound plan generates no more beneficial an outcome than a sound execution of a faulty plan. Some executives have even gone so far as to say that nothing is right
which does not work. This may be too extreme a pronouncement. Yet, of what service to humanity is a dream entombed? Unless
results are effected, the dreamer will continue to share the bewilder- ment of the March Hare, who was trying to fix the Mad Hatter’s
watch with butter in Alice in Wonderland. All he could say was:
“‘And it was the best butter, too, the best butter.”
TWD Ait q Fig. 101. Crane-head and femur. After Culmann and J. Woltf — | . Be 15
* The Stress of Life
It has been suggested that this book be reviewed with the thought in mind of its being included in the WEC. Now before going into the criteria for that, it should be stated that the entertainment
value, or readability of this book is high. Further note that according
to a quoted review the book “... is very readable. ..." You will experience “... Dr. Selye’'s persuasive enthusiasm." Yet another (not quoted in the book) says it can be read “. .. with considerable pleasure." And thus spake (also sprach) the Library Journal:
“... orchids upon this... incomparable exposition. ..."
In the reading——this applies chiefly to the first 4/5 ths of the volume——a word of advice is picked up from a review quoted in the book itself and credited to the American Journal of Public Health. The book, happily, docs not contain “. .. a mass of
data of questionable relevance...” but the reader is cautioned to“... maintain balance amid Dr. Selye’s persuasive enthusiasm” These words gain weight when one is apprised that they were written for the reviewing journal by Ancel Keys, one of this country’s great physiologists.
Now back to the WEC. The WEC states that the criteria for listing something in its pages shall be four in number, videlicet:
1) useful as a tool, 2) relevant to independent education,
3) high quality or low cost, and 4) available by mail. This
book immediately meets criteria 3 and 4.
Criterion 2 is a sort of double-barreled one that depends not only upon the nature of the book but also upon what the reader does
Now to get back to the question of criterion number one——the use of the book asa tool. Up to page 258 it is not useful as such to the general reader, Sclye says, “All we have Said up to now helps to guide treatment on the part of a physician,” and “. . . even dietary treatment must be controlled by a competent physician. All this book can do in this respect is to help the patient understand why his physician prescribes a certain regimen; it could not presume to be an adequate preparation for self-treatment along such purely medical lines.” BUT, “... there are many things I have learned from the study of stress, which the physician cannot use but the patient can. I particularly want to share these lessons with you. ... "’ OK, reader, you are now on your own, and you will indeed find out
that criterion number one is met.
[Reviewed by R. D. Chamberlain, M.D.]
The Stress of Life
Hans Selye, M.D.
$2.75 postpaid : from:
McGraw-Hill Book Co. Princeton Road Hightstown, N. J. 08520
Manchester Road Manchester, Mo. 63062
What is disease——not any one disease, just disease in general? This question lingered on in my mind, as it undoubtedly has in the minds of most physicians of all nations throughout history. But there was no hope of an early answer, for nature——the source of all know- ledge——rarely replies to questions unless they are put to her in the form of experiments to which she can say ‘‘yes”’ or ‘‘no.”’ She is not loquacious; she merely nods in the affirmative or in the negative. ‘What is disease?’ is not a question to which one can reply this way.
Occasionally, if we ask, “What would you do if... ?”’ or, "What is in such and such a place?” she will silently show you a picture. But she never explains. You have to work things out yourself first, aided only by instinct and the feeble powers of the human brain, until you can ask precise questions, to which nature can answer in her precise but silent sign language of nods and pictures. Understanding grows out of a mosaic of such answers. It is up to the scientist to draw a biueprint of the questions he has to ask before the mosaic makes sense.
Fortunately, it is not so much the existence of things that we do not know, or about which we are too uncertain, that handicaps our research, but the existence of things we do know and about whose interpretation we are quite certain——although they may turn out to be false. Lack of equipment, or even lack of knowledge, is much less of a handicap in original research than an overabundance of useless materials or useless (and sometimes false) information which clutters up our laboratories and our brains.
with it. Dr. Selye epitomizes the relevance to independent education in his dedication: “This book is dedicated to those who are not afraid to enjoy the stress of a full life, nor too naive to think that they can do so without intellectual effort.” So let
us now say that criteria 2, 3, and 4 have now been met.
