Perspectives on the American Experience
“What Is Science?”
T/H, 9:00-10:15
DLB Hall #180
Prof. Rich Hamerla
Spring 2023
HON 2973
Perspectives on the American Experience:
What is Science?
Spring 2023
Rich Hamerla, Ph.D., Dean (Interim)
Phone: 325-9286
Email: rhamerla@ou.edu
Office Hours: Come by whenever, I’m always here. Room 160 (HC Front Office.)
Class Meetings:
Tuesday, Thursday 900-1015
CCD5 180/81
Writing Assistants: Emma Clary (email: emma.clary@ou.edu)
Megan Szymanski (email: megan.szymanski@ou.edu)
Class Goals: Most of us accept science and scientific knowledge as a privileged form
of understanding with powerful implications for the way we live. There’s absolutely
nothing wrong with such a view, BUT I want you to think more critically and more
analytically about the creation of scientific knowledge, the operation of scientific
institutions, and the culture of science in general. To do this we will read a number of
books and articles that examine the nature of the scientific enterprise locally,
nationally, and globally over time. This literature focuses on science as an evolving
and contingent body of knowledge, as a dynamic and powerful way to explore the
world, as a professional community, as a culture with its own idiosyncratic
conventions, and as a contested source and object of political power.
Class Design: Most of the course is organized around a weekly theme with classroom
time given over to active discussion and debate. While there will be an occasional
“lecture,” I’m more interested in your active participation so you must come to class
having read that day’s material. I’ll ask questions and comment when appropriate.
You need to come prepared for each meeting because I will call on you if you don’t
participate!
Class Assignments:
1. Class Participation: This is a challenging course in which regular attendance is
essential to successful completion. Assignments depend heavily upon material
treated in class and class discussion. Read the texts actively, making note of what you
like and dislike, where you agree and disagree. Think hard and think critically about
the readings and bring your thoughts and questions to class. In the event that you’re
unsure about your participation grade, contact me. (Your Small-Group activity will
count toward your participation grade.)
2. Reaction Papers: You will submit six reaction papers over the course of the
semester. These papers should be 2 double-spaced, typed pages. Your specific
response will focus on one of the questions that are noted in the Class Calendar
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section of this syllabus. These papers should be grammatically and syntactically
correct and without typographical errors.
You should make an early start on the Reaction Papers and write as you read. Your
best 5 of the 6 papers will count toward this portion of your grade. You MUST
complete THREE of your Reaction Papers PRIOR TO THE MIDTERM EXAM!!!
Your papers will be assessed with the following rubric in mind:
x/25 points: for submitting an essay that addresses question:
x/25 points: for engagement with relevant reading:
x/25 points: for thoughtfulness, clarity, and stylistic flair of response to question
(including grammar, punctuation, etc.):
x/25 points: answering the question with evidence from the assigned material and
class discussions:
TOTAL points: x/100 points
Drafts of your papers are due the Monday following week they’re assigned. Final
drafts are due the Monday after that. (Specific dates are detailed in the Class Calendar
section below.) You cannot make up missed Reaction Paper topics later in the
semester. Once the Final Draft date has passed, that question is no longer available.
Your Reaction Papers should maintain an appropriate standard of presentation. The
Writing Assistant is there to help you develop a writing style appropriate to degreelevel work. He will provide assistance with structure, style, clarity, coherence,
grammar and spelling as well as other relevant matters. You must see the Writing
Assistant on at least three occasions over the course of the semester, although I hope
you will see him more often. You will lose one percentage point from your final grade
for each meeting short of the required minimum of three meetings. You should note
that the Writing Assistant has no input on the grading of papers. Only Professor
Hamerla assigns grades to papers.
The Honors College Writing Center is located on the third floor of CCD1, room #312.
You will meet your WA there.
3. Take-Home Midterm Exam: You will have seven days to complete your Midterm
Exam. You may use the texts and your class notes. These exams will be graded for
presentation (spelling, grammar etc.) as well as content. Your answer should be
between 5 and 7 double-spaced typed pages in length. The Midterm is designed to
examine your engagement with the range of course materials covered over the first
half of the semester. (You may study together but your work must be your own.)
4. Take-Home Final Exam: Your Final Exam’s format is identical to the Midterm with
the exception of distribution date and material covered. For the Final you will be
responsible for all readings, class discussions and other material from the date of the
Midterm’s distribution through the distribution of the Final. (You may study together
but your work must be your own.)
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Grading: Your Midterm and Final Exam will be graded according to the following
criteria: 1. Coherence of argument/answer to the question. 2. Extent and nature of
supporting evidence. 3. Structure. 4. Style. 5. Presentation (grammar, spelling, layout
etc.). 6. Creativity/Originality of thought.
Grade Breakdown:
Participation
Six short reaction papers
(best 5 will count)
Take-home mid-term exam
Take-home Final
25%
25%
25%
25%
Required Texts: Most of the material for this class will be available on the Canvas in
PDF format. The three books you are required to purchase are noted below. Note
that the first book, The Golem, is assigned for the first week of class. You need to
acquire this as soon as possible. It should be available at the OU bookstore and online.
Collins and Pinch, The Golem
Gould, The Mismeasure of Man
Reverby, Examining Tuskegee
Students with Disabilities:
Any student in this course who has a disability that may
prevent him or her from fully demonstrating his or her
abilities should contact me personally as soon as possible so
we can discuss accommodations necessary to ensure full
participation and facilitate your educational opportunities.
Civility in Class:
It is assumed that this class can be conducted in a spirit of
full academic freedom but also with civility and courtesy
directed toward all. Accordingly, ANY serious idea or point
of view may be expressed by any member of the class, but
this must be done courteously and with civility. NO
extraneous conversation while either the instructor or
another student is speaking, please.
Academic Integrity:
All students are expected to have read “A Student's Guide to
Academic Integrity at the University of Oklahoma,” available
at this link: http://integrity.ou.edu/students_guide.html.
Students must understand the standards described in this
guide. Apparent academic misconduct will be dealt with
according to university policy.
IMPORTANT POLICY WEBSITES! Please review.
OU COVID Policy: https://www.ou.edu/together/faq
Integrity Policy: https://www.ou.edu/integrity/faculty
Non-Discrimination Policy: https://www.ou.edu/eoo/policies-procedures/nondiscrimination
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Course Calendar
Week 1, 23-27 Jan: Introduction
Readings: Collins and Pinch, The Golem.
Topics to Consider:
What are some of the ramifications of the 1972 “Skeptics” list?
Which TWO chapters do you find the most provocative and why?
Reaction Paper questions for The Golem, Draft due 30 Jan. Final due 6 Feb.
Discuss the notion of “hypothesis space” recalling examples from two
chapters, one from chapters 1-3 and one from chapters 4-7.
Week 2, 30 Jan-3 Feb: Objectivity
Readings: Matthew Stanley, “An Expedition to Heal the Wounds of War”: The 1919
Eclipse and Eddington as Quaker Adventurer” Isis, and Phillip Prodger and
“Illustration as Strategy in Charles Darwin’s The Expression of Emotions in Man and
Animals’”.
Topics to Consider:
Objective science; yes or no?
Reaction Paper question for “Objectivity” (Stanley and Prodger), Draft due 6 Feb.
Final due 13 Feb.
In what ways do Stanley and Prodger provide substance for an argument
against science as an objective enterprise?
Week 3, 6-10 Feb : The “Advance” of Science
Readings: Selection from Thomas Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions.
Topics to Consider:
Logical Positivism vs. Relativism: Where do you stand?
Reaction Paper question for “The “Advance of Science” (Kuhn), Draft due 13 Feb.
Final due 20 Feb.
Do you agree or disagree with the assertion of Kuhn’s relativist philosophy
that Tycho Brahe and Johannes Kepler DID NOT see the same thing when
they had their hypothetical seaside rendezvous presented in class? Why or
why not?
Week 4, 13-17 Feb: Politics
Readings: Joshua Blu Buhs, “The Fire Ant Wars: Nature and Science in the Pesticide of
Controversy of the Late 20th Century” Isis, and John Quiggin, “Rehabilitating Carson”
and Roger Bate, DDT Works,” both in Prospect Magazine, and Frank Luntz, “Straight
Talk Memo.”
Topics to Consider:
Is the environment is a political construct?
Response question for “Politics” (Blu Buhs and 2 DDT articles), Draft due 20 Feb.
Final due 27 Feb.
Discuss two competing agendas from the Blu Buhs essay. Feel free to
incorporate one or both of the articles concerning DDT into your response.
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Week 5, 20-24 Feb: The Human Consequence of Science
Readings: Stephen Jay Gould, The Mismeasure of Man.
Topics to Consider:
Are classification and quantification are good for society?
Discuss the immigration crisis with an eye toward Gould’s thesis.
Response question for ‘The Human Consequence of Science” (Gould, Mismeasure of
Man), Draft due 27 Feb. Final due 6 March.
Identify and discuss three of the socio/cultural ramification of biological
determinism. These may be positive, negative, or both.
Week 6, 27 Feb-3 March: Cultural Outcomes
Readings: Emily Martin, “The Egg and the Sperm: How Science has Constructed a
Romance Based on Stereotypical Male-Female Roles,” Anne Fasuto-Sterling, “The Five
Sexes; Why Male and Female are not Enough,” and Susan Stryker's "My Words to
Victor Frankenstein Above the Village of Chamounix: Performing Transgender Rage."
Topics to Consider:
Two genders, male and female, are enough!
What are some of the possible societal consequences should additional
genders be recognized?
Response question for “Cultural Outcomes” (Gender Articles), Draft due 6 March.
Final due 13 March.
Do you think modern American society will ever recognize more than two
sexes? Why or why not? What might be some social, scientific, political, or
economic benefits to recognizing more than two sexes? What might be some
negative consequences of doing so? What do you think would be the most
dramatic effect on your life, if our society recognized more than two sexes?
Week 7, 6-10 March: No Class. Individual student meetings, take-home Midterm
due Friday, 10 March.
Week 8, 13-17 March: No Class. Spring Break
Week 9, 20-24 March: Medical Science
Readings: Reverby, Examining Tuskegee
Topics to Consider:
Was the Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment ethical science?
*Reaction Paper Question for Examining Tuskegee, Draft due 27 March. Final due 3
April.
Summarize your assigned sections from Examining Tuskegee. What is the
general thesis of each? Collectively?
Week 10, 27-31 March: Science and Religion
Readings: Individual reading packets.
Topics to Consider:
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The class will be divided into four groups, each representing a different
religion. Each group will receive a packet of information concerning some of
the specific opinions and policies on stem cell research of the group’s
assigned religion. You will not receive information regarding other religion.
Instead, you should come to class prepared to present and defend your
assigned religion’s position on this topic
Reaction Paper Question for “Science and Religion”, Draft due 3 April. Final due 10
April.
Compare and contrast THREE of the religious perspectives on when life
begins.
Week 11, 3-7 April: Sociology of Science
Readings: Robert Merton, “Science and the Social Order” (1938), “The Normative
Structure of Science” (1942).
Topics to Consider:
What do you know about Hitler’s Germany?
Are Merton’s ‘norms’ attainable?
Response question for “Sociology of Science” (Merton), Draft due 10 April. Final due
17 April.
According to Merton, how does an authoritarian state ‘defile’ scientific
knowledge production? (You should draw evidence from both Merton
essays.)
Week 12, 10-14 April: Science and Technology
Readings: Heinrich Himmler, “Himmler Speaks to the SS,” Jean-Francois Steiner,
“Treblinka,” Miklos Nyszli, “From Auschwitz: A Doctor’s Eyewitness Account,”
Fransizek Piper, “Gas Chamber and Crematoria,”
Topics to Consider:
Is technology value-laden?
Response question for “Science and Technology, Draft due 17 April. Final due 24
April.
Aside from the killing itself, what aspects of the killing procedure seem to be
particularly immoral or disrespectful? Does technology contribute to the
immorality of the process?
Week 13, 17-21 April: Big Science
Readings: George Kennan, “The Sources of Soviet Conduct,” Robert Oppenheimer,
“Atomic Weapons and American Policy,” and Peter Galison and Barton Bernstein, “In
Any Light: Scientists and the Decision to Build the Superbomb, 1952-1954.”
Topics to Consider:
Should the United States have built the hydrogen bomb?
Response question for “Big Science” (Galison, Kennan, Oppenheimer), Draft due 24
April. Final due 1 May.
In “The Sources of Soviet Misconduct,” Kennan emphasizes the secrecy of the
Soviet state and how this—among many other things—should be considered
a threat to the entire world. Oppenheimer, in “Atomic Weapons and
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American Policy,” stresses the need for openness when it comes to debate
about nuclear weapons and what’s being done in the U.S. in the name of
national security. These two perspectives are in agreement; secrecy is bad,
transparency is good. Yet President Truman issues an order in 1949 that all
public discussion involving the decision as to whether or not the hydrogen
bomb should be built must be kept away from the American public for
reasons of national security. Why does he do this, can it be reconciled with
Kennan and Oppenheimer, and how does it impact the choice to build the
bomb?
(Note that although the three subjects here, Kennan, Truman, and
Oppenheimer, are spread out over seven years [1947, 1949, and 1953
respectively], they are all a part of what is essentially the same conversation;
secrecy, science, and the state.)
Week 14, 24-28 April: Science Under Siege
Readings: Adrienne LaFrance, “Nothing Can Stop What Is Coming” and Margaret
Talbot, “The Rogue Experimenters.”
Topics to Consider: TBD
Response question for “Siege”, Draft due 1 May. Final due 8 May.
These two articles have one principal thing in common: Both address the
issue of expertise—in science and otherwise—under attack by nontraditional sources of information—“facts”—that threaten the very
foundations of scientific integrity. Citing evidence from both articles, discuss
this assertion.
Week 15, 1-5 May: Science as Business
Readings: Selections Scientists at Work.
Topics to Consider: The class will be divided into a number of teams, each allotted
with a certain amount of capital to spend. After reading the selection of biographical
articles of several scientists, each team will come up with a project and participate
in an in-class auction at which they will bid for the scientists that would best
develop the project. Following the auction, each team will then modify their plan
with the scientists they were able to purchase, presenting their project proposal in
the final class.
There is no Response Paper assignment for this topic.
Week 16, 8-12 May: Finals Week.
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“An Expedition to Heal the Wounds
of War”
The 1919 Eclipse and Eddington
as Quaker Adventurer
By Matthew Stanley*
ABSTRACT
The 1919 eclipse expedition’s confirmation of general relativity is often celebrated as a
triumph of scientific internationalism. However, British scientific opinion during World
War I leaned toward the permanent severance of intellectual ties with Germany. That the
expedition came to be remembered as a progressive moment of internationalism was
largely the result of the efforts of A. S. Eddington. A devout Quaker, Eddington imported
into the scientific community the strategies being used by his coreligionists in the national
dialogue: humanize the enemy through personal contact and dramatic projects that highlight the value of peace and cooperation. The essay also addresses the common misconception that Eddington’s sympathy for Einstein led him intentionally to misinterpret the
expedition’s results. The evidence gives no reason to think that Eddington or his coworkers
were anything but rigorous. Eddington’s pacifism is reflected not in manipulated data but
in the meaning of the expedition and the way it entered the collective memory as a celebration of international cooperation in the wake of war.
Science is above all politics.
—Sir Oliver Lodge (1914)
Is it not an actual fact that babies have been killed in ways almost inconceivably brutal,
and not as a mere individual excess, but as a part of the deliberate and declared policy
of the German army? . . . Is it not a fact that German men of science have gone out of
their way to declare their adhesion to these things?
—“From an Oxford Note-Book,” Observatory (1916)
* Department of the History of Science, Harvard University, Science Center 235, Cambridge, Massachusetts
02138.
I would like to thank the staff of the Department of the History of Science at Harvard University and the Max
Planck Institute for the History of Science, where some of this research was carried out. I would also like to
extend special thanks to Peter Galison, David Kaiser, Michael Gordin, and Janelle Stanley. This essay received
the 2002 Henry and Ida Schuman Prize of the History of Science Society.
Isis, 2003, 94:57–89
! 2003 by The History of Science Society. All rights reserved.
0021-1753/03/9401-0003$10.00
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58
“AN EXPEDITION TO HEAL THE WOUNDS OF WAR”
W
HEN ONCE ASKED WHY EINSTEIN enjoyed such a tremendous public reputation
compared to the founders of atomic and quantum physics, Ernest Rutherford replied
that it was due to the timing of the 1919 eclipse expedition that provided a confirmation
of general relativity: “The war had just ended, and the complacency of the Victorian and
Edwardian times had been shattered. The people felt that all their values and all their ideals
had lost their bearings. Now, suddenly, they learnt that an astronomical prediction by a
German scientist had been confirmed by expeditions . . . by British astronomers. . . . An
astronomical discovery, transcending worldly strife, struck a responsive chord.” Rutherford’s description of the setting was exactly right: coming out of the Great War, British
society was devastated from years of trench warfare, rationing, and hatred of the enemy.
However, the note of international harmony is rather misleading. Rutherford’s view is still
widespread, and the expedition is often portrayed as a great victory for scientific internationalism over jingoistic militarism. For example, many years later the astrophysicist William McCrea wrote a patriotic, congratulatory article on how much of his success Einstein
owed to the good auspices of the Royal Astronomical Society (RAS).1 Unfortunately, the
claim that the RAS’s support of Einstein was a straightforward scientific step ignores
the tremendous anti-German forces that were present in British science during and after
the war, as well as the difficult and unpopular struggle waged in support of Einstein and
German science in general. I will argue that the expedition’s significance as a dramatic
and pivotal event in both science and society was far from inevitable and that it was only
because of its wartime context and the value-driven actions of particular individuals that
it achieved its canonical status in the history of modern science.
The key figure in the formation of the expedition’s significance as a historical event was
A. S. Eddington, the Plumian Professor at Cambridge. Eddington was then a rising star in
the astronomical community: by the start of the war his work in statistical cosmology had
established his reputation as a creative and talented scientist, and his later work in stellar
structure was a crucial element in the development of theoretical astrophysics as a field.
He was one of the leading public spokesmen for science between the world wars and was
often the source of controversy owing to his writings on science and religion, as well as
his attempts at unifying quantum physics and relativity.
But his name is most widely associated with relativity, both for his role in the 1919
expedition to measure Einstein’s predicted light deflection and for his aggressive popularization and promulgation of the theory in the anglophone world. Eddington’s passion for
Einstein’s theory is often pointed to as a weakness, and there is a widespread assumption
that his sympathy for relativity led to inappropriate, or even fraudulent, interpretation of
the 1919 data in favor of Einstein. Because of this, the eclipse expedition is often seen as
an intrinsically great event in both scientific and social history (for bringing Einstein to
the fore and soothing wartime anger) but one based on contextually contaminated science
(Eddington’s biased observations). I would like to invert this dichotomy: the evidence
shows that Eddington’s work on the eclipse was well within the scientific standards of the
day and that the larger significance of the expedition, both contemporaneously and in the
present, was largely the result of Eddington’s contextual concerns.
Eddington became a pivotal figure in these events owing to his religious antipathy to
1
S. Chandresekhar, Truth and Beauty (Chicago: Univ. Chicago Press, 1987), p. 115 (quoting Rutherford); and
W. H. McCrea, “Einstein: Relations with the RAS,” Quarterly Journal of the Royal Astronomical Society, 1979,
20:251–260.
MATTHEW STANLEY
59
the war. He was a member of the Religious Society of Friends (better known as the
Quakers), a small but historically influential Christian sect whose beliefs center on the
divine Inner Light found in all people and the consequent values of pacifism, nondogmatism, and tolerance.2 His campaigns for an astronomy free of nationalism emerged from
the roots of his religious belief. His Quaker values meant that he saw international science
as a site for a moral contestation of war and prejudice. His actions, particularly in regard
to the 1919 expedition, shared the motivation of the Friends who organized the refugee
camps and ran the blockade to feed German children. These Quakers who braved the chaos
of wartime and postwar Europe became known as “adventurers”: men and women led by
religious conviction to leave the safety and comfort of home to work for peace. I will
argue that the expedition to “weigh light” was as much a religious calling as the food
programs and that Eddington saw himself as one of these Quaker adventurers. The eclipse
expedition, then, becomes an event steeped in political, moral, and religious meaning.
Einstein and relativity became a focal point through which Eddington could advance both
science and international understanding. In practice, these two goals blurred together, as
he truly felt that astronomy could not progress in a world wracked by hatred and war.
The conflicts within the RAS emerged from the wider culture of anti-German sentiment
and wartime hatred, and Eddington refused to deal with them as though they were unique
to astronomy. Rather, he sought to combat jingoism in science by importing the techniques
used by Quaker pacifists in British society as a whole. An understanding of this origin for
Eddington’s efforts and arguments will show that the expedition and its place in the history
of science have a meaning that can be understood only with reference to the Great War
and its impact on British astronomy. To investigate the context and significance of the
expedition, this essay will follow the historical actors, and specifically Eddington, through
the experience of being a scientist in a country at war. I will first establish the sociocultural context of the actors: What values and beliefs were in play? How did it become
possible for the expedition to be relevant to the war? Next, the expedition’s execution and
interpretation will be examined in detail. Questions of technical diligence and scientific
responsibility will be paramount here. Finally, we will look at the expedition’s presentation
to the world community and the influence it had on the first shaky steps of astronomy after
the Great War.
ASTRONOMY IN THE GRIP OF WAR
The crisis of the summer of 1914 happened to coincide with the annual meeting of the
British Association for the Advancement of Science (BAAS), held that year in Australia.
Many of the greatest figures in British science, including Eddington, were thousands of
miles away from the stormy fields of Europe, considering issues of experiment and organization rather than sovereignty and strategy. After Archduke Ferdinand’s assassination
on 28 June, events in Europe were followed closely by the members of the association, in
attitudes varying from excitement to dread. Eddington wrote to his mother on 3 August:
“We heard definitely of the war between Germany and Russia. Everyone here seems to
take it for granted that England will join in. It all seems incredible. We are anxiously
awaiting news.” Confirmation of Britain’s entry into the war arrived in Australia slightly
before an important dinner, at which several foreign members of the BAAS were in attendance. Seeking to reassure the Germans present, Oliver Lodge rose and gave a short speech,
2
In this essay “Quaker” or “Friend” will refer to a member of the Religious Society of Friends.
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“AN EXPEDITION TO HEAL THE WOUNDS OF WAR”
declaring that science was beyond all politics. This mood of camaraderie was maintained
by the Australian hosts, who went out of their way to make the Germans feel welcome.
The war was taken lightheartedly enough that some clever soul rewrote the patriotic anthem
“The British Grenadiers” with lyrics praising the valor of physics and astronomy.3
Unfortunately, this isolation from the war faded during the journey home. The ship
made a detour to Singapore to pick up 140 British soldiers, soon to be assigned to the
British Expeditionary Force. Eddington noted sourly that the ship would now make a fine
prize for the Emden, the feared German commerce raider. Indeed, at one point a false
report circulated in London that the BAAS ship had been sunk, with everyone captured
and their papers lost.4
Upon the scientists’ return to Britain, the impact of the war on astronomy was immediately evident. The commencement of hostilities had led to the severing of telegraph
connections to the Central Powers, a move that had disproportionate effects on astronomers
by interrupting their “Science Observer” scheme of rapid dissemination of observations
and discoveries. The central hub of the network was in Kiel, Germany, and astronomers
were anxious about the disruption of their well-oiled system. Stopgaps such as those arranged by Frank Dyson, Edward Pickering, and S. E. Strömgren faltered because many
Entente astronomers were distrustful about dealing with institutions in neutral countries.
Dyson also ran into official difficulties: the Defence of the Realm Act’s censors were
unwilling to let coded telegrams pass back and forth unfettered.5
Hostility against the enemy was rampant across Great Britain. Even before the declaration of war widespread anti-German rioting had broken out across the country. The
British public had been anticipating conflict with Germany for years, its agitation fanned
by invasion scare stories and books such as Erskine Childers’s The Riddle of the Sands.
One historian remarked, “Of the mood of the inarticulate public it is difficult to say more
than that its most obvious features were an intense hatred of the German Kaiser and
people.” Concerns grew beyond suspicion of German citizens to encompass anyone or
anything of German origin: the Royal Society even received an angry letter asking why
German continued to be taught at Gresham College.6
3
A. Vilbert Douglas, The Life of Arthur Stanley Eddington (London: Nelson, 1957), pp. 90, 91 (quotation);
Observatory, Oct. 1914, 479:397 (Lodge’s speech); and ibid., Nov. 1914, 480:430 (“British Grenadiers”). Many
of the items in the Observatory do not have titles or attributed authors. When such are present they will be cited.
4
Douglas, Life of Eddington, p. 92; and Observatory, Mar. 1915, 485:155.
5
E.g., on 6 Mar. 1916 the astronomer royal received a curt telegraph from the Chief Censor’s Office: “With
reference to a telegram in code, addressed by you to Stromgren, Copenhagen, will you kindly let me know the
exact meaning of the telegram, and whether you have authority to use private code to Copenhagen. The telegram
was transmitted.” Individual uses of the code had been summarily rejected on “censorship grounds” since the
beginning of the war. Post Office to Frank Dyson, 27 Nov. 1914, F. W. Dyson Papers, MS.RGO.8 (hereafter
Dyson Papers), 104, Cambridge University Library, Royal Greenwich Observatory Archives. On the attempts
to set up a wartime system see Dyson to Edward Pickering, 20 Oct. 1914; and S. E. Strömgren to Dyson, 6 Nov.,
9 Nov. 1914, Dyson Papers 104. For reluctance to route communication through neutral countries see, e.g.,
R. T. A. Innes to Dyson, 10 Dec. 1914, Dyson Papers 104. Innes confessed that “he would prefer to send such
messages to a British Institution.” The French expressed similar reservations—Bureau de Longitudes to Dyson,
18 May 1917, Dyson Papers 104—and eventually all schemes hoping to reach across military alliances collapsed.
6
The rioting is reported in Times [London], 4 Aug. 1914; and [London] Daily News, 5 Aug. 1914. For
Childers’s book see Erskine Childers, The Riddle of the Sands (1903; London: Grafton, 1986). For the historian’s
remark see Arthur Marwick, The Deluge: British Society and the First World War (London: Bodley Head, 1965),
p. 49. The Royal Society responded to the letter: “It is contrary to the practice of the Society to express an
opinion in its Corporate capacity upon questions involving political considerations.” Royal Society Council
Minutes, 1 Nov. 1917, Royal Society, London, Vol. 10, p. 258.
MATTHEW STANLEY
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QUAKERS AND THE WAR
Eddington’s reaction to these and subsequent events was largely shaped by his membership
in British society’s traditional bastion of pacifism: the Society of Friends. Since their
origins in the turbulent seventeenth century, the Quakers had resolutely opposed violence
in what is often called the Testimony against War, originally a protest against the King of
England: “It springs from our belief of the potentiality of the divine in all men—the Inner
Light, as we call it, which is in every man, no matter how hidden or darkened it may be.
. . . Hatred and violence only feed the flame of evil. . . . If this be true of personal relations,
we believe it to be true equally of civic and international ones.” Surrounded by the antiGerman violence at home and the organized violence across the Channel, they felt clear
calls to duty and they mobilized to testify for peace. The Quakers in Britain held a conference at the opening of the war to discuss their options, out of which came a message
to everyone in the British Empire. It read, in part: “We find ourselves today in the midst
of what may prove to be the fiercest conflict in the history of the human race. [We reaffirm
that] the method of force is no solution of any question [and] that the fundamental unity
of men in the family of God is the one enduring reality. Our duty is clear: to be courageous
in the cause of love and in the hate of hate.” Their pacifism was based on the idea that the
war was epiphenomenal to the dangers of nationalism. A Friend spoke in this spirit: “whatever may be the guilt of the individual countries concerned, it is the system which is much
more at fault.”7 Despite its militarism, Germany was not the enemy; the true opponent for
the Society of Friends was the human misery that came out of any war. As we shall see,
it was exactly this attitude that mobilized Eddington in the struggles around international
science.
THE BATTLEFIELD OF SCIENCE
Hatred toward the Germans was not limited to mobs in the street, and it was the anger of
the British intelligentsia that would eventually lead Eddington to place the eclipse expedition on the world stage. Literati and scientists alike had been alienated by an incident in
August, as the Germans pushed deeper into Belgium. While trying to take the town of
Louvain, the German army destroyed many buildings suspected of harboring snipers, including the magnificent library. The destruction of the fourteenth-century structure and its
literary riches was a severe blow to Germany’s reputation.8 Academics, artists, and intellectuals around the world were outraged at what was seen as an assault on culture itself.
The German self-identification with the Hun suddenly came to seem shockingly appropriate, and many argued that the war had become one for the preservation of civilization.
The German intellectual community was deeply offended by their country’s portrayal
in the world press as barbaric. In response, ninety-three leading members of that community drafted and signed “The Manifesto to the Civilized World,” in which they indignantly defended their nation and its Kultur: “As representatives of German science and art
we protest before the whole civilized world against the calumnies and lies with which our
enemies are striving to besmirch Germany’s undefiled cause in the severe struggle for
existence which has been forced upon her.” The document was signed by twenty-two
7
A. Ruth Fry, A Quaker Adventure (London: Nisbet, 1926), p. xvii; and Rufus Jones, A Service of Love in
Wartime (New York: Macmillan, 1920), pp. 3–4, 65–66.
8
The firsthand reports of the destruction of the library can be found in Martin Gilbert, A History of the
Twentieth Century, Vol. 1: 1900–1933 (New York: Morrow, 1997), p. 345.
62
“AN EXPEDITION TO HEAL THE WOUNDS OF WAR”
natural scientists and doctors, including (as one observer noted) almost all those “of real
celebrity.”9
Of course, some in Germany disagreed with this sentiment, and G. F. Nicolai, Albert
Einstein, and Willem Förster drafted their own manifesto, which was sent out privately:
“Never has any previous war caused so complete an interruption of that cooperation that
exists between civilized nations . . . educated men in all countries not only should, but
absolutely must, exert all their influence to prevent the conditions of peace being the source
of future wars.” Unsurprisingly, this statement received virtually no attention in Germany
and was completely unknown outside the country. The Manifesto of Ninety-three came to
be seen as representative of German intellectuals; the Provost of Trinity College, Dublin,
wrote: “[The] declaration from 93 German men of science and letters . . . was issued by
way of influencing neutral opinion. . . . Most of them required no coercion, for they signed
it not as independent men but as courtiers . . . and so they have adopted all the vices of
the most servile courtiers, with one curious exception. They still maintain their boorish
manners.”10 Louvain had exposed German science, art, and literature to the full spectrum
of contempt and hatred and to accusations ranging from barbarism to simple rudeness.
This hatred was inflamed by the arrival of refugees from the Continent, particularly
Belgium. These refugees, mostly women and children, brought tales of murder and arson
at the hands of invading German troops. Among the refugees was Robert Jonckheere, of
the Lille Observatory. He made an appearance at the Royal Astronomical Society, where
he described his flight from German shelling on 3 October.11 Stories such as his helped
paint the Germans as savage occupiers ignoring all conventions of war and encouraged
agitation in England.
The reaction of the British astronomical community is recorded in the Observatory, a
monthly publication that recorded the transcripts of the meetings of several groups, including the Royal Astronomical Society and the British Astronomical Association. It also
included official announcements, notes from individual researchers, and an anonymous
column titled “From an Oxford Note-book” that contained quips, stories, and miscellaneous observations about life in science. It was written by H. H. Turner, Savilian Professor
of Astronomy at Oxford. However, the column’s anonymity presented it as something like
an unofficial voice of the astronomical community, without the author’s byline that would
have marked it as individual opinion. It was in the Observatory that many of the battles
over the course of British astronomy were fought.
At the beginning of the war, the journal was happy to quote Oliver Lodge’s optimistic
claim about apolitical science, although it did note later that many of the celebrations in
Australia became “a symbol that the Empire was united and determined in the face of the
common enemy, and not to be dismayed by his aggression.” By mid 1915 the war was a
regular feature, especially reports of astronomers killed or taken prisoner at the front. The
nephew of a Canadian astronomer was recorded as having died fighting with Entente troops
at Ypres on 23 April. The same page reported the wounding of two English astronomers.12
G. F. Nicolai, The Biology of War (New York: Century, 1919), pp. ix, xiv.
Ibid., pp. xvii–xix; and Observatory, May 1916, 500:241. For the German perspective on the manifesto see
J. L. Heilbron, The Dilemmas of an Upright Man: Max Planck as Spokesman for German Science (Berkeley:
Univ. California Press, 1986).
11
A. J. P. Taylor, English History, 1914–1945 (Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 1965), p. 19 (refugees); and
Observatory, Jan. 1915, 483:47. A more detailed account of Jonckheere’s escape is given ibid., Mar. 1915,
485:143–145.
12
Observatory, Oct. 1915, 492:409; and ibid., July 1915, 489:306.
9
10
MATTHEW STANLEY
63
The June issue included a meditation on the centenary of Waterloo and a sad comment
that England’s former ally now aimed at “brute control” of Europe. The 1915 BAAS
meeting had none of the optimism of the previous year’s. Zeppelin warnings broke up the
meeting on several occasions. The May 1916 issue brought an unprecedented burst of
anger from the “Oxford Note-book,” in which the possibility of returning to a normal
international world of science was abandoned. In a discussion of the need for new astronomical journals appeared this unexpected comment: “But shall we be able to resume the
use of German organizations in the near future? Have the Germans themselves not made
it practically impossible?” Following this was a more extended protest:
At the declaration of War . . . the general attitude of scientific men was voiced by the President,
Sir Oliver Lodge, who declared that “Science was above all politics,” and took the opportunity
of proposing the health of the foreign guests of the Association. It would not be possible to
adopt this attitude now. We have seen how engagements and relationships, which we all thought
were “above all politics,” and safe to be respected even in time of war itself, have, nevertheless,
been broken and tossed aside in a moment if Germany took the fancy that it could thereby
benefit itself. Many of us do not see how, after such an exhibition, we can face the mockery of
new understandings and undertakings with such a nation. There is much to be said for awaiting
a less heated moment for decision; but meantime there are matters, both great and small, which
call for action—and are we not too sanguine in hoping that decision will be easier in the near
future? Is not the die really cast already?13
The anger toward Germany was as unmistakable as the resignation of any hope of resuming
normal relations. The piece was even more shocking given its author: before the war, H. H.
Turner was one of the astronomical community’s most dedicated internationalists. He was
the principal coordinator of one of the first organized international astronomical efforts in
1887. In 1914 he was recommended by Eddington for the post of foreign secretary of the
RAS on the basis of his experience working with foreign scientists. Turner had worked
closely with Germans on all of his projects, but now he was willing to abandon them; the
trauma of the war, even on the home front, was such that he could no longer accept them
as colleagues. He quoted the official investigation into German atrocities, which read: “The
dilemma is inexorable: we can readmit Germany to international society and lower our
standard of international law to her level, or we can exclude her and raise it. There is no
third course.”14 By its prosecution of the war, Germany had forfeited its position in the
civilized world. Science, no matter how ideally apolitical, was not exempt. There is no
question which “course” Turner espoused.
