In Rachel Carson's Silent Spring, what is her argument about the state of nature?
I think Carson is making a stronger argument about what is wrong with human interaction within the state of nature. Her primary assertion is that like all organisms, there is a delicate ecosystem within which humans are immersed. Human beings have to be mindful of their actions within this balance. The use of pesticides and other chemicals might eliminate one part deemed not desirable, but this carries with it large ecological issues that impact more than simply ourselves. The inherent barrier Carson sees is that individuals do not see themselves as part of this balance and, in failing to do so, are causing irreparable damage to their state of being in the world and those who happen to inhabit it.
Rachel Carson's Silent Spring was published as an environmental warning against the use of DDT and other pesticides, which she claimed was harmful to bird...
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and animal populations, and through the food chain and water supply, harmful to humans as well.
She argued that by the interruption and extinction of species through the overuse of pesticides did both visible and invisible damage to the environment. That it upset the state of nature by interfering with natural selection and evolution, and disrupting environmental processes and relationships that humans did not even understand.
Her book is considered the spark that started the modern day environmental movement.
What point was Rachel Carson making in Silent Spring?
In her 1962 book, Silent Spring, Rachel Carson was trying to alert the public to the dangers of pesticides. She was trying to make people more environmentally aware.
At the time that Carson wrote the book, there was very little environmental consciousness in the United States. People were not really aware of the possibility that chemicals and things like that could actually harm the environment. Chemicals were identified with progress. DDT was an example of that. It had been something of a wonder pesticide and was very popular.
What Carson was doing was trying to change this view. She was trying to get people to realize that pesticides were capable of causing harm and that they had actually been causing great harm to bird populations especially.
Carson was an expert in examining the ecosystems around her, and she was also gifted with a talent for writing. When DDT was first used to destroy malaria-causing insects in the South Pacific during World War II, the inventor was awarded the Nobel Prize. Carson was one of the only voices speaking up on behalf of the delicate web of ecosystems, noting that DDT certainly should be further investigated before becoming widely used by civilians. She was ignored. She tried to get her ideas published several times and was met with rejection. Ultimately, that led her to write Silent Spring.
In this book, Carson details how DDT becomes part of the food chain, eventually leading to human cancers and genetic damage. She outlines how it doesn't simply disappear with a good rainfall but remains in the environment, continuing to affect all living things.
The message she delivers in the book is echoed in these thoughts from a speech she gave in 1964, shortly before her death:
Man's attitude toward nature is today critically important simply because we have now acquired a fateful power to alter and destroy nature. But man is a part of nature, and his war against nature is inevitably a war against himself. [We are] challenged as mankind has never been challenged before to prove our maturity and our mastery, not of nature, but of ourselves.
Carson, therefore, asserts that mankind has a great responsibility with the technology we have created. We must be certain that in making our lives more convenient and "pest"-free that we are not inadvertently destroying the very foundation of our planet and forever altering ecosystems in ways that cannot be repaired.