The term adaptation energy has been coined for that which is consumed during continued adaptive work, to indicate that it is some- thing different from the caloric energy we receive from food; but
this is only a name, and we still have no precise concept of what
this energy might be. Further research along these lines would
seem to hold great promise, since here we appear to touch upon
the fundamentals of aging.
8171 Redwood Highway Novato, CA 94947
or WHOLE EARTH CATALOG
Stress is essentially the rate of all the wear and tear caused by life. It will take a whole book to explain the complex mechanisms through which the body can reduce this type of wear and tear. But e let me say here, by way of an introduction, that although we cannot avoid stress as long as we live, we can learn a great deal about how to keep its damaging side-effects to a minimum. For instance, we
In order to determine if the book meets criterion number one as well, let us first quote the author, “I... recommend that only physicians, or readers who are at least reasonably familiar with current problems of physiology and medicine, should read this book from cover to cover.” He directs the rest of us cats to
irst re V is divi. -V incl. Ses my ote (the volume is divided into Books F-V incl.) are just beginning to see that many common diseases are largely LEVEL OF NORMAL _ in small installments of. .. ten to twenty pages at a time. Now due to errors in our adaptive response to stress, rather than to RESISTANCE VW \
it turns out that Book V contains “... the practical implications and applications of the stress concept in everyday life....” Hence, criterion number one is going to be met by the contents of Book V——a mere matter of 52 pages——or it is not going
to be met at all.
direct damage by germs, poisons, or other external agents. In this AR. S.R. SE.
sense many nervous and emotional disturbances, high blood pres- sure, gastric and duodenal ulcers, certain types of rheumatic, In the acute phase of the alarm reaction (A.R.), general resistance, allergic, cardiovascular, and renal diseases appear to be essentially to the icular stressor with which the G.A.S. had been elicited,
dis dap tati eases OF iap tation. falls way below normal. Then, as adaptation is acquired, in the stage
Let us now diverge a bit. “The main purpose of this book is to : ’ > ’ ? of resistance (S.R.), the capacity to resist rises considerably above tell... what medicine has learned about stress.” It should be normal. But eventually, in the stage of exhaustion (S.E.), resistance noted in passing that there is a glossary at book's-end to help out aqseasied th attaching the petit tt continent to the pe of the drops below normal again. on the technical terms. The main subject of the book is the G.A.S. world
(general adaptation syndrome) which comes to be called the stress and, may between the previously known and the hitherto unknown that Adaptability can be well trained to serve a special purpose, but be said to be a GAS. First, one should mention that a syndrome is constitutes the essence of scientific discovery. eventually it runs out; its amount is finite.
merely a collection or constellation of related signs and symptoms
which is characteristic of a disease or condition of malfunctioning. e "
The G.A.S. is the sum-total of all non-specific changes that occur
in the body during the time it is being acted upon by a Stress- producing agent (stressor.) These non-specific changes occur in three stages, 1) alarm, 2) resistance, and 3) exhaustion. Number 3 eventuates, if it continues, in death. Most stresses are only severe enough to produce stages 1 and 2. Going through I and 2 repeatedly in one’s lifetime constitutes “adapting” to things. Various degrees of failure to adapt, Selye says, result in various disease or degen- erative conditions.
Star Maker
It is not to see something first, but to establish solid connections
° The fact is that a man can be intoxicated with his own stress
Paracelsus (whose true, but somewhat bombastic, name was Theo- hormones. | venture to say that this sort of drunkenness phrastus Bombastus von Hohenheim) was a famous Swiss physician has caused much more harm to society than the other kind. who lived during the sixteenth century. In his treatise on “Diseases Which Deprive Man of his Reason, he stated that ‘the best cure = quota. Many more people are the helpless slaves of their own and one which rarely fails is to throw such persons into cold water. stressful activities than of alcohol. Besides, simple rest is no cure-
© all. Activity and rest must be judiciously balanced, and every person has his own characteristic requirements for rest and activity. To lie motionless in bed all day is no relaxation for an active man.
... It is not easy to tune down when you have reached your stress-
Disease is not mere surrender to disease, but also fight for health; and unless there is fight there is no disease.