A single lonely response appeared a month after the “Oxford Note-book” called for the
exclusion of Germany from the international scientific community. In a letter to the Observatory entitled “The Future of International Science,” Arthur Eddington called for a
future not embittered by the war. He began by pleading that astronomy in particular depended on international cooperation, a plea that became a call for science as a brotherhood:
13
“From an Oxford Note-Book,” Observatory, June 1915, 488:265 (“brute control”); Observatory, Oct. 1915,
492:413 (1915 BAAS meeting); and “From an Oxford Note-Book,” Observatory, May 1916, 500:240.
14
J. H. Morgan, “German Atrocities: An Official Investigation,” quoted in “From an Oxford Note-Book,”
Observatory, May 1916, 500:241–242. Regarding Turner’s recommendation for the post of foreign secretary
see A. S. Eddington to Hills, 27 Jan. 1914, RAS MSS Grove Hills 2/1 14, Royal Astronomical Society, London.
Eddington wrote: “I have been considering the problem of the next Foreign Secretary. . . . The conclusion I have
come to is that it ought to be Turner. [He] is so intimately in touch with international organisations and foreign
astronomers generally that he has an exceptional claim. Moreover he is tremendously loyal to the Society.” All
letters from Eddington are used with the kind permission of the Eddington Trustees.
64
“AN EXPEDITION TO HEAL THE WOUNDS OF WAR”
I think that astronomers in this country realize the disaster to progress which would result from
dissolution of partnership, and there is no disposition to belittle the contributions of Germany.
Some of the problems of our science can only be attacked by world-wide cooperation . . . the
lines of latitude and longitude pay no regard to national boundaries. But, above all, there is the
conviction that the pursuit of truth, whether in the minute structure of the atom or in the vast
system of the stars, is a bond transcending human differences—to use it as a barrier fortifying
national feuds is a degradation of the fair name of science.
Eddington argued that using science to extend the fronts of the war was a complete misunderstanding of both the practical needs and the higher aims of science. Progress could
be made only if astronomers realized that the pursuit of truth must cut across all divisions:
unity was to be found in the scientific quest for knowledge, not a shallow and selfish
patriotism. Eddington’s Quaker roots are clear; the ideas and vocabulary could just as
easily have been applied to mysticism or the interpretation of Scripture.15
His letter continued, trying to show the essential humanity of the enemy, by quoting
German scientists who expressed regret over the Manifesto of Ninety-three and praising
Willem Förster, an associate of the RAS, who was undertaking the dangerous work of
assisting citizens of the Entente interned in Germany. Eddington pointed out that the Berlin
Academy of Science had twice refused to eject its foreign members and that the Astronomische Gesellschaft had honored its commitments to send its publications to English
members.16
His strategy, like that of Quakers around the world, was to humanize the enemy and
thus weaken the hatred that fueled the war:
It is not any personal attitude of the German scientists that presents a difficulty, but the feeling
that we are involved in a general condemnation of their nation. But the indictment of a nation
takes an entirely different aspect when applied to the individuals composing it. Fortunately,
most of us know fairly intimately some of the men with whom, it is suggested, we can no
longer associate. Think, not of a symbolic German, but of your former friend Prof. X, for
instance—call him Hun, pirate, baby-killer, and try to work up a little fury. The attempt breaks
down ludicrously. . . . The worship of force, love of empire, a narrow patriotism, and the
perversion of science have brought the world to disaster.17
In this letter Eddington strove to inject into the scientific dialogue the same humanitarianism that the Society of Friends was pushing into the national dialogue. Both, however,
faced tremendous inertia and anger from those who were convinced of German barbarity
in and responsibility for the war.
The first direct response to Eddington’s letter was from his Cambridge colleague Joseph
Larmor, who also sent to the Observatory an open letter titled “The Future of International
Science.” Larmor thanked Eddington for bringing the opposing viewpoint to the table but
defended the shutdown of relations with enemy scientists as a conservative measure, a
tolerant and prudent way to keep scientific relations “frozen” at the status quo. He took
15
A. S. Eddington, “The Future of International Science,” Observatory, June 1916, 501:271. For explicit
discussions of mysticism and the interpretation of Scripture see Eddington, Science and the Unseen World (New
York: Macmillan, 1930).
16
By this point in the war, it appears that Eddington was the only British member still active in the Astronomische Gesellschaft. He received their notices through Copenhagen, and he was apparently the source of the
reports of the work of German astronomers that occasionally appeared in the Observatory.
17
Eddington, “Future of International Science” (cit. n. 15), p. 271. An example of Eddington’s strategy for
invoking the essential humanity of German colleagues was his moving obituary of Karl Scharzschild, published
in the Observatory: A. S. Eddington, “Karl Schwarzschild,” Observatory, Aug. 1916, 503:337–339.
MATTHEW STANLEY
65
exception to Eddington’s suggestion that a measure of identification with the enemy had
been actively discouraged, pointing out that the government had given many groups—
including the Quakers—full rights to oppose the war on conscientious grounds. Eddington’s own conscientious objector hearing was coming up in just two weeks, and one senses
that Larmor was suggesting that he should be content with his personal right to oppose
the war. Eddington was given space for a short response: he asserted that he was not
critical of the government on this issue but meant, rather, to point out that a warm-hearted
partisan could not also be a neutral judge. This was not only a warning of conscience to
his British colleagues but also a reminder that the same problem “must confront German
scientists also.” Eddington expressed his personal difficulties in this situation in a private
letter to Larmor: “I did not wish to strike a discordant note. I am sorry if I have failed. It
is very difficult.”18
The “Oxford Note-book” wasted no time in responding to Eddington’s initial letter, in
particular to his query “What stands in the way of a continuance of that co-operation which
is for the welfare of astronomy?” The brutal response:
My reply is that the facts stand in the way—hard, horrible facts, such as we should not have
believed possible before the war. He proposes to shut his eyes to these facts, and to test the
situation by the play of our imaginations in connection with some individual. . . . Surely Prof.
Eddington is here using his preconceptions formed before the war, and his own shrinking from
horrors, to help him in ignoring actual hard facts? Is it not an actual fact that babies have been
killed in ways almost inconceivably brutal, and not as a mere individual excess, but as a part
of the deliberate and declared policy of the German army? Is it not a fact that the Lusitania
was sunk with a national rejoicing that puts the cold-bloodedness of former pirates to shame?
Is it not a fact that German men of science have gone out of their way to declare their adhesion
to these things, and that one of them who ventures some excuse still boasts of a “quiet conscience”? If we cast our memories back before the war, it is easy to recall that we should have
vowed these things incredible; but that does not alter facts.19
The writer’s disgust for Eddington’s pacifism is obvious, and the remark about his “shrinking from horrors” was likely an attack on his conscientious objection to conscription.
Overall, it is interesting to note that Eddington’s insistence on trying to understand the
opponent’s point of view has been missed entirely; this is illustrative of what happened
throughout Great Britain during the war. The magnitude of atrocities, real and imagined,
was such that it became impossible to see beyond them to ask who was responsible and
to remember old friends before they became villains.
While he was navigating the rough waters of scientific politics in wartime, Eddington
was also beginning his investigations into stellar structure. This work would cement his
scientific reputation at the RAS, but discussion continually returned to the war. With the
slaughter at the Battle of the Somme, the banner of patriotic science was taken up once
again, this time by R. A. Sampson. He insisted that his desire to exclude the Germans did
not stem, as Eddington had suggested, from an attitude of moral superiority. Rather, it
came from “resentment . . . that the base and bloody experiences of this war have destroyed
the ground in which unguarded trust and friendship must grow.” Sampson’s personal, even
pained, approach to the problem strikes a reader as more balanced than the usual tone of
18
Joseph Larmor, “The Future of International Science,” Observatory, July 1916, 502:313–314; A. S. Eddington, ibid., p. 314; and A. S. Eddington to Joseph Larmor, 7 June 1916, Joseph Larmor MSS 603-9 403,
Royal Society.
19
“From an Oxford Note-Book,” Observatory, July 1916, 502:23–24.
66
“AN EXPEDITION TO HEAL THE WOUNDS OF WAR”
the “Oxford Note-book,” but in practical details he was no different. “Speaking in general
and of the immediate future, anything except merely formal relations, even in the scientific
field, would strike me as forced, if not impossible.”20
An American correspondent soon entered the debate. Edwin Frost, writing from Yerkes
Observatory, quoted a letter he had received from an anonymous German colleague: “And
yet not one of us scholars was consulted in advance [of the war]. Each one is innocent,
and each one should believe the same of his colleagues, in the hostile country, that he, too,
is innocent of the frightful calamity. . . . We must prepare [after the war] to make our
relations closer than before. We must attempt to attain the solidarity of the scholars of all
nations.” The “Oxford Note-book” was quick to respond, again focusing on the notion of
individual responsibility. As in his rejoinder to Eddington, Turner refused to acknowledge
the possibility that a citizen could disavow the policies and actions of his or her nation.
“As for the question of individual responsibility . . . it may be worth remarking that though
English astronomers were certainly not consulted about the war in advance, from the
moment of the brutal attack on Belgium there are few indeed of us who wish to disavow
the responsibility for the action of England.”21 This passage crystallizes the points of
disagreement between the anti-German faction, chiefly represented by Turner through the
“Oxford Note-book,” and the pro-German group, chiefly represented by Eddington.
Turner—and most of the British population—refused to believe that German individuals,
scientists or no, could truthfully claim to have no part in their government’s atrocities.
This view was strengthened by documents such as the Manifesto of Ninety-three. Eddington, however, was motivated chiefly by his Quaker perspective on human nature, which
saw individual understanding and responsibility as the salient factors in relationships. From
his point of view, the German scientists were as much victims of the war as were their
Belgian counterparts.
The Society of Friends organized its war relief efforts around that very assumption: that
the victims of war were not just those on the defensive side of the fighting. Friends made
it a point not to limit their services because of national boundaries: refugee camps were
established in France and Holland, but also in the Russian district of Buzuluk, where they
cared for displaced Prussians and German prisoners of war. In Britain, the Quakers set up
the Emergency Committee for the Assistance of Germans, Austrians, and Hungarians in
Distress, a group led by close friends of Eddington’s and organized to aid enemy citizens
detained when the war broke out. There was some question of whether this activity violated
the five-hundred-year-old Treason Act, and the Emergency Committee received many
death threats. Three members of the committee were imprisoned for conscientious objection to conscription, including Eddington’s friend and fellow Cambridge scientist Ernest
B. Ludlam.22
The root of the anger against the Quakers was the impression that, since they were
opposed to the war, they were supporting the aggression and atrocities of the Central
Powers. An American observer sought to correct this notion: “The Friends who thus kept
alive their human sympathies and humanitarian instincts were not ‘pro-German.’ They did
not approve at all of German military aims, policies or methods.”23 The Society of Friends
R. A. Sampson, Observatory, Aug. 1916, 503:344–345.
Edwin Frost, Observatory, Oct. 1916, 505:435–436; and “From an Oxford Note-Book,” ibid., Nov. 1916,
506:476–477.
22
Report of the War Victims Relief Committee of the Society of Friends (London: Spottiswoode, 1914–1919),
Vol. 1, pp. 5, 13, 15; Vol. 3, p. 44.
23
Jones, Service of Love in Wartime (cit. n. 7), p. 252.
20
21
MATTHEW STANLEY
67
argued that pacifism, not violence, was the key to confronting German militarism and
ending the war. Compassion for individuals and their suffering would lead to a new and
more robust internationalism that would prevent future wars.
THE ADVENTURERS AND THE AFTERMATH OF WAR
The end of the war did not end the calling of these Quakers, but instead brought new
opportunities. The Cambridge Friends Meeting, of which Eddington was a prominent
member, expressed this statement of purpose on hearing of the armistice:
Suffering and unrest are by no means over, nor is the conflict, tho’ it may be removed to another
plane of action. And while we could take no part in the late warfare we feel that the inevitable
struggle now before the world, social political or economic, is one to which we may rightly
have some thing to give, indeed we feel that it is precisely here that our place may lie. The
value and power of this contribution depends on one thing, the ability in which our Church and
each one of us as individual members of it can lay hold of the power of the Spirit. Nothing
else can avail in this great moment.
British Quakers headed to Germany immediately to help ease suffering in the wake of
the fighting. Hopes that the blockade would be lifted and material conditions in Germany
improved were dashed as the public began calling for reparations and revenge. During the
war, many in Britain had expressed high hopes for a just peace—H. G. Wells wrote that,
in victory, Britain would “save the liberated Germans from vindictive treatment”—but by
the armistice such ideals had been lost in the horrors of the trenches. Public opinion quickly
gathered behind leaders such as Sir Eric Geddes, who called for “squeezing Germany until
the pips squeak.”24
Part of this “squeezing” was the maintenance of the wartime blockade of Germany
between the armistice and the signing of the Treaty of Versailles. One postwar commentator
explained the reasoning: “The Germans are . . . suffering as they deserve to suffer from
acute humiliation as well as from all kinds of impoverishment.” Starvation was rampant
in Germany; Foch and Churchill hoped to use it as a lever to force German acceptance of
the Paris peace terms. Quakers, led by the Emergency Committee, purchased food and
humanitarian supplies in England and then shipped them to Germany, in contravention of
government orders. Much damage had already been done, however; in midsummer 1919—
as Eddington was returning from the eclipse expedition—American and British Friends
estimated that the post-armistice blockade had led to seven hundred thousand deaths, in
addition to endemic starvation and disease among children. As evidence of the appalling
conditions inside Germany mounted, Clemenceau and Lloyd George were persuaded to
loosen the blockade.25
Those Friends who ventured to Europe to relieve this suffering, both during and after
the war, worked in difficult and sometimes dangerous conditions. These relief workers
came to be known as “adventurers,” and they hold a special place in Quaker history as
men and women who journeyed into far and foreign lands as a duty of conscience. The
24
Cambridge Friends Meeting Minutes, Nov. 1918, Cambridgeshire County Records, Cambridge; Marwick,
Deluge (cit. n. 6), pp. 48–49 (quoting Wells); and Times, 24 Nov. 1918 (quoting Geddes).
25
Frank Dilnot, England after the War (New York: Doubleday, 1920), p. 184 (quotation); and John Forbes,
The Quaker Star under Seven Flags, 1917–27 (Philadelphia: Univ. Pennsylvania Press, 1962), pp. 93, 95–98,
91. Margaret Macmillan, Peacemakers: The Paris Conference of 1919 and Its Attempt to End War (London:
Murray, 2001), is an excellent resource for understanding the conference.
68
“AN EXPEDITION TO HEAL THE WOUNDS OF WAR”
strategies used by these adventurers became the models for Eddington’s efforts to use the
eclipse expedition as a tool in repairing international relationships. Their personal presence
in the devastated areas was seen as being as important as the material relief they brought:
social and intellectual relationships needed to be stimulated as well. The problem was this:
“The entire population was shut up within the frontiers of the country, unable to get any
relief from the monotony of suffering, unable, too, to exchange ideas.” The Friends’ goal
was to demonstrate “the brotherhood of man overstepping all artificial barriers of race,
politics or creed, which we believe to be the only true foundation upon which the family
of nations can rest.” Many Quakers were called to these adventures when the plight of the
German educational system was discovered. Convinced that resurrecting the German intellectual system was crucial—even in times of famine—Quakers undertook to feed hundreds of students in Berlin. Among the German faculty involved was Albert Einstein, who
was reported as being “closely connected” with this work. The program grew eventually
to feed nearly sixteen thousand students.26
Quakers saw one of the most important benefits of this work to be the connection forged
with a young generation of students, which they hoped would repair or replace those
connections severed by the war. In a sense, this was the Quaker war: “While chemists are
testing out the deadliest types of poison gas for future wars . . . it is well that there should
also be some notable attempts made to conquer the hearts of men by kindness and to
demonstrate that one person who heads an expedition to heal the wounds and desolation
of war is stronger than a battalion of men under arms.”27
RELATIVITY AND GERMAN SCIENCE
Like the Emergency Committee, Eddington had begun his own efforts to repair the intellectual connections of the scientific community. He was one of the few British scientists
to maintain contact with scientists working in enemy or neutral countries. Among his
contacts was Willem de Sitter of the Netherlands, who alerted Eddington (then the secretary
of the RAS) to a new theory of gravity being developed in Germany.28
De Sitter submitted a pair of papers on general relativity for the Monthly Notices of the
Royal Astronomical Society in 1916, and Eddington was immediately fascinated by Einstein’s work. He had been vaguely familiar with the principle of relativity as it was formulated by Einstein in 1911 and had mentioned its gravitational implications a full year
before receiving de Sitter’s letters. A significant point of interest was the ability of relativity
to link the forces of nature: “a positive result [of relativity’s prediction] would mean that
gravitation has been pulled down from its pedestal, and ceases to stand aloof from the
other forces of nature.”29
Einstein’s full theory of 1915, however, was a very different beast. General relativity’s
successful explanation of the advance of the perihelion of Mercury was significant, but it
was that explanation’s origin in a coherent and revolutionary understanding of space and
26
Edward Thomas, Quaker Adventures (London: Revell, 1935), pp. 1–30; and Fry, Quaker Adventure (cit.
n. 7), pp. 312 (no relief ), 315 (“true foundation”), 330–331.
27
Fry, Quaker Adventure, pp. 331–332, 355 (quotation).
28
De Sitter’s motivations for and strategies in communicating the relativity papers to Eddington were complex
and interesting. For an insightful analysis see Andrew Warwick’s forthcoming Masters of Theory: The Rise of
Mathematical Physics in Cambridge.
29
A. S. Eddington, “Some Problems of Astronomy (XIX: Gravitation),” Observatory, Feb. 1915, 484:93–98,
on p. 98.
MATTHEW STANLEY
69
time (not to mention the impressive mathematics) that held Eddington’s attention. Beyond
the scientific import of the paper, he saw an opportunity to repair some of the damage
caused by the war. Writing to de Sitter, he reported that he was “interested to hear that so
fine a thinker as Einstein is anti-Prussian.” Finding a fellow pacifist (and a brilliant one at
that) in the German physics community was just what was needed to restore internationalism to science. Einstein was equally excited at the opportunity, and he praised de Sitter
for his work to “throw a bridge over the abyss of misunderstanding.”30
The debate over the merits of general relativity developed quickly, with Eddington
virtually the only defender of the theory against vigorous attacks from many high-profile
figures, not the least of whom was Oliver Lodge.31 The theory was heavily constrained by
the lack of experimental evidence and its general technical difficulty. Few scientists could
manipulate the mathematics, and there was widespread suspicion about a theory that was
both highly abstract and made sweeping claims that gravity was merely a property of
space. Astronomers were probably better placed than physicists to grapple with a new
theory of gravity, though; the motion of Mercury had inspired several attempts to modify
Newtonian gravitation. Some members of the RAS felt that Einstein’s theory should be
tested, if only because of its possible impact.
But much of this tentative interest was derailed by the general unease at dealing with
work from an enemy country. The “Oxford Note-book,” in discussing an astrophysical
hypothesis of German origin that had recently been shown to be false, speculated on the
possibility of any German producing good science: “We have tried to think that the exaggerated and false claims made by Germans today were due to some purely temporary
disease of quite recent growth. But an instance like this makes one wonder whether the
sad truth may not lie deeper.” The implicit suggestion was that German scientific claims
were tainted not only by wartime propaganda but also by the barbarity and corruption
hidden in the German character. How could they ever be trusted? The apparent success of
German science in many fields was attributed by one observer to “plagiarism and piracy”
of more civilized nations.32
This lack of trust formed the cornerstone of the continuing argument for German expulsion from international science. Scientific associations, Turner claimed, rested on certain intangibles: “The basis of such organizations is the good faith of the contracting
parties: can we accept in scientific matters assurances which are, by some of the parties,
not considered binding in other connections?”33 Just as the German violation of Belgium
had made the claims of their politicians unreliable, their scientists’ reports were likewise
worthless. No experiment, no mathematical analysis, could be beyond suspicion.
This attitude led to the closing of the official channels of scientific communication. The
RAS aggressively kept its journals out of neutral and enemy hands, even after the war.
There were some concerns about leaking technical secrets, but in general the reluctance
to make journals available was a result of exactly the position Turner represented: the
30
A. S. Eddington to Willem de Sitter, 13 Oct. 1916, quoted in Pierre Kersberg, The Invented Universe (Oxford:
Oxford Univ. Press, 1989), p. 99; and Albert Einstein to de Sitter, 23 Jan. 1917, Albert Einstein Archives
(hereafter Einstein Archives), 20-540 (permission granted by the Albert Einstein Archives, Jewish National and
University Library, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel). Eddington saw religious implications in relativity
as well. For an overview see Loren Graham, Between Science and Values (New York: Columbia Univ. Press,
1981).
31
For an overview of the development and reception of general relativity see Don Howard and John Stachel,
eds., Einstein and the History of General Relativity (Boston: Birkhäuser, 1989).
32
“From an Oxford Note-Book,” Observatory, Mar. 1918, 524:128; and Nature, 6 Feb. 1919, 102:446–447.
33
“From an Oxford Note-Book,” Observatory, Mar. 1918, 524:147.
70
“AN EXPEDITION TO HEAL THE WOUNDS OF WAR”
belief that the Germans had forfeited their right to participate in the scientific community.
After the war the RAS happily provided back issues of its publications to Belgium and
Serbia while refusing to send any to “enemy countries.” Eddington pushed his colleagues
to renew communications with former colleagues and institutions, often pointing to the
socioeconomic devastation of the former Central Powers. Scientists in the former German
and Austrian empires tried to beg, borrow, or trade for British publications, and they often
directed their requests through Eddington, knowing his sympathies to internationalism.
Eddington did his best to help them and was quite pleased when bureaucratic confusion
allowed otherwise unavailable materials to slip through.34
As the war raged on, scientists, both individually and through their professional organizations, began seeking to sever any remaining ties with German colleagues, no matter
how indirect or informal. After the collapse of the ersatz astronomical telegraph network,
the Royal Society moved to expel its German members:
In view of the war having continued nearly 4 years without any indication that the scientific
men of Germany are unsympathetic toward the abominable malpractices of their government
and their fellow countrymen, and having regard to the representative character of the Royal
Society among British scientific bodies as recognized by the patronage of His Majesty the King,
this Council forthwith take the steps necessary for removing all enemy aliens from the foreign
membership of the Society.
The virulent anti-German sentiment found throughout Britain, France, and America had
begun to have concrete consequences for the possibility of resurrecting scientific relations
after the war.35
THE EXPEDITION: EDDINGTON AS ADVENTURER
Help for Eddington’s efforts against this mentality came from his friend and former colleague at the Royal Greenwich Observatory, Astronomer Royal Frank Dyson, who was
seeking permission and resources to mount an expedition to test Einstein’s theory at the
1919 eclipse. Einstein’s theory predicted that a ray of light traveling near a massive object,
such as the sun, would undergo a small but measurable deflection of its path. This was one
of the three “classic” relativistic effects predicted by Einstein: the advance of the perihelion
of Mercury was already established, and the measurement of the redshift of the solar spectrum was proving difficult. This left observing the gravitational deflection as the only
realistic hope of confirming general relativity. Earlier attempts to observe the deflection
had been made by the German astronomer Erwin Freundlich, with no success. According
to Eddington, Dyson “was at that time very skeptical about the theory though deeply
interested in it.”36 Dyson felt that while the theory was speculative, its implications
34
Strömgren to W. H. Wesley, 22 July 1917, RAS Letters 1917; RAS Council Minutes, Vol. 11, 9 Nov. 1917
(keeping materials from the enemy); RAS Council Minutes, 14 Feb. 1919, 9 Apr., 14 May 1920, 11 Feb. 1921
(back issues); A. S. Eddington to A. C. Crommelin, 28 Dec. 1919, RAS Letters 1919; and A. S. Eddington to
Wesley, 30 Jan. 1921, RAS Letters 1921. The RAS archives have large numbers of such requests from former
Central Powers countries.
35
Royal Society Council Minutes, 20 June 1918. For a useful overview of issues of nationalism in science
see Elisabeth Crawford, Nationalism and Internationalism in Science, 1880–1939: Four Studies of the Nobel
Population (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1992).
36
A. S. Eddington to Hermann Weyl, 18 Aug. 1920, ETH-Bibliothek Zürich, Hs 91:523 (used by permission
of Dr. Michael Weyl and the ETH-Bibliothek Zürich). Dyson’s initial efforts are recorded in Monthly Notices of
the Royal Astronomical Society, Mar. 1917, 77:445. For more details on the expedition and its scientific back-
MATTHEW STANLEY
71
were so important that it needed to be investigated. He had examined older eclipse photographs in search of this effect but found nothing. The upcoming eclipse of 29 May 1919
would find the sun in the center of a bright field of stars, the Hyades, perfect for measuring
the deflection. The path of the eclipse was in an inconvenient location, however, and a
large expedition would need to be mounted to make the observations. This expedition was
just the sort of work that required the international cooperation that Eddington had argued
was fundamental to the spirit of science. Further, it offered an opportunity to bring a peaceloving, insightful German to prominence in both science and society. In this sense, the
expedition was as much a “Quaker adventure” as a journey to war-torn Europe would have
been. Unlike many adventurer Friends, Eddington was never in physical danger, but his
experiences on the eclipse expedition were fraught with excitement and the exotic flavor
of West Africa. Further, his later account of the journey strongly reflected the literature
reporting the adventures of Quakers working in the aftermath of the war.
The eclipse’s scientific significance had gradually become clear over the course of the
war years. The first mention of relativity’s prediction of the bending of light in the Observatory was an anonymous 1913 note entitled “Gravitation and Light.” This note referred
to the deflection Einstein predicted in 1911 (which was only half the value he would later
predict), long before he had developed the general theory or even adopted the Minkowskian
formulation of space-time.37
Einstein’s full theory, along with the new value for the deflection, arrived in 1916 via
de Sitter, and Eddington wasted no time in arguing for its importance. At the same time
as he was embroiled in controversy at Cambridge over the treatment of pacifists such as
Bertrand Russell, Eddington set himself up as the chief exponent of relativity. He responded to concerns about de Sitter’s papers, defended the theory at the RAS, and elucidated confusion caused by the new mathematics. He had become Einstein’s “bulldog.”
Through the next year he worked on his Report on the Relativity Theory of Gravitation, a
small volume that would be the first complete treatment of general relativity in English.
Soon, enough interest in the theory had been generated to begin investigation into the
logistics of an expedition to test it. Geographic considerations dominated the discussion,
since the eclipse path did not go near any observatories or even any easily accessible areas.
It seemed likely that those who carried out the expedition would have to make their way
to Africa or South America.38
ground see John Earman and Clark Glymour, “Relativity and Eclipses: The British Expeditions of 1919 and
Their Predecessors,” Historical Studies in the Physical Sciences, 1980, 11:49–85 (see the conclusion of this
essay and note 77, below, for commentary on Earman and Glymour’s analysis of Eddington’s work on the
expedition). Their article also discusses observations of the deflection before and after 1919. Eric B. Forbes,
“Erwin Finlay Freundlich,” in Dictionary of Scientific Biography, ed. Charles Coulston Gillispie, 18 vols. (New
York: Scribner’s, 1970–1986), Vol. 5, pp. 181–184, has details on Freundlich’s many observations to test relativity’s predictions.
37
“Gravitation and Light,” Observatory, May 1913, 461:231. Einstein’s first calculation was based solely on
the equivalence principle and yielded a value equal to an explicitly ballistic calculation, as would be expected
from Newtonian theory. This is also the origin of the first “half ” of the general relativistic deflection; the second
“half ” comes from the curvature of space near the sun relative to distant space. The possibility of Newtonian
gravity affecting light had been investigated a handful of times (notably by Henry Cavendish) over the previous
two centuries, but the idea was never taken particularly seriously. For more see Clifford Will, “General Relativity
at Seventy-five: How Right Was Einstein?” Science, 1990, 250:770–776.
38
A. S. Eddington, Report on the Relativity Theory of Gravitation (London: Fleetway, 1919). The Report was
read surprisingly widely, and Nature’s reviewer called it “the most remarkable publication during the war”:
Nature, 6 Mar. 1919, 103:2. Eddington was heavily involved in the efforts to reinstate Russell after his dismissal
for authoring a peace pamphlet and also in protesting the treatment of conscientious objectors such as himself.
For more on Russell and the war see G. H. Hardy, Bertrand Russell and Trinity (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ.
72
“AN EXPEDITION TO HEAL THE WOUNDS OF WAR”
Unsurprisingly, many astronomers thought the expedition would be a waste of time.
The refugee scientist Jonckheere warned that there were several different mechanisms that
might duplicate the predicted deflection, making observations useless. The best-developed
objection was that refraction in the solar atmosphere could create an effect identical to that
of gravitational deflection. Other possibilities included optical effects from the particles
responsible for zodiacal light and a condensation of ether around the sun, either of which
could produce deflection effects. F. A. Lindemann, an Englishman of German descent,
replied with pages of detailed calculations showing that the density of the stellar atmosphere necessary to cause appreciable refraction was unlikely: there were several good
observations of comets passing close enough to the sun to rule out the possibility. The
zodiacal particles were too rarefied, and while an ether condensation would duplicate the
qualitative effect, no one had a good enough ether model to make a quantitative prediction.
Such a vague objection, Lindemann said, should carry little weight compared to Einstein’s
detailed and consistent theory.39
General relativity’s successful explanation of the advance of the perihelion of Mercury
was impressive to astronomers, and many thought the eclipse test should be carried out
on those grounds alone. The third test, the gravitational redshift, was already being conducted. Charles St. John, an astronomer at Mt. Wilson, had produced preliminary results,
and they were not favorable for Einstein. The supporters were persistent, however, and an
anonymous note regarding St. John’s report reminded the scientific community that there
were “those who have welcomed Einstein’s relativity theory of gravitation, both on account
of its great beauty of conception and its remarkable success in explaining the discordance
of the perihelion of Mercury.”40
Discussions such as these were important in the scientific debate but had little impact
on the actual planning of the expedition. This was chiefly in the hands of two astronomers
who were also interested in ramifications beyond the scientific test: Eddington and Dyson.
Dyson had been making public statements in favor of the expedition since March 1917,
and as astronomer royal he was perfectly placed to begin preparations even without the
full support of the astronomical community. Planning for the expedition was formally the
duty of the Joint Permanent Eclipse Committee, a group set up by both the Royal Society
and the Royal Astronomical Society so as to pool the intellectual and logistical resources
of the two groups.41 Eddington was not a member of the committee and attended its
meetings only sporadically before 1916.
Preparations for the expedition began in earnest at the 10 November 1917 meeting.
Eddington was present at the special invitation of Dyson. Relativity was the sole focus of
discussion. Dyson drew attention to the “specially favourable opportunity for testing the
displacements of stars near the Sun, which are predicted by the Theory of Relativity. It
was pointed out that such favourable opportunities are of rare occurrence, and there would
Press, 1970). On the likely necessity of journeying to Africa or South America see J. Evershed, “The Einstein
Effect and the Eclipse of 1919 May 29,” Monthly Notices Roy. Astron. Soc., 1917, 78:79.
39
“RAS Meeting,” Observatory, May 1918, 526:215, 323. Lindemann later became Lord Cherwell and was
Churchill’s science advisor. See R. V. Jones, “Frederick Alexander Lindemann,” in Dictionary of Scientific Biography, ed. Gillispie (cit. n. 36), Vol. 8, pp. 368–369, for more detail.
40
Observatory, July 1917, 515:356 (favoring the eclipse test); Charles St. John, “The Principle of Generalized
Relativity and the Displacement of Fraunhofer Lines toward the Red,” Astrophysical Journal, 1917, 96:249–
265; and Observatory, Apr. 1918, 525:183.
41
For more on the culture of eclipse expeditions see Alex Soojung-Kim Pang, “The Social Event of the Season:
Solar Eclipse Expeditions and Victorian Culture,” Isis, 1993, 84:252–277.
MATTHEW STANLEY
73
certainly be no equally suitable Eclipse for many years.”42 It was decided that there were
three possible stations for taking observations: northern Brazil, the island of Principe on
the west coast of Africa, and near the western shore of Lake Tanganyika. Hopes were that
expeditions could be sent to two of these sites to guard against poor weather.
Money was an immediate problem, and Dyson planned on applying for a government
grant that would include £100 for modifying instruments and £1,000 contingent on the
feasibility of the expeditions. The war in Europe continued to rage (a massive German
offensive had just begun), and planning for this sort of scientific travel reflected an optimism that either peace would soon be at hand or the withered spirit of scientific internationalism would suffice for its execution. Discussion settled on Brazil and the west coast
of Africa as the best sites, and a subcommittee was set up to undertake serious preparations.
The subcommittee worked feverishly to account for all the logistical, scientific, and
technical issues pertinent to accurate observation. The test would be nearly at the observational limits of the techniques available in the field, and the expeditions needed excellent
equipment. It was decided to use the astrographic telescope from Greenwich (which had
previously captured excellent star fields during eclipse exposures) and a similar lens from
Oxford. As was standard practice in eclipse observations, the astrographs would be “fed”
by 16-inch coelostats, mirrors rotated by clockwork to keep the image of the moving sun
centered on the photographic plate. In this way, the telescopes could lie horizontal and
unmoving (crucial considerations for mechanical stability) while the comparatively light
coelostat mirrors could be pivoted steadily to compensate for the rotation of the earth. The
aging mechanisms of these coelostats were a worry, but improvements were dependent on
obtaining a “priority certificate from the Ministry of Munitions” for the use of scarce
resources. As a hedge against the unreliable coelostats, one of the expected observers,
Father A. L. Cortie of the Stonyhurst College Observatory, suggested also bringing a 4inch telescope fed by a different coelostat, which he had used to good effect on previous
expeditions.43 E. T. Cottingham, from Greenwich, would overhaul all the equipment to the
best of his ability in any case.
Actually getting the observers to their sites was proving a challenge. Although the
fighting had ended in November 1918, the war had been hard on shipping, and their
destinations were far from well-traveled routes. In order to be in the right places on 29
May, the teams would have to leave England in February and be gone through June. There
was some danger that Eddington himself would not be available: his conscientious objection to conscription seemed likely to land him in prison. He had originally been exempted
as an astronomer (whose work was seen as having military value), but the British government desperately needed manpower in the spring of 1918 and revoked his exemption.
Eddington refused to fight, on religious grounds, and even declined later opportunities for
exemption where he needed to do nothing beyond simply not stating his religious objection.
In an ironic reversal, Dyson (with his connections in the Admiralty) was able to gain
Eddington an exemption on the condition that he participate in the eclipse expedition.44
42
Minutes of the Joint Permanent Eclipse Committee Meetings (hereafter JPEC minutes), RAS Papers
54/2, 10 Nov. 1917.
43
F. W. Dyson, “On the Opportunity Afforded by the Eclipse of 1919 May 29 of Verifying Einstein’s Theory
of Gravitation,” Monthly Notices Roy. Astron. Soc., Mar. 1917, 77:445 (astrographic telescope and Oxford lens);
JPEC minutes, 14 June 1918 (worry about the coelostats); and Dyson, A. S. Eddington, and C. Davidson, “A
Determination of the Deflection of Light by the Sun’s Gravitational Field, from Observations Made at the Total
Eclipse of May 29, 1919,” Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London: Series A, 1920, 220:291–
333, on p. 295 (Cortie’s suggestion).
