633
© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021
M. C. Tobias, J. G. Morrison, On the Nature of Ecological Paradox,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-64526-7_68
Chapter 68
Caesuras of Certainty
68.1 “Crawling at Your Feet”
The problems exacerbating the confident extrapolation of deep signals from the
space of natural history are not simply the size of our inner radio telescopes, but the
reach of our hearts; the bias of our bipedal height from the ground, fear of being
stung, and an evolutionary ambivalence toward tiny invertebrates whose 480 million
year genesis, since the time of the Ordovician and subsequently, 80 million years
later, that moment in the Devonian when some insects took to flight, all account for
our utter insecurity around swarms and beings far more pertinacious and stout of
character than hominids. While many cultures, like that of the East African Hadza,
feast on insects and children delight in squashing or protecting them, for many natural historians, the problem with an emphatic embrace of insects that is not simply
destined toward those grisly chambers of torture where thousands of “bugs” are
shown embalmed, pinned to cabinets of curiosity in one museum after another, is
our reliance on the word “pest” and its application to industrial agriculture, a utilitarian shift in Neolithic thinking that smashes the glory of the Bread-and-Butterfly,
as well as the Gnat who warns Alice, “Crawling at your feet”
1
(Fig. 68.1).
The endlessly curious relations between tiny creatures and ourselves are
emblemized in such instances as Handasyde Buchanan’s point that “In spite of the
title of Meria Sybilla Merian’s great book Insects of Surinam, of 1705 (Dissertatio
de generatione et metamorphosibus insectorum Surinamensium), it is always considered a flower book.”
2
Buchanan traces many of the finest, most colorful, and
detailed explorations in print of the invertebrate world—J. J. Ernst (1779–1793),
Edward Donovan (1800–1804),, and James Say (1824–1828). Butterfly books
1 Chapter 3, “Looking-Glass Insects, of Through The Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There,
by Lewis Carroll, Macmillan And Co., London, 1898, p. 58.
2 See Handasyde Buchanan, Nature Into Art – A Treasury of Great Natural History Books,
Mayflower Books, New York, 1979, p. 177.
© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021
M. C. Tobias, J. G. Morrison, On the Nature of Ecological Paradox,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-64526-7_68
Chapter 68
Caesuras of Certainty
68.1 “Crawling at Your Feet”
The problems exacerbating the confident extrapolation of deep signals from the
space of natural history are not simply the size of our inner radio telescopes, but the
reach of our hearts; the bias of our bipedal height from the ground, fear of being
stung, and an evolutionary ambivalence toward tiny invertebrates whose 480 million
year genesis, since the time of the Ordovician and subsequently, 80 million years
later, that moment in the Devonian when some insects took to flight, all account for
our utter insecurity around swarms and beings far more pertinacious and stout of
character than hominids. While many cultures, like that of the East African Hadza,
feast on insects and children delight in squashing or protecting them, for many natural historians, the problem with an emphatic embrace of insects that is not simply
destined toward those grisly chambers of torture where thousands of “bugs” are
shown embalmed, pinned to cabinets of curiosity in one museum after another, is
our reliance on the word “pest” and its application to industrial agriculture, a utilitarian shift in Neolithic thinking that smashes the glory of the Bread-and-Butterfly,
as well as the Gnat who warns Alice, “Crawling at your feet”
1
(Fig. 68.1).
The endlessly curious relations between tiny creatures and ourselves are
emblemized in such instances as Handasyde Buchanan’s point that “In spite of the
title of Meria Sybilla Merian’s great book Insects of Surinam, of 1705 (Dissertatio
de generatione et metamorphosibus insectorum Surinamensium), it is always considered a flower book.”
2
Buchanan traces many of the finest, most colorful, and
detailed explorations in print of the invertebrate world—J. J. Ernst (1779–1793),
Edward Donovan (1800–1804),, and James Say (1824–1828). Butterfly books
1 Chapter 3, “Looking-Glass Insects, of Through The Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There,
by Lewis Carroll, Macmillan And Co., London, 1898, p. 58.
2 See Handasyde Buchanan, Nature Into Art – A Treasury of Great Natural History Books,
Mayflower Books, New York, 1979, p. 177.