The sheer beauty of our planet surprised me. It was a huge pearl, set in spangled ebony. |t was nacrous, it was an opal. No, it was far more lovely than any jewel. Its patterned colouring was more subtle, more ethereal. It displayed the delicacy and brilliance, the intricacy and har- mony of alive thing. Strange that in my remoteness | seemed to feel, as never before, the vital presence of Earth as of a creature alive but tranced and obscurely yearning to wake. + The sport of disembodied flight among the stars must surely be the ‘ most exhilarating of all athletic exercises. It was not without danger;
A man’s consciousness unwillingly departs his body and his planet. Once in space he accomplishes willed travel in search of Star Maker. His journey takes him into the minds of other planetary beings; a company of these travel together and witness countless civilizations; eventually they participate
in a combined consciousness of worlds that in time embraces Star Maker but its danger, as we soon discovered, was psychological, not physical. the stars as well; this leads to galactic and cosmic consciousness *j Olaf Stapledon In our bodiless state, collision with celestial objects mattered
reer . 1937; 188 pp. little. Sometimes, in the early stages of our adventure, we plunged and the culminating encounter with Star Maker. by accident headlong into a star. Its interior would, of course, be Jordan Belson, who | trust in these matters, asserts that it is $2.50 postpaid inconceivably hot, but we experienced merely brilliance. a true vision, that Stapledon’s whole life pointed at attaining from: The psychological dangers of the sport were grave. We soon discovered
that disheartenment, mental fatigue, fear, all tended to reduce our pow- ers of movement. More than once we found ourselves immobile in space, like a derelict ship on the ocean; and such was the fear roused by this plight that there was no possibility of moving till, having experienced the whole gamut of despair, we passed through indif- ference and on into philosophic calm.
it, and that the book will be used and discussed for centuries.
This Dover edition has an earlier Stapledon story, “Last and First Men,” which Jordan considers negligible.
Dover Publications, Inc. 180 Varick Street New York, N. Y. 10014
or WHOLE EARTH CATALOG
The Age of Discontinuity
Almost certainly, the star’s whole physical behaviour is normally experienced as a blissful, an ecstatic, an ever successful pursuit of formal beauty. This the minded worlds were able to discover through their own most formalistic aesthetic experience. In fact it was through this experience that they first made contact with stellar
How come Peter Drucker has so much good sense and mind.
perspective, and still remains so cheerful? Tradi tionally considerations such as his—economics, organizations, the future—turn a prophet’s soul terrible and dark or at least 1969; 401 pp. partially wiggy. The only other intact floater on this ocean $7.95 postpsid | know of is Marshall McLuhan. You sense that both of . wiles ai them have a backyard in their mind that resides somewhere oo x else, some time else. (It would be worth pursuing this. 40 East J a pl a How To Think Big and Stay Sane.) New York, N. 7 10016 Pitti ttt
Peter bP LLECKE? Yet though |BM is now shipping computers at a rate of a thousand or WHOLE EARTH CATALOG oP Aes a month, we do not have the equivalent of Edison’s light bulb. What we are lacking is not a piece of hardware like the light bulb. What we still have to create is the conceptual understanding of information. As long as we have to translate laboriously every set of data into a separate “‘program,’’ we do not understand information. We have to be capable of classifying information according to its characteristics. We have to have a “‘notation,”” comparable to the one St. Ambrose invented 1,600 years ago to record music, that can express words and thoughts in symbols appropriate to electronic pulses rather than in the clumsy computer language of today. Then each person could, with very little training, store his own data within a general system, that is, in what the computer engineers call a “routine.” Then we shall have true “information systems.”
The Age of Discontinuity Peter F. Drucker
| said, ‘‘It is enough, and far more than enough, to be the creature of so dread and lovely a spirit, whose potency is infinite, whose nature passes the comprehension even of a minded cosmos. It is enough to have been created, to have embodied for a moment the infinite and tumultuously creative spirit. It is infinitely more than enough to have been used, to have been the rough sketch for some perfected creation.”’
The Age of Discontinuity takes notice of the remarkable continuity of the last 50 years in building on the technological breakthroughs of the Victorian era. Now, says Drucker, we are in for some hard changes, particularly around new technologies (of information, materials, oceans, megalopolis), global economics, and redistribution of responsibility in large organizations.
Since the computer first appeared in the late 1940's the information industry has been a certainty. But we do not have it yet. We still do not have the effective means to build an “information system.” This is where the work is going on, however, The tools to create information systems may already exist: the communications satellite and other means of transmitting information, microfilm and the TV tube to display and store it, rapid printers to reduce it to permanent record, and soon. There is no technical reason why someone like Sears Roebuck should not come out tomorrow with an appliance selling for less than a TV set, capable of being plugged in wherever there is electricity, and giving immediate access to all the information . needed for schoolwork from first grade through college.