44
JPEC minutes, 8 Nov. 1918 (travel time). See S. Chandrasekhar, “Verifying the Theory of Relativity,” Notes
74
“AN EXPEDITION TO HEAL THE WOUNDS OF WAR”
From Eddington’s perspective, the agreement was that he would not be punished for his
objection to the war so long as he took part in an activity that he was hoping to use as a
tool for peace.
Securing a leave of absence from Trinity was somewhat easier—even though Eddington
was the only member of the observatory staff not on war duty—but Cortie found that he
could not be spared. He was replaced at the last minute by C. R. Davidson, from Greenwich. The expeditions would leave from Liverpool on the Anselm, traveling via Madeira.
As of their departure, no information on steamers to Principe (Eddington’s final destination) was available. There was some discussion of trying to get a warship from the Admiralty, but that came to nothing.45 The travelers would simply have to hope for the best.
As the departure approached, Eddington became concerned with returning results to
Greenwich as quickly as possible. He arranged for each party to take a micrometer (a tool
for making very fine measurements) in order that preliminary measures of check plates
and eclipse plates might be made at the eclipse stations instead of waiting for the long
journey back. He also gathered information on the developing of photographic plates under
tropical conditions, which would likely be quite different from those prevailing in an
enclosed observatory in Europe. Plates were bought from different companies, and different lines within each, in case some particular chemistry proved unsuitable for the tropics.
Eddington also arranged a telegraphic code for informing Dyson as to the weather conditions and the general character of the eclipse results.46 There was no particular need for
haste in returning the scientific results; certainly there was no danger of losing priority. It
seems, rather, that Eddington’s concern was to bring the results of the expedition home in
time for them to have an impact on the fluid post-armistice situation.
Before leaving, Eddington wrote a review article (essentially a distilled version of his
Report on the Relativity Theory of Gravitation) on the expedition, detailing the theoretical
and logistical background of the planned observations. During the five minutes of totality,
relativity would be the only topic of investigation. The expected displacement of stars at
the sun’s limb, as calculated by Einstein, was 1.75 seconds of arc, which would give a
displacement of approximately 1/60 mm on the plates. Not an easy matter to determine—
but Eddington assured his readers that “this in itself calls for no extravagant precautions
of accuracy.”47 Plates taken in the field would be compared with photographs of the same
stars already taken at Greenwich and Oxford. Check plates of other parts of the sky could
be taken to determine scale, though this was not strictly necessary because the hoped-for
effect was distinct from the effect of change of scale.
According to Eddington, there were three possible results from the expedition observations: no deflection, the predicted relativistic deflection, or a half-deflection calculated
from Newtonian mechanics. He pointed out that the results would have important implications for the relationship between matter and energy, which would itself have important
consequences for theories of stellar evolution (he made no mention of the important consequences for international science). “The problem of the coming eclipse may, therefore,
be described as that of weighing light.” He addressed Jonckheere’s ether condensation
and Records of the Royal Society of London, 1976, 30:249–260, esp. p. 250. The proceedings of Eddington’s
conscription hearings were recorded in the Cambridge press. Douglas, Life of Eddington (cit. n. 3), also has an
account of these events.
45
JPEC minutes, 14 Feb. 1919.
46
JPEC minutes, 14 Feb., 10 Jan. 1919.
47
A. S. Eddington, “The Total Eclipse of 1919 May 29 and the Influence of Gravitation on Light,” Observatory,
Mar. 1919, 537:119–122.
MATTHEW STANLEY
75
hypothesis and assimilated the objection in a rather positivist fashion by arguing that since
this would involve a deflection of light caused by the presence of a massive body it should
really not be regarded as a separate hypothesis. Carefully covering all possibilities, Eddington closed with the point that any result, even a null one, would be extremely important, and he held up the Michelson-Morley experiment as an example of an important null
result.48 But there is no question that Eddington was hoping for a positive result, both in
physics and in the scientific community.
The expedition itself was far from smooth. The Principe team, Eddington and Cottingham, found themselves waiting for two weeks in Portugal for the next steamer to
Principe. Eddington occupied himself with mountain climbing (his companion was unable
to keep up) and a trip to the local casino (he assured his mother that he went there solely
for the good tea). Their experiences were dominated by the oddity of traveling while
Europe was still technically at war. Eddington remarked on the strangeness of not eating
under rationing and on the war damage in Portugal: “Three ships were torpedoed by
submarine in Madeira during the war, and one sees the masts of two of them sticking up
out of the water. The town was also bombarded and there are a few traces visible.” Due
to a held-over wartime regulation, passengers on a steamer were not allowed to know
where the boat was at any given time.49
The travelers arrived on Principe, an island off the west coast of Africa, on 29 April,
with a month until the eclipse. The island was described as thickly wooded and “very
charming.” Unfortunately, they quickly discovered that Principe had terrible weather and
that they would be lucky to get a clear sky on the day of the eclipse. Rain, mosquitoes,
and quinine became the daily regimen. Eddington and Cottingham built waterproof huts
for the equipment, with the help of laborers from a local plantation. They were forced to
work under mosquito netting and at least once helped hunt monkeys that had been interfering with their equipment. Thoughts of the war filled Eddington’s letters home. He wrote
of how strange it was to see full sugar bowls and asked whether his family was still
rationed. Above all, he felt frustrated by being cut off from news of world affairs. “[I
wonder] whether peace has been signed.”50
Eddington and Cottingham began taking check plates on 16 May, with only a little
difficulty due to developing photographs in the high temperatures. Eddington spent his
days measuring the plates. The weather worsened as May progressed, and the morning of
the eclipse was not reassuring. It brought a tremendous rainstorm, which stopped about
two hours before totality but left significant cloud cover. The eclipse, for which they had
traveled thousands of miles, was to reach totality at 2:15 in the afternoon. In Eddington’s
words:
About 1:30 when the partial phase was well advanced, we began to get glimpses of the sun, at
1:55 we could see the crescent (through cloud) almost continuously, and there were large patches
48
Ibid., p. 121. The origin of the “Newtonian” deflection in this troika of possibilities is unclear. In 1917
Lodge presented a calculation of the deflection assuming that Newtonian gravitation held good, which yielded
a value half of Einstein’s. Earman and Glymour, “Relativity and Eclipses” (cit. n. 36), suggests that Eddington
invented the half deflection to give the expedition the flavor of a crucial experiment; it is not clear whether they
were aware of Lodge’s calculation.
49
A. S. Eddington to Sarah Ann Eddington, 11 Mar., 15 Mar. 1919, Uncatalogued Eddington Material, Trinity
College, Cambridge. Although the fighting in Europe ended in November 1918, all the combatants were technically still at war until the deliberations in Paris were finished and the treaties signed.
50
A. S. Eddington to S. A. Eddington, 29 Apr. 1919; and A. S. Eddington to Winifred Eddington, 5 May 1919,
Uncatalogued Eddington Material.
76
“AN EXPEDITION TO HEAL THE WOUNDS OF WAR”
of clear sky appearing. We had to carry out our programme of photographs in faith. I did not
see the eclipse, being too busy changing plates, except for one glance to make sure it had begun,
and another half-way through to see how much cloud there was. We took 16 photographs (of
which 4 are not yet developed). They are all good pictures of the sun, showing a very remarkable
prominence; but the cloud has interfered very much with the star-images. The first 10 photographs show practically no stars. The last 6 show a few images which I hope will give us what
we need; but it is very disappointing. Everything shows that our arrangements were quite
satisfactory, and with a little clearer weather we should have had splendid results. Ten minutes
after the eclipse the sky was beautifully clear. . . . We developed the photographs 2 each night
for 6 nights after the eclipse, and I spent the whole day measuring. The cloudy weather upset
my plans, and I had to treat the measures in a different way from what I intended; consequently
I have not been able to make any preliminary announcement of the result. But the one good
plate that I measured gave a result agreeing with Einstein and I think I have got a little confirmation from a second plate.
He was more succinct in a telegraph to Dyson: “Through cloud. Hopeful.”51
The expedition to Sobral, in Brazil, was less harried (see Figure 1). C. R. Davidson and
A. C. Crommelin were well taken care of by the local authorities and quickly found a good
observing station. The team had the service of Brazil’s first automobile, as well as a supply
of ice (useful for developing photographs) produced by a nearby meatpacker. The coelostat
mechanism functioned without difficulties, but the devices themselves displayed a new
problem during preparations. The team discovered that the coelostat mirror for the high-
Figure 1. The eclipse observation equipment at Sobral. The troublesome coelostats can be seen in
the foreground. Copyright Science Museum/Science and Society Picture Library. Inventory no. 19220277.
51
A. S. Eddington to S. A. Eddington, 21 June 1919, Uncatalogued Eddington Material; and Observatory,
June 1919, 540:256 (telegraph).
MATTHEW STANLEY
77
quality astrographic telescope had astigmatism, a serious optical defect. All was not lost,
however, since the team could remain in Sobral until July to get check plates of the star
field and would still be able to measure the relative displacement of star images.52
In Brazil the eclipse became a public event, and an observatory near the edge of the
eclipse path sold tickets to look through the telescope. The weather for the eclipse was
beautiful, and the observers took nineteen plates with the astrographic telescope and eight
with the small 4-inch lens. They had every expectation of success and cabled home immediately: “Eclipse splendid.”53
The next day brought an unpleasant surprise. Four of the astrographic plates were developed, and it was discovered that the image quality was far from adequate. A note made
at the time reads:
May 30, 3 am . . . It was found that there had been a serious change of focus, so that, while
the stars, were shown, the definition was spoilt. This change of focus can only be attributed to
the unequal expansion of the mirror through the sun’s heat. The readings of the focusing scale
were checked next day, but were found unaltered at 11.0 mm. It seems doubtful whether much
can be got from these plates.54
The displacements the astronomers were looking for were only a quarter of the diameter
of the stellar images, so any distortion of the images made the measurement hopelessly
unreliable. The poor quality of the coelostat mirror had wrecked the finely tuned optical
system of the astrographic telescope; thus they would have to rely on whatever results
were achieved with the small lens. In any case, Crommelin and Davidson had to stay in
Brazil until July to take the check plates, and no measurements could be made before then.
RESULTS: FROM INTERPRETATION TO ACCEPTANCE
As negotiators in Paris arranged the final details of Germany’s reparations, Dyson waited
anxiously in Britain for news from the expeditions. The observers still had not returned
by early July, and he had no idea whether the photographs obtained were satisfactory.
Measurements could not be completed at Principe owing to a steamboat strike that would
have stranded the observers had they stayed to finish their work. When the two teams
arrived home, the tedious task of measurement and analysis began. The photographs and
their check plates were clipped into a micrometer, and two sets of screw readings were
made by two different people so as to minimize human error. The sixteen Principe photographs taken through the cloud yielded only seven plates with star images, but all of
these showed the crucial stars j1 and j2 Tauri, which had the highest predicted deflection.
Only two of the plates had all five of the stars needed for a reliable analysis, however.
These gave consistent results, with a calculated mean deflection of 1.61" #/$ 0.30. These
were good results given the difficulty of the measurement, and Eddington was quite
pleased, as the calculated deflection was rather close to the theoretical prediction of 1.75".55
The astrographic photographs from the other expedition were less reassuring. The poor
quality of the Sobral astrographic images was confirmed once they were compared with
Dyson et al., “Deflection of Light” (cit. n. 43), p. 298.
Observatory, June 1919, 540:256. One of the tickets survives in the Royal Greenwich Observatory Archives:
Cambridge University Library, Royal Greenwich Observatory Archives, MS.RGO.8.150.
54
Dyson et al., “Deflection of Light” (cit. n. 43), p. 309.
55
Ibid., pp. 320–328.
52
53
78
“AN EXPEDITION TO HEAL THE WOUNDS OF WAR”
the check plates. They were unambiguous about showing a deflection, however, and the
mean displacement was calculated to be 0.93", far from Einstein’s predicted value. These
results were to be given little weight owing to the clear optical problems of the coelostat,
but they were nonetheless worryingly close to the “Newtonian” half-deflection.56
The auxiliary lens, the 4-inch telescope recommended at the last minute by Father Cortie,
ended up saving the day. Seven of the eight plates taken with it had excellent images of
the seven hoped-for stars. The images were far better than those from Principe, with results
of 1.98" #/$ 0.12. Eddington wrote Dyson in relief: “I am glad the [4 inch] plates give
the full deflection not only because of theory, but because I had been worrying over the
Principe plates and could not see any possible way of reconciling them with the halfdeflection.”57 After a great deal of data reduction, Eddington presented a calculated mean
of 1.64". This mean included a particular weighting of the results according to how scale
determinations made the Principe and Sobral 4-inch results much more important than the
flawed Sobral astrographic.
Eddington and Dyson began writing the report, which would be given before a special
joint meeting of the Royal Society and the Royal Astronomical Society in November.
Eddington wrote the introduction, theoretical background, and much of the final analysis.
He added a graph of the 4-inch telescope results from Sobral to show how well they fit
the predicted 1/r deflection dependence on distance from the sun (the Principe results did
not have enough stars). He felt that this was an excellent test to show the internal consistency of the data: “It seemed to me rather interesting and deals with a point that ought not
to be overlooked and brings out the really remarkable agreement of individual stars at
Sobral.” At the last minute, Eddington changed his mind about the presentation of possibly
the single most important element in the paper: the final results. Initially, the results from
all three telescopes were averaged to give a very good mean deflection of 1.64". He decided
that this procedure was slightly disingenuous, given the obvious problems with one of the
three sets: “I do not like the combination of the astrographic with the other Sobral results—
particularly because it makes the mean come so near the truth. I do not think it can be
justified; the probable errors of both are I think below 0.1" so they are manifestly discordant. . . . It seems arbitrary to combine a result which definitely disagrees with a result
which agrees and so obtain still better agreement.”58 It was agreed that the three sets of
data would instead be presented separately, so as to clarify the case for and against each.
Both Eddington and Dyson were quite confident in their results; now they had to convince
their colleagues.
On 6 November 1919 J. J. Thomson presided over a special joint meeting of the RAS
and the RS assembled for the sole purpose of presenting the results from the eclipse
expeditions, which were unknown to nearly everyone. A. N. Whitehead, one of the many
observers packed into the room, described the setting:
The whole atmosphere of tense interest was exactly like that of the Greek drama. . . . There
was a dramatic quality in the very staging:—the traditional ceremonial, and in the background
Ibid., pp. 309–312.
Ibid., pp. 299–309; and A. S. Eddington to Dyson, 3 Oct. 1919, Dyson Papers 150, no. 138.
58
A. S. Eddington to Dyson, 21 Oct. 1919, Dyson Papers 150, no. 143. Letters such as this suggest that
Eddington’s analysis was very careful and sought to avoid even a suggestion of favoritism; they are the primary
evidence refuting the assumption that he manipulated the data in favor of Einstein. In any case, there were several
other people involved in the expedition and the data analysis, so a wide-scale conspiracy would have been
necessary (in addition to counterfeiting the photographic plates distributed to other astronomers). There are also
criticisms that Eddington’s error analysis was poor; most of these claims are confused in assuming that he
averaged all three sets of results, which he explicitly did not do.
56
57
MATTHEW STANLEY
79
the picture of Newton to remind us that the greatest of scientific generalizations was now, after
more than two centuries, to receive its first modification. Nor was the personal interest wanting:
a great adventure in thought had at length come safe to shore.
Dyson, as astronomer royal, began the presentation. He reviewed the background of the
expedition and talked about why previous eclipse photographs were inadequate to measure
the Einstein effect. He described the techniques used to account for change of scale from
the check plates and explained the disappointing problem with the coelostat. Finally, he
came to the results: “After a careful study of the plates I am prepared to say that there can
be no doubt that they confirm Einstein’s prediction. A very definite result has been obtained
that light is deflected in accordance with Einstein’s law of gravitation.”59
Next, A. C. Crommelin, the leader of the Sobral expedition, rose to describe his half of
the observations. He detailed the difficulties with the astrographic telescope and how the
astronomers realized that there was a problem. The final speaker was Eddington, who not
only reported on the Principe expedition but dealt with the larger scientific issues implied
by the results and the impact they might have on physics. The observations from Africa
were presented, and Eddington argued that the cloud cover was apparently a blessing in
disguise, since it may have prevented the coelostat distortion under the sun’s heat that
ruined the Sobral astrographic results. These plates also had the supplementary benefit of
having captured a tremendous solar prominence that would keep solar physicists busy for
some time. After presenting the data, Eddington moved on to the physical consequences
of the observations. He described the work as a crucial test between Newton’s and Einstein’s laws and noted that the results clearly favored the larger deflection. He did qualify
his declaration that relativity had been confirmed in light of the so-far-unsuccessful attempts to measure the relativistic displacement of solar spectral lines. “This effect [the
deflection] may be taken as proving Einstein’s law rather than his theory. It is not affected
by the failure to detect the displacement of Fraunhofer lines on the Sun. If this latter failure
is confirmed it will not affect Einstein’s law of gravitation, but it will affect the views on
which the law was arrived at. The law is right, though the fundamental ideas underlying
it may yet be questioned.”60
Despite this fine line drawn between theory and law, many of those present were convinced that Newton had been overthrown. Thomson spoke for this viewpoint with remarkable vigor and also offered a common caveat:
This is the most important result obtained in connection with the theory of gravitation since
Newton’s day, and it is fitting that it should be announced at a meeting of the Society so closely
connected with him. . . . If it is sustained that Einstein’s reasoning holds good—and it has
survived two very severe tests in connection with the perihelion of Mercury and the present
eclipse—then it is the result of one of the highest achievements in human thought. The weak
point in the theory is the great difficulty in expressing it. It would seem that no one can
understand the new law of gravitation with out a thorough knowledge of the theory of invariants
and of the calculus of variations.
Thomson then invited Ralph Fowler, the president of the RAS, to speak. Fowler thanked
Dyson for his tireless insistence on the importance of the expedition but concluded with
59
A. N. Whitehead, Science and the Modern World (New York: Macmillan, 1947), p. 15; and “Joint Eclipse
Meeting of the Royal Society and the Royal Astronomical Society,” Observatory, Nov. 1919, 545:391. Such a
joint meeting was the standard way to report results from expeditions performed under the auspices of the Joint
Committee.
60
Ibid., p. 393.
80
“AN EXPEDITION TO HEAL THE WOUNDS OF WAR”
a cautious reminder that further tests of relativity were necessary: “The conclusion is so
important that no effort should be spared in seeking confirmation in other ways.” Several
other speakers voiced similar concerns about the incompleteness of the confirmation, and
there were several objections to the attribution of the results to gravitational deflection.
Some verbal sparring ensued, and Eddington again insisted that it was Einstein’s law and
not necessarily his theory that had been confirmed, thus avoiding difficult questions of
metaphysics.61
Eddington and Dyson spent the subsequent weeks defending the quality and meaning
of the expedition results. Dyson was quick to refute “misconceptions which have arisen
as to the magnitude of the observed quantity involved in the recent experiment.” Many
scientists objected that measuring a displacement that was only one-quarter the size of the
entire image was dubious, but the astronomer royal reassured them that “those who are
familiar with the measurement of astronomical photographs will know that it is quite
possible to measure quantities of this order of magnitude.” The displacements were much
larger than those seen in measurements of stellar parallax, which were reliably and consistently measured, and Dyson argued that the results were quite reasonable to those conversant with the methods.62
Lodge and others unhappy with the difficulty of duplicating the test asked repeatedly
whether the deflection from Jupiter could be observed, instead of waiting for the next solar
eclipse to confirm the results (it could not). Ludwik Silberstein argued that the plates
showed significant nonradial displacements not predicted by Einstein and that an objective
analysis unprejudiced by the theory would show that there was no radial effect. The Joint
Committee had made copies of the eclipse plates available to anyone who wanted them
(see Figure 2), and there was a frenzy of analysis across the astronomical community.63
Silberstein’s critique was refuted, and there was soon little doubt that there was a radial
deflection of the star images. Exactly what caused this displacement was still in contention.
Refraction in the solar atmosphere remained the most popular alternative to Einstein’s
explanation, though there were others. Lindemann again provided detailed calculations
dismissing the possibility of refraction.64
Objections based on the aesthetic, conceptual, and mathematical unfamiliarity of relativity were legion but had surprisingly little impact on the debate among astronomers.65
Careful analysis of the data had persuaded most of them that there was in fact a deflection.
Charles St. John, himself still skeptical of the theory, wrote: “A deflection of light while
passing through the near neighborhood of the Sun is now a fact of observation, destined
either to influence profoundly our attitude toward the conceptions of space and time, as
involved in the generalized theory of relativity, or to serve as a basis for the advancement
Ibid., pp. 394–395.
Observatory, Jan. 1920, 547:37–38 (quotations); and Nature, 17 Feb. 1921, 106:786.
63
Observatory, Jan. 1920, 547:41; and JPEC minutes, 14 Nov. 1919. The original plates have since been lost,
but many of the copies still exist.
64
H. N. Russell, “Note on the Sobral Eclipse Photographs,” Monthly Notices Roy. Astron. Soc., 1920, 81:154–
164 (refuting Silberstein); and “RAS Meeting,” Observatory, Jan. 1920, 547:33–44, 56 (Lindemann). See also
Dyson Papers 123. For an interesting electromagnetic explanation see H. A. Wilson, Physical Review, 1921,
17:54. For more competing explanations for the deflection see Donald Moyer, “Revolution in Science: The 1919
Eclipse Test of General Relativity,” in On the Path of Albert Einstein, ed. Arnold Perlmutter and Linda Scott
(London: Plenum, 1979), pp. 55–101.
65
These debates were more the province of physicists and philosophers and were of particular interest to the
public. I will deal with these issues in a future publication.
61
62
MATTHEW STANLEY
81
Figure 2. One of the photographs taken by Eddington at Principe. No stars are visible here, but the
image does capture a spectacular solar prominence. Copyright Royal Astronomical Society Picture
Library. RAS Photographs 2, No. A7/39. Special thanks to Peter Hingley.
of science in other directions.” Joseph Larmor took a similar position, calling the expedition a “very important astronomical determination that is to be regarded as a guide toward
future theory rather than as the verification of the particular theory which suggested it.”
Eddington’s assertion that Einstein’s law and not necessarily his theory had been proved
was an apt characterization of opinion among astronomers. This distinction was particularly useful for Eddington (he certainly did not think the distinction was valid) in that it
allowed him to publicize a confirmation of Einstein even in the absence of the spectroscopic results.66 Opponents of the theory used the distinction as well: Silberstein, acceding
66
Charles St. John, “Displacement of Solar Lines and the Einstein Effect,” Observatory, Jan. 1920, 547:158;
and Joseph Larmor to Nature, 25 Dec. 1919, 104:412. Eddington had been worried about the lack of spectroscopic
evidence for some time—see A. S. Eddington to W. S. Adams, 28 Jan. 1918, Huntington Library, San Marino,
California—and this may have helped shape his “law not theory” strategy.
82
“AN EXPEDITION TO HEAL THE WOUNDS OF WAR”
to the unlikelihood of refraction, maintained that the deflection was an “isolated fact” and
had no bearing on the truth of the theory. Others had similar thoughts:
The star images are certainly excellent and the photograph leaves little doubt that the deflection
is close to the double amount. You and your colleagues are to be heartily congratulated on the
results of the eclipse expeditions. I trust you are planning to observe the 1922 eclipse in the
same way, as I am sure you will be among the first to agree that results of such importance
should be thoroughly confirmed before we accept them as establishing Einstein’s theory. I have
a feeling that some explanation for the deflection will be found without resorting to nonEuclidean space.
The lack of spectroscopic evidence meant that many scientists had reservations about
pronouncing relativity “proven,” but astronomers were comfortable announcing that Einstein’s quantitative prediction of the deflection of light had been confirmed. Many astronomers, still much more comfortable with positional astronomy than with spectroscopy,
found the combination of the deflection test and Mercury’s orbit convincing. Dyson, writing a few years later, described the situation well:
But what appeals to me and the astronomers and physicists I know is that Einstein’s theory
gives a formula—if not an explanation—of a number of very difficult and unexplained observations and experiments. . . . Einstein’s predictions have been verified and his Law of Gravitation is correct, and as far as I can see, there is no alternative law. It is possible to accept the
law and reject the theory which led to it, but it is not an unreasonable view to regard the
verification of the law as confirmation of the theory.67
In short, the observations proved the law, and the law came from the theory. Many of the
difficulties of the theory were far outside the expertise of astronomers, and its utility in
investigating astronomical phenomena made it worth using. What was clear to astronomers
was that there was a deflection, and it, coupled with Mercury’s orbit, effectively verified
Einstein’s law of gravitation. The practical workings of gravity and celestial mechanics
were by far the dominant concerns; esoteric matters about clocks running slow and rulers
shrinking were distinctly secondary. Even before the final spectroscopic results in favor
of relativity were published, the “Oxford Note-book” could comment casually that debate
among astronomers had effectively ceased, with opinion firmly behind Einstein.68
The public response was, unsurprisingly, less measured. Among the audience at the joint
meeting on 6 November were several members of the press, and the excitement of the
scene quickly found its way into public view. The Friday, 7 November 1919, edition of
the Times proclaimed the headline “REVOLUTION IN SCIENCE” (see Figure 3), which shared
the page with an announcement of the first Armistice Day observance (“THE GLORIOUS
DEAD”). The correspondent reported that “the greatest possible interest had been aroused
67
F. Schlesinger to Dyson, 16 Feb. 1920; and Dyson to unknown, 19 Apr. 1923, Dyson Papers 123. For an
interesting analysis of the relative importance of the eclipse results and the motion of Mercury see Stephen G.
Brush, “Prediction and Theory Evaluation: The Case of Light Bending,” Science, 1989, 246:1124–1129.
68
“From an Oxford Note-Book,” Observatory, Jan. 1921, 560:234–235. Later expeditions by the Lick and
other observatories returned values for the deflection very close to Einstein’s prediction, and the quality of the
data was significantly better than that obtained by the 1919 expedition. This was enough to convince most of
the remaining skeptics of the reality of deflection. For more see Jeffrey Crelinsten, “William Wallace Campbell
and the ‘Einstein Problem’: An Observational Astronomer Confronts the Theory of Relativity,” Hist. Stud. Phys.
Sci., 1983, 14:1–91.
MATTHEW STANLEY
83
Figure 3. The headline in the Times reporting the meeting at which Eddington and Dyson presented
the results of the expedition. Copyright Times, 6 November 1919.
in scientific circles.” On Saturday the paper ran a follow-up article under the same banner,
this time subtitled “EINSTEIN V. NEWTON.” Two paragraphs at the end of the article introduced Einstein himself, who to this point had barely appeared in the accounts of his theory.
He was described as a Swiss Jew who had taught at Zurich and Prague but took a position
in Berlin for a large salary. The paper noted that “during the war, as a man of liberal
tendencies, he was one of the signatories to the protest against the German manifesto of
the men of science who declared themselves in favour of Germany’s part in the war.”69
Clearly, the correspondent was concerned to demonstrate that the originator of this new
theory had nothing to do with the scientists who had aided and abetted the war. A year
after the armistice, those British men of science who carried out the expedition and its
measurements still needed protection against accusations that they were consorting with
the enemy.
Einstein himself wrote an article for the Times three weeks later. He applauded the
international character of the eclipse expedition: “After the lamentable breach in the former
international relations existing among men of science . . . it was in accordance with the
high and proud tradition of English science that English scientific men should have given
their time and labour . . . to test a theory that had been completed and published in the
country of their enemies in the midst of war.” Einstein could hardly have expressed better
69
Times, 7 Nov. 1919; and ibid., 8 Nov. 1919. See also Nature, 22 Jan. 1920, 104:541, which points out that
Einstein was “called” to Berlin from his more pleasant posts in Zurich and Prague.
84
“AN EXPEDITION TO HEAL THE WOUNDS OF WAR”
the hopes Eddington had for the eclipse observations. Primed with publicity from newspapers and magazines from across the United Kingdom, Eddington set out to spread the
message of international science. A representative passage from the opening paragraph of
one of his articles on relativity reads: “The theoretical researches of Prof. Albert Einstein,
of Berlin, now so strikingly confirmed by the British eclipse expeditions, involve a broadening of our views of external nature, comparable with, or perhaps, exceeding the advances
associated with Copernicus, Newton and Darwin.”70 Here was the crux of his strategy:
explicitly linking the wartime enemies through an epochal scientific advance.
Eddington’s avalanche of lectures, public addresses, and articles on relativity reinforced
the expedition’s quality of adventure as well (see Figure 4). For example, at an RAS dinner
he presented the story of the expedition as a parody of the Rubaiyat, ejecting Kipling’s
jingoism but retaining the excitement of pushing into the unknown. His best-selling Space,
Time, and Gravitation also gave the expedition a privileged place. Thus Eddington did his
part to mend international relations, while bringing home as invigorating a tale as the
Friends who had been chased by bandits while feeding Russian refugees. Needless to say,
Quakers in Britain were delighted by the expedition and Eddington’s work to make it
known. This work brought him to prominence in the Society of Friends, and in later years
he helped make the teaching of international relations part of science instruction in some
Quaker schools.71
Eddington’s correspondence with Einstein revealed his high hopes for the political and
social impact of the expedition. In December 1919 he wrote:
All England has been talking about your theory. . . . There is no mistaking the genuine enthusiasm in scientific circles and particularly in this University. It is the best possible thing that
could have happened for scientific relations between England and Germany. I do not anticipate
rapid progress toward official reunion, but there is a big advance toward a more reasonable
frame of mind among scientific men, and that is even more important than the renewal of formal
associations.
Like the Quakers working to rebuild Europe for a lasting peace, Eddington saw rapprochement as a slow process that began with personal relationships. His excited report of enthusiasm in Britain shows that he was concerned not only to humanize the Germans to the
British but also to show Einstein that there was more than ill will across the Channel. He
went on to describe in some detail the interest the expedition aroused:
I have been kept very busy lecturing and writing on your theory. My Report on Relativity is
sold out and is being reprinted. That shows the zeal for knowledge on the subject; because it
is not an easy book to tackle. I had a huge audience at the Cambridge Philosophical Society a
70
Times, 28 Nov. 1919; and A. S. Eddington, “Einstein’s Theory of Space and Time,” Contemporary Review,
1919, 116:639–643, on p. 639. Eddington’s strategy for presenting relativity to the media and the public was
carefully planned and began well before the November joint meeting. This is dealt with in detail in Alistair
Sponsel, “Constructing a ‘Revolution in Science’: The Campaign to Promote a Favorable Reception for the 1919
Solar Eclipse Experiments,” forthcoming in the British Journal for the History of Science. I thank Sponsel for
many valuable conversations and helpful criticism.
71
A. S. Eddington, Space, Time, and Gravitation: An Outline of the General Relativity Theory (Cambridge:
Cambridge Univ. Press, 1920); and “The Teaching of International Relations in Schools,” Friends Guild of
Teachers, 1928, Box 291, Friends House, London. E.g., a statement of the Friends Guild of Teachers (of which
Eddington was a member and officer) reads: “The study of International Relationships should not be confined
to any one subject; possibly even more marked in Science or Mathematics, which deal with universal truths than
in other subjects” (ibid., p. 6).
MATTHEW STANLEY
85
Figure 4. The Illustrated London News presentation of the expedition and its results. Copyright Illustrated London News Picture Library. Reference ILN 22 Nov. 1919, p. 815.
few days ago, and hundreds were turned away unable to get near the room . . . one feels that
things have turned out very fortunately in giving this object-lesson of the solidarity of German
and British science even in time of war.
Despite the interest in relativity, Eddington remained the principal advocate of a return to
normal scientific relations. When a group of German scientists organized a special
86
“AN EXPEDITION TO HEAL THE WOUNDS OF WAR”
meeting of the Astronomiche Gesellschaft to discuss general relativity, the silence from
their British counterparts was deafening. Writing to Strömgren, the head of the Gesellschaft, Eddington said: “I hope to show my interest in the Astronomische Gesellschaft by
attending the next meeting—an individual step which no one has any right to object to.
. . . International Science is bound to win and recent events—the verification of Einstein’s
theory—has made a tremendous difference in the past month.” Despite the clear implication that his British colleagues would in fact object to his attendance, Eddington made
plans for the trip to Germany. The meeting was held at Einstein’s house and came to be
known as the Potsdam Conference. Eddington was the sole British scientist present. He
continued to participate in German science as if there had been no disruption from the war
and even published a paper in the Zeitschrift für Physik, despite his near-total inability to
write or read German. It begins: “This paper is intended to give a full account on the
theory of the radiative equilibrium of the stars. It is written primarily because the original
papers are not easily accessible in Central Europe in present circumstances.”72
Eddington’s hopes for a reconciliation between the enemy nations was no doubt boosted
at the 14 November 1919 meeting of the Council of the Royal Astronomical Society, when
Einstein was nominated for the Gold Medal, the society’s highest honor. He was in competition with H. N. Russell for his theory of stellar evolution and Annie Jump Cannon for
her catalogue of stellar spectra. In December Einstein was chosen to receive the medal.73
According to the society’s byzantine regulations, confirmation of the award would have
to wait until the January meeting, but an excited Eddington decided to send word to
Einstein even before the end of the year. Eddington’s friend E. B. Ludlam was soon to go
to Germany as part of the Quaker Emergency Committee’s war relief work in former enemy
countries. Ludlam had done research under Philipp Lenard at Kiel and had a great deal of
experience with German language and culture. He met with Einstein personally to convey
the news of his nomination.
Unfortunately, the confirmation of the award was far from certain; many were uncomfortable with the idea of giving an award to a citizen of a nation so recently at war with
Britain. The minutes of the January meeting record only that “the award of the Gold Medal
to Professor Einstein was not confirmed.” But the message was clear: rather than give
Einstein the award, the RAS elected to give no Gold Medal at all for the first time since
1891. Eddington immediately sent an apology to Einstein:
I am sorry to say an unexpected thing has happened and at the meeting on Jan. 9 the Council
of the RAS rejected the award, which had been carried by quite a large majority at the previous
meeting. The facts (which are confidential) are that three names were proposed for the Medal.
You were selected by an overwhelming majority in December. Meanwhile the “irreconcilables”
took alarm, mustered up their full forces in January, and managed to defeat the confirmation
of the award in January. . . . I confess I was very much surprised when the motion was proposed
and carried originally (it was proposed by two men who during the war have been violently
“patriotic”). . . . I am sure that your disappointment will not be in any way personal; and that
you will share with me the regret that this promising opening of a better international spirit has
had a rebuff from reaction. Nevertheless I am sure the better spirit is making progress.
72
A. S. Eddington to Einstein, 1 Dec. 1919, Einstein Archives, ALS 9-260; and A. S. Eddington to Strömgren,
Nov. 1919, quoted in Henrietta Hertzsprung-Kapteyn, “J. C. Kapteyn,” Space Science Reviews, 1993, 64:1–92,
on p. 81. For the article see A. S. Eddington, “Das Strahlungsgleichgewicht der Sterne,” Zeitschrift für Physik,
1921, 7:531. It is not clear who translated the article. For the opening line see Eddington, “Radiative Equilibrium
of the Stars,” MS, Aug. 1921, Uncatalogued Eddington Material.
73
RAS Council Minutes, 14 Nov., 12 Dec. 1919.
MATTHEW STANLEY
87
He closed the letter by expressing hope that Einstein would be able to visit England soon
and even attend a meeting of the RAS, although he admitted there might be “some awkwardness after what happened.” Eddington clearly placed the blame for the rejection of
the award squarely on the shoulders of those who had joined in the wartime animosity.
The facts of the case are unclear: the original nominations came from H. H. Turner and
James Jeans, both of whom during the war had been extremely vocal opponents of any
contact with German scientists. Whether they had a change of heart is unknown; they were
absent for the final vote at the January meeting. In any case, the violence of anti-German
rhetoric had not cooled in the months since the armistice, and it was likely that the attitudes
voiced so loudly during the conflict weighed against Einstein in the end. Ludlam, writing
on Emergency Committee stationery, apologized for his countrymen:
I find it difficult to believe that English men of science can really be so narrow minded. I think
one of the chief difficulties is that scientific men work so hard, and have so much to read, that
they have not time to study the real facts in international affairs and accept too easily the
opinions of the common press. Your visit to England may be postponed, but I hope not for
very long, and it is more evident than ever that there is need of every effort to overcome these
foolish and narrow-minded prejudices . . . perhaps, when you consider the campaign of lies
which has lasted for five years—in all countries—you will not judge these poor islanders too
harshly.74
For Ludlam and Eddington, the medal took on a political and religious dimension as a
tangible symbol of their work toward reconciliation and the prevention of future hostility.
Eddington nominated Einstein for the Gold Medal again in 1920, but this time he had
little support. Einstein was finally awarded the medal six years later. In a letter, Eddington
told Einstein that “I had not much to do with this decision.” In a literal sense this was true,
as Eddington was in Leiden when the vote was taken. However, in a wider and very
fundamental sense, Eddington was directly responsible for helping create the conditions
in which a former enemy could be welcomed in Britain. The expedition’s importance in
this regard was noted by many contemporaries. “The fact that a theory formulated by a
German has been confirmed by observations on the part of Englishmen has brought the
possibility of cooperation between these two scientifically minded nations much closer.”
The conduct of Einstein’s visit to England in 1921 showed both how much progress had
been made toward reconciliation and how much bitterness remained. He was welcomed
by Lord Haldane, who had himself been a victim of Germanophobia, and was feted at a
whirlwind series of dinner parties. There were serious misgivings, however, about his first
public appearance in a city where German science had even become an issue in the recent
election: one radical London M.P. noted that his patriotic colleagues wanted to “prevent
the dumping of German science on these shores, and if [they win, they] will preserve intact
an all-British Law of Gravity.” In the end, Einstein’s lecture was well received, despite its
being delivered in German.75
74
RAS Council Minutes, 9 Jan. 1920; A. S. Eddington to Einstein, 21 Jan. 1920, Einstein Archives, ALS 9264; and E. B. Ludlam to Einstein, 23 Jan. 1920, Einstein Archives, ALS 9-266. See also R. J. Tayler, ed.,
History of the RAS, Vol. 2 (London: Blackwell, 1987), p. 20.
75
A. S. Eddington to Einstein, 22 Jan. 1926, Einstein Archives, ALS 9-287; Ronald Clark, Einstein: The Life
and Times (New York: World, 1965), pp. 238 (quotation), 272–277 (reception of the lecture); and W. Benn,
“Alien Influence in England,” Contemp. Rev., 1919, 116:637.
88
“AN EXPEDITION TO HEAL THE WOUNDS OF WAR”
CONCLUSION
Scientists and laymen alike marveled at the warm reception Einstein received despite the
still-manifest hostility toward all things German. His talk at the Royal Astronomical Society was especially remarkable given the hatred and dehumanization directed toward
Germans and German thought in the British scientific community, which had at times
appeared to overwhelm any hope for postwar cooperation. The fact that Einstein’s visit
took place at all was due in large part to Eddington’s promotion of Quaker idealism in the
face of patriotic anger. Eddington and the Friends both sought to alleviate the suffering
caused by the war as well as to weaken the antagonism between nations that made the war
possible. Thus Eddington played the same role within the scientific community that his
friends E. B. Ludlam and Anna Braithewaite Thomas played in British society at large: a
reminder that the enemy was human and was himself a victim of war. As a discrete and
dramatic event that could be used to influence public opinion, the eclipse expedition provided a focal point for these efforts. Eddington presented the expedition as a milestone in
both international relations and human thought, and it was this presentation that entered
both the public imagination and the historical record. It now appears in innumerable textbooks and popular histories, usually without a trace of Eddington’s Quaker values that
brought it to prominence.
A crucial element of those values was the philosophy that responsibility for the war
could not be hurled as a blanket aspersion against anyone and everyone in the enemy
countries. Rather, Quakers saw responsibility as an individual issue: this allowed them to
seek both to defeat German militarism and to ease the suffering of the German people.
That such a distinction could be drawn was flatly denied by the most patriotic supporters
of the war, such as H. H. Turner, speaking through the mouthpiece of the “Oxford Notebook.” Such supporters argued that nationality alone was sufficient for incrimination and
that the acts of the German government and army directly reflected the character of its
citizens—and its scientists. Their views held sway long after the war and gained validation
with the establishment of the International Research Council and its subgroup the International Astronomical Union, which explicitly denied membership to scientists of the
former Central Powers.76 The struggle for the future of international science would continue for nearly another decade, and its course would largely reflect the political attitude
toward Germany, as it had during the war.
The scientific merit of the eclipse expedition continues to be controversial today. A
typical accusation is that Eddington intentionally discarded or misinterpreted data so as to
confirm Einstein’s prediction.77 The basis of this is the claim that there was no justification
76
For more on the IRC, as well as on the American attitude toward German science during and after the war,
see Daniel Kevles, “Into Hostile Political Camps,” Isis, 1971, 62:47–60. For more on the IAU in general and
particularly in this period see Adriaan Blaauw, History of the IAU: The Birth and First Half-Century of the
International Astronomical Union (Boston: Kluwer, 1994). There is a great deal of correspondence in the Royal
Greenwich Observatory Archives regarding the exclusion and later admission of the Central Powers into the
IAU, but a more in-depth analysis is outside the scope of this essay.
77
See Harry Collins and Trevor Pinch, The Golem: What Everyone Should Know about Science (Cambridge:
Cambridge Univ. Press, 1993), pp. 27–56; and the conclusion of Earman and Glymour, “Relativity and Eclipses”
(cit. n. 36) (their paper is the source for much of Collins and Pinch’s treatment of the expedition). Both pairs
argue that Eddington had no justification for assigning little weight to the Sobral astrographic data, though their
views of science are quite different. Both criticisms fail to deal with the observers’ stated reasons for treating
the data as they did, nor do they acknowledge that Eddington et al., as trained professional astronomers, had
extensive experience in determining the accuracy and self-consistency of a measurement. Further, the astronomical community, with similar levels of experience and skill, had ample opportunity to check and evaluate their
MATTHEW STANLEY
89
for viewing some of the data as more reliable than the rest. But as I have argued, the
evidence shows that the quality and the utility of the photographs were very carefully
considered by Eddington and Dyson; further, the determination of the unreliability of the
Sobral astrographic results was made in the field by the observers in Brazil, and Eddington
was not among them. Were these decisions difficult? Yes. Could they have been made only
by trained and experienced observers? Yes. But the importance of this tacit knowledge
does not mean that the results were untrustworthy: indeed, since the community the actors
needed to persuade—most directly, astronomers—was also well versed in this knowledge,
one cannot complain that it was used to obscure the basis of their choices.
This is not to say that the results were precise and unarguable. The error was fairly
large—and indeed would not be greatly improved on until much later, with the development of techniques such as the Shapiro time delay. The bottom line, however, is that
contemporary astronomers were persuaded that there was a deflection and that it was most
likely associated with Einstein’s law of gravity. There was, of course, disagreement about
the results throughout the 1920s and 1930s, but I know of no serious accusations of
impropriety on Eddington’s part. Why, then, has it now become common opinion that he
“fudged” the results? Since this opinion exists largely as oral folklore, it lies beyond the
realm of this essay to investigate it fully. However, I would like to suggest that it is the
result of the severe blow Eddington’s reputation sustained as a result of his writings on
mysticism and religion, as well as the spectacular rejection of his attempts to unify relativity and quantum mechanics. This later work of his, looked on with disfavor by many
of his colleagues, may have tarnished his reputation sufficiently to cast doubt on his earlier
work as well. It has been my personal experience that physicists are much more willing
to impugn him than astronomers, and I speculate that this is because the former have had
more exposure to his unified field theory while the latter remember his still-important work
in astrophysics.
Despite frequent criticism of the results, astronomers and scientists still point to the
1919 eclipse expedition as an example of how scientific internationalism could rise above
any challenge. But the collective memory of this test of Einstein’s theory as a straightforward and harmonious cooperation between scientists from nations embroiled in political
conflict was not solidified until many years later. It was only through Eddington’s deliberate
presentation of the expedition as a milestone in international scientific relations that it
came to have that valence. To contemporaries, the expedition was a symbol of highly
contested visions of what it meant to do science in a world at war. Examining the expedition
in the context of wartime Britain shows that it was a pivotal moment not only in scientific
investigation but also in the debate over the relationship between science, war, politics,
and peace. For Eddington, Turner, and virtually every historical actor involved, science
was an enterprise necessarily tied to some aspect of civilization, patriotism, or religion.
Eddington’s involvement with, and promotion of, Einstein and relativity therefore takes
on the rich and important context of his role as the representative of Quaker pacifism in a
scientific community grappling with the horrors of what was the greatest conflict yet to
trouble human history.
work. For examples of similar criticisms outside science studies see C. W. F. Everitt, “Experimental Tests of
General Relativity: Past, Present, and Future,” in Physics and Contemporary Needs, ed. Riazuddin, Vol. 4 (New
York: Plenum, 1980), pp. 529–555; and Ian McCausland, “Anomalies in the History of Relativity,” Journal of
Scientific Exploration, 1999, 13:271.
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The Fire Ant Wars
Nature and Science in the Pesticide
Controversies of the Late Twentieth Century
By Joshua Blu Buhs*
ABSTRACT
This essay uses an approach borrowed from environmental history to investigate the interaction of science and nature in a late twentieth-century controversy. This debate, over
the proper response to fire ants that had been imported into the American South accidentally and then spread across the region, pitted Rachel Carson and loosely federated groups
of conservationists, scientists, and citizens against the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
The analysis falls into three sections: an examination of the natural history of the ants; an
examination of the views of the competing factions; and an examination of how those
views, transformed into action, affected the natural world. Both sides saw the ants in terms
of a constellation of beliefs about the relationship between nature, science, and democracy.
As various ideas were put into play, they interacted with the natural history of the insects
in unexpected ways—and with consequences for the cultural authority of the antagonists.
Combining insights from the history of science and environmental history helps explain
how scientists gain and lose cultural authority and, more fundamentally, allows for an
examination of how nature can be integrated into the history of science.
I
N HER 1962 BESTSELLER SILENT SPRING, Rachel Carson attacked the profligate
use of pesticides, arguing that the chemicals did little to control insects but were deadly
to wildlife, livestock, and humans. She pointed to the federal campaign to eradicate imported fire ants from the American South as evidence. The ants had arrived in Mobile,
Alabama, in the late 1910s. By the 1950s they had spread across the South, and suddenly
* Legislative Intent Service, Sacramento, California 95814.
For their criticisms and encouragement I would like to thank J. Lloyd Abbot, Jr., Mark Adams, William Banks,
Murray Blum, Peter Branum, Leonard Bruno, Eve Buckley, Alex Checkovich, Dwayne Cox, Pete Daniel, Nathan
Ensmenger, John George, Becky Jordan, Robert Kohler, Henrika Kuklick, Linda Lear, Daniel Leedy, Susan
Lindee, Clifford Lofgren, Kim McIlnay, Erin McLeary, Susan Miller, Beth Orton, Phil Pauly, Walter Rosene,
Robert Rudd, Dan Speake, Jeffrey Stine, Elizabeth Toon, James Trager, Walter Tschinkel, Jeremy Vetter, Edward
Osborne Wilson, and Audra Wolfe, as well as participants in the panel on invading organisms at the 2000 History
of Science Society meeting and the 2001 graduate student conference on the Cold War at the University of
California, Santa Barbara. This research was supported in part by grants from the National Science Foundation
and the University of Pennsylvania. This essay won the History of Science Society’s Schuman Prize for 2001.
Isis, 2002, 93:377–400
! 2002 by The History of Science Society. All rights reserved.
0021-1753/02/9303-0001$10.00
377
378
THE FIRE ANT WARS
there was a roar of complaint: the ants reportedly attacked crops, killed wildlife, worried
livestock, built large earthen mounds that interfered with farm machinery, and stung painfully. Carson suspected that the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) had fabricated
these claims in order to justify a huge program to eradicate the insects and increase its
bureaucratic strength. The measures taken killed quail and rabbits, cows and pigs, and
threatened human health. Carson called the USDA program “an outstanding example of
an ill-conceived, badly executed, and thoroughly detrimental experiment in the mass control of insects.” Hers was not the only voice raised in protest. Concerned citizens, entomologists, hunters, nascent environmental groups, and wildlife biologists urged the department to end the eradication program. Complaints continued into the late 1970s, when
the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) finally banned the chemicals used to eradicate
the fire ants. Carson’s philippic was one salvo in a conflict that would last twenty years,
a conflict so intense it was dubbed “the fire ant wars.”1
This essay explores the interaction of nature and science in the fire ant wars by combining methodologies from the history of science and environmental history. Over the past
quarter century, historians of science have staked out a constructivist approach that focuses
on the way social processes are implicated in the manufacture of all natural knowledge.
While not necessarily opposed to examining the role of the material world in the construction of scientific ideas, earlier constructivist analyses focused on the social machinery of
science, ignoring nature. More recently, there have been a number of efforts to broaden
constructivism by making the natural world an actor in historical narratives.2 This essay
attempts something similar by importing techniques from environmental history. Environmental historians take as their central topic the study of the interactions between humans
and nature at different times and in different places. William Cronon has argued that to
fulfill this agenda historians need to answer three intertwined questions: How does nature
work in the time and place being studied? How do humans view the natural world and
create ideas about nature? And how do those ideas, transformed into action, affect the
1
Rachel Carson, Silent Spring (Boston: Houghton-Mifflin, 1962), p. 162. For histories of the fire ant wars see
Harrison Wellford, Sowing the Wind (New York: Grossman, 1972), pp. 286–309; Phillip M. Boffey, The Brain
Bank of America: An Inquiry into the Politics of Science (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1975), pp. 200–226; Thomas
R. Dunlap, DDT: Scientists, Citizens, and Public Policy (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton Univ. Press, 1981), pp. 89–
91; Christopher J. Bosso, Pesticides and Politics: The Life Cycle of a Public Issue (Pittsburgh: Univ. Pittsburgh
Press, 1987), pp. 85–90; Pete Daniel, “A Rogue Bureaucracy: The USDA Fire Ant Campaign of the Late 1950s,”
Agricultural History, 1990, 64:99–114; Elizabeth F. Shores, “The Red Imported Fire Ant: Mythology and Public
Policy,” Arkansas Historical Quarterly, 1994, 53:320–339; Linda Lear, Rachel Carson: Witness for Nature (New
York: Holt, 1997), pp. 305–306, 312–315, 332–336, 340–344; and Daniel, Lost Revolutions: The South in the
1950s (Chapel Hill: Univ. North Carolina Press, 2000), pp. 78–87.
2
For overviews of the constructivist approach see David Bloor, Knowledge and Social Imagery (Boston:
Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1976); Steven Shapin, “History of Science and Its Sociological Reconstructions,”
History of Science, 1982, 20:157–211; Henrika Kuklick, “The Sociology of Knowledge: Retrospect and Prospect,” Annual Review of Sociology, 1983, 9:287–310; Shapin, “Here and Everywhere: Sociology of Scientific
Knowledge,” ibid., 1995, 21:289–321; and Jan Golinski, Making Natural Knowledge: Constructivism and the
History of Science (New York: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1998). On the integration of nature into narratives in the
history of science see John Law, ed., Power, Action, and Belief: A New Sociology of Knowledge? (Sociology
Review Monographs, 32) (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1986); Michael L. Smith, Pacific Visions: California Scientists and the Environment, 1850–1915 (New Haven, Conn.: Yale Univ. Press, 1987); Bruno Latour,
The Pasteurization of France, trans. A. Sheridan and J. Law (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press, 1988);
Robert Kohler, Lords of the Fly: Drosophila Genetics and the Experimental Life (Chicago: Univ. Chicago Press,
1994); Andrew Pickering, The Mangle of Practice: Time, Agency, and Science (Chicago: Univ. Chicago Press,
1995); Richard White, The Organic Machine: The Remaking of the Columbia River (New York: Hill & Wang,
1995); Adele Clark, Disciplining Reproduction: Modernity, American Life Sciences, and “The Problem of Sex”
(Berkeley: Univ. California Press, 1998); and Angela N. H. Creager, The Life of a Virus: Tobacco Mosaic Virus
as an Experimental Model, 1930–1965 (Chicago: Univ. Chicago Press, 2002).
JOSHUA BLU BUHS
379
natural world?3 The second question is that asked by constructivist historians of science;
the first and the third investigate the role of the natural world. As these three questions are
addressed, and connections are drawn between the answers, the integral place of the material world in histories of science is revealed.
Nature, in this essay, is embodied by the fire ants. The insects are opportunistic organisms, adapted to disruption, that exploited the changing ecology of the mid-twentiethcentury American South. Neither the USDA entomologists nor their opponents focused
on the cause of the ants’ irruption, however. The federal employees, excited by the power
of the new insecticides that had been introduced after World War II and worried that the
ants threatened agricultural production, thought only of finding the most efficient methods
to kill them. (See Frontispiece.) Carson, her allies, and her descendants, on the contrary,
saw the insects as ecological innocents, not exploiters of the South’s ecology but organisms
that found a niche in North American ecology. The real threat, they said, was posed by
bureaucrats who intervened in natural processes, disrupting nature and chipping away at
personal liberties. Both sides expressed their views through vocabulary borrowed from
debates over the structure of American democracy during the Cold War. Simultaneously
reflecting alternative interpretations of the relationship between nature, science, and the
state and offering a powerfully persuasive rhetorical tool, the Cold War imagery gave the
fire ant wars their form and their urgency: for combatants on both sides, the imagined ends
of the Cold War came to stand for the imagined ends of the fire ant wars, with both the
response to the insects and the proper structuring of the American democratic system at
stake.4 The two sides alternated in seeing their views realized: first the USDA attempted
to eradicate the ants; then, in the 1970s, the agency’s opponents successfully banned the
insecticides and the insects were allowed to integrate into the southern ecology. The ideas,
however, were not simply imposed on a passive nature. The biology of the ants and the
actions of the two groups interacted in unexpected ways, with repercussions for the insects
and the world that they inhabited as well as for the humans who claimed to understand
them.
THE NATURAL HISTORY OF THE IMPORTED FIRE ANTS
Fire ants belong to the subgenus Solenopsis, a diverse group of ants that originated in
South America about sixty-five million years ago. All Solenopsis possess a stinger that
gives the group its common name. The insects at the heart of the fire ant wars were actually
two closely related species from this assemblage: Solenopsis richteri, a brown or black
3
William Cronon, “The Uses of Environmental History,” Environmental History Review, 1993, 17:1–22. For
reviews of the field more generally see Donald Worster, “History as Natural History: An Essay on Theory and
Method,” Pacific History Review, 1984, 53:1–19; Kendall E. Bailes, ed., Environmental History: Critical Issues
in Comparative Perspective (Lanham, Md.: Univ. Press America, 1985); Richard White, “American Environmental History: The Development of a New Historical Field,” Pacific Hist. Rev., 1985, 54:297–335; Cronon,
“Modes of Prophecy and Production: Placing Nature in History,” Journal of American History, 1990, 76:1122–
1131; White, “Environmental History, Ecology, and Meaning,” ibid., pp. 1111–1116; Worster, “Transformations
of the Earth: Toward an Agro-Ecological Perspective in History,” ibid., pp. 1087–1106; Cronon, “A Place for
Stories: Nature, History, and Narrative,” ibid., 1992, 78:1347–1376; I. G. Simmonds, Environmental History: A
Concise Introduction (Oxford: Blackwell, 1993); Worster, “Nature and the Disorder of History,” Environ. Hist.
Rev., 1994, 18:1–15; and Mart A. Stewart, “Environmental History: Profile of a Developing Field,” History
Teacher, 1998, 31:351–368.
4
On the wider point see Steven Shapin and Simon Schaffer, Leviathan and the Air-Pump: Hobbes, Boyle, and
the Experimental Life (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton Univ. Press, 1985), p. 15: “Solutions to the problem of knowledge are embedded within practical solutions to the problem of social order, and . . . different practical solutions
to the social order encapsulate contrasting practical solutions to the problem of knowledge.”
380
THE FIRE ANT WARS
ant with a yellow stripe across its gaster; and Solenopsis invicta, a red species. Entomologists noted the color differences early on, but since the insects are otherwise hard to
distinguish they lumped the two under the name Solenopsis saevissima richteri, “most
savage fire ant.” They were considered the same species that the English naturalist Henry
Walter Bates had seen attacking the village of Aveyros in the Amazon River Basin. “A
greater plague than all other [insects] put together,” he had called them; they ate everything
in sight and attacked people “out of sheer malice.”5
The two species originally inhabited different parts of the world’s largest wetland, an
expanse of marshy land that follows the Rı́o Paraguay and the Rı́o Parana through Brazil,
Paraguay, and northern Argentina to their confluence with the Rı́o de la Plata and ultimately
into the Atlantic Ocean. Solenopsis richteri lives on the periphery of this wetland, its range
edging into the Pampas. Solenopsis invicta can be found throughout the marshy river
basins. The area is characterized by frequent disturbances. During the dry season, thick
grasses clog the riverbeds; when the rains come, the water is forced to cut new channels,
eventually overflowing and flooding the landscape. The river’s vagrancy has created a
wealth of microclimates, and the area is dominated by a rich array of plants. In 1929 a
geographer noted, “The most striking feature in the natural vegetation is its lack of uniformity.” The ants have adapted to this situation by exploiting the disturbances. They are
opportunistic—one entomologist calls them “weeds”—infiltrating disrupted areas, growing quickly—a single queen gives birth to 250,000 workers in three years—but are forced
out when the ecology matures.6
Solenopsis richteri was the first of the two species to break from the wetland and travel
north. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, Argentina’s cattle industry flourished and international trade was brisk. The ants, which lived near major points of distribution, stowed away on ships, reaching Mobile, Alabama, around 1918. The new world
the insects faced was climatically similar to South America but ecologically very different.
“Extensive timberlands and swamps, almost quite impenetrable,” surrounded Mobile. Approximately 80 percent of the land within a hundred-mile radius of the port city was thick
forest. The rest of the southern coastal plain was equally uninviting, devoted to fields often
5
Henry Walter Bates, The Naturalist on the Rivers Amazon (1863; London: Murray, 1892), p. 227. (The
imported fire ants are no longer believed to be the same species as the ants Bates saw.) Fire ant biology is
reviewed in Clifford S. Lofgren, William A. Banks, and B. Michael Glancey, “Biology and Control of Imported
Fire Ants,” Annual Review of Entomology, 1975, 20:1–30; Edward O. Wilson, “The Defining Traits of Fire Ants
and Leaf-Cutting Ants,” in Fire Ants and Leaf-Cutting Ants: Biology and Management, ed. Lofgren and R. K.
Vander Meer (Boulder, Col.: Westview, 1986), pp. 1–9; S. Bradley Vinson, “Invasion of the Red Imported Fire
Ant (Hymenoptera: Formicidae): Spread, Biology, and Impact,” Bulletin of the Entomological Society of America,
1997, 43:23–39; and Stephen Welton Taber, Fire Ants (College Station: Texas A&M Press, 2000). I simplify a
more complicated taxonomic history. In any case, the distinction between the imported fire ants and the fire ants
of Aveyros was never that great and was largely erased by the late 1950s. For a fuller discussion see Joshua Blu
Buhs, “The Fire Ant Wars: Solenopsis and the Nature of the American State, 1918–1982” (Ph.D. diss., Univ.
Pennsylvania, 2001), Ch. 2.
6
The ecology of the region is described in E. W. Shanahan, South America: An Economic and Regional
Geography with an Historical Chapter (London: Methuen, 1927) (the quotation is from p. 90); and A. A. Bonettos
and I. R. Wais, “Southern South American Streams and Rivers,” in River and Stream Ecosystems, ed. C. E.
Cushing, K. W. Cummins, and G. W. Minshall (Ecosystems of the World, 22) (Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1995),
pp. 257–293. The comparison of the ants to weeds is from Walter Tschinkel, “History and Biology of Fire Ants,”
in Proceedings of the Symposium on the Imported Fire Ant, ed. S. L. Battenfield (Washington, D.C.: Government
Printing Office, 1982), pp. 16–35; Tschinkel, “The Ecological Nature of the Fire Ant: Some Aspects of Colony
Function and Some Unanswered Questions,” in Fire Ants and Leaf-Cutting Ants, ed. Lofgren and Vander Meer,
pp. 72–87; and Tschinkel, “Distribution of the Fire Ants Solenopsis invicta and S. geminata (Hymenoptera:
Formicidae) in Northern Florida in Relation to Habitat and Disturbance,” Annals of the Entomological Society
of America, 1998, 81:76–81.
JOSHUA BLU BUHS
381
left fallow by sharecroppers and groves of trees allowed to grow dense. With nowhere to
go, the ants settled into the Government Street Loop, a rundown section of Mobile where
the trolleys turned around.7 Some two decades later, after the cattle industry reached deeper
into the South American interior where Solenopsis invicta lived, the red ants also reached
Mobile. As they arrived, the South was on the brink of a revolution that would alter the
ecology of the region, opening vast new spaces for the ants to colonize.
Beginning in the 1930s the USDA began to modernize the South, making it more
efficient, more like the Midwest. Tractors, harvesters, and combines replaced field hands
and farms grew in size, doubling in Alabama and tripling in Georgia, Louisiana, and
Mississippi between 1920 and 1969. Wastelands were plowed under, groves of trees felled,
and fields seeded from fencepost to fencepost. New crops were cultivated, especially soybeans, and cattle. During World War II military contracts were sent south, absorbing the
idle workforce and pulling rural citizens into urban areas. Cities sprawled “with little
attention to urban planning and zoning,” and suburbs suddenly appeared. The southern
historian C. Vann Woodward called these interlocking changes “the bulldozer revolution.”
That revolution would last into the 1970s, transforming the South into the Sun Belt.8
The spread of Solenopsis invicta was an unexpected consequence of this modernization
process. Thriving in disturbed areas, the ants were presented with a vast extent of disrupted
habitats to exploit. Humans also unwittingly provided a means of transport out of Mobile
and across the South. For decades southern nurseries had struggled against discriminatory
railroad rates that favored the North. With the postwar economic boom road building
increased, the trucking industry introduced cheap transport, and nurseries bloomed. Mobile
became the nation’s fifth largest horticultural center. The ants found their way into nursery
stock and were shipped across the region and deposited in just the kinds of disrupted
sites—suburban developments, highway rights of way—that they preferred. The late7
On the Argentine cattle industry see Ysabel F. Rennie, The Argentine Republic (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood,
1945), pp. 142–150. For the migration of the ants see F. E. Lennartz, “Modes of Dispersal of Solenopsis invicta
from Brazil into the Continental United States—A Study in Spatial Diffusion” (master’s thesis, Univ. Florida,
1973); and James C. Trager, “A Revision of the Fire Ants Solenopsis geminata Group (Hymenoptera: Formicidae:
Myrmicinae),” Journal of the New York Entomological Society, 1991, 99:141–198. On the ecology of Mobile
and the surrounding area see A. H. Howell, “Physiography, 1908,” Box 1, Folder 17, Fish and Wildlife Service,
U.S. Department of the Interior Field Reports, 1887–1961, Series 1, Record Group (RG) 7176, Smithsonian
Institution Archives, Washington, D.C. (quotation); and Edward L. Ullman, “Mobile: Industrial Seaport and
Trade Center” (Ph.D. diss., Univ. Chicago, 1942), p. 46. On the natural history of the area see Ecological Society
of America, Committee on the Preservation of Natural Conditions, Naturalist’s Guide to the Americas, ed. Victor
E. Shelford (Baltimore: Williams & Wilkins, 1926); Havilah Babcock, My Health Is Better in November (Columbia: Univ. South Carolina Press, 1947); and Merle J. Prunty, “The Renaissance of the Southern Plantation,”
Geographical Review, 1955, 45:459–491. The ants’ settlement in the Government Street Loop is described in
William Steel Creighton to Murray S. Blum, 22 Apr. 1968, William Steel Creighton Papers (hereafter cited as
Creighton Papers), an unprocessed box of material incorporated in the uncatalogued E. O. Wilson Papers
(hereafter cited as Wilson Papers), Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.
8
Pete Daniel, Standing at the Crossroads: Southern Life in the Twentieth Century (New York: Hill & Wang,
1986), pp. 136–137; and C. Vann Woodward, The Burden of Southern History, 3rd ed. (Baton Rouge: Louisiana
State Univ. Press, 1993), p. 6. The changes are documented in Gilbert C. Fite, “Southern Agriculture since the
Civil War: An Overview,” Agr. Hist., 1979, 53:3–21; Daniel, “The Transformation of the Rural South, 1930 to
the Present,” ibid., 1981, 55:231–248; Jack Temple Kirby, “The Transformation of Southern Plantations,
ca. 1920–1960,” ibid., 1983, 57:257–276; Fite, Cotton Fields No More: Southern Agriculture, 1865–1980 (Lexington: Univ. Press Kentucky, 1984); Daniel, Breaking the Land: The Transformation of Cotton, Tobacco, and
Rice Cultures since 1880 (Urbana: Univ. Illinois Press, 1985); Kirby, Rural Worlds Lost: The American South,
1920–1960 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State Univ. Press, 1987); Bruce J. Schulman, From Cotton Belt to Sunbelt:
Federal Policy, Economic Development, and the Transformation of the South, 1938–1980 (New York: Oxford
Univ. Press, 1991); Albert E. Cowdrey, This Land, This South: An Environmental History (Lexington: Univ.
Press Kentucky, 1996); and U.S. Bureau of the Census, Census of Agriculture (Washington, D.C.: GPO), for
various years.
382
THE FIRE ANT WARS
arriving red ants were not as restricted in their distribution as their congeners and so were
better prepared to take advantage of the changing southern ecology. Solenopsis richteri
languished, reaching only parts of northern Alabama and northern Mississippi; Solenopsis
invicta spread widely.9
By the mid 1950s, the red ants could be found in nine southern states. The ants are
omnivorous: they prefer insects but take whatever food is available. As their population
increased, they could not always find favored foods, and their turn to other caloric sources
brought them to the attention of southerners. The ants ate seeds and crops and even young
quail—which caused consternation, since the birds were the South’s most important game
animals. They colonized lawns and the open spaces of the newly built military bases,
where they came into intimate contact with humans. In 1955 a boy in New Orleans died
after being stung three times. Two years later ant stings sent three soldiers from Maxwell
Air Force Base to the hospital. The imported fire ants especially favored cow pastures,
fields that were open and constantly disrupted by the big beasts.10
It might have been possible to ignore many of these problems—the boy’s death notwithstanding, the ants killed far fewer people than bees and wasps—except that the spread
of the ants was so dramatic and so intense that ignoring the formicids was difficult. In
traveling to North America, the ants had left behind predators and parasites; the bulldozer
revolution diminished competition. Freed from constraints, the ants’ population exploded—sometimes the insects built a hundred mounds on a single acre of land. The
hundreds of thousands of workers in each nest scurried from the colony, looking for food
and stinging gardeners and soldiers. Landowners could not use their tractors to mow pastures without breaking blades or knocking the angry insects onto their backs. (See Figure
1.) Laborers refused to harvest heavily infested fields.11
9
Edward O. Wilson and William L. Brown, “Recent Changes in the Population of the Fire Ant Solenopsis
saevissima (Fr. Smith),” Evolution, 1958, 12:211–218; William F. Buren et al., “Zoogeography of the Imported
Fire Ants,” J. New York Entomolog. Soc., 1974, 82:113–124; Geddes Douglas, ed., The History of the Southern
Nurserymen’s Association, Inc., 1899–1974 (Nashville, Tenn.: Southern Nurserymen’s Association, 1974); Roy
A. Roe II, “A Biological Study of Solenopsis invicta Buren, the Red Imported Fire Ant, in Arkansas” (master’s
thesis, Univ. Arkansas, 1974); Richard P. White, A Century of Service: A History of the Nursery Industry Associations of the United States (Washington, D.C.: American Association of Nurserymen, 1975); and Henry W.
Lawrence, “The Geography of the U.S. Nursery Industry: Locational Change and Regional Specialization in the
Production of Woody Ornamental Plants” (Ph.D. diss., Univ. Oregon, 1985).
10
Edmund P. Hill III, “Observations of Imported Fire Ant Predation on Nesting Cottontails,” Proceedings of
the Annual Conference of the Southeastern Association of Game and Fish Commissioners, 1969, 23:171–181;
Robert H. Mount et al., “Predation by the Red Imported Fire Ant, Solenopsis invicta (Hymenoptera: Formicidae),
on Eggs of the Lizard Cnemidophorous sexlineatus (Squamata: Teiidae),” Journal of the Alabama Academy of
Science, 1981, 52:66–70; Mount, “The Red Imported Fire Ant, Solenopsis invicta (Hymenoptera: Formicidae),
as a Possible Serious Predator on Some Native Southeast Vertebrates: Direct Observations and Subjective Impressions,” ibid., pp. 71–78; James M. Mueller et al., “Northern Bobwhite Chick Mortality Caused by Red
Imported Fire Ants,” Journal of Wildlife Management, 1999, 63:1291–1298; and Craig R. Allen et al., “Impact
of Red Imported Fire Ant Infestation on Northern Bobwhite Quail Abundance Trends in Southeastern United
States,” Journal of Agricultural and Urban Entomology, 2000, 17:43–51. On the importance of quail see Frank
S. Arant, The Status of Game Birds and Mammals in Alabama (Wetumpka, Ala.: Wetumpka Printing, 1939);
and Stuart A. Marks, Southern Hunting in Black and White: Nature, History, and Ritual in a Carolina Community
(Princeton, N.J.: Princeton Univ. Press, 1991), pp. 169–199. The attacks are described in “Fire Ants Spread as
Pastures Shrink,” Montgomery Advertiser, 17 Feb. 1957; and “Maxwell Reports Plague of Fire Ants: Three in
Hospital,” 14 Mar. 1957, Box 62, Fire Ants—News Items, Plant Pest Control Division Papers (hereafter cited
as Plant Pest Control Papers), RG 463, 86/6/3, National Archives and Records Administration, College Park,
Maryland.