: ' ane Feral & SSS ee ss ¥ es ee ee si ee a ee ee
The Year 2000
Js Herman Kahn the bad guy (as liberal opinion would have it) or a good guy (as in some informed opinion)? Kahn will
hang you on that question and while you're hanging jam infor-
mation and scalding notions into your ambivalence. He does this best with a live audience, but this book is a fine collec- tion of the information he uses.
Here is most of the now-basic methodology of future study— multi-fold trends, surprise-free projections, scenarios, etc. And here are their results. It’s the best future-book of the several that are out.
In my opinion, it is not particularly an accurate picture of the future but the most thorough picture we have of the present—the present statistics, present fantasies, present ex- pectations that we’re planning with. We are what we think our future is.
The Futurist
In part because the Future is a new field of methodic study this is a lively newsletter. It reports bi-monthly on new books and programs having anything to do with social fore- casting. Future study is like education: everybody thinks they‘re good at it. The newsletter has some of that diluted flavor, but it doesn’t matter. Useful pointing at useful activities done here.
Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs
Abraham Maslow, a Brandeis University psychologist, has postulated that all men share certain basic needs which can be arranged in a hierarchy of five levels, from the most fundamental physiological needs to the needs of intellectual and spiritual fulfillment. The
five levels are:
1. Physiological needs: To survive, man needs food, clothing, shelter, rest. As the imperative requirements for staying alive, these represent the most elemental needs.
2. Safety or security needs: When physiological needs are satisfied, man wants to keep and protect what he has. He starts to try to stabilize his environment for the future.
3. Social needs: As his environment becomes more stable, he seeks to be part of something larger than himself. He has social needs
for belonging, for sharing and association, for giving and receiving friendship and love.
4. Ego needs: These are the needs that relate to one’s self-esteem (needs for self-confidence, independence, achievement, competence, knowledge) and one’s reputation (needs for status, recognition, appreciation, deserved respect of one’s peers)
5. Self-fulfillment needs: Finally comes the need for growth, self- development, self-actualization. As the capstone of all his other needs, man wants to realize the full range of his individual potential as a human being.
At each level, needs determine values and patterns of behavior.
At the survival level, for instance, man values food, clothing and shelter most highly. It is important to note that a satisfied need
is not a motivator of behavior. (Once hunger has been satisfied,
it no longer has much motivating force.) Furthermore, higher
level needs operate only when lower level needs continue to be met.
Mankind 2000
Politicians seldom invent things. They respond to pressures by reaching into the current social invention bag and finding whatever looks like the most promising program for this day our daily conflict.
So who makes the inventions? A motley crew is who. Pol- itical aids, academes, business entrepreneurs, artists, liberal Scientists, and occasionally a grass root and friends. Some of their thoughts get published; some purely happen.
Whether you’re an inventor or a piece of the pressure, you may want to know what’s in the bag so far for the rest of this century. This book has a good range of the published ideas and expectable pressures, some lovely, some harrow- ing, all impinging on your very own personal world to come.
Mankind 2000 Robert Jungk, Johan Galtung, Ed. 1969; 368 pp.
$14.90 postpaid
from: Universitetsforlaget P.O. Box 142 Boston, Mass. 02113
or WHOLE EARTH CATALOG
THE Year 209
A FRAMEWORK
TABLE IX The Postindustrial (or Post-Mass Consumption) te 1. Per capita income about fifty times the preindustrial 2. Most “economic” activities are tertiary and quaternary (ser-
vice-oriented), rather than primary or secondary (production- oriented)
. Business firms no longer the major source of innovation . There may be more “‘consentives” (vs. ‘‘marketives’’)
3 4 The Year 2000 nony J. Wi ’ §. Effective floor on income and welfare co. end Anthony J. 6. Efficiency no longer primary 4 7. Market plays diminished role compared to public sector $9.95 postpaid and “social accounts” 8. Widespread ‘“‘cybernation” 9. “Small world” Front end Brown Streets 10. Typical doubling time’’ between three and thirty years Riverside, Burlington County 11. Learning society Cumenctrsting the mam techs of he New Jersey 08075 12. Rapid improvement i in educational institutions and tech- worte most niques. cannes or WHOLE EARTH CATALOG 13. Erosion (in middle class) of work-oriented, achievement- by HERMAN KAHN oriented, advancement-oriented values
The Futurist
14, Erosion of ‘’national interest’’ values 15. Sensate, secular, humanist, perhaps self-indulgent criteria
become central
Changes in value systems will be the major determinant of social, political and economic developments on the domestic scene.
It may well be that identifying value changes will become the single most important element of environmental forecasting. For, if these changes can be identified and analyzed, then it will be that much more feasible to predict the course of the major currents
in our society. $5.00 for one year (bi-monthly) of Significant Volue-System Changes: 1968. 1980 World Future Society : P.O. Box 19285 20th Street Station Nationalism a ; Stete Washington, D.C..20036 Public enterprise c Private enterprise 3 Individve! =, H — Independence Interdependence A Generation Looking for ‘‘Munich’’ May Be Followed Seciobility alll Privecy by a Generation Looking for “Vietnam” Matenalism Quolity of life There was, once upon a time, a generation whose consciousness was = Seana formed by Munich, and that generation has been walking around "ane tains innovation looking for Munich ever since. Among them are the guys who got Pénee glumeiag | Immedvacy us into this crazy disaster in Vietnam, because they were looking for Munich and they thought they had found another one. Wes | ave Try to think what it is going to mean to have millions of Americans Authasiey | i i looking for Vietnam the rest of their lives. That is: the first thing Guiiniedtasinen | | Cesennatention they say about an American President is: ‘‘He is probably lying to repmatiom Not the last thing. Not the thing you come to through great rationality suffering. But the first thing you say is: ‘That son-of-abitch is Moral Absolvtes | ethics probably lying, because every American President | can ever remember fgcccax 7 a has been lying to | That is going to cut very deep, because if you are living in a society technology! in which a big chunk just doesn’t believe the government is legitimate, NS 969 Vole: Profile 1980 Valves Profile
or thinks it probably isn’t, and you've got to prove to them with great labor that it is, that is a very strange event in American history.
—Arthur |. Waskow
Waste
Pond Manure Dairy CoLony Green From Oxi Fish
‘idation Fro Waste From From Rain Pond Pond
10 000 - 40.000: Tons/y,.,
Fig. 3. Production of perishable foods in urban village (Population up to 35,000 persons)
The neatest case is the sit-ins, where the civil rights movement said,
One way of anticipating probable ccmmnt in values, attitudes and behavior is to view them as the consequences of a progression, on a national scale, up Masiow’s hierarchy of needs. Since man is a creature of seemingly endless needs, we can predict that, when one has been satisfied, another will appear in its place. Furthermore, when one level of needs has been satisfied, he will proceed to the next level. The levels are progressively less essential in terms of sheer survival, and more important in terms of living at one’s fuilest human potential (which seems to be the ultimate level of aspiration).
We might be able to create ‘‘future gaming” centers which could offer experience in “‘living’’ alternative futures to people who are fed up with the present
but have no feei for a workable or desirable society.
Meat Arthur |. Waskow
Sewage-produced algae would be fed to chickens and fish (cattle do not need the protein) according to minor modifications of existing art in these forms
of husbandry (Fig. 3
Altogether, about two thirds or more of the weight and at least a quarter of the caloric intake of the urban diet can very likely be produced economically inside the city itself using present
Vegetables knowledge
Small Fruits Richard L. Meier
Even in advanced countries, futurology is not necessarily identical and, moreover, can be roughly divided into three groups:
European type
US-Soviet type
Japanese type
“Our desirable-achievable future is that we want to be able to eat
in integrated restaurants. We will not petition legislatures to require
Yujiro Hayashi
integration, we will not petition the owners of the restaurants to integrate, we will simply create the future. This is, we will integrate
the restaurants, and it will rest upon those who have the power
of
law and the power of ownership in their hands, to decide how to respond to that creation. So we will build now what it is we want
to exist in the future, and society will have to react to that. it will have to let us build it, or it will have to punish us for building it. If it punishes us for building it, we believe we can build support around that vision of the future, and can, therefore, mobilize people into
action to achieve that future.” Arthur |. Waskow
In the times of Antipatro the Macedonian, the first
water-driven mills made people exclaim, ‘“The
Golden Age is returning!” Silvio Ceccato
fh ) q { : and ANTHONY J. WIENER eee { | | q 4 HICKEN’S | Algae Protein Concentrate SP BATTERY Eggs > e 7 ‘ Fish | 4
Shelter and Land Use
Edited by Lloyd Kahn
* Domebook One
A book (the first) for domebuilders, with detailed step-by- step instructions on building 7 different type domes, most of them geodesic.