11
Undated notes, and W. G. Bruce, H. T. Vanderford, and A. L. Smith, “Survey of the Imported Fire Ant
Solenopsis saevissima var. richteri Forel,” Special Report S-6, 19 Nov. 1948, Early Fire Ant Records File, Wilson
Papers; Edward O. Wilson and James H. Eads, Jr., “A Preliminary Report on the Fire Ant Survey,” Alabama
Department of Conservation, SG 9977, and Leyburn F. Lewis, “Develop Methods of Control of the Imported
JOSHUA BLU BUHS
383
Figure 1. Large fire ant mounds, hardened by the southern sun, presented a hazard for agricultural
workers: they sometimes broke tractor blades, and the ants also stung laborers. In the early days of the
invasion, as many as a hundred mounds covered a single acre. This formicary was unusually large.
(From H. B. Green, The Imported Fire Ant in Mississippi, Mississippi State University, Agricultural Experiment Station, Bulletin 737, February 1967.)
Many organisms introduced into new environments undergo similarly dramatic increases
in their population and density. The increase is usually followed by an equally dramatic
crash, as parasites and predators attack the newcomers, the ecology of the area stabilizes,
and the imported organisms compete among themselves for increasingly scarce resources.12
To a point the imported fire ants followed this pattern, as both their number and population
density declined in the years after introduction, but there were also significant deviations.
The bulldozer revolution accounts for some of the deviation, ensuring that there were
always new areas for the ants to exploit as suburbs sprawled, old areas were razed, and
new roads were built. Looking at the course of invasion over a single patch of ground—
southern Alabama, say—reveals the familiar rise-and-fall pattern. On a regional scale,
however, the irruption continued, as the ants found their way to more and more parts of
the South. By 1957 they had spread from Mobile to cover twenty million acres.
The rest of the deviation from the expected pattern is explained by a biological quirk.
In their homeland, Solenopsis invicta populations live in two social forms: monogynous
Fire Ant,” Research Line 1—Investigations in the Biology of the Imported Fire Ant Solenopsis saevissima
var. richteri Forel, Fire Ant Cooperative File, Alabama Department of Conservation Papers (hereafter cited as
Alabama Dept. Conservation Papers), SG 17019, Alabama Department of Archives and History, Montgomery,
Alabama; Sanford D. Porter et al., “Fire Ant Mound Densities in the United States and Brazil (Hymenoptera:
Formicidae),” Journal of Economic Entomology, 1992, 85:1154–1161; Porter et al., “Intercontinental Differences
in the Abundance of Solenopsis Fire Ants (Hymenoptera: Formicidae): Escape from Natural Enemies?” Environmental Entomology, 1997, 26:373–384; and Nicholas Gotelli and Amy Arnett, “Biogeographic Effects of
Red Fire Ant Invasion,” Ecology Letters, 2000, 3:257–261.
12
On the ecology of invasions see Charles S. Elton, The Ecology of Invasions by Animals and Plants (1958;
London: Chapman & Hall, 1977); R. Groves and J. Burdon, eds., Ecology of Biological Invasions (Cambridge:
Cambridge Univ. Press, 1984); A. Gray, M. Crawley, and P. Edwards, eds., Colonization, Succession, and Stability
(Oxford: Blackwell Scientific, 1984); H. Mooney and J. Drake, eds., Ecology of Biological Invasions of North
America and Hawaii (New York: Springer, 1986); and Geerat Vermeij, “When Biotas Meet: Understanding
Biotic Interchange,” Science, 1991, 253:1099–1104.
384
THE FIRE ANT WARS
and polygynous colonies. Monogynous colonies have a single queen that mates in aerial
swarms and founds her colony independently; polygynous colonies contain several, sometimes several hundred, queens, most of which mate within the nest and form new colonies
by adopting workers from the mother colony, walking to a likely nearby area, and building
a new nest. Both forms arrived in America. Bigger and stronger, the monogynous queens
initially predominated. They could spread widely and colonize many disturbed habitats
quickly. But as the environment became saturated with ants, the polygynous colonies came
to dominate. Young queens were protected in the nest and were subsidized by the mother
colony when founding their own nests. The increasing prevalence of polygyny allowed
more and more ants to be packed into the same area, softening the expected crash in the
fire ant population. In the 1990s, some fields in Texas sagged under the weight of over
four hundred imported fire ant mounds per acre.13
IDEAS ABOUT NATURE: THE FIRE ANTS IN A COLD WAR
Eradicating the Fire Ants
The spread of the fire ants occurred in a postwar America optimistic about the future and
confident that it could use its natural resources, science and technology, and democratic
institutions to solve any problem. The economy hummed, domestic problems seemingly
obliterated by the power of mass consumption. Antibiotics had a death-grip on disease.
The federal government was in the capable hands of the affable Dwight Eisenhower. But
beneath this optimism was a dark layer of concern. Science brought not only antibiotics
but also the bomb, radioactive fallout, and pollution. Conformity was the root not only of
the good economy but also of totalitarianism. And democratic institutions, while guaranteeing that Americans were the freest people on earth, could also be perverted to squash
the very individual liberties they purported to defend. How best to live in nature, how to
use science and technology, and how to bring nature, science, and technology to bear on
the maintenance of democratic traditions—these were all questions that would become
intertwined with the fire ant wars.14
Control entomologists and their administrative allies within the USDA shared a vision
of how nature, science, and democracy related. Nature, they thought, was imperfect: insects
destroy crops, diseases kill livestock, and weather is foe as often as friend. Survival is a
struggle, achieved only by the correct application of scientific ideas to hold the forces of
nature at bay and protect civilization. One entomologist wrote, “To clothe and feed [the
growing U.S.] population man must maintain his position of dominance, and our agricultural production must continue to increase even at the expense of the further displacement
of native plants and animals.”15 By the time the fire ants had spread across the South, the
13
Sanford D. Porter and D. A. Savignano, “Invasion of Polygyne Fire Ants Decimates Native Ants and Disrupts Arthropod Community,” Ecology, 1990, 71:2095–2106; Rodger Lyle Brown, “Fire Ants: Buggy Battalions
Beating Mere Mortals,” Atlanta Journal-Constitution, 21 June 1992, Metro Sect., p. 2; and Kenneth G. Ross
and Laurent Keller, “Ecology and Evolution of Social Organization: Insights from Fire Ants and Other Highly
Eusocial Insects,” Annual Review of Ecology and Systematics, 1995, 26:631–656.
14
This reading of the 1950s is based on Paul A. Carter, Another Part of the Fifties (New York: Columbia Univ.
Press, 1983); and Michael Sherry, In the Shadow of War: The United States since the 1930s (New Haven, Conn.:
Yale Univ. Press, 1995).
15
George C. Decker, “Pesticides’ Relationship to Conservation Programs,” National Agricultural Chemicals
Association News and Pesticide Review, May 1959, pp. 4–7, 13–14, on p. 7. Compare David G. Hall, “Food,
Wildlife, and Agricultural Chemicals,” Conservation News, 1 July 1952, 17:1–4; W. L. Popham to Samuel H.
Ordway, Jr., 26 Dec. 1957, Box 752, Regulatory Crops–1–Fire Ants File, and Ross E. Hutchins to Allen H.
JOSHUA BLU BUHS
385
USDA had adopted insecticides as a principal weapon in the struggle against nature. Control (or economic) entomologists who supported the use of the chemicals had elbowed
aside other insect biologists (often called research entomologists) who supplemented the
use of chemical insecticide with biological and cultural controls to manage insect outbreaks. They pointed out that DDT was safer than the arsenic and cyanide solutions used
by earlier generations of entomologists and that it had been used in World War II to protect
American soldiers from typhus and malaria. Now, they reasoned, that insecticide and its
chemical relatives could be used to protect public health and agricultural production. Entomologists need not be limited to controlling insects—the mark of old-fashioned entomology—but could eradicate them completely. The chemicals, they admitted, might kill
wildlife and other desirable animals as well, but the gain in farming efficiency was well
worth the cost. One farmer made the calculus explicit, noting, “I believe I have been as
much for conserving our wildlife as the next one and have spent a great deal of effort and
money to see wildlife increase but if one of us should be hurt by treating the land for fire
ants I do not believe it should be the man who owns the land and pays taxes on the same,
especially when it means the survival of himself and family.”16
Using science to control the ants did more than preserve public health and increase
agricultural production, the federal economic entomologists contended. Insecticides helped
the nation in its struggle with the Soviet Union. It was an article of faith at the USDA that
American democracy grew from the soil: agriculture was a Cold War weapon. Byron Shaw,
head of the USDA’s Agricultural Research Service, for example, said in 1958, “I think the
times were described rather aptly a year or so ago, when a Soviet premier told an American
television audience that communism would win its contest with capitalism when the Soviets’ per-capita production of meat, milk and butter surpassed that of the United States.
He was really saying that a nation is as strong as its agriculture.” Eradicating the ants
would allow the United States to increase its productivity and win the Cold War. If, on
the contrary, the ants were left to spread, agricultural output would plummet, dissatisfaction
would increase, and the seeds of revolution would be sown.17
The Department of Agriculture had reason to believe that the imported fire ants represented an especially dire threat to the modernizing South. In the late 1940s the state of
Alabama had tapped E. O. Wilson, then an undergraduate at the University of Alabama,
Morgan, 18 Feb. 1959, Box 113, Regulatory Crops–Fire Ants File, General Correspondence, 1954–1966, 1
(UD), Agricultural Research Service Papers (hereafter cited as Agricultural Research Service Papers), RG
310, National Archives and Records Administration, College Park, Maryland; C. H. Hoffman to Theodore Dashman, 23 Aug. 1957, Box 64, Insecticides, Fish, and Wildlife File, Entomology Research Division: General
Correspondence, 1954–1958, 5 (UD), Agricultural Research Service Papers; John L. George, The Program to
Eradicate the Imported Fire Ant: Preliminary Observations (New York: Conservation Foundation, 1958); Popham and Hall, “Insect Eradication Programs,” Annu. Rev. Entomol., 1958, 3:335–354; “Conservation through
Pest Control,” 3 June 1958, Box 82, Information—Speeches File, and Woodrow O. Owen to J. F. Spears, 13
June 1960, Box 128, Fire Ant–Wildlife File, Plant Pest Control Papers; and U.S. Congress, Subcommittee on
Agriculture, Committee on Appropriations, USDA Appropriations FY 1960, 86th Cong., 1st sess., 1959, p. 900.
16
O. G. McBeath to E. D. Burgess, 17 Dec. 1958, Box 197, Fire Ant File, Plant Pest Control Papers. For more
on the distinction between control and research entomologists and the rise of the eradication ideal see John H.
Perkins, Insects, Experts, and the Insecticide Crisis: The Quest for New Pest Management Strategies (New York:
Plenum, 1982).
17
Byron T. Shaw, “Development of Research Facilities and the Role of Regional Laboratories in State and
Federal Programs,” 10 Nov. 1958, Box 34, Speeches File, Entomology Research Division: General Correspondence, 1954–1958, 5 (UD), Agricultural Research Service Papers. See also “Background on—Our Nation’s
Agriculture,” Box 4007, Publications/Department, Jan. 1 to April 19 File, General Correspondence, 1906–1975,
PI 191 and 1001 A-E (UD), Secretary of Agriculture Papers (hereafter cited as Secretary of Agriculture Papers),
RG 16, National Archives and Records Administration, College Park, Maryland; and Bosso, Pesticides and
Politics (cit. n. 1), p. 69.
386
THE FIRE ANT WARS
to study the insects. Wilson and a classmate determined that the ants significantly damaged
the state’s agriculture. Worse, he concluded that the red ants were newly evolved mutants
that were better adapted to life in North America and more aggressive than their black
counterparts. The taxonomic decision explained the chronology of the ants’ irruption without reference to the bulldozer revolution: the ants, Wilson argued, had remained unremarkable until the mutation appeared sometime around the end of World War II, allowing
the insects to spread across the South. Wilson’s ideas made the ants even more threatening
and unpredictable—a constantly evolving pest. Thus C. C. Fancher, head of the USDA’s
fire ant program, could say without irony that the eradication of the insects would protect
“the American way of life” and provide a “service for mankind.”18
In popular culture more broadly, other connections were drawn between the ants and
communist subversives. The insects lived in a hierarchically arranged social system that
extinguished individualism—they were “regimented automatons, driven, dutiful in their
prescribed pointless doing.” The ants undermined the concept of private property, building
their mounds without respect for property lines and making capitalist production difficult.
They also perverted gender roles—the males reduced to mere bearers of sperm that died
after mating and the females ruling the colony—just as communists promised to abolish
sexual hierarchies. As the fire ants impinged on southern life, the connections between the
insects and communists were made quickly and easily. One newspaper labeled the insects
“the red peril” and “fifth columnists,” while a hunting magazine noted, “This ferocious
little ant . . . has carried communism to the ultimate, and its actions suggest a certain coldblooded intelligence.”19
Military metaphors permeate the history of insect control, and Americans have a long
tradition of drawing parallels between insects and ostracized humans. But despite the
triteness of the language (or maybe because of it), the analogy was useful to the USDA.20
18
C. C. Fancher to Burgess, 27 June 1958, Box 198, Fire Ant—Wildlife Losses File, and Fancher to Spears,
7 June 1960, Fire Ant—1 File (1960), Plant Pest Control Papers. On Wilson’s work see Field Notes File, SG
9977, and Wilson and Eads, “Preliminary Report on the Fire Ant Survey” (cit. n. 11); E. O. Wilson to Creighton,
3 Oct. 1949, Creighton Papers; Edward O. Wilson, “Invader of the South,” Natural History, 1959, 68:276–281;
Wilson, “The Fire Ant,” Scientific American, 1958, 198:36–41, 160; Wilson, “In the Queendom of Ants: A Brief
Autobiography,” in Leaders in the Study of Animal Behavior: Autobiographical Perspectives, ed. Donald A.
Dewsbury (Lewisburg, Pa.: Bucknell Univ. Press, 1985), pp. 465–486; and Wilson, Naturalist (Cambridge,
Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press, 1994), pp. 107–115. On the importance of calling the insects mutants see portion
of a letter to J. Lloyd Abbot, 27 June 1957, Box 62, Fire Ant File; Wilson to Robert L. Burlap, 11 Jan. 1959;
Wilson to Clifford Lofgren, 11 Feb. 1959; and Wilson to Burgess, 11 Feb. 1959, Box 213, Fire Ant File; and
Wilson to Philip Charam, 14 July 1964, Box 247, Imported Fire Ant—10 File: Plant Pest Control Papers.
19
“Of Ants and Men,” Christian Century, 13 Nov. 1957, 74:1339 (“automatons”); “Fire Ants Sting Congress
into Action,” Dayton Daily News, Box 62, Fire Ant—News Items File, Plant Pest Control Papers (“red peril,”
“fifth columnists”); and John Foster, “Secrets of the Fire Ant,” Mississippi Game and Fish, July 1957, 19:4–5
(“ferocious little ant”). See also William Morton Wheeler, “Insect Parasitism and Its Peculiarities,” Popular
Science Monthly, 1911, 79:431–449; Arpaud Ferenczy, The Ants of Timothy Thümmel (New York: Harcourt,
Brace, 1924); “What Shall We Do about Ants? Efforts to Control New Invader,” Alabama Journal, 9 Feb. 1957,
p. 4-A; “Insect Saboteur on the March,” Senior Scholastic, 4 May 1960, 76:40; “Fire Ant a Hardy ‘Soldier,’
State’s Poison War Gains,” 22 May 1962, Box 128, Fire Ant—8 File, Plant Pest Control Papers; George Laycock,
“The Determined Ant,” Field and Stream, May 1963, 78:61, 155–159; and Gregg Mitman, “Defining the Organism in the Welfare State: The Politics of Individuality in American Culture, 1890–1950,” in Biology as
Society, Society as Biology, ed. Sabine Maasen, Everett Mendelsohn, and Peter Weingart (Dordrecht: Kluwer,
1995), pp. 249–278.
20
For a similar metaphorical linkage between a prominent problem and a less obvious one see Gary Alan Fine
and Lazaros Christoforides, “Dirty Birds, Filthy Immigrants, and the English Sparrow War: Metaphorical Linkage
in Constructing Social Problems,” Symbolic Interaction, 1991, 14:375–393. Edmund Russell has shown the
connection between insects and America’s enemies more generally; see Edmund P. Russell III, “War on Insects:
Warfare, Insecticides, and Environmental Change in the United States, 1870–1945” (Ph.D. diss., Univ. Michigan,
JOSHUA BLU BUHS
387
To eradicate the ants, the federal agency needed to spread insecticides on all land, “without
regard to location, land use, or ownership.” If any land was left untreated, some ants might
survive and spread, threatening American agriculture. Broad support was necessary to
ensure that all land could be sprayed. Drawing on the shared Cold War imagery, the USDA
worked to generate the needed mandate. A department press release, for example, noted,
“Uncle Sam is ready to use a fleet of 60 planes to go to war against the dreaded fire ant.
. . . Only the modern airplane, dropping insecticides on twenty million acres in the critical
area, can hope to stop the menace.” The word “menace,” of course, had deeper connotations, evoking concerns over the Red Menace. Congressional testimony in favor of the
eradication program drew on the same lexicon. One southerner testified, “The government
should be building as big a defense against the fire ants as they are against the Russians.
The ants have already invaded.”21 The rhetoric proved persuasive, and in late 1957 Congress gave the USDA $2.4 million to initiate the program. The agency took the money
and transformed their ideas into action, spreading chemical insecticides onto one million
acres in the South the first year and millions more before the fire ant wars ended. (See
Figure 2.)
Naturalizing the Imported Fire Ants
As the USDA entomologists worked to put their ideas into practice, a loosely federated
group of biologists, citizens, early environmentalists, and hunters offered an alternative
vision of how nature, science, and democracy fit together and, consequently, an alternative
response to the ants. To varying extents, the members of this group saw nature not as
imperfect but as finely tuned and integrated. Over the course of the previous two decades,
wildlife biologists had shown how animal populations kept each other in balance. For an
even longer time, both research and control entomologists—before they were elbowed
aside by the upstarts promising to use insecticides for eradication—had studied insects as
part of an ecological community.22 In their view, the job of the scientist was not to battle
1993); Russell, “‘Speaking of Annihilation’: Mobilizing for War against Human and Insect Enemies, 1914–
1945,” J. Amer. Hist., 1996, 82:1505–1529; and Russell, War and Nature: Fighting Humans and Insects with
Chemicals from World War I to Silent Spring (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 2001). Russell makes a very
similar argument about the connection between pest control, the Cold War, and democracy but does so with a
much broader array of evidence. Dunlap has also commented on the ubiquity of military metaphors in insect
control: Dunlap, DDT (cit. n. 1), pp. 36–37.
21
The phrase “without regard to location, land use, or ownership” was ubiquitous in the USDA; for one
example see Popham to Lister Hill, 18 Jan. 1957, Box 752, Regulatory Crops—1—Fire Ants File, General
Correspondence, 1954–1966, 1 (UD), Agricultural Research Service Papers. The story about Uncle Sam going
to war against the ants was widely printed; for an example see Box 62, Fire Ant—News Clippings File, Plant
Pest Control Papers. For the southerner’s view see John Devlin, “Fire Ant Alarms South,” New York Times, 19
Mar. 1957, p. 40. Illustrating how easy it was to make the connection between ants and threats to the social
order, in 1954 the New York Times, reviewing the movie Them! about giant, mutated ants that threaten Los
Angeles, found the “proceedings tense, absorbing and, surprisingly enough, somewhat convincing”: rpt. in James
Robert Parrish and Michael R. Potts, The Great Science Fiction Pictures (Metuchen, N.J.: Scarecrow, 1977),
p. 318. Stories of invading ants were in vogue. In addition to Them! the story “Leiningen versus the Ants” was
reported in numerous forms and articles about “army ants” proliferated: Carl Stephenson, “Leiningen versus the
Ants,” in The Sixth New Year (Chicago: Esquire, 1938), pp. 145–168; “Leiningen versus the Ants,” Senior
Scholast., 5 Apr. 1948, 52:25–26; “Go to the Army Ant,” Newsweek, 12 Apr. 1948, 31:54; Alan Devoe, “The
World of Ants,” American Mercury, Aug. 1949, 69:225–229; B. Eddy, “Go to the Ants, and Be Warned,” New
York Times Magazine, 12 Dec. 1948, p. 22; T. C. Schnierla, “Army Ants,” Sci. Amer., 1948, 178:16–23; “All
about Army Ants,” Newsweek, 28 July 1952, 40:53; J. O’Reilly, “Swarming Killers of the Jungle: Army Ants,”
Saturday Evening Post, 16 May 1953, 225:36; The Naked Jungle (Paramount Pictures, 1954); and “March of
the Ants,” Newsweek, 18 Mar. 1957, 49:84.
22
On the entomologists see W. Conner Sorenson, Brethren of the Net: American Entomology, 1840–1880
(Tuscaloosa: Univ. Alabama Press, 1995); and Russell, “War on Insects” (cit. n. 20). More generally, see Susan
388
THE FIRE ANT WARS
Figure 2. The press covered the fire ant irruption as if it were a military invasion. This map illustrates
the spread of the insects using cartographic techniques reminiscent of World War II battle diagrams.
Juxtaposing an enormously enlarged ant with the map also made the creature seem more monstrous,
as well as capable of moving north, as the dotted arrows project. (From Dayton Daily News, Box 62,
Fire Ant News Items File [1957], Plant Pest Control Division Papers, RG 436, National Archives and
Records Administration, College Park, Maryland.)
nature but to elucidate natural processes and find ways to accommodate human life to
natural rhythms. This understanding of the relationship between science and nature was
thought to serve democracy in several different ways. Some saw the protection of nature
as the promotion of spiritual values above economic ones and thus a means for creating a
better citizenry. Some felt that wildlife was one of the nation’s most important natural
resources and that its conservation was a way of maintaining U.S. strength. Others felt
that a commitment to living in accord with nature proved the vitality of democratic institutions. If insecticides, say, were used without regulation, killing wildlife, it would mean
that agricultural agencies had gained too much power, warping the political process and
silencing those who voiced concern for wildlife. A rich, varied natural world was evidence
of a strong democracy, in which policies were set to appease competing factions. The
Flader, Thinking Like a Mountain: Aldo Leopold and the Evolution of an Ecological Attitude toward Deer, Wolves,
and Forests (Columbia: Univ. Missouri Press, 1974); Curt Meine, Aldo Leopold: His Life and Work (Madison:
Univ. Wisconsin Press, 1987); Thomas R. Dunlap, Saving America’s Wildlife: Ecology and the American Mind,
1850–1990 (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton Univ. Press, 1988); and Donald Worster, Nature’s Economy: A History
of Ecological Ideas, 2nd ed. (New York: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1994).
JOSHUA BLU BUHS
389
USDA’s policy of favoring agriculture over wildlife in the fire ant wars represented a threat
to American democracy.23
Research by university entomologists provided evidence for these views. These studies
did not examine the invasion as a regional phenomenon but instead studied the insects in
limited locations that they had inhabited for some time—places where the irruption was
ending and the damage done by the ants was less intense. For example, Kirby Hays, an
entomologist at the Alabama Polytechnic Institute (renamed Auburn in 1960), visited
South America in early 1957 and was told by local scientists that the ants were considered
beneficial because they preyed on other insects. Research on the insects’ behavior conducted in Alabama by Hays’s brother Sydney, a graduate student at Auburn, substantiated
these opinions. The younger Hays tested the feeding preference of laboratory-reared imported fire ants and found that they ate only insects, becoming cannibalistic rather than
consuming plant material. Another Auburn graduate student showed that the ants consumed no more than 4 percent of young quail, and research in Louisiana determined that
the ants were major predators of sugarcane borers and, perhaps, boll weevils. In 1958 a
report by the Alabama state forester that had been written at the time of Wilson’s survey
reappeared. The ants, it claimed, were not pests.24
23
For the spiritual view see Paul B. Sears, “The Road Ahead in Conservation,” Audubon, Mar.–Apr. 1956,
58:58–59, 80; Alfred G. Etter, “A Protest against Spraying,” ibid., July–Aug. 1959, 61:153; Robert Rudd, “The
Indirect Effects of Chemicals in Nature,” in “The Effects of Toxic Pesticides on Wildlife,” p. 16, Box 35, File
583, Rachel Carson Papers (hereafter Carson Papers), YCAL 46, Beinicke Rare Book Library, Yale Univ., New
Haven, Connecticut; Rudd, “The Irresponsible Poisoners,” Nation, 1959, 188:496–497; and Samuel P. Hays,
Beauty, Health, and Permanence: Environmental Politics in the United States, 1955–1985 (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1987). On wildlife as a natural resource see Clarence Cottam, “Pesticides and Wildlife,” 21–
23 Feb. 1960, Box 35, File 581, Carson Papers; Ernest Swift to Ezra Taft Benson and National Wildlife Federation, press release, 21 Nov. 1957, Box 65, Fire Ant File, Entomology Research Division: General
Correspondence, 1954–1958, 5 (UD), Agricultural Research Service Papers; Ross L. Leffler to Benson, 2 Dec.
1957, File 61, Fire Ant File, Plant Pest Control Papers; John L. George, The Pesticide Problem (New York:
Conservation Foundation, 1957); “Peril in Attack on Fire Ant Seen,” 18 Feb. 1958, Box 30, Fire Ant File,
Entomology Research Division: General Correspondence, 1954–1958, 5 (UD), and Ira Gabrielson to Benson,
19 Feb. 1958, Box 944, Regulatory Crops—Fire Ants File, Agricultural Research Service Papers; Cottam, “A
Conservationist’s Views on the New Insecticides,” in Biological Problems in Water Pollution, ed. C. M. Tarzwell
(Washington, D.C.: U.S. Dept. Health, Education, and Welfare, 1960), pp. 42–45; and George, “The Pesticide
Problem: Wildlife—The Community of Living Things,” May–June 1960, Box 135, Folder 221 File, Paul B.
Sears Papers (hereafter cited as Sears Papers), 663, Manuscripts and Archives, Yale Univ. On the connection
between natural preservation and democratic institutions see Fairfield Osborn, “Conservation—The Core of Our
Democracy,” 10 Mar. 1948, Office of the President, Fairfield Osborn Papers, RG 2, New York Zoological Society
Archives, New York; Olaus Murie to Lyle Watts, 7 Feb. 1952, Box 135, File 221, Sears Papers; Margaret K.
Keath to John A. Blatnik, 29 July 1957, Box 2940, Insecticides June 1—File, Secretary of Agriculture Papers;
Willhelmine Kirby Waller, “Poison on the Land,” Audubon, Mar–Apr. 1958, 60:68–70; Marjorie Spock to Rachel
Carson, 6 June 1958, Box 105, Folder 20006, Carson Papers; Frances Martin to Department of Agriculture, n.d.,
Box 651, Publications—Rachel Carson Articles, 1963 File, General Correspondence, 1954–1966, 1 (UD), Agricultural Research Service Papers; Bill Ziebach, “Fire Ant Problem,” Mobile Press-Register, 22 June 1958,
p. 6B; “Farmers Protest Fire Ant Control Program ‘Throat-Ramming,’” Conserv. News, 15 Aug. 1958, 23:4–5;
Charles H. Callison, “Pesticides and Wildlife,” 21 Oct. 1959, Box 4, Insecticides—DDT—Wildlife File, Entomology Director’s Correspondence, 1959–1965, 1055 (Al), Agricultural Research Service Papers; and “Experiments of USDA Violate Individual Rights,” 11 Feb. 1961, Box 94, Fire Ant—8 File, Plant Pest Control
Papers.
24
Research at Auburn is covered in Frank S. Arant, Kirby L. Hays, and Dan W. Speake, “Facts about the
Imported Fire Ant,” Highlights of Agricultural Research, 1958, 5:12–13; K. Hays, “The Present Status of the
Imported Fire Ant in Argentina,” J. Econ. Entomol., 1958, 51:111–112; Sydney B. Hays, “The Food Habits of
the Imported Fire Ant, Solenopsis saevissima richteri Forel, and Poison Baits for Its Control” (master’s thesis,
Alabama Polytechnic Inst., 1958); “The Present Status of the Imported Fire Ant, Solenopsis saevissima richteri
Forel, in Argentina,” Report to the Governor, 16 June 1958, Gene Stevenson, press release, 21 Feb. 1958, and
Kenneth B. Roy, press release, 24 Apr. 1958, Box 2, Ralph B. Draughon Papers (hereafter cited as Draughon
Papers), RG 107, Auburn Univ. Archives, Auburn, Alabama; K. Hays, “Food Habits of Solenopsis saevissima
390
THE FIRE ANT WARS
These reports became the basis of Carson’s discussion of the ants in Silent Spring. While
writing the book Carson had corresponded with Wilson and learned that he considered
reports of the ants’ beneficial traits exaggerated, but she ignored his conclusions and concentrated on the positive aspects of the ants’ biology. Carson reinterpreted the meaning of
the nests, for example, seeing them not as impediments to agricultural production but as
necessary to the ecology of the earth. “Their mound-building activities,” she wrote, “serve
a useful purpose in aerating and draining the soil.” Her book, she concluded, “thoroughly
documented that the fire ant has never been a menace to agriculture and that the facts
concerning it have been completely misrepresented.” Ignoring the distinctions between the
two species (or mutants) and the role that humans had played in the irruption, Carson
argued that for most of the ants’ time in North America they had been inconsequential.
The sudden interest in them resulted from USDA propaganda, not biology; the ants were
actually well-behaved parts of the ecosystem. In the late 1930s Carson had written an essay
about the starling, a bird imported into America that many considered a pest but that she
thought was becoming a necessary part of the American ecological order. She argued that
it was time to give the starling citizen papers. Twenty years later, she was working to
naturalize another immigrant, the imported fire ants.25
The insecticides, by contrast, remained outside the American ecological order, a true
threat. Biologists monitoring the effect of the fire ant program found dead wildlife at every
spot that they checked. The Alabama Department of Conservation, for example, found
sixty-eight dead animals on a one-hundred-acre plot of land, while biologists with the U.S.
Fish and Wildlife Service, scouting a two-acre sample plot in Georgia, found six dead
quail, seven dead rabbits, twenty dead songbirds, three dead rodents, and one dead cat, all
with enough insecticide in their bodies to account for their deaths; two months after the
application, they could not find a single live bird. (See Figure 3.) Quail populations plumrichteri Forel,” J. Econ. Entomol. 1959, 52:455–457; K. Hays, “Ecological Observations on the Imported Fire
Ant, Solenopsis saevissima richteri Forel, in Alabama,” J. Alabama Acad. Sci., 1959, 30:14–18; Albert S.
Johnson, “Antagonistic Relationships between Ants and Wildlife with Special Reference to Imported Fire Ants
and Bobwhite Quail in the Southeast,” Proc. Ann. Conf. Southeastern Assoc. Game and Fish Commissioners,
1961, 15:88–107; and Johnson, “Antagonistic Relationships between Ants and Wildlife” (master’s thesis, Auburn
Univ., 1962). Other research can be tracked in J. D. Long et al., “Fire Ant Eradication Program Increases Damage
by the Sugarcane Borer,” Insect Conditions in Louisiana, 1958, 1:10–11; Long et al., “Fire Ant Eradication
Program Increases Damage by the Sugarcane Borer,” Sugar Bulletin, 1958, 37:62–63; George Stromeyer, “Unraveling the Secrets of the Fire Ant,” Amer. Mercury, July 1960, 91:121–124; S. D. Hensley et al., “Effects of
Insecticides on the Predaceous Arthropod Fauna of Louisiana Sugarcane Fields,” J. Econ. Entomol., 1961,
54:146–149; Leo Dale Newsom to Charam, 17 July 1964, Box 247, Imported Fire Ant—10 File, Plant Pest
Control Papers; and Newsom, “Eradication of Plant Pests,” Bull. Entomolog. Soc. Amer., 1978, 24:35–40. Mention of the forester’s report is in John A. Fluno, office memo, 11 Aug. 1958, Box 84, Insects Affecting Man and
Animals Branch Fire Ant File, Entomology Research Division: General Correspondence, 1954–1958, 5 (UD),
Agricultural Research Service Papers.
25
Wilson to Carson, 14 May 1959, 23 Oct. 1958, Box 44, Folder 841, Carson Papers; Carson, Silent Spring
(cit. n. 1), p. 163 (on mound-building activities); Carson to Abbot, 6 Oct. 1961, Box 90, Folder 1586, Carson
Papers (misrepresentation of facts); and Rachel Carson, “How about Citizenship Papers for the Starling?” Nature
Magazine, June–July 1939, 32:317–319. E. O. Wilson, then at Harvard University, and the USDA entomologists
both dismissed the Hays brothers’ work: the ants were mutants, they said, and their behavior in North America
could not be predicted from their behavior south of the equator, nor could the actions of the insects in the wild
be understood by studying them in a lab. They charged that the Auburn entomologists were also chronically
confused by the taxonomy of the fire ants, often mistaking native fire ants for the imports, and so their conclusions
could not be trusted. Creighton to Walter H. Grimes, 19 Nov. 1957, 23 Nov. 1957, and Smith to Creighton, 9
Dec. 1957, 19 Feb. 1969, Creighton Papers; portion of a letter to Abbot, 27 June 1957, Box 62, Fire Ant File;
Wilson to Burlap, 11 Jan. 1959, Wilson to Lofgren, 11 Feb. 1959, and Wilson to Burgess, 11 Feb. 1959, Box
213, Fire Ant File; and Wilson to Charam, 14 July 1964, Box 247, Imported Fire Ant—10 File, Plant Pest
Control Papers.
JOSHUA BLU BUHS
391
Figure 3. In April 1958 the Alabama Department of Conservation surveyed a field in Autauga County
where the USDA had recently sprayed heptachlor to eradicate the imported fire ants. The department
released to the press a picture of some of the dead animals that its wildlife biologists had found, the
image proof that the pesticides used to control the ants decimated wildlife. The department’s director
admitted that the survey was small but said, “Seeing them dead in the field following fire ant treatment
is strong enough evidence for me.” (From Ralph H. Allen, Jr., “The Fire Ant Eradication Program and
Its Effect on Fish and Wildlife,” Fire Ant File, Alabama Department of Conservation Papers, 1943–1951,
SG 17018, Alabama Department of Archives and History.)
meted by almost 90 percent. Livestock, as well, frequently died, and the chemicals were
seeping into the milk supply and, possibly, into the bodies of children. Research entomologists working for the USDA added their voices to the chorus of complaint, advocating
studies of biological and cultural control as a supplement to the use of chemical insecticides. The federal control entomologists were not working with nature, their opponents
charged, but against it. The application of the insecticides, Carson wrote, “follow[ed] the
impetuous, heedless pace of man, not the deliberate pace of nature.”26
The eradication was more than a threat to wildlife. It was a threat to democracy, the
26
Carson, Silent Spring, p. 7; Ralph H. Allen, Jr., “The Fire Ant Eradication Program and Its Effect on Fish
and Wildlife,” Fire Ant File, Alabama Department of Conservation Papers, 1943–1951, SG 17018, Alabama
Dept. Conservation Papers; Daniel H. Janzen, “Effects of the Fire Ant Eradication Program upon Wildlife,” 25
May 1958, Box 30, Fire Ant File, Entomology Research Division: General Correspondence, 1954–1958, 5 (UD),
Agriculture Research Service Papers; Leslie L. Glasgow, “Wildlife and the Fire Ant Program,” in Transactions
of the Twenty-fourth North American Wildlife Conference, ed. James B. Trefethen (Washington, D.C.: Wildlife
Management Inst., 1959), pp. 142–149; Daniel W. Lay, “Fire Ant Eradication and Wildlife,” Proc. Annu. Conf.
Southeastern Assoc. Game and Fish Commissioners, 1958, 12:248–250; Walter Rosene, “Whistling-Cock Counts
of Bobwhite Quail on Areas Treated with Insecticides and Untreated Areas, Decatur County, Georgia,” ibid.,
pp. 240–244; Otis L. Poitevint to Ray E. Tyner, 13 Oct. 1959, and Discussions of the Imported Fire Ant at
Meetings of Georgia Sportsmen’s League, 15–17 Oct. 1959, Box b-494, Peters File, National Audubon Society
Papers (hereafter cited as National Audubon Society Papers), New York Public Library, New York; and Robert
W. Murray, “A Synecological Study of the Effects of the Fire Ant Eradication Program in Florida,” Proc. Annu.
Conf. Southeastern Assoc. Game and Fish Commissioners, 1962, 16:145–153. On the importance of milk contamination see Ralph H. Lutts, “Chemical Fallout: Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring, Radioactive Fallout, and the
Environmental Movement,” Environmental Review, 1985, 9:214–225.
392
THE FIRE ANT WARS
USDA’s opponents said, turning the federal agency’s rhetoric on its head. The critique of
the fire ant program raised a serious question: If the insects were not pests and the insecticides were so deadly, why would the USDA undertake to eradicate the ants? To answer
these questions, the USDA’s opponents called on a traditional American distrust of centralized governmental control. Antistatism has a long history in America, but it took on a
particular intensity during the Cold War. As the historian Michael Hogan has shown, there
was a widespread fear that in building a national security system against communism, the
United States would take on the traits of its enemy. National defense required centralized
control and secrecy and conformity, all characteristics of the Soviet Union. The Cold War,
many feared, would transform the United States into a garrison state. The USDA had
already defined itself as part of the national security system, and the agency’s determination
to pursue the eradication ideal demanded centralized control. Carson and others drew on
these tropes to attack the USDA. Why would the USDA spread deadly chemicals against
a pest that was not a pest? Because the agency was drunk on its own power and beyond
democratic accountability.27
In Silent Spring Carson wrote, “Who has decided—who has the right to decide—for
the countless legions of people who were not consulted that the supreme value is a world
without insects, even though it be also a sterile world ungraced by the curving wing of a
bird in flight? The decision is that of the authoritarian temporarily entrusted with power.”
Others followed the same line of reasoning. The wildlife biologist Clarence Cottam, for
example, wrote, “I am convinced some of the philosophies expressed and actions taken
by the pest control arm of our Federal Department of Agriculture strike at the very heart
of American democracy. The problems, therefore, far transcend the control program or
any entomological considerations.” He urged others to agitate against eradication campaigns and avoid becoming “numbered pawns of the state.” This form of critique was so
powerful that it drew to wildlife groups some who opposed the growth of bureaucracies
but had little interest in wildlife. The Mobile nursery owner J. Lloyd Abbot, for instance,
joined the Alabama Wildlife Federation explicitly to stop the imported fire ant program
not because he worried about the danger of insecticides but because “the threat to the
continued existence of our Democracy, and whether or not we are going to be taken over
by internal bureaucracies, could not be more clearly illustrated than it is by this whole
reprehensible situation.”28
27
Michael Hogan, A Cross of Iron: Harry S. Truman and the Origins of the National Security State, 1945–
1954 (New York: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1998). On antistatism more generally see Gary Wills, A Necessary
Evil: A History of American Distrust of Government (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1999). For the South’s
particular blanching at centralized control see Twelve Southerners, I’ll Take My Stand: The South and the
Agrarian Tradition (New York: Harper, 1930); Paul Conklin, The Southern Agrarians (Knoxville: Univ. Tennessee Press, 1988); and Eugene Genovese, The Southern Tradition: The Achievement and Limitations of an
American Conservatism (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press, 1994). Some southern farmers did fear the
government bureaucracy that undertook the fire ant program: W. A. Ruffin, “Tales about Insects,” 3 Mar. 1958,
Box 1, Ruffin File, Extension Entomology Papers, RG 842, Auburn Univ. Archives; E. V. Smith to Henry B.
Gray, 1 Mar. 1957, and Smith to Draughon, 23 Mar. 1957, Box 2, Draughon Papers; and Joe P. Henderson to
A. W. Todd, 10 Apr. 1958, Box 197, Fire Ant—Southern Region File, Plant Pest Control Papers.
28
Carson, Silent Spring (cit. n. 1), p. 127. See also Rachel Carson, “A Sense of Values in Today’s World,” 17
Jan. 1963, Box 101, File 1895, Carson Papers; and U.S. Senate, Subcommittee on Reorganization and International Organizations, Committee on Government Operations, Interagency Coordination in Environmental Hazards, 88th Cong., 1st sess., 4 June 1963, pp. 206–216. Clarence Cottam, “Pesticides and Wildlife,” 21–23 Feb.
1960, Box 35, File 581, Carson Papers; Cottam, “The Pesticide Problem,” Series 1393, Carton 4, Florida State
Archives, Tallahassee; Abbot to Members of the Board of Directors—Alabama Wildlife Federation, 24 June
1959, Box 1, Abbot File, Correspondence of Assistant Secretary for Fish and Wildlife Ross L. Leffler, 790 (A1),
Secretary of Interior Papers (hereafter cited as Secretary of Interior Papers), RG 48, National Archives and
JOSHUA BLU BUHS
393
The USDA’s opponents had more difficulties putting their vision of the relationship
between nature, science, and democracy into practice than had the department. The agricultural agency was one of the most powerful federal bureaucracies, and control entomologists had embedded themselves deeply within a network of relationships with powerful allies. No attempts to stop pesticide use gained much political traction in the 1960s,
but the protest against the imported fire ant program seemed the least likely to succeed.
Just as Silent Spring was published in 1962, the USDA introduced a new insecticide for
eradicating the ants, Mirex, that nullified the objections of the department’s opponents.
Billed as the perfect pesticide, Mirex was less harmful to vertebrates than its predecessors
and was used at the incredibly low dose of one-seventh of an ounce per acre. With little
left to object to and little power, the USDA’s opponents turned their attention to other
issues. When Carson died in 1965, the fire ant wars seemed to be over.29
“The Vietnam of Entomology”
By the 1970s, however, the situation had changed: Mirex was seen as dangerous and the
environmentalists were on the ascendancy. Richard Nixon, wanting to coopt a Democratic
constituency, created the Environmental Protection Agency and charged it with regulating
the introduction of chemicals into the environment. An increasingly self-conscious environmental movement allied with the EPA to ban dozens of insecticides, most famously
DDT, institutionalizing their ideas about the proper relationship between nature and science
and endeavoring to create what they considered a more democratic nation.30 In 1973,
Records Administration, College Park, Maryland. See also “Elements of Myth in the Fire Ant Peril,” 11 Mar.
1957, Box 65, Fire Ant—News Clippings File, Entomology Research Division: General Correspondence, 1954–
1958, 5 (UD), Agricultural Research Service Papers; Abbot to Byron T. Shaw, 25 Oct. 1957, Box 225, Quarantine
File, and Abbot to Dwight Eisenhower, 31 May 1958, Box 3128, Insects, Aug. 8–Nov. 4 File, Secretary of
Agriculture Papers; “Fire Ant Fight Intensified by State Group,” 2 July 1958, Box 197, Fire Ant—News Clippings File, and Abbot to Marcus D. Byers, 14 July 1958, Box 225, Fire Ant File, Plant Pest Control Papers;
Abbot to Smith, 24 Oct. 1958, Box 2, Draughon Papers; Abbot to Members of the Board of Directors—Alabama
Wildlife Federation, 23 June 1959, 25 June 1959, Box 1, Abbot File, Correspondence of Assistant Secretary for
Fish and Wildlife Ross L. Leffler, 790 (A1), Secretary of Interior Papers; Abbot to Paul B. Sears, 15 Aug. 1960,
Box 135, Folder 221, Sears Papers; Abbot to Leffler, 17 Jan. 1961, Box 1, Abbot File, Correspondence of
Assistant Secretary for Fish and Wildlife Ross L. Leffler, 790 (A1), Secretary of Interior Papers; and Abbot to
Robert H. Michel, 2 Aug. 1961, Box 93, Imported Fire Ant—2 File, and “Fire Ant Spending,” 16 Aug. 1961,
Box 93, Fire Ant—8 File, Plant Pest Control Papers.
29
Herbert L. Stoddard to Fancher, 30 June 1962, and Leo Iverson to Fancher, 5 Sept. 1962, Box 128, Fire
Ant File; D. H. Janzen to Shaw, 31 Oct. 1962, Box 134, Insecticides—2—Toxic Effects File; Robert J. Anderson,
“The Functions of the Federal Pest Control Review Board,” 1 Nov. 1962, Box 134, Information—12—Talks,
Speeches File; R. E. Lane to USDA, 3 Dec. 1962, Box 128, Fire Ant—9 File; Robert Anderson to Orville
Freeman, 10 May 1963, and Maurice F. Baker, “New Fire Ant Bait,” 1963, Box 165, Fire Ant File—5—
Cooperation File; “Fire Ant Killer Tested at Refuge,” n.d., Box 128, Fire Ant—8 File, Plant Pest Control Papers;
“USDA Honors ARS Individuals, Groups . . . for Superior Service,” Agricultural Research, June 1963, 11:3–4;
Jamie L. Whitten, That We May Live (Princeton, N.J.: Van Nostrand, 1966), p. 115; and Harrison Wellford,
“Pesticides,” in Nixon and the Environment: The Politics of Devastation, ed. James Rathelsberger (New York:
Taurus, 1972), pp. 146–162. On the strength of the USDA see Grant McConnell, The Decline of Agrarian
Democracy (Berkeley: Univ. California Press, 1953); McConnell, Private Power and American Democracy (New
York: Knopf, 1966); Samuel R. Berger, Dollar Harvest: The Story of the Farm Bureau (Lexington, Mass.: Heath,
1971); Margaret W. Rossiter, “The Organization of Agricultural Sciences,” in The Organization of Knowledge
in Modern America, ed. John Voss and Alexandra Oleson (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, 1979), pp. 211–
248; Theda Skocpol and Kenneth Finegold, “State Capacity and Economic Intervention in the Early New Deal,”
Political Science Quarterly, 1982, 97:255–274; and Gregory Hooks, “From an Autonomous to a Captured State
Agency: The Decline of the New Deal in Agriculture,” American Sociological Review, 1990, 55:29–43. Bosso,
Pesticides and Politics (cit. n. 1), elaborates the many connections between the USDA and southern congressmen
who, because of the seniority system in the legislature and the South’s de facto one-party system, controlled
much of Washington’s political machinery.
30
“Toxic Substances: EPA and OSHA Are Reluctant Regulators,” Science, 1979, 203:28–32; and Dunlap,
394
THE FIRE ANT WARS
prompted by the Environmental Defense Fund, the agency initiated a court case over the
fate of the fire ant eradication program. In the years since it had been called the perfect
pesticide, Mirex had been shown to accumulate in the fat of fish, kill shrimp and crabs,
and, possibly, cause cancer.31 The ants, on the contrary, were even more firmly established
as nonthreatening. In the late 1960s some of E. O. Wilson’s older contemporaries, feeling
overshadowed by the young man’s rapid ascent, revisited his taxonomic work—“Someone
has to do the niddy-griddies to check out Wilson’s theories while he continues onward and
upward to still greater and greater glories”—and determined that the red and black ant
forms were not mutants, but separate species, and that the red form was not as dangerous
as Wilson had implied. Others suggested that the ants were a key part of the southern
ecosystem that should not be removed. Even Wilson had changed his mind, calling the
eradication program “the Vietnam of entomology”: a battle with inchoate goals and no
clear winners, only loss.32
The power of the EPA and the environmental movement slowly overwhelmed those
promoting the eradication of the fire ants. The court case over the fire ant program and
Mirex did not definitively settle the matter, but it made the cost of continuing too high for
Allied Chemical, the maker of the insecticide. In 1976 Allied dropped out of the proceedings, selling its plant to the State of Mississippi for one dollar. Mississippi’s waxing was
DDT (cit. n. 1). On the creation of the EPA see J. Brooks Flippen, “Pests, Pollution, and Politics: The Nixon
Administration’s Pesticide Policy,” Agr. Hist., 1997, 71:442–456; and Flippen, Nixon and the Environment
(Albuquerque: Univ. New Mexico Press, 2000).
31
Regarding the court case see William A. Butler to Executive Committee and Executive Director, 11 May
1973, Box 68, Correspondence (from July 1, 1971) File; and Lee Rogers to Charlie Wurster, 29 May 1973, Box
71, Correspondence, Internal File, Environmental Defense Fund Papers (hereafter cited as Environmental Defense Fund Papers), MS 232, State Univ. New York, Stony Brook. On new findings about Mirex see C. C. Van
Valin, A. K. Andrews, and L. L. Eller, “Some Effects of Mirex on Two Warm-Water Fishes,” Transactions of
the American Fisheries Society, 1968, 97:185–196; Denzel Ferguson, “Fire Ant Eradication—Grandiose BoonDoggle,” 20 Mar. 1969, General Information to 1970 File, Series 2012: Fire Ant Correspondence, Mississippi
Department of Agriculture and Commerce Papers (hereafter cited as Mississippi Dept. Agriculture and Commerce Papers), Mississippi Department of Archives and History, Jackson; J. R. Innes et al., “Bioassay of Pesticides and Industrial Chemicals for Mutagenicity in Mice: A Preliminary Note,” Journal of the National Cancer
Institute, 1969, 42:1101–1114; Lewis Nolan, “Further Study Suggested in Fire Ant Eradication Program,” 5
Apr. 1970, General Information to 1970 File, Mississippi Dept. Agriculture and Commerce Papers; Jeff Nesmith,
“Fire Ant Poison Kills Other Things,” n.d. [1970?], Box 5227, Insects, Jan. 1 to Apr. 30 file [1 of 2], Secretary
of Agriculture Papers; Deborah Shapley, “Mirex and the Fire Ant: Declines in the Fortune of a ‘Perfect’ Pesticide,” Science, 1971, 172:358–360; J. R. Gibson, G. W. Ivie, and H. W. Donough, “Fate of Mirex and Its Major
Decomposition Products in Rats,” Journal of Agriculture and Food Chemistry, 1972, 20:1246–1248; T. E. Reagan, G. Coburn, and S. Hensley, “Effects of Mirex on the Arthropod Fauna of a Louisiana Sugarcane Field,”
Environ. Entomol., 1972, 1:588–591; E. G. Alley, “The Use of Mirex in Control of the Imported Fire Ant,”
Journal of Environmental Quality, 1973, 2:52–61; K. M. Hyde et al., “Accumulation of Mirex in Food Chains,”
Louisiana Agricultural Experiment Station Bulletin, 1973, 17:10–11; and K. L. E. Kaiser, “The Rise and Fall of
Mirex,” Environmental Science and Technology, 1978, 12:520–528. On the EPA’s preoccupation with cancer
see Edmund P. Russell, “Lost among the Parts per Billion: Ecological Protection at the United States Environmental Protection Agency, 1970–1993,” Environmental History, 1997, 2:29–51.
32
William F. Buren to Creighton, 24 Apr. 1972, Creighton Papers (on the “niddy-griddies”); “Fire Ant War
Lost by U.S.,” 29 Sept. 1975, Box 73, Mirex—Press Releases File, Environmental Defense Fund Papers; and
“Fire Ants: Vietnam of Entomology,” news clippings, Mississippi Dept. Agriculture and Commerce Papers (for
Wilson’s new view). On the revision of Wilson’s taxonomy see William F. Buren, “Revisionary Studies on the
Taxonomy of the Imported Fire Ants,” Journal of the Georgia Entomological Society, 1972, 7:1–26; and Joshua
Blu Buhs, “Building on Bedrock: William Steel Creighton and the Reformation of Ant Systematics, 1925–1970,”
Journal of the History of Biology, 2000, 33:27–70. On the ants and the ecosystem see William L. Brown to W.
Wallace Harrington, 7 May 1973, and “Environmental Defense Fund Response to 1972 Environmental Impact
Statement,” 17 Feb. 1973, both in Miscellaneous Publications and Unpublished Documents Relating to the Use
of Mirex to Control the Imported Fire Ant in the USA, Comstock Library, Cornell Univ., Ithaca, New York. Cf.
Brown to Rogers, 14 Dec. 1970, Box 68, Correspondence (up to July 1, 1971) File, Environmental Defense
Fund Papers.
JOSHUA BLU BUHS
395
short-lived, however. Two years later, the EPA determined that Mirex and its by-products
caused cancer and that the chemical could be found in the bodies of almost one in every
two Mississippians. The use of Mirex was phased out.33 In the years since it had been
established, the EPA had also banned all other chemicals used to eradicate the imported
fire ants. By the end of the 1970s, the fire ant wars were over. The ants were left to
accommodate themselves to life in North America, safe from chemical attack.
IDEAS INTO ACTIONS: THE EFFECT OF THE FIRE ANTS WARS
The USDA and its opponents had focused on different aspects of the natural history of the
imported fire ants, generalizing particular traits into the essence of the animal—like the
five blind men of legend who touched different parts of an elephant and divined its essence
from those parts, one touching the tail and deciding that an elephant was like a rope and
another feeling the ear and deciding that the beast was like parchment. Committed to
protecting American agriculture and confronting the ants on a regional scale, the federal
entomologists focused on the negative aspects of the insects. (See Figure 4.) The dissenters,
on the contrary, looking at the invasion on a smaller scale and wedded to the belief that
nature was an integrated whole, studied the places where the irruption was dying and
determined that the ants were no longer pests. They pointed to the way the opportunistic
ants preyed on other insects as evidence of their beneficence and their acceptance into the
American ecological order. Both sets of ideas, however, were simplifications of a more
complicated natural history. When they were transformed into action and applied through
American agricultural and environmental policy, the friction between the ideas and the
reality created situations that no one expected.
The USDA entomologists believed that nature could be remade without consequence
and so applied the insecticides fully expecting to eradicate the ants. The insecticides,
however, were broad-spectrum poisons that killed huge numbers of insects and game
animals. They disrupted the areas where they were applied, much as the vagaries of the
rivers of South America did. Imported fire ants reinvaded the poisoned parcels of land,
mocking the eradication ideal. In 1957, for example, Arkansas was declared ant-free after
twelve thousand acres were sprayed. In 1958, however, the ants occupied ten thousand
33
Shapley, “Mirex and the Fire Ant” (cit. n. 31), p. 359; Fancher to Sonny Montgomery, 17 Feb. 1972,
Congressional Delegation, 1971–1972 File, Mississippi Dept. Agriculture and Commerce Papers; Maureen K.
Hinkle to Judy Swiderski, 26 Apr. 1976, Box b194, Mirex File, National Audubon Society Papers; “Mississippi
to Make Pesticide,” 12 May 1976, Box 71, Correspondence, Internal File, Environmental Defense Fund Papers;
“South Still Fights Its Longest War, Learns to Live with Surly Fire Ants,” 28 June 1976, News Reports File,
Mississippi Dept. Agriculture and Commerce Papers; William A. Banks et al., “An Improved Mirex Bait Formulation for Control of Imported Fire Ants,” Environ. Entomol., 1973, 2:182–185; Banks et al., “Imported Fire
Ants: 10-5, an Alternate Formulation of Mirex Bait,” J. Econ. Entomol., 1975, 69:465–467; “Human Tissue
Shows Mirex,” 16 July 1976, and “Mirex Found in Bodies Fuels Pesticide Controversy,” 8 July 1976, Box b194,
Mirex File, National Audubon Society Papers; “Mirex Found in 44 per cent of Mississippians,” 25 Aug. 1976,
Box 73, Mirex—Press Releases File, Environmental Defense Fund Papers; “Mississippi Back in Mirex Business,” n.d., “State Asks EPA to Ban Mirex Use in Two Years,” n.d., and “Mirex’s Phase Out,” n.d., News Reports
File, Mississippi Dept. Agriculture and Commerce Papers; “Mirex Cancellation Announced,” EDF Newsletter,
Sept. 1976, 7; “Spread of a Deadly Chemical—and the Ever-Widening Impact,” U.S. News and World Report,
6 Sept. 1976, pp. 43–44; Jim Buck Ross to All News Media in Mississippi, 22 Sept. 1976, and “EPA Okays
Phaseout Program for Mirex,” 29 Oct. 1976, News Reports File, Mississippi Dept. Agriculture and Commerce
Papers; “Mississippi Stymied by Lack of Fire Ant Poison,” 23 Nov. 1976, Box 73, Mirex—Press Releases File,
Environmental Defense Fund Papers; “Mirex Plant Shutdown Blocks War on Fire Ant,” 27 Nov. 1977, News
Clippings File, Mississippi Dept. Agriculture and Commerce Papers; and Ardith Maney, “New Influences on
Agricultural Policy: Fire Ants, Environmentalists, and the Agricultural Research Service,” Box 73, Mirex—
Maney (Iowa State) Article File, Environmental Defense Fund Papers.
396
THE FIRE ANT WARS
Figure 4. A fire ant grasps human flesh with its mandibles and bends its gaster forward, prepared to
sting. The pointed structures appearing here and there are human hairs. The USDA illustrated many of
its publications with this picture of the imported fire ant; newspaper articles throughout the South reprinted the image. Some news publications labeled this picture “Monster,” underlining the danger posed
by the ants and the need to eradicate the insects. (From “$10 Million Sought to Fight Fire Ants,” Montgomery Advertiser, 8 March 1957, Box 65, Fire Ant News Clippings File, Entomology Research Division:
General Correspondence, 1954–1958, 5 (UD), Agricultural Research Service Papers, RG 310, National
Archives and Records Administration, College Park, Maryland.)
acres, many of them areas that had been treated previously. And in 1959 the ants could be
found on twenty-five thousand acres. By 1960 the USDA noticed the reinvasion problem
on a regional scale. One disappointed entomologist complained, “It is probable that the
acreage being reinfested plus the expansion into new areas each year is as great as the
acreage that can be treated with presently available funds. The program can hardly be
termed an eradication program if there is no net gain in acreage free from ants.” Over the
course of the fire ant wars, the USDA tried a number of different insecticides and a number
of different rates of application, but all failed.34
With the failure of eradication came a diminished belief in the professional competency
34
Lamar J. Padget to Burgess, 11 Mar. 1959, and Padget to W. E. Blasingame, 29 June 1959, Box 213, Fire
Ant File (on Arkansas); and “Appraisal Survey of the Cooperative Fire Ant Program, Sept. 1960, Summary and
Comments,” 12 Oct. 1960, Fire Ant File, 1960, Plant Pest Control Papers (quotation). For an overview of the
eradication–reinfestation cycle see William F. Buren, “The Importance of Fire Ant Taxonomy,” Proceedings of
the Tall Timbers Conference on Ecological Animal Control by Habitat Management, 1978, 7:61–66; Buren,
G. E., Allen, and R. N. Williams, “Approaches toward Possible Pest Management of the Imported Fire Ants,”
Bull. Entomolog. Soc. Amer., 1978, 24:418–420; “Fire Ant Preventive Linked to Infestation,” Jackson [Mississippi] Clarion-Ledger, 8 Mar. 1982, p. 8b; Tschinkel, “History and Biology of Fire Ants” (cit. n. 6); and Clifford
S. Lofgren and David F. Williams, “Red Imported Fire Ants (Hymenoptera: Formicidae): Population Dynamics
Following Treatment with Insecticidal Baits,” J. Econ. Entomol., 1985, 78:863–867. On the varied insecticide
trials and failures see “Fire Ant Control,” report no. 62 (Ames, Iowa: Council for Agricultural Science and
Technology, 1976); and Anne-Marie A. Callcott and Homer L. Collins, “Invasion and Range Expansion of
Imported Fire Ants (Hymenoptera: Formicidae) in North America from 1918–1995,” Florida Entomologist,
1996, 79:238–251.
JOSHUA BLU BUHS
397
of control entomologists. Control entomologists had bet their scientific legitimacy on eradication: C. C. Fancher had announced at the beginning of the fire ant program, “It would
be a disgrace to entomologists of this country to permit the imported fire ant to become
established.”35 As the program progressed, though, the dream faded. The ants continued
to spread, as did other insects targeted by the USDA—bark beetles, gypsy moths, Japanese
beetles.
By the 1960s the embarrassment was acute, and it would only get worse. Even with the
introduction of the so-called perfect pesticide, many entomologists in the USDA doubted
whether eradication was possible.36 Their backbone stiffened in 1969 when Nixon appointed J. Phil Campbell to the USDA. A former commissioner of agriculture in Georgia,
Campbell had built his career battling the ants and demanded that the agency renew its
commitment to eradication. Campbell’s enthusiasm, though, could not stem the spread of
the insects. In 1978, deciding that the battle could not be won, the USDA shifted all funding
for the program away from control entomologists, awarding it instead to insect biologists
who hewed to older traditions in entomology, investigating insect natural history and employing biological and cultural control. Study of parasites and predators increased, and in
1995 the agency began releasing into the wild flies that decapitate the ants. The goal now
was control, not eradication. Indicating how far acceptance of the control entomologists’
terms had fallen, the Jackson, Mississippi, Clarion-Ledger reported, “‘Eradication’ is a
dirty word among the small corps of fire ant researchers.”37
Environmental policy created similar, if less severe, professional problems, and for the
same reason: the unexpected outcomes of mixing human practices and the biology of the
ants. In her rehabilitation of the ants, Carson had excluded any consideration of the role
humans played in creating the irruption. This exclusion was part of Carson’s more general
tendency to see humans as separate from the natural world, a habit of thought that was
taken up by later environmental groups and institutionalized by the EPA. This perspective
overlooked human responsibility for the fire ant problem and led to solutions that failed
to address the root cause of their spread. Insecticides were banned, but the bulldozer
revolution continued and the ants continued to spread, covering another hundred million
acres by the century’s end. They reached western Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada,
and California. Wherever they appeared, their population exploded and they wreaked
Fancher to Burgess, 20 May 1958, Box 197, Fire Ant—Southern Region File, Plant Pest Control Papers.
Wellford, Sowing the Wind (cit. n. 1), pp. 302–303. D. R. Shepherd to F. J. Mulhern, 5 May 1969, Box 260,
File 8, Plant Pest Control Papers; John A. Schmittker to George Mehren et al., 27 Oct. 1967, Box 4679, Insects
(October) File, Secretary of Agriculture Papers; Fancher to Ross, 20 Sept. 1971, Memos to Commissioner, 1970–
1971 File, Mississippi Dept. Agriculture and Commerce Papers; Joseph M. Robertson to Mehren, 7 Apr. 1967,
Doyle Conner to Spessard Holland, 10 Apr. 1967, and Charles L. Grant to Mehren and George Irving, 16 May
1967, Box 4680, Insects, April 1967–31 May 1967 File; Mehren to Gillespie F. Montgomery, 8 June 1967, and
Irving to the Secretary, 20 June 1967, Box 4679, Insects (June) File; and T. C., Byerly to Thomas T. Irvin, 20
Apr. 1970, Box 5227, Insects Jan. 1 to Apr. 30 File [1 of 2], Secretary of Agriculture Papers.
37
“Fire Ants: The Experts Throw Up Their hands,” U.S. News World Rep., 17 Jan. 1977, p. 79; Alan Huffman,
“Environment May Pay the Price in Fire Ant War,” Jackson Clarion-Ledger, 4 Nov. 1988; Sanford D. Porter et
al., “Growth and Development of Pseudacteon Phorid Fly Maggots (Diptera: Phoridae) in the Heads of Solenopsis Fire Ant Workers (Hymenoptera: Formicidae),” Environ. Entomol., 1995, 24:475–479; L. W. Morrison
and L. E. Gilbert, “Oviposition, Behavior, and Development of Pseudacteon Flies (Diptera: Phoridae), Parasitoids
of Solenopsis Fire Ants (Hymenoptera: Formicidae),” ibid., 1997, 26:716–724; Porter, David F. Williams, and
R. S. Patterson, “Rearing the Decapitating Fly Pseudacteon tricuspis (Diptera: Phoridae) in Imported Fire Ants
(Hymenoptera: Formicidae) from the United States,” J. Econ. Entomol., 1997, 90:135–138; Bruce Reid, “USDA
Launches Biological War on Fire Ants,” Jackson Clarion-Ledger, 7 June 1998; Porter, “Host-Specific Attraction
of Pseudacteon Flies (Diptera: Phoridae) to Fire Ant Colonies in Brazil,” Florida Entomol., 1998, 81:423–429;
and Porter and L. E. Alonso, “Host Specificity of Fire Ant Decapitating Flies (Diptera: Phoridae) in Laboratory
Oviposition Tests,” J. Econ. Entomol., 1999, 92:110–114.
35
36
398
THE FIRE ANT WARS
havoc.38 Analyses that separated humans and nature obscured the critical importance of
interaction between the two.
Many felt vulnerable without a way to stop the spread. The commercial insecticides that
were available were for individual use, not widespread spraying, and they could not stop
the introduction of the ants into a new area, only ameliorate the danger once they were
ensconced. Meanwhile, alternative control techniques were slow in coming. It took the
USDA twenty years to initiate a biological control program on a wide scale, and there
remains no measure of its effectiveness. The EPA, for its part, blocked the introduction of
other alternative techniques. In the early 1970s the biotechnology company Zoecon developed an analogue of a fire ant hormone, a chemical that would prevent ant larvae from
developing into adults. This insect growth regulator, as it was called, was expensive to
develop and had a smaller market than DDT and other such chemicals since the hormone
analogue could be used only against the imported fire ants. But the EPA, following in
Carson’s tradition, was leery about introducing chemicals into the environment and required that the analogue undergo the same battery of tests as a broad-spectrum pesticide;
when Zoecon’s president pleaded for grants to help fund the necessary studies, the EPA
refused. The cost was prohibitive and the insect growth regulator did not make it to market.
Other species-specific chemicals, lacking support from the EPA, experienced similar
fates.39
The EPA, then, had banned the chemicals perceived to control the ants, prevented the
development of alternative forms of control, and left the ants to spread. Now it was the
EPA—not the USDA—that looked like a bureaucracy unconcerned with civil liberties.40
The president of Zoecon made this point when he noted that the Soviet Union had asked
his company to develop new pest control methods: the most communist country on earth
recognized the innovative possibilities, but an American bureaucracy could not. The USDA
exploited the growing resentment toward the EPA in an attempt to win back some of the
power it had lost to the agency. Here, too, was one of the roots of the Reagan-era backlash
against environmentalism and the EPA, when the agency went into a decade-long
38
William P. Mackay and Richard Fagerlund, “Range Expansion of the Red Imported Fire Ant, Solenopsis
invicta Buren (Hymenoptera: Formicidae), into New Mexico and Extreme Western Texas,” Proceedings of the
Entomological Society of Washington, 1997, 99:757–758; Deborah Schoch, “Fire-Ant Fear on the March in
Western States,” Los Angeles Times, Orange County ed., 7 Feb. 1999; Schoch, “Invasion of Fire Ants Poses New
Threat to Area Wildlife,” Los Angeles Times, home ed., 1 Mar. 1999; “Imported Fire Ants a Red-Hot Nuisance,”
Sacramento Bee, 6 Mar. 1999, p. CL2; Schoch, “State Issues Its Marching Orders for Fire Ant War,” Los Angeles
Times, Orange County ed., 20 Mar. 1999; “State Turns up the Heat on Aggressive Fire Ants,” Sacramento Bee,
22 Mar. 1999, p. A1; David Reyes, “Fire Ants Defeating Eradication Force,” Los Angeles Times, home ed., 22
July 2000; “Fire Ants Have a Nasty Sting,” Sacramento Bee, 23 Oct. 1999, p. CL12; “Is It ‘Them!’?” Sacramento
Bee, 3 May 2000, p. A4; Matthew Ebnet, “Fire-Ant Campaign Turns up the Heat,” Los Angeles Times, Orange
County ed., 6 Sept. 2000; and Kiley Russell, “Burned by Fire Ants,” Sacramento Bee, 23 Feb. 2001, p. D1.
39
Gene Bylinsky, “Zoecon Turns Bugs against Themselves,” Fortune, Aug. 1973, 88:94–103; Carl Djerassi
to Robert Long, 12 Nov. 1973, and Carl Djerassi, Christina Shih Coleman, and John Diekman, “Operational and
Policy Aspects of Future Insect Control Methods,” 12 Feb. 1974, Box 5855, Insects, April 19 to July 16 File,
Secretary of Agriculture Papers; “John Diekman, Direct Testimony,” 21 Feb. 1974, Box 68, Summaries File,
Environmental Defense Fund Papers; and Djerassi to Paul A. Vander Myde, 14 May 1974, Box 5855, Insects,
April 19 to July 16 File, Secretary of Agriculture Papers. For similar complaints against the EPA see Marc K.
Landy, Marc J. Roberts, and Stephen R. Thomas, The Environmental Protection Agency: Asking the Wrong
Questions from Nixon to Clinton, expanded ed. (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1994); and Mark Winston,
Nature Wars: People vs. Pests (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press, 1997), pp. 158–159.
40
The EPA administrator John Quarles admitted the problem: “I am a federal bureaucrat. I am one of those
bureaucrats everyone complains of,” he began his 1976 book Cleaning Up America. “I am one of those whom
George Wallace has called lazy, incompetent and ‘pointy-headed.’” John Quarles, Cleaning Up America: An
Insider’s View of the Environmental Protection Agency (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1976), p. xi.
JOSHUA BLU BUHS
399
dormancy. Exterminator–cum–House Whip Tom DeLay, exercised at the ban on Mirex,
charged the EPA with stifling necessary insect control operations under a pile of red tape.
Texas Senator Phil Gramm also attacked the EPA’s policy on the fire ants, looking—like
DeLay—for an excuse to eviscerate the regulatory bureaucracy.41
The EPA’s loss of status was not as stark as that of the control entomologists—the EPA
remains the nation’s largest regulatory body—nor was its failure as great—the EPA did
remove carcinogenic chemicals from the market—but the decline in its legitimacy stemmed
from the same cause. The biology of the ants and human activities interacted in unexpected
ways. The ants were not ecological innocents, ready to become well-behaved citizens.
They were opportunists, exploiting the disruption brought about by the bulldozer revolution and the constant building in the irrigated West. Failing to deal with the causes of the
fire ant irruption, the EPA and the environmental community saw their predictions founder
and their legitimacy weaken.