A portion of the book describes domes built as part of the curriculum at an experimental high school, several of the structures built almost entirely by 15-17 year olds.
There are both simple and detailed explanations of geodesic geometry, exterior photos of the different domes, interior fisheye photos, and sketches of details.
Geodesic chord factors (constants that allow you to cal- culate strut lengths for different size domes) are published - here for the first time——up to 6 frequency for “alternate breakdown,” to 8 frequency for “‘triacon breakdown.”
The nature of the dome designs is experimental; the pur- pose of the book is to communicate the builders’ exper- ience; the hope of the writers is to initiate individual dome building, innovations, & prototypes.
[The above is Lloyd trying to review his own book. He’s hopelessly modest. If you’re doming, the book is simply necessary. —SB]
Plywood Domes
We have built seven domes like this in about three months’ time. Most of those on our building crew were 15-17 years old.
We used pipe-section hubs and stainless steel straps for the framework—— a method first used by Fletcher Pence in the Virgin Islands about ten years ago. The skeleton framework is first strapped into place,
a membrane is then attached, and joints are waterproofed.
We used 2 x 3's for the skeleton, 3/8" Duraply plywood for skin, clear ultra-violet resistant vinyl in geometric patterns for light, polyurethane caulk for sealing joints, and other ingredients listed below. The entire
dome——struts and skin——will fit in a 3/4 ton pickup truck.
VITAL STATISTICS—Pacific Dome
Geometry: 3-frequency geodesic, 5/8 sphere, icosa-alternate breakdown, vertex zenith
Diameter: 24’
Weight (not including floor) 2050 Ibs Volume: about 4400 cubic feet
Floor area: (not including lofts) 452 sq ft
Note: volume is a far better measure of living space, especially in a dome, as you'll not be confined to the floor area.
DOME INGREDIENTS
—12 pieces 4’ x 7’ plywood for small triangles
—24 pieces 4’ x 8’ plywood for large triangles
—6 pieces 4’ x 9’ plywood for extra-large triangles
—about 750 lineal feet 2 x 3’s for struts (of 8’ and 10’ lengths). Figure the proper number of each to order.
—61 hubs, cut from sections of pipe
—about 500’ stainless steel strap, about 400 stainless steel buckles
—about 20 Ibs 4d or 6d hot dip galvanized nails
—quantity of window material up to you
—12 tubes of caulk
—2% gallons primer, 2% gallons finish coat paint
—misc. materials for vent, door etc.
—floor materials not included
subtract for windows
Total Cost: $929.00
Talde of struts: make a large, clear copy of this and post by the saw
Steut Number to cut ing 3%"
A 46 11/16" 0° 10° 4 55 5/8" 78° 170 Check shop c 80 7/8" 78° 12
“Strut lengths here are based upon 3 1/2” diameter hubs. If you use
Angie: use an adjustable protractor to double check the saw's gauge. Hold it against fence, pull blade out and check to see that biade parallels protractor
Length: tape measures are made to hook over a piece of wood. For greater accuracy use the 1” line on the tape measure and line it up with inside of saw blade. Add 1”
Make sure table and fence are made of clear straight wood. Close one eye and sight down the fence.
Domebook One from: 1970; 56 pp. Pacific Domes Box 1692 $3.00 postpaid Los Gatos, CA 95030 5 or more $2.25 each or WHOLE EARTH CATALOG (except quantity orders) Tube Frame Domes THE FRAME
Any suitably strong tubing can be used, but the cheapest and easiest
» to get is “EMT” electrical conduit. It is easy to work with and is
plated, so painting isn’t necessary. %’’ is not suitable for any domes that will be subjected to heavy weather conditions, but it is useful
for indoor structures and small (up to 14 feet diameter) domes. %"’ conduit will bend if climbed on. %” is best for most uses. It whole- sales for about 9¢/ft. Using the chord factors, you can use %” conduit in triangles whose sides are up to 4% feet long. 4 feet is maximum where there will be snow loads. This will result in about a 24 foot maximum diameter in 3-frequency. For larger domes you will
need bigger tubes or a higher frequency. Bigger tubes are hard to squash! Think first.
Cutting
The tubes should be cut according to the chord factors plus 1%"’. The chord factor gives the “‘center-of-hole to center-of-hole”’ length, and there must be about %” beyond the holes. Conduit
| comes in ten foot lengths. You get two struts from each length
for making domes up to about 24 feet diameter.