CONCLUSION
In 1976, when Mississippi purchased the Mirex manufacturing plant, environmentalists
believed that their prophecies had come true. The ideology of eradication had led to American socialism: a state now owned a business. Journalists sympathetic to the anti-insecticide
crusade lampooned “Magnolia-Scented Socialism.” One newspaper wrote, “A losing effort
to conquer a tiny, unconquerable insect has brought a strange and costly species of socialism to the Deep South. Today, the final citadel of this socialism is to be found, of all
places, in Mississippi, whose politicians for decades urged the voters to resist any hint of
socialism wherever it seemed to be nibbling at the woodwork of free enterprise.”42
The situation, though, was not so cut and dried. The imagined ends of the Cold War—
victory, capitulation, or transformation—that had come to stand for the imagined ends of
the fire ant wars were too restrictive: magnolia-scented socialism soon collapsed. There
was neither victory nor capitulation nor transformation: the ants continued to spread and
entomologists continued to battle them in a country that continued to favor relatively weak
bureaucratic governance. When it became clear that these imaginings were inadequate, a
new view—one less dedicated to castigating or praising the imported fire ants—emerged.
A Texas entomologist encapsulated this new view when he wrote in the late 1970s that
imported fire ants wear neither a white nor a black hat, but a gray one. The insects do
41
Nancy Mathis, “EPA under House Siege: DeLay Plans to Lead Assault for Changes in Environmental Policy,
Agency Funding,” Houston Chronicle, STAR ed., 8 Oct. 1995, p. 13A; and Scott Norvell, “Force of Nature,”
Washington Post Magazine, 23 June 1996, p. 14. For complaints about the EPA see Djerassi to Long, 14 Feb.
1974, Box 5855, Insects, April 19 to July 16 File, Secretary of Agriculture Papers; U.S. Congress, Subcommittee
on Department Operations, Investigations and Oversights, Committee on Agriculture, Fire Ant Eradication Program, 94th Cong., 1st sess., 1975; and G. F. Engler to John Paul Hammerschmidt, 16 Aug. 1975, Louis Gregory
to John C. Stennis, 19 Aug. 1975, and Earl McMunn, “Let’s Reason Together,” n.d., [1975?], Box 6012, Pesticides, July 1 to August 31 File, Secretary of Agriculture Papers. See also “Administrator’s Letter,” 26 Feb. 1976,
and Shirley Schiebla, “Fighting the Fire Ant: Regulations Make It Almost Impossible to Do,” 10 May 1976,
Box 73, Mirex—Press Releases File, Environmental Defense Fund Papers; and “The Year of Insects,” editorial,
Wall Street Journal, 15 Aug. 1978. On seeds of the Reagan-era backlash see Hays, Beauty, Health, and Permanence (cit. n. 23), pp. 491–526.
42
“Mississippi to Make Pesticide,” Washington Star, 12 May 1976, p. A14, Box 71, Correspondence, Internal
File, Environmental Defense Fund Papers; “‘Magnolia-Scented Socialism’ Invades Mississippi,” Gulfport Star
Journal, 2 Sept. 1976, News Reports File, Mississippi Dept. Agriculture and Commerce Papers; and “Solenopsis
the Unconquerable,” Ecology Center Newsletter, July–Aug. 1976, pp. 5–6, Box 73, Mirex—Press Releases File,
Environmental Defense Fund Papers.
400
THE FIRE ANT WARS
damage crops and they do attack young quail, but they also consume boll weevils.43 This
ambiguous ant is celebrated on the first Saturday of October each year in Marshall, Texas,
when the city puts on a Fire Ant Festival. Participants are encouraged to vent their aggression toward the insects by tearing apart a stuffed ant. But they also choose a Miss Fire
Ant in a beauty pageant, compete in a fire ant mating call contest, and judge a chili cookoff in which each pot must contain at least one fire ant. The environmentalist and singersongwriter Bill Oliver has captured this new image in song:
You who live in cities, you who live in neighborhoods
Fire ants, it’s understood, may come and take their stand
The males that die in nuptials, the queens that come in multiples,
The fire ant, combustible, is hard to understand.44
The combined tools of the history of science and environmental history, however, make
the story of the ants less hard to understand. Environmental history teaches the need to
pay attention to the natural world and the effects humans have on it. History of science
teaches the need to look at the social processes that are constitutive parts of scientific
thought and work. Put together, these techniques reveal intricate and important interconnections between nature and science. The biology of the fire ants mattered—and it was
misunderstood by both the USDA and its opponents: the ants were neither specially
adapted mutants nor invented bogeymen, but opportunists following the bulldozer across
the South. The social history of the competing groups mattered, too, for the fire ant wars
were not about Rachel Carson speaking truth to power but about the clash of two different
visions of nature, science, and the state.
The interaction of the humans and the fire ants mattered as well. The legitimacy of the
USDA control entomologists and their various opponents rested on this interaction, reliant
on a nature that did not always behave as predicted but instead responded to a combination
of its own rhythms and the actions of humans. Over the past three decades, historians of
science have shown how scientists gain and maintain cultural authority through rhetorical
techniques and political machinations. A focus on nature adds a new category of analysis
to this familiar repertoire: cultural authority depends, as well, on interactions with nature,
on making the material world perform in particular, specified ways. Historians of science
need ways to integrate the natural world into their accounts to make sense of this—and
other—aspects of science. Environmental history offers such tools, opening new paths in
the field that build on the hard-won victories of past generations and provide for even
fuller historical narratives.
43
W. L. Sterling, “Imported Fire Ant . . . May Wear a Grey Hat,” Texas Agricultural Progress, 1978, 24:19–
20. See also Charles Seabrook, “Some Farmers Sing Praises of Fire Ant: South American Insect Preys on a
Number of Crop Pests,” Atlanta Journal-Constitution, 12 Jan. 1988, p. A1; and Joe Murray, “If You Can’t Beat
’Em, Join ’Em: Raising Fire Ants for Fun and Profit?” ibid., 8 Oct. 1996, p. A13.
44
Bill Oliver and the Otter Space Band, “Queen Invicta (Fireant Invincible),” on Have to Have a Habitat
(Texas Deck Music, BMI, 1995), lyrics available at “Bill Oliver’s Environmental Songbook,” url: http://
www.geocities.com/mrhabitat/songbook.html, accessed 2 Mar. 2002. See also Suzanne Gamboa, “Fire Ant Festival Offers a Chance for Revenge: 45,000 Expected at Marshall’s Weekend Party,” Dallas Morning News, 3 Oct.
1988; and Richard Conniff, “You Never Know What the Fire Ant Is Going to Do Next,” Smithsonian, July 1990,
pp. 48–57.
Item–2.6
Frank Luntz Memorandum to Bush White House, 2002
This is an excerpt from the leaked “Straight Talk” Memorandum written by GOP consultant Frank Luntz [ he
who invented The Contract With America in 1994]. The Memo’s ideas have apparently been utilized by
Republican congressional and executive leaders since approximately the end of 2002. These pages 131-146
constitute the wide-ranging memorandum’s section on environment. The photographed original pages are
at http://www.ewg.org/briefings/luntzmemo/The rest of the Memo would be intriguing to see as well!
THE ENVIRONMENT:
A CLEANER SAFER, HEALTHIER AMERICA
The core of the Democrat argument depends on the belief that “Washington
regulations” represent the best way to preserve the environment. We don’t
agree.
1) First, assure your audience that you are committed to “preserving and protecting” the
environment, but that “it can be done more wisely and effectively.” (Absolutely do
not raise economic arguments first.) Tell them a personal story from your life.
Since many Americans believe Republicans do not care about the environment,
you will never convince people to accept your ideas until you confront this
suspicion and put it to rest.
2) Provide specific examples of federal bureaucrats failing to meet their responsibilities
to protect the environment. Do not attack the principles behind existing legislation.
Focus instead on the way it is enforced or carried out, and use rhetorical questions.
3) Your plan must be put in terms of the future, not the past or present. We are carrying
forward a legacy, yes, but we are trying to make things even better for the future.
The environment is an area in which people expect progress, and when they do not
see progress being made, they get frustrated.
4) The three words Americans are looking for in an environmental policy, they are
“safer,” “cleaner,” and “healthier.” Two words that summarize what Americans
are expecting from regulators and agencies are “accountability” and
“responsibility.”
5) Stay away from “risk assessment,” “cost-benefit analysis,” and the other traditional
environmental terminology used by industry and corporations. Your constituents
don’t know what those terms mean and they will then assume that you are probusiness.
6) If you must use the economic argument, stress that you are seeking “a fair balance”
between the environment and the economy. Be prepared to specify and quantify
the jobs lost because of needless, excessive or redundant regulations.
7) Describe the limited role for Washington. We must thoroughly review the
environmental regulations already in place, decide which ones we still need,
identify those which no longer make sense, and make sure we don’t add any
unnecessary rules. Washington should disclose the expected cost of current and all
new environmental regulations. The public has a right to know.
8) Emphasize common sense. In making regulatory decisions, we should use best
estimates and realistic assumptions, not the worst-case scenarios advanced by
environmental extremists.
The Luntz Research Companies – Straight Talk
Page 131
OVERVIEW
The environment is probably the single issue on which Republicans in general –
and President Bush in particular – are most vulnerable. A caricature has taken hold in
the public imagination: Republicans seemingly in the pockets of corporate fat cats who
rub their hands together and chuckle maniacally as they plot to pollute America for fun
and profit. And only the Democrats and their goodhearted friends from Washington can
save America from these sinister companies drooling at the prospect of strip mining
every picturesque mountain range, drilling for oil on every white sand beach, and clear
cutting every green forest.
The fundamental problem for Republicans when it comes to the environment is
that whatever you say is viewed through the prism of suspicion. As with education,
Social Security and so many other issues, the Democrats have been expert at
constructing a narrative in which Republicans and conservatives are the bad guys. And
if Americans swallow that story, then whatever comes later is mere detail.
Indeed, it can be helpful to think of environmental (and other) issues in terms of
“story.” A compelling story, even if factually inaccurate, can be more emotionally
compelling than a dry recitation of the truth. The popular movie Erin Brockovich
presented a courageous woman fighting against an impersonal corporation that
poisoned the public with cancerous chemicals with impunity. The Wall Street Journal and
investigative journalist Michael Fumento later conclusively demonstrated that the reallife Erin Brockovich’s legal case was full of holes and contradictions, but no matter: the
public had it’s emotional story, and no number of exposes will ever come close to
matching the power of that story.
As with those other issues, the first (and most important) step to neutralizing the
problem and eventually bringing people around to your point of view on environmental
issues is to convince them of your sincerity and concern. You may come up with the
most subtle, nuanced, brilliant, ironclad and indisputable argument as to why President
Bush’s approach to the “arsenic in the water” issue was responsible and correct, but it
will fall on deaf ears unless the public is willing to give you the benefit of the doubt at
the beginning.
I don’t have to remind you how often Republicans are depicted as cold, uncaring,
ruthless, even downright anti-social. These attacks appeal to resentment and fear.
Because they are primarily emotional in nature, they cannot be blunted with logic or
statistics. Therefore, any discussion of the environment has to be grounded in an effort
to reassure a skeptical public that you care about the environment for its own sake –
that your intentions are strictly honorable. Otherwise, all the rational arguments in the
world won’t be enough for you to prevail.
The good news, amidst all this doom and gloom, is that once you are able to
establish your environmental bona fides, once you show people that your heart is in the
right place and make them comfortable listening to what you have to say, then the
conservative, free market approach to the environment actually has the potential to be
quite popular.
The Luntz Research Companies – Straight Talk
Page 132
ON THE MATTER OF ARSENIC IN THE WATER
I start here because this is where we almost snatched defeat from the jaws of
victory. As you know, the incoming Bush administration’s judicious, prudent approach
to the numerous “midnight” regulations imposed by Bill Clinton on his way out the
door ended up backfiring in a big way. The “arsenic in the water” imbroglio of spring
2001 was the biggest public relations misfire of President Bush’s first year in office.
What was the chaos all about? The Bush Administration’s suspension of
Clinton’s last-minute executive order toughening the federal standard for arsenic in
drinking water from 50 parts per billion to 10 parts per billion.
The Democrats’ message came through loud and clear: Bush and the Republicans
put business interests above public health. The fact that the new administration was
only delaying a change that hadn’t been considered urgent enough for the Clinton
administration to do anything about it for eight long years got lost in the hubbub.
Indeed, the story was not that Bush was delaying a hastily imposed regulation,
but rather that, he was actively putting in more arsenic in the water. Republicans
pointing out that the Democrats were distorting the facts…and pointed this out…and
pointed this out…and pointed this out again…but the facts didn’t matter. The hit had
been scored, the political damage done, and that was the first chink in President Bush’s
approval ratings.
Again, let me emphasize: The facts were beside the point. Facts only become
relevant when the public is receptive and willing to listen to them. The decision to
suspend the regulation wouldn’t be troubling to someone educated on the issue, to
someone who knew that there already was arsenic in the water and the only thing being
debated was whether it was necessary to reduce it, and by how much. But Americans
didn’t know that. They heard “arsenic in the water,” and it was news to them. No wonder
that they reacted in horror.
How do we avoid such debacles in the future?
It’s all in how you frame your argument, and the order in which you present
your facts. Don’t allow yourself to become bogged down in minutiae when you should
be presenting the big picture. You should have the details at hand to back you up, to be
sure, but don’t be afraid to begin by painting in broad strokes.
A more effective, step-by-step approach to educating the public about the arsenic
issue would have been:
The Luntz Research Companies – Straight Talk
Page 133
THE “ARSENIC” COMMUNICATION LADDER
1.
Every American has the right to clean, healthy and safe drinking water.
2.
Republicans are dedicated to the continued improvement of our nation’s water
supply, and to ensuring that Americans have the best quality water available.
We all drink water. We all want it safe and clean.
3.
Today, there are minute, tiny amounts of arsenic in our drinking water. It has
always been this way. It will always be this way.
4.
Based on sound science, the government’s standard is that there should be no
more than 50 parts of arsenic per billion.
5.
In the last weeks before Bill Clinton left office, he issued an executive order
reducing the standard from 50 to 10 parts of arsenic per billion –but he did not
act for eight years because it was neither a priority nor a health risk.
6.
Before this new standard takes effect, we would like to make sure that it is
necessary to make this change. The decision was reached quickly, without
public debate, and without evidence that this change will make our water
appreciably safer.
Points one and two above may sound like boilerplate to you, but they are the
most important element in arguing about this and similar issues. Talking about the
environment is no different than explaining your position on taxes. Social Security or the
war on terrorism: Begin with your fundamental, guiding principles, explain where you
are coming from and what your ultimate ends and intentions are, and only then delve
into the particulars of your case.
Although President Bush ultimately adopted the Clinton administration
standard of 10 parts per billion in November 2001, the arsenic issue should be a lesson to
all Republicans. Remember, the burden of proof is on you to prove your good intentions
and your sincerity. Reassure the public on those counts, and only then will they see the
Democrats’ demagoguery for what it is.
Note: The day President Bush made his subsequent announcement accepting the new
regulation, the Democrats immediately began harping on the Clinton standard, claiming that 10
parts per billion was too high, and that the new arsenic standard should actually be changed to
three parts per billion.
No one wants polluted air and water, yet that’s what a majority of Americans
think Republicans stand for. When we talk about “rolling back regulations” involving
the environment, we are sending a signal American don’t support. If we suggest that the
choice is between environmental protection and deregulation, the environment will win
consistently.
The Luntz Research Companies – Straight Talk
Page 134
GETTING BACK TO NATURE
“I’m usually the one running around the house shutting off lights,
making sure the water is turned off. Still, when I think
environmentalist – I’m sorry if someone is offended by this – I think
of somebody chaining themselves to a tree.”
- Pittsburgh woman
The most popular federal programs today are those that preserve and protect our
natural heritage through conservation of public lands and waters through parks and
open spaces.
Americans love the outdoors. Becoming a champion of national parks and
forests – and protecting American culture and history with sound policies for carrying
these legacies to the next generations of Americans – is the best way to show our citizens
that Republicans can be FOR something positive on the environment. Being AGAINST
existing laws or regulations has been translated into being AGAINST the environment.
Preserving parks and open spaces is a winner because it doesn’t need to be
explained to everyday Americans. We need more issues like this. No matter how many
experts know that Superfund law or the Clean Water Act or Clean Air rules don’t work
as they should, the public doesn’t perceive them as broken. There is not a public outcry
to fix them.
That is not to say that it is unreasonable to try to “update” Superfund or to
“modernize” the Clean Water Act. But you can’t do that kind of heavy lifting until you
win the public’s trust on the basics: protecting and maintaining what we have. [Avoid
terms and concepts like “providing stewardship” (passive and unclear) in favor of
“preserving and protecting” (active and clear).] And the number one hot button to most
voters is water quality – including both infrastructure and pollution protection.
People don’t understand the technicalities of environmental law – but they do
understand the benefits of conservation of water, land, and open spaces. Republicans
need to focus more on the benefits the public expects and spend less time debating
process, which the public really doesn’t care to follow.
Public support for a trust fund for conservation of land, water and open spaces is
both widespread and deep. We should not pass up the opportunity to talk about an
“open space conservation trust fund” as a better response to chatter about “urban
sprawl.” Remember, few want the growth and development of their community
determined by Washington.
But don’t reject a federal role altogether. The environment knows no state or
local boundaries and the public demands at least some federal guidelines. However,
people don’t want an intrusive federal bureaucracy dictating local enforcement. They
want the federal government to take care of the “big picture” and leave the details to the
states and localities.
The Luntz Research Companies – Straight Talk
Page 135
UPDATING WASHINGTON’S RULES ON THE ENVIRONMENT
“Do you want some pencil-pushing Washington bureaucrat to tell you what to do
and how to do it, someone who gets all his knowledge of the Everglades, the Rocky
Mountains, and every environmental issue from the pages of National Geographic?”
While we may have lost the environmental communications battles in the past,
the war is not over. When we explain our environmental proposals correctly, more than
70 percent of the nation prefers our positions to those of our opponents. Let me
emphasize, however, that when our environmental policies are explained ineffectively,
not only do we risk losing the swing vote, but our suburban female base could abandon
us as well.
The Democratic message could best be characterized as the “Protection Racket”
of politics – protection of the environment, protection of education, protection of
workers, protection of health care, protection of Social Security, protection of Medicare
and Medicaid. “Protecting” those programs has become the Democratic mantra, and
their ability to remain on message in all of their communications has reaped great
rewards. And who could disagree? Having those things given to you and protected is an
offer that’s difficult to refuse.
As Republicans, we have the moral and rhetorical high ground when we talk
about values, like freedom, responsibility, and accountability. The same values apply to
the environment as to other examples of government-knows-best solutions. But when
we talk about “rolling back regulations” involving the environment, we are sending a
signal Americans don’t support. If we suggest that the choice is between environmental
protection and deregulation, the environment will win consistently.
You cannot allow yourself to be labeled “anti-environment” simply because you
are opposed to the current regulatory configuration (your opponents will almost
certainly try to label you that way). The public does not approve of the current
regulatory process, and Americans certainly don’t want an increased regulatory burden,
but they will put a higher priority on environmental protection and public health than
on cutting regulations. Even Republicans prioritize protecting the environment.
That is why you must explain how it is possible to pursue a common sense or
sensible environmental policy that “preserves all the gains of the past two decades”
without going to extremes, and allows for new science technologies to carry us even
further. Give citizens the idea that progress is being frustrated by over-reaching
government, and you will hit a very strong strain in the American psyche.
If there must be regulation, Americans are most comfortable with local oversight.
Participants respond favorably to proposals that included communities and more
common sense approaches. This is important. We can uphold the environmental
priorities of the American people, while at the same time moving control to the state and
local level and removing needless bureaucratic meddling. People believe they know
better than do nameless, faceless federal bureaucrats how to preserve and protect their
local environment.
The Luntz Research Companies – Straight Talk
Page 136
WINNING THE GLOBAL WARMING DEBATE – AN OVERVIEW
Please keep in mind the following communication recommendations as you address
global warming in general, particularly as Democrats and opinion leaders attack President
Bush over Kyoto.
1. The scientific debate remains open. Voters believe that there is no consensus about
global warming within the scientific community. Should the public come to believe that
the scientific issues are settled, their views about global warming will change
accordingly. Therefore, you need to continue to make the lack of scientific certainty a
primary issue in the debate, and defer to scientists and other experts in the field.
2. Americans want a free and open discussion. Even though Democrats savaged
President Bush for formally withdrawing from the Kyoto accord, the truth is that none
of them would have actually voted to ratify the treaty, and they were all glad to see it
die. Emphasize the importance of “acting only with all the facts in hand” and “making
the right decision, not the quick decisions.”
3. Technology and innovation are the key in arguments on both sides. Global warming
alarmists use American superiority in technology and innovation quite effectively in
responding to accusations that international agreements such as the Kyoto accord could
cost the United States billions. Rather than condemning corporate America the way most
environmentalists have done in the past, they attack their us for lacking faith in our
collective ability to meet any economic challenges presented by environmental changes
we make. This should be our argument. We need to emphasize how voluntary
innovation and experimentation are preferable to bureaucratic or international
intervention and regulation.
4. The “international fairness” issue is the emotional home run. Given the chance,
Americans will demand that all nations be part of any international global warming
treaty. Nations such as China, Mexico and India would have to sign such an agreement
for the majority of Americans to support it.
5. The economic argument should be secondary. Many of you will want to focus on the
higher prices and lost jobs that would result from complying with Kyoto, but you can do
better. Yes, when put in specific terms (food and fuel prices, for example) on an
individual-by-individual basis, this argument does resonate. Yes, the fact that Kyoto
would hurt the economic well being of seniors and the poor is of particular concern.
However, the economic argument is less effective than each of the arguments listed
above.
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The most important principle in any discussion of global warming is your
commitment to sound science. Americans unanimously believe all environmental rules
and regulations should be based on sound science and common sense. Similarly, our
confidence in the ability of science and technology to solve our nation’s ills is second to
none. Both perceptions will work in your favor if properly cultivated.
The scientific debate is closing [against us] but not yet closed. There is still a
window of opportunity to challenge the science. Americans believe that all the strange
weather that was associated with El Nino had something to do with global warming,
and there is little you can do to convince them otherwise. However, only a handful of
people believes the science of global warming is a closed question. Most Americans
want more information so that they can make an informed decision. It is our job to
provide that information.
LANGUAGE THAT WORKS
“We must not rush to judgment before all the facts are in. We need to ask more
questions. We deserve more answers. And until we learn more, we should not commit
America to any international document that handcuffs us either now or into the future.”
You need to be even more active in recruiting experts who are sympathetic to
your view, and much more active in making them part of your message. People are
willing to trust scientists, engineers, and other leading research professionals, and less
willing to trust politicians. If you wish to challenge the prevailing wisdom about global
warming, it is more effective to have professionals making the case than politicians.
When you do enter the fray, keep your message short, concise, and refer to the source of
the material you use. Back up your points with a limited number of facts and figures –
but then explain why they matter.
One final science note: Americans have little trust in arguments relying on shortterm data, such as mentioning that year X was the hottest on record or year Y was the
coldest on record, etc. Even 15 years of satellite records or modeling that shows rising
sea levels is not enough.
WORDS THAT WORK
“Scientists can extrapolate all kinds of things from today’s data, but that doesn’t tell us
anything about tomorrow’s world. You can’t look back a million years and say that
proves that we’re heating the globe now hotter than it’s ever been. After all, just 20
years ago scientists were worried about a new Ice Age.”
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The Kyoto camp is divided into two categories: America Besters and Calamity
Janes. The American Besters, led by Sen. John Kerry, will argue that we have the most
innovative, technically advanced business community that can easily adapt to stricter
anti-global warming regulations. The Calamity Janes, on the other hand, use scare tactics
to convince audiences that global warming will lead to doom and gloom. Both have one
common argument: The future will be a better place if we take the necessary actions
today.
Let me warn you that both arguments do resonate with some people when they
make the case that short-term pain will yield long-term gain. Americans are still forward
thinking and are likely to respond favorably to sacrifice if they can see a light at the end
of the tunnel.
That’s what you must offer. The fact that people take a long-term view gives you
an opportunity to construct a “zero-regrets” argument. For example, you should argue
that America should invest more in research and development to find ways to burn fuel
more efficiently.
The traditional economic approach taken by Republicans to oppose many
environmental rules and regulations simply does not move Democrats and has only
limited appeal among independents. If you must raise economic concerns, the best way
to reach swing voters is to take a practical, down-to-earth approach. Talk about the real
world day-to-day effects that proposed environmental remedies would have on their
everyday lives.
1.
Put the costs of regulations in human terms. Stringent environmental regulations
hit the most vulnerable among us – the elderly, the poor and those on fixed
incomes – the hardest. Say it. Taxes on fuel and other products will be highly
regressive, and new regulations will contribute to higher prices for necessities
like food and utilities.
LANGUAGE THAT WORKS
“Unnecessary environmental regulations hurt moms and dads, grandmas and grandpas.
They hurt citizens on fixed incomes. They take an enormous swipe at miners, loggers,
truckers, farmers – anyone who has any work in energy intensive professions. They
mean less income for families struggling to survive and educate their children.”
This is the most effective when you actually describe how specific activities and
items will cost more, from “pumping gas to turning on the light.” Remember, Americans
already think they are an overtaxed people. Treaties such as Kyoto would have been yet
another tax on an already overburdened population.
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2.
Job losses. Every year excessive environmental regulations cost the United States
thousand of jobs. Independent and swing voters can really relate to concrete
effects such as this. The prospect of losing so many jobs may upset Americans
more than any hypothetical effects of global warming, but you have to be careful
to use specifics – generalities will be rejected. Talk about the professions and
industries that will be most hurt.
3.
Major lifestyle changes. Talking generically about higher taxes and great costs
will not persuade those who are truly undecided of the dangers of the Kyoto
protocol and similar regulation regimes. But they will listen if you point out that
the unintended consequences of such well-intended regulations may make
American life less safe, not more safe.
Let me emphasize that while the economic arguments may receive the most
applause at the Chamber of Commerce meeting, it is the least effective approach among
the people you most want to reach – average Americans. The assertion that there are
better ways to address environmental threats such as global warming is a superior
argument.
Nothing scores better than a “We’re Number One” theme and in the arena of
scientific breakthroughs, we really are Number One. Therefore, if supporters of drastic
environmental regulations tell you that “we can do anything we set our sights on,” and
that “American corporations and industry can meet any challenge,” immediately agree,
but then add the following:
WORDS THAT WORK
“Don’t confuse my opposition to excessive regulation with a desire for inaction. We
don’t need an international treaty with rules and regulations that will handcuff the
American economy or our ability to make our environment cleaner, safer, and healthier.
“One the contrary, what we need to do is to put American creativity and American
innovation to work. It’s time to call on the leaders of science and technology to find
new forms of fuel that burn cleaner and more efficiently. We need to invest in research
and development that will restore polluted air and water to pristine conditions – just as
we have done for Lake Erie. We should take an active role in helping other nations save
their forests and build safer energy sources.”
That puts you back on offense, but don’t stop there. Proponents will criticize
America for causing a majority of the world’s pollution and being the biggest
contributor to the greenhouse effect. Excuse the pun, but this is garbage. We do so much
more and pollute so much less than anyone else. You must set the record straight.
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WORDS THAT WORK
“As a nation, we should be proud. We produce a majority of the world’s food, a large
majority of the world’s technology, and virtually all of the world’s health and scientific
breakthroughs, yet we produce a fraction of the world’s pollution. America has the best
scientists, the best engineers, the best researchers, and the best technicians in the world.
That is why we must assume a leadership role in conservation and preservation, but we
cannot do it alone. Every nation must do its part.”
We should dominate the technology and innovation argument, but you will still
fall short unless you emphasize the voluntary actions and environmental progress
already underway. Remember, Democrats have nothing to offer but more bureaucrats
and bureaucratic solutions to the challenges we face. They are simply attempting to
involve bureaucrats in areas in which the private sector is already making tremendous
progress.
MORE WORDS THAT WORK
“In the last 20 years, America has made significant progress in environmental research
without any foreign treaty. These breakthroughs have already been put to work to help
the global environment, and we didn’t need any foreign body to tell you how to do it.”
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CONCLUSION: REDEFINING LABELS
The mainstream, centrist American now sees the excesses of so-called
“environmentalists,” and prefers the label “conservationist” instead. These individuals
are still clearly “pro-environment,” but not at the expense of everything else in life. They
are the kind of voters who consider the environment as one of a variety of factors in
their decision for whom to vote, but not the overriding factor. If we win these people
over, we win the debate. It’s that simple. The rest is commentary.
Most people now recognize that some self-described environmentalists are – in
their words – “extremists.” Thanks to some pretty bizarre behavior, there are some
negative connotations that attach themselves to those who promote environmentalism.
In particular, Greenpeace and Ralph Nader have an extremist image that turns off many
voters.
We have spent the last seven years examining how best to communicate
complicated ideas and controversial subjects. The terminology in the upcoming
environmental debate needs refinement, starting with “global warming” and ending
with “environmentalism.” It’s time for us to start talking about “climate change”
instead of global warming and “conservation” instead of preservation.
1.
“Climate change” is less frightening than “global warming.” As one focus group
participant noted, climate change “sounds like you’re going from Pittsburgh to
Fort Lauderdale.” While global warming has catastrophic connotations attached
to it, climate change suggests a more controllable and less emotional challenge.
2.
We should be “conservationists,” not “preservationists” or “environmentalists.”
The term “conservationist” has far more positive connotations than either of the
other two terms. It conveys a moderate, reasoned, common sense position
between replenishing the earth’s natural resources and the human need to make
use of those resources.
“Environmentalist” can have the connotation of extremism to many Americans,
particularly those outside the Northeast. “Preservationist” suggests someone
who believes nature should remain untouched – preserving exactly what we
have. By comparison, Americans see a “conservationist” as someone who
believes we should use our natural resources efficiently and replenish what we
can when we can.
Republicans can redefine the environmental debate and make inroads on what
conventional wisdom calls a traditionally Democratic constituency, because we offer
better policy choices to the Washington-run bureaucracy. But we have to get the talk
right to capture that segment of the public that is willing to give President Bush the
benefit of the doubt on the environment – and they are out there waiting.
The words on these pages are tested – they work! But the ideas behind them –
translated into actions – will speak louder than words. Once Republicans show the
public that we are for something positive, not just against existing environmental
regulations, we can start to close that credibility gap.
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THE NINE PRINCIPLES OF ENVIRONMENTAL POLICY AND GLOBAL
WARMING
1.
Sound science must be our guide in choosing which problems to tackle and how
to approach them.
2.
We should identify the real risks to human health and safety before we decide
how to address a problem.
3.
Punishing real polluters must be a higher priority than creating more rules and
regulations.
4.
Local problems require local solutions. National standards may be necessary, but
enforcement should be local. People in the community have the greatest
incentive to keep their local environment clean.
5.
Technology, innovation and discovery should play a major role in preserving a
clean and healthy environment.
6.
Environmental policies should take into account the economic impact on senior
citizens, the poor and those with fixed incomes.
7.
The best solutions to environmental challenges are common sense solutions.
8.
All nations must share responsibility for the environment. No nation should be
excluded from doing its part to improve climate conditions and the health and
safety of its population.
9.
All changes in national environmental policy should be fully discussed in an
open forum. Laws, agreements and treaties should not be signed without public
input.
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PROTECTING OUR ENVIRONMENT
(Democrats in their own words)
One of the most important responsibilities of government and elected officials is
the protection of our air, our water, and our land. Making rules against polluting our
natural environment and investments in restoring it are part of a Democratic tradition
that extends back almost 100 years. From the founding of our national parks early in
this century, to the landmark laws of the past three decades, one of America’s greatest
achievements has been conserving and cleaning our natural environment. This is one
area where citizen initiative and government regulation of corporate behavior has been
a demonstrable success.
Americans are proud of the achievements that have been made – and understand
the urgency of the work that still needs to be done. Yet Republicans have opposed
efforts to reform the massive government subsidies for new logging roads that will
benefit private logging companies in national forests. They have blocked efforts to
charge market prices for range-land grazing on federal land. And they even refused to
re-authorize the “crown jewel” of American environmental laws – the Endangered
Species Act.
When the law that restored the bald eagle to vibrant populations can’t be
preserved, we must call the Republicans what they are – anti-environment. Similarly,
Republican support for corporate subsidies for polluters represents hypocrisy at its
worst. It’s bad enough that conservatives condone the exploitation of the environment.
It’s even worse when they want the taxpayers to pick up the tab.
Simply stated, we want to protect our natural resources for our children and
future generations. The Republicans want to protect the deep pockets of those who seek
to exploit our national parks and forests and waterways.
Democratic environmental legislation of past years made tremendous gains
toward restoring our pristine natural resources. We no longer have rivers catching fire
from pollution. Once dead rivers, lakes and estuaries are now pulsating with life.
People are returning to these areas to swim, fish and enjoy the great outdoors as wildlife
thrives. Republicans want to remove the stiff fines and penalties levied on polluters.
We won’t let them.
Today our skies are cleaner. In virtually every city in this country, the air is
cleaner than it was 25 years ago. Smog is down. Carbon monoxide in the air is down.
Parents can now breathe easier knowing their children are breathing cleaner air.
Yet today, there are those who want to turn back the clock on people who want
to fish in the rivers and drink safe, clean water from the tap… on parents who want to be
sure the park down the block is safe for their children to play in… on people who want
to breathe clean, healthy air. We won’t let them. Democrats will continue to fight
Republicans and their corporate allies that would risk our children’s long-term health,
the air they breathe and the water they drink for the sake of short-term profits.
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A CLEANER, SAFER, HEALTHIER FUTURE
(A Republican speech about the air we breath)
It is possible to achieve better protection of human health and the environment by
regulating smarter, but you can’t regulate smarter unless we all demand it from the
regulators in Washington. The fact is, businesses – big and small – spend too much time
trying to comply with too much paperwork and too many regulations from too many
Washington bureaucrats.
If we are to move forward to a safer, cleaner, healthier future, we have to change
the way Washington regulates. States and communities should be allowed – even
encouraged – to take a greater role in environmental regulations and oversight. After
all, who knows better about what each community needs, a local leader or a Washington
bureaucrat? There are national environmental standards that must be set, and the
federal government must make that determination, but federal resources must be
targeted and allocated more effectively, and that’s why we must have greater
involvement by state and local officials.
But the improvements we need in Washington go beyond state and local
involvement. We need to plan for the future, not just for today. Science and technology
are constantly changing and improving. Too often, the federal government doesn’t keep
up with these improvements, and old regulations become out-dated and don’t do the
best job they can. That is why I want to see four immediate changes to the way we
regulate the environment:
1.
We must do a thorough review of the environmental regulations already in
place, decide what works and what doesn’t, and then make sure we don’t add
any more unnecessary or unproductive rules. There should be a mandatory
requirement that obligates the federal government to determine whether current
regulations should be reformed, consolidated or discontinued.
2.
Washington should also be required to disclose the expected cost of current and
all new environmental regulations. The public has a right to know what these
laws and regulations cost.
3.
In making regulatory decisions involving the environment, the federal
government should use best estimates and realistic assumptions rather than
worst-case scenarios advanced by environmental extremists.
4.
New regulations should be based on the most advanced and credible scientific
knowledge available.
Finally, to promote the accountability and responsibility of federal regulatory
agency decisions, the entire process should be open to public scrutiny. It’s time to
restore common sense to environmental laws. This is how we move forward to a safer,
cleaner, healthier future.