Squashing Flatten the tube tips 2%" from the ends, by squeezing them in avise. A big vise. Small ‘“‘home workshop” vises will break.
Miscellaneous Ideas
Completely transparent dome with pop-in insulating panels. Adjust dome to the season, change light patterns to block or admit sunlight, view different parts of landscape.
Hang a swing in your dome for quick passage from one side to another.
Aluminum and galvanized steel can be used as skins for domes. Aluminum doesn’t have to be painted, will last about 25 years (near the ocean it should be anodized), and is soft. Galvanized steel has to be painted and is stiff.
You can use thin metal if you spray the inside of the dome with foam. The panels should be sprayed from the inside with auto- mobile undercoating or something like it to keep the dome from booming.
With a metal skin and a wood frame the panels can be shingled. Cut the panels an inch or two larger than the actual size of the triangles (Then when the panels are attached to the frame they overlap.
See metal tube domes.). For sealing you put a strip of viny! foam
or tape caulk over the struts before attaching the panels. The panels can be stapled to the frame. You should use a staple gun that makes the staples curve outward. For thick metal you can rent an air stapler.
Models are essential. Don’t try to build a dome without first making and studying models. However, don’t get so involved with models that you never trv a real structure.
STRUT MODELS
These are models of the structural framework of a dome, made with 1/8” dowels and ‘’D-Stix’”’ rubber connectors. You can get the connectors from Edmund Scientific Co., 100 Edscorp Building, Barrington, N. J. 08007. Dowels can be obtained at a hobby shop (they are used by model airplane hobbyists) or you can buy one of the D-Stix kits from Edmund, with colored dowels.
Making a 3-Frequency Sphere
Your first model should be a sphere, since a dome is a portion of a sphere. You can then determine where to cut it off, how to orient it to the earth, and see the relationship of a geodesic sphere to the icosahedron.
Important note: when figuring the length of model struts, be sure you subtract for the length of the . In the following table, this
has been done.
Here are calcul. for a 3-freq y sphere. Check these out yourself before cutting, using chord factors below. For ease in multiplying chord factors, the metric system is preferable. Remember to adjust for connector.
Strut Chord Factor —_ Length of Strut Color Code Make this Many A 3 23/32" Red 60
8 -4035 4 13/32" Blue 90
c 4124 4 V2" Yellow 120
Putting it Together
You are actually making a spherical icosahedron, with its 20 faces subdivided into smaller triangles. Red struts outline vertices of icosa faces.
Put together one face:
and continue until you have 20 of these subdivided triangles. It will be clearer with colors than it looks above.
Lay out 4 x 8 panels on the floor plan of your intended dome in a pattern that makes sense. Remember if you are using 1 1/8” ply- wood to keep the tongue and grooves meshing properly. See if you can do it in a way that the cut off plywood ends can be over- turned and used upside down at the other side of the dome to fill in the empty spaces. Also, if possible, arrange things so a whole
4 x 8 will bridge the beam nest over the center pier, as shown. Scrap A is turned over and used at B, locating edge P as shown in Fig. 1. For a 20’ dome this can mean that you can make the plat- form from only 11 sheets! (see drawing). Also, space the plywood so that the edges arrive over beams in the strongest manner. If it all works out well, you will save wood and piers.
~
TK
NW
|
Fig Floor plan
Tony Mager’s hub for space grids
Insulation is 1 1/8” polystyrene (“styrofoam”). This is the white you see on the interiors of the plywood domes. You must get fire resistant foam, as fires are going to burn very efficiently in domes.
The foam is pure white, granular, and combined with the wood Struts, gives the dome a half-timbered look. It feels more wooden than plastic.
It's put in with three small nails per triangle.
Fuller Sun Dome
Blueprints for a 3-frequency geodesic dome. The $5 includes construction license. Designed for swimming pool covers, dome plans specify wood strips and
cheap polyethylene skin. However, you can modify
to build domes of other materials, such as plywood, parachutes, or car tops. A simple system: two triangles make the dome; can be used up to about 35’ diameter.
[Suggested by Ken Babbs.] Geodesic Sun Dome 1966
$5.00 postpaid
from:
Sun Dome
Popular Science Monthly 355 Lexington Avenue New York, N. Y. 10017
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* Arcology
/f | get it right [and getting it at all is something: it takes either lots of work or none at all] Soleri sees the next step in evolution as man’s job. He sees that