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THE VALUE OF GREEN AND OPEN SPACES
(A Republican speech about protecting the earth)
William Shakespeare wrote, “One touch of nature makes the whole world kin.” I’m joining
you today to share a little bit of my personal family history and why I think we all as Americans
share a common interest in protecting our common legacy – the environment.
We should do well to take stock of what it is that has made this country great – and what
has made us truly unique as Americans – so that we carry the finest traditions of America into the
new century. Our rugged individualism, sense of adventure, and pioneer spirit are all embodied in
our collective love of the outdoors. I want to join you today in a pledge to preserve and protect the
special places God gave us.
Our public lands and waters, and all the private habitats and nature preserves, remind me
of times spent with my family – as a child, discovering a love of the outdoors my parents and
grandparents instilled in me; as a young adult, taking walks in the park with a special someone;
and now as a parent, teaching my own kids to identify species of animals and plants; having a
picnic, or just throwing or kicking a ball around in an open field. I want those places to still exist
when my children grow older and teach their own kids the values of our family for another
generation.
But if we fail to act now, many of those special places won’t be preserved, and what is lost
or destroyed cannot be replaced. We must take responsibility and show accountability for
protecting these sacred places for generations to come.
More than half of us plan our annual vacations around some aspect of the outdoors. But in
the new century, as we focus more than ever on the future and confront rapid change – we need to
keep touch with those places that remind us of those defining ideas and principles that have made
America the great pioneer nation.
Whether we want a place to get away for some solitude … or to vacation with our loves
ones … or whether we just enjoy the peace of mind that comes with knowing that those places will
still exist for future generations …we Americans see a value in conserving places vastly different
than our own backyards. North Dakota does not look like North Carolina, nor does New Mexico
look like New Jersey. America’s diversity accounts for a great measure of her beauty.
Whether or not you believe as I do that conserving the environment is its own reward, there
is no doubt that green and open spaces will benefit all of us in the long run.
Man’s discoveries from nature may provide the cure for disease like cancer. Today,
programs that take place in our national, state and local parks and forest provide a place for
children to learn new skills and values like teamwork and respect for nature, which helps prevent
juvenile crime and delinquency. Having buffers of open spaces contributes to property values and
the economic stability of neighborhoods.
Washington is rarely known for its display of common sense. But just this once, why not do
what makes the most sense to most Americans and support policies for parks and open spaces that
conserve nature and the environment as a legacy for the next generation of Americans? If we work
together, there is no reason we can’t make these areas cleaner, safer, and healthier for us all.
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83
My Words to
Victor Frankenstein
Above the Village of
Chamounix
– Performing Transgender Rage
*
BY SUSAN STRYKER
ESSAY
T
he following work
is a textual adaptation of a performance
piece originally presented at “Rage Across
the Disciplines,” an arts, humanities, and
social sciences conference held June 10-12,
1993 at California State University, San
Marcos. The interdisciplinary nature of the
conference, its theme, and the organizers’
call for both performances and academic
papers inspired me to be creative in my
mode of presenting a topic then much on
my mind. As a member of Transgender Nation – a militantly queer, direct action
transsexual advocacy group – I was at the
time involved in organizing a disruption
and protest at the American Psychiatric Association’s 1993 annual meeting in San
Francisco. A good deal of the discussion at
our planning meetings concerned how to
harness the intense emotions emanating
from transsexual experience – especially
rage – and mobilize them into effective political actions. I was intrigued by the
prospect of critically examining this rage in
84
a more academic setting through an idiosyncratic application of the concept of gender performativity. My idea was to perform
self-consciously a queer gender rather than
simply talk about it, thus embodying and
enacting the concept simultaneously under
discussion. I wanted the formal structure of
the work to express a transgender aesthetic
by replicating our abrupt, often jarring
transitions between genders – challenging
generic classification with the forms of my
words, just as my transsexuality challenges
the conventions of legitimate gender and
my performance in the conference room
challenged the boundaries of acceptable
academic discourse. During the performance, I stood at the podium wearing genderfuck drag-combat boots, threadbare
Levi 501’s over a black lace body suit, a
shredded Transgender Nation T-shirt with
the neck and sleeves cut out, a pink triangle
quartz crystal pendant, grunge metal jewelry, arid a six-inch long marlin hook dangling around my neck on a length of heavy
stainless steel chain. I decorated the set by
draping my black leather hiker jacket over
my chair at the panelists’ table. The jacket
had handcuffs on the left shoulder, rainbow
freedom rings on the right side lacings, and
Queer Nation-style stickers reading SEX
CHANGE, DYKE, and FUCK YOUR
TRANSPHOBIA plastered on the back.
MONOLOGUE
The transsexual body is an unnatural body.
It is the product of medical science. It is a
technological construction. It is flesh torn
apart and sewn together again in a shape
other than that in which it was born. In
these circumstances, I find a deep affinity
between myself as a transsexual woman and
the monster in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein.
Like the monster, I am too often perceived
as less than fully human due to the means
of my embodiment; like the monster’s as
well, my exclusion from human community
fuels a deep and abiding rage in me that I,
KVINDER, KØN & FORSKNING NR. 3-4 2011
like the monster, direct against the conditions in which I must struggle to exist.
I am not the first to link Frankenstein’s
monster and the transsexual body. Mary
Daly makes the connection explicit by discussing transsexuality in “Boundary Violation and the Frankenstein Phenomenon,”
in which she characterizes transsexuals as
the agents of a “necrophilic invasion’’ of
female space (69-72). Janice Raymond,
who acknowledges Daly as a formative influence, is less direct when she says that
“the problem of transsexuality would best
be served by morally mandating it out of
existence,” but in this statement she nevertheless echoes Victor Frankenstein’s feelings toward the monster: “Begone, vile insect, or rather, stay, that I may trample you
to dust. You reproach me with your creation” (Raymond 178, Shelley 95). It is a
commonplace of literary criticism to note
that Frankenstein’s monster is his own
dark, romantic double, the alien Other he
constructs and upon which he projects all
he cannot accept in himself; indeed,
Frankenstein calls the monster ‘‘my own
vampire, my own spirit set loose from the
grave” (Shelley 74). Might I suggest that
Daly, Raymond and others of their ilk similarly construct the transsexual as their own
particular golem?1
The attribution of monstrosity remains a
palpable characteristic of most lesbian and
gay representations of transsexuality, displaying in unnerving detail the anxious,
fearful underside of the current cultural
fascination with transgenderism.2 Because
transsexuality more than any other transgender practice or identity represents the
prospect of destabilizing the foundational
presupposition of fixed genders upon
which a politics of personal identity depends, people who have invested their aspirations for social justice in identitarian
movements say things about us out of sheer
panic that, if said of other minorities,
would see print only in the most hate-riddled, white supremacist, Christian fascist
MY WORDS TO VICTOR FRANKENSTEIN
rags. To quote extensively from one letter
to the editor of a popular San Francisco
gay/lesbian periodical:
I consider transsexualism to be a fraud, and
the participants in it … perverted. The transsexual [claims] he/she needs to change his/
her body in order to be his/her “true self.”
Because this “true self’ requires another
physical form in which to manifest itself, it
must therefore war with nature. One cannot
change one’s gender. What occurs is a cleverly manipulated exterior: what has been done
is mutation. What exists beneath the deformed surface is the same person who was
there prior to the deformity. People who
break or deform their bodies [act] out the
sick farce of a deluded, patriarchal approach
to nature, alienated from true being.
Referring by name to one particular person, self-identified as a transsexual lesbian,
whom she had heard speak in a public forum at the San Francisco Women’s Building, the letter-writer went on to say:
When an estrogenated man with breasts loves
a woman, that is not lesbianism, that is mutilated perversion. [This individual] is not a
threat to the lesbian community, he is an outrage to us. He is not a lesbian, he is a mutant
man, a self-made freak, a deformity, an insult.
He deserves a slap in the face. After that, he
deserves to have his body and mind made
well again.3
When such beings as these tell me I war
with nature, I find no more reason to
mourn my opposition to them – or to the
order they claim to represent – than
Frankenstein’s monster felt in its enmity to
the human race. I do not fall from the
grace of their company – I roar gleefully
away from it like a Harley-straddling, dildopacking leatherdyke from hell.
The stigmatization fostered by this sort
of pejorative labelling is not without consequence. Such words have the power to de-
85
stroy transsexual lives. On January 5, 1993,
a 22-year-old pre-operative transsexual
woman from Seattle’s queer community,
Filisa Vistima, wrote in her journal, “I wish
I was anatomically ‘normal’ so I could go
swimming. … But no, I’m a mutant,
Frankenstein’s monster.” Two months later
Filisa Vistima committed suicide. What
drove her to such despair was the exclusion
she experienced in Seattle’s queer community, some members of which opposed
Filisa’s participation because of her transsexuality – even though she identified as
and lived as a bisexual woman. The Lesbian
Resource Center where she served as a volunteer conducted a survey of its constituency to determine whether it should stop
offering services to male-to-female transsexuals. Filisa did the data entry for tabulating the survey results; she didn’t have to
imagine how people felt about her kind.
The Seattle Bisexual Women’s Network announced that if it admitted transsexuals the
SBWN would no longer be a women’s organization. “‘I’m sure,” one member said
in reference to the inclusion of bisexual
transsexual women, “the boys can take care
of themselves.” Filisa Vistima was not a
boy, and she found it impossible to take
care of herself. Even in death she found no
support from the community in which she
claimed membership. “Why didn’t Filisa
commit herself for psychiatric care?” asked
a columnist in the Seattle Gay News. “Why
didn’t Filisa demand her civil rights?” In
this case, not only did the angry villagers
hound their monster to the edge of town,
they reproached her for being vulnerable to
the torches. Did Filisa Vistima commit suicide, or did the queer community of Seattle
kill her?4
I want to lay claim to the dark power of
my monstrous identity without using it as a
weapon against others or being wounded
by it myself. I will say this as bluntly as I
know how: I am a transsexual, and therefore I am a monster. Just as the words
“dyke,” “fag,” “queer,” “slut,” and
86
“whore” have been reclaimed, respectively,
by lesbians and gay men, by anti-assimilationist sexual minorities, by women who
pursue erotic pleasure, and by sex industry
workers, words like ‘‘creature,” ‘‘monster,”
and ‘‘unnatural” need to be reclaimed by
the transgendered. By embracing and accepting them, even piling one on top of another, we may dispel their ability to harm
us. A creature, after all, in the dominant
tradition of Western European culture, is
nothing other than a created being, a made
thing. The affront you humans take at being called a “creature” results from the
threat the term poses to your status as
“lords of creation,” beings elevated above
mere material existence. As in the case of
being called “it,” being called a “creature”
suggests the lack or loss of a superior personhood. I find no shame, however, in acknowledging my egalitarian relationship
with non-human material Being; everything emerges from the same matrix of possibilities. “Monster” is derived from the
Latin noun monstrum, “divine portent,” itself formed on the root of the verb monere,
“to warn.” It came to refer to living things
of anomalous shape or structure, or to fabulous creatures like the sphinx who were
composed of strikingly incongruous parts,
because the ancients considered the appearance of such beings to be a sign of some
impending supernatural event. Monsters,
like angels, functioned as messengers and
heralds of the extraordinary. They served to
announce impending revelation, saying, in
effect, “Pay attention; something of profound importance is happening.”
Hearken unto me, fellow creatures. I
who have dwelt in a form unmatched with
my desire, I whose flesh has become an assemblage of incongruous anatomical parts,
I who achieve the similitude of a natural
body only through an unnatural process, I
offer you this warning: the Nature you bedevil me with is a lie. Do not trust it to
protect you from what I represent, for it is
a fabrication that cloaks the groundlessness
KVINDER, KØN & FORSKNING NR. 3-4 2011
of the privilege you seek to maintain for
yourself at my expense. You are as constructed as me; the same anarchic womb
has birthed us both. I call upon you to investigate your nature as I have been compelled to confront mine. I challenge you to
risk abjection and flourish as well as have I.
Heed my words, and you may well discover
the seams and sutures in yourself.
CRITICISM
In answer to the question he poses in the
title of his recent essay, “What is a Monster? (According to Frankenstein),” Peter
Brooks suggests that, whatever else a monster might be, it “may also be that which
eludes gender definition” (229). Brooks
reads Mary Shelley’s story of an overreaching scientist and his troublesome creation
as an early dissent from the nineteenth-century realist literary tradition, which had not
yet attained dominance as a narrative form.
He understands Frankenstein to unfold
textually through a narrative strategy generated by tension between a visually oriented epistemology, on the one hand, and another approach to knowing the truth of
bodies that privileges verbal linguisticality,
on the other (199-200). Knowing by seeing and knowing by speaking/hearing are
gendered, respectively, as masculine and
feminine in the critical framework within
which Brooks operates. Considered in this
context, Shelley’s text is informed by – and
critiques from a woman’s point of view –
the contemporary reordering of knowledge
brought about by the increasingly compelling truth claims of Enlightenment
science. The monster problematizes gender partly through its failure as a viable
subject in the visual field; though referred
to as “he,” it thus offers a feminine, and
potentially feminist, resistance to definition
by a phallicized scopophilia. The monster
accomplishes this resistance by mastering
language in order to claim a position as
a speaking subject and enact verbally the
MY WORDS TO VICTOR FRANKENSTEIN
very subjectivity denied it in the specular
realm.5
Transsexual monstrosity, however, along
with its affect, transgender rage, can never
claim quite so secure a means of resistance
because of the inability of language to represent the transgendered subject’s movement over time between stably gendered
positions in a linguistic structure. Our situation effectively reverses the one encountered by Frankenstein’s monster. Unlike
the monster, we often successfully cite the
culture’s visual norms of gendered embodiment. This citation becomes a subversive
resistance when, through a provisional use
of language, we verbally declare the unnaturalness of our claim to the subject positions we nevertheless occupy.6
The prospect of a monster with a life and
will of its own is a principal source of horror for Frankenstein. The scientist has taken up his project with a specific goal in
mind – nothing less than the intent to subject nature completely to his power. He
finds a means to accomplish his desires
through modern science, whose devotees,
it seems to him, “have acquired new and almost unlimited powers; they can command
the thunders of heaven, mimic the earthquake, and even mock the invisible world
with its shadows. ... More, far more, will I
achieve,” thought Frankenstein. “I will pioneer a new way, explore unknown powers,
and unfold to the world the deepest mysteries of creation” (Shelley 47). The fruit
of his efforts is not, however, what
Frankenstein anticipated. The rapture he
expected to experience at the awakening of
his creature turned immediately to dread.
“I saw the dull yellow eyes of the creature
open. … His jaws opened, and he muttered
some inarticulate sounds, while a grin
wrinkled his cheeks. He might have spoken, but I did not hear; one hand was
stretched out, seemingly to detain me, but
I escaped” (Shelley 56, 57). The monster
escapes, too, and parts company with its
maker for a number of years. In the inter-
87
im, it learns something of its situation in
the world, and rather than bless its creator,
the monster curses him. The very success of
Mary Shelley’s scientist in his self-appointed task thus paradoxically proves its futility:
rather than demonstrate Frankenstein’s
power over materiality, the newly enlivened
body of the creature attests to its maker’s
failure to attain the mastery he sought.
Frankenstein cannot control the mind and
feelings of the monster he makes. It exceeds and refutes his purposes.
My own experience as a transsexual parallels the monster’s in this regard. The
consciousness shaped by the transsexual
body is no more the creation of the science
that refigures its flesh than the monster’s
mind is the creation of Frankenstein. The
agenda that produced hormonal and surgical sex reassignment techniques is no less
pretentious, and no more noble, than
Frankenstein’s. Heroic doctors still endeavor to triumph over nature. The scientific
discourse that produced sex reassignment
techniques is inseparable from the pursuit
of immortality through the perfection of
the body, the fantasy of total mastery
through the transcendence of an absolute
limit, and the hubristic desire to create life
itself.7 Its genealogy emerges from a metaphysical quest older than modern science,
and its cultural politics are aligned with a
deeply conservative attempt to stabilize
gendered identity in service of the naturalized heterosexual order.
None of this, however, precludes medically constructed transsexual bodies from
being viable sites of subjectivity. Nor does
it guarantee the compliance of subjects thus
embodied with the agenda that resulted in
a transsexual means of embodiment. As we
rise up from the operating tables of our rebirth, we transsexuals are something more,
and something other, than the creatures
our makers intended us to be. Though
medical techniques for sex reassignment are
capable of crafting bodies that satisfy the visual and morphological criteria that gener-
88
ate naturalness as their effect, engaging
with those very techniques produces a subjective experience that belies the naturalistic
effect biomedical technology can achieve.
Transsexual embodiment, like the embodiment of the monster, places its subject in
an unassimilable, antagonistic, queer relationship to a Nature in which it must nevertheless exist.
Frankenstein’s monster articulates its unnatural situation within the natural world
with far more sophistication in Shelley’s
novel than might be expected by those familiar only with the version played by Boris
Karloff in James Whale’s classic films from
the 1930s. Film critic Vito Russo suggests
that Whale’s interpretation of the monster
was influenced by the fact that the director
was a closeted gay man at the time he made
his Frankenstein films. The pathos he imparted to his monster derived from the experience of his own hidden sexual identity.8
Monstrous and unnatural in the eyes of the
world, but seeking only the love of his own
kind and the acceptance of human society,
Whale’s creature externalizes and renders
visible the nightmarish loneliness and alienation that the closet can breed. But this is
not the monster who speaks to me so potently of my own situation as an openly
transsexual being. I emulate instead Mary
Shelley’s literary monster, who is quick-witted, agile, strong, and eloquent.
In the novel, the creature flees Frankenstein’s laboratory and hides in the solitude
of the Alps, where, by stealthy observation
of the people it happens to meet, it gradually acquires a knowledge of language, literature, and the conventions of European society. At first it knows little of its own condition. “I had never yet seen a being resembling me, or who claimed any intercourse
with me,” the monster notes. “What did
this mean? Who was I? What was I?
Whence did I come? What was my destination? These questions continually recurred,
but I was unable to solve them” (Shelley
116, 130). Then, in the pocket of the jack-
KVINDER, KØN & FORSKNING NR. 3-4 2011
et it took as it fled the laboratory, the monster finds Victor Frankenstein’s journal, and
learns the particulars of its creation. “I sickened as I read,” the monster says. “Increase
of knowledge only discovered to me what a
wretched outcast I was” (Shelley 124,
125).
Upon learning its history and experiencing the rejection of all to whom it reached
out for companionship, the creature’s life
takes a dark turn. “My feelings were those
of rage and revenge,” the monster declares.
“I, like the arch-fiend, bore a hell within
me” (130). It would have been happy to
destroy all of Nature, but it settles, finally,
on a more expedient plan to murder systematically all those whom Victor Frankenstein loves. Once Frankenstein realizes
that his own abandoned creation is responsible for the deaths of those most dear to
him, he retreats in remorse to a mountain
village above his native Geneva to ponder
his complicity in the crimes the monster
has committed. While hiking on the glaciers in the shadow of Mont Blanc, above
the village of Chamounix, Frankenstein
spies a familiar figure approaching him
across the ice. Of course, it is the monster,
who demands an audience with its maker.
Frankenstein agrees, and the two retire together to a mountaineer’s cabin. There, in
a monologue that occupies nearly a quarter
of the novel, the monster tells Frankenstein
the tale of its creation from its own point of
view, explaining to him how it became so
enraged.
These are my words to Victor Frankenstein, above the village of Chamounix. Like
the monster, I could speak of my earliest
memories, and how I became aware of my
difference from everyone around me. I can
describe how I acquired a monstrous identity by taking on the label “transsexual” to
name parts of myself that I could not otherwise explain. I, too, have discovered the
journals of the men who made my body,
and who have made the bodies of creatures
like me since the 1930s. I know in intimate
MY WORDS TO VICTOR FRANKENSTEIN
detail the history of this recent medical intervention into the enactment of transgendered subjectivity; science seeks to contain
and colonize the radical threat posed by a
particular transgender strategy of resistance
to the coerciveness of gender: physical alteration of the genitals.9 I live daily with
the consequences of medicine’s definition
of my identity as an emotional disorder.
Through the filter of this official pathologization, the sounds that come out of my
mouth can be summarily dismissed as the
confused ranting of a diseased mind.
Like the monster, the longer I live in
these conditions, the more rage I harbor.
Rage colors me as it presses in through the
pores of my skin, soaking in until it becomes the blood that courses through my
beating heart. It is a rage bred by the necessity of existing in external circumstances
that work against my survival. But there is
yet another rage within.
JOURNAL (FEBRUARY 18, 1993)
Kim sat between my spread legs, her back
to me, her tailbone on the edge of the
table. Her left hand gripped my thigh so
hard the bruises are still there a week later.
Sweating and bellowing, she pushed one
last time and the baby finally came.
Through my lover’s back, against the skin
of my own belly, I felt a child move out of
another woman’s body and into the world.
Strangers’ hands snatched it away to suction the sticky green meconium from its
airways. “It’s a girl,” somebody said. Paul,
I think. Why, just then, did a jumble of
dark, unsolicited feelings emerge wordlessly
from some quiet back corner of my mind?
This moment of miracles was not the time
to deal with them. I pushed them back,
knowing they were too strong to avoid for
long.
After three days we were all exhausted,
slightly disappointed that complications
had forced us to go to Kaiser instead of
having the birth at home. I wonder what
89
the hospital staff thought of our little tribe
swarming all over the delivery room:
Stephanie, the midwife; Paul, the baby’s father; Kim’s sister Gwen; my son Wilson
and me; and the two other women who
make up our family, Anne and Heather.
And of course Kim and the baby. She
named her Denali, after the mountain in
Alaska. I don’t think the medical folks had
a clue as to how we all considered ourselves
to be related to each other. When the labor
first began we all took turns shifting between various supporting roles, but as the
ordeal progressed we settled into a more
stable pattern. I found myself acting as
birth coach. Hour after hour, through
dozens of sets of contractions, I focused
everything on Kim, helping her stay in control of her emotions as she gave herself over
to this inexorable process, holding on to
her eyes with mine to keep the pain from
throwing her out of her body, breathing
every breath with her, being a companion.
I participated, step by increasingly intimate
step, in the ritual transformation of consciousness surrounding her daughter’s
birth. Birth rituals work to prepare the self
for a profound opening, an opening as psychic as it is corporeal. Kim’s body brought
this ritual process to a dramatic resolution
for her, culminating in a visceral, cathartic
experience. But my body left me hanging. I
had gone on a journey to the point at
which my companion had to go on alone,
and I needed to finish my trip for myself.
To conclude the birth ritual I had participated in, I needed to move something in
me as profound as a whole human life.
I floated home from the hospital, filled
with a vital energy that wouldn’t discharge.
I puttered about until I was alone: my ex
had come over for Wilson; Kim and Denali
were still at the hospital with Paul;
Stephanie had gone, and everyone else was
out for a much-needed walk. Finally, in the
solitude of my home, I burst apart like a
wet paper bag and spilled the emotional
contents of my life through the hands I
90
cupped like a sieve over my face. For days,
as I had accompanied my partner on her
journey, I had been progressively opening
myself and preparing to let go of whatever
was deepest within. Now everything in me
flowed out, moving up from inside and out
through my throat, my mouth because
these things could never pass between the
lips of my cunt. I knew the darkness I had
glimpsed earlier would reemerge, but I had
vast oceans of feeling to experience before
that came up again.
Simple joy in the presence of new life
came bubbling out first, wave after wave of
it. I was so incredibly happy. I was so in
love with Kim, had so much admiration for
her strength and courage. I felt pride and
excitement about the queer family we were
building with Wilson, Anne, Heather,
Denali, and whatever babies would follow.
We’ve all tasted an exhilarating possibility
in communal living and these nurturing,
bonded kinships for which we have no adequate names. We joke about pioneering on
a reverse frontier: venturing into the heart
of civilization itself to reclaim biological reproduction from heterosexism and free it
for our own uses. We’re fierce; in a world
of “traditional family values,” we need to
be.
Sometimes, though, I still mourn the
passing of old, more familiar ways. It
wasn’t too long ago that my ex and I were
married, woman and man. That love had
been genuine, and the grief over its loss
real. I had always wanted intimacy with
women more than intimacy with men, and
that wanting had always felt queer to me.
She needed it to appear straight. The shape
of my flesh was a barrier that estranged me
from my desire. Like a body without a
mouth, I was starving in the midst of plenty. I would not let myself starve, even if
what it took to open myself for a deep connectedness cut off the deepest connections
I actually had. So I abandoned one life and
built this new one. The fact that she and I
have begun getting along again, after so
KVINDER, KØN & FORSKNING NR. 3-4 2011
much strife between us, makes the bitterness of our separation somewhat sweet. On
the day of the birth, this past loss was present even in its partial recovery; held up beside the newfound fullness in my life, it
evoked a poignant, hopeful sadness that inundated me.
Frustration and anger soon welled up in
abundance. In spite of all I’d accomplished,
my identity still felt so tenuous. Every circumstance of life seemed to conspire
against me in one vast, composite act of invalidation and erasure. In the body I was
born with, I had been invisible as the person I considered myself to be; I had been
invisible as a queer while the form of my
body made my desires look straight. Now,
as a dyke I am invisible among women; as a
transsexual, I am invisible among dykes. As
the partner of a new mother, I am often invisible as a transsexual, a woman, and a lesbian – I’ve lost track of the friends and acquaintances these past nine months who’ve
asked me if I was the father. It shows so
dramatically how much they simply don’t
get what I’m doing with my body. The
high price of whatever visible, intelligible,
self-representation I have achieved makes
the continuing experience of invisibility
maddeningly difficult to bear.
The collective assumptions of the naturalized order soon overwhelmed me. Nature exerts such a hegemonic oppression.
Suddenly I felt lost and scared, lonely and
confused. How did that little Mormon boy
from Oklahoma I used to be grow up to be
a transsexual leatherdyke in San Francisco
with a Berkeley Ph.D.? Keeping my bearings on such a long and strange trip seemed
a ludicrous proposition. Home was so far
gone behind me it was gone forever, and
there was no place to rest. Battered by
heavy emotions, a little dazed, I felt the inner walls that protect me dissolve to leave
me vulnerable to all that could harm me. I
cried, and abandoned myself to abject despair over what gender had done to me.
91
MY WORDS TO VICTOR FRANKENSTEIN
Everything’s fucked up beyond all recognition.
This hurts too much to go on. I came as close today as I’ll ever come to giving birth – literally.
My body can’t do that; I can’t even bleed without a wound, and yet I claim to be a woman.
How? Why have I always felt that way? I’m
such a goddamned freak. I can never be a
woman like other women, but I could never be
a man. Maybe there really is no place for me in
all creation. I’m so tired of this ceaseless movement. I do war with nature. I am alienated
from Being. I’m a self-mutilated deformity, a
pervert, a mutant, trapped in monstrous flesh.
God, I never wanted to be trapped again. I’ve
destroyed myself. I’m falling into darkness, I
am falling apart.
I enter the realm of my dreams. I am underwater, swimming upwards. It is dark. I see a
shimmering light above me. I break through the
plane of the water’s surface with my lungs
bursting. I suck for air – and find only more
water. My lungs are full of water. Inside and
out I am surrounded by it. Why am I not dead
if there is no difference between me and what I
am in? There is another surface above me and I
swim frantically towards it. I see a shimmering
light. I break the plane of the water’s surface
over and over and over again. This water annihilates me. I cannot be, and yet – an excruciating impossibility – I am. I will do anything
not to be here.
I will swim forever.
I will die for eternity.
I will learn to breathe water.
I will become the water.
If I cannot change my situation I will
change myself.
In this act of magical transformation
I recognize myself again.
I am groundless and boundless movement.
I am a furious flow.
I am one with the darkness and the wet.
And I am enraged.
Here at last is the chaos I held at bay.
Here at last is my strength.
I am not the water –
I am the wave,
and rage
is the force that moves me.
Rage
gives me back my body
as its own fluid medium.
Rage
punches a hole in water
around which I coalesce
to allow the flow to come through me.
Rage
constitutes me in my primal form.
It throws my head back
pulls my lips back over my teeth
opens my throat
and rears me up to howl:
: and no sound
dilutes
the pure quality of my rage.
No sound
exists
in this place without language
my rage is a silent raving.
Rage
throws me back at last
into this mundane reality
in this transfigured flesh
that aligns me with the power of my Being.
In birthing my rage,
my rage has rebirthed me.
THEORY
A formal disjunction seems particularly appropriate at this moment because the affect
I seek to examine critically, what I’ve
termed “transgender rage,” emerges from
the interstices of discursive practices and at
92
the collapse of generic categories. The rage
itself is generated by the subject’s situation
in a field governed by the unstable but indissoluble relationship between language
and materiality, a situation in which language organizes and brings into signification matter that simultaneously eludes definitive representation and demands its own
perpetual rearticulation in symbolic terms.
Within this dynamic field the subject must
constantly police the boundary constructed
by its own founding in order to maintain
the fictions of “inside” and “outside”
against a regime of signification/materialization whose intrinsic instability produces
the rupture of subjective boundaries as one
of its regular features. The affect of rage as
I seek to define it is located at the margin
of subjectivity and the limit of signification.
It originates in recognition of the fact that
the “outsideness” of a materiality that perpetually violates the foreclosure of subjective space within a symbolic order is also
necessarily “inside” the subject as grounds
for the materialization of its body and the
formation of its bodily ego.
This primary rage becomes specifically
transgender rage when the inability to foreclose the subject occurs through a failure to
satisfy norms of gendered embodiment.
Transgender rage is the subjective experience of being compelled to transgress what
Judith Butler has referred to as the highly
gendered regulatory schemata that determine the viability of bodies, of being compelled to enter a “domain of abjected bodies, a field of deformation” that in its unlivability encompasses and constitutes the
realm of legitimate subjectivity (16). Transgender rage is a queer fury, an emotional
response to conditions in which it becomes
imperative to take up, for the sake of one’s
own continued survival as a subject, a set of
practices that precipitates one’s exclusion
from a naturalized order of existence that
seeks to maintain itself as the only possible
basis for being a subject. However, by mobilizing gendered identities and rendering
KVINDER, KØN & FORSKNING NR. 3-4 2011
them provisional, open to strategic development and occupation, this rage enables
the establishment of subjects in new
modes, regulated by different codes of intelligibility. Transgender rage furnishes a
means for disidentification with compulsorily assigned subject positions. It makes the
transition from one gendered subject position to another possible by using the impossibility of complete subjective foreclosure to organize an outside force as an inside drive, and vice versa. Through the operation of rage, the stigma itself becomes
the source of transformative power.10
I want to stop and theorize at this particular moment in the text because in the
lived moment of being thrown back from a
state of abjection in the aftermath of my
lover’s daughter’s birth, I immediately began telling myself a story to explain my experience. I started theorizing, using all the
conceptual tools my education had put at
my disposal. Other true stories of those
events could undoubtedly be told, but upon my return I knew for a fact what lit the
fuse to my rage in the hospital delivery
room. It was the non-consensuality of the
baby’s gendering. You see, I told myself,
wiping snot off my face with a shirt sleeve,
bodies are rendered meaningful only
through some culturally and historically
specific mode of grasping their physicality
that transforms the flesh into a useful artifact. Gendering is the initial step in this
transformation, inseparable from the
process of forming an identity by means of
which we’re fitted to a system of exchange
in a heterosexual economy. Authority seizes
upon specific material qualities of the flesh,
particularly the genitals, as outward indication of future reproductive potential, constructs this flesh as a sign, and reads it to
enculturate the body. Gender attribution is
compulsory; it codes and deploys our bodies in ways that materially affect us, yet we
choose neither our marks nor the meanings
they carry.11 This was the act accomplished
between the beginning and the end of that
93
MY WORDS TO VICTOR FRANKENSTEIN
short sentence in the delivery room: “It’s a
girl.” This was the act that recalled all the
anguish of my own struggles with gender.
But this was also the act that enjoined my
complicity in the non-consensual gendering
of another. A gendering violence is the
founding condition of human subjectivity;
having a gender is the tribal tattoo that
makes one’s personhood cognizable. I
stood for a moment between the pains of
two violations, the mark of gender and the
unlivability of its absence. Could I say
which one was worse? Or could I only say
which one I felt could best be survived?
How can finding one’s self prostrate and
powerless in the presence of the Law of the
Father not produce an unutterable rage!
What difference does it make if the father
in this instance was a pierced, tatooed, purple-haired punk fag anarchist who helped
his dyke friend get pregnant? Phallogocentric language, not its particular speaker, is
the scalpel that defines our flesh. I defy that
Law in my refusal to abide by its original
decree of my gender. Though I cannot escape its power, I can move through its
medium. Perhaps if I move furiously
enough, I can deform it in my passing to
leave a trace of my rage. I can embrace it
with a vengeance to rename myself, declare
my transsexuality, and gain access to the
means of my legible reinscription. Though
I may not hold the stylus myself, I can
move beneath it for my own deep self-sustaining pleasures.
To encounter the transsexual body, to
apprehend a transgendered consciousness
articulating itself, is to risk a revelation of
the constructedness of the natural order.
Confronting the implications of this constructedness can summon up all the violation, loss, and separation inflicted by the
gendering process that sustains the illusion
of naturalness. My transsexual body literalizes this abstract violence. As the bearers of
this disquieting news, we transsexuals often
suffer for the pain of others, but we do not
willingly abide the rage of others directed
against us. And we do have something else
to say, if you will but listen to the monsters:
the possibility of meaningful agency and action exists, even within fields of domination
that bring about the universal cultural rape
of all flesh. Be forewarned, however, that
taking up this task will remake you in the
process.
By speaking as a monster in my personal
voice, by using the dark, watery images of
Romanticism and lapsing occasionally into
its brooding cadences and grandiose postures, I employ the same literary techniques
Mary Shelley used to elicit sympathy for
her scientist’s creation. Like that creature, I
assert my worth as a monster in spite of the
conditions my monstrosity requires me to
face, and redefine a life worth living. I have
asked the Miltonic questions Shelley poses
in the epigraph of her novel: “Did I request
thee, Maker, from my clay to mould me
man? Did I solicit thee from darkness to
promote me?” With one voice, her monster
and I answer “no” without debasing ourselves, for we have done the hard work of
constituting ourselves on our own terms,
against the natural order. Though we
forego the privilege of naturalness, we are
not deterred, for we ally ourselves instead
with the chaos and blackness from which
Nature itself spills forth.12
If this is your path, as it is mine, let me
offer whatever solace you may find in this
monstrous benediction: May you discover
the enlivening power of darkness within
yourself. May it nourish your rage. May
your rage inform your actions, and your actions transform you as you struggle to
transform your world.
NOTES
* Essayet er genoptrykt med tilladelse fra forfatteren og Duke University Press. Det blev først trykt i
GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies, 1994/
1: 237-254. Senere er det bl.a. blevet optrykt i
Stryker, Susan og Whittle, Stephen (2006): The
94
Transgender Studies Reader. Routledge, New York:
244-256. Teksten bringes her uden ændringer
bortset fra enkelte ortografiske rettelser. (red.)
1. While this comment is intended as a monster’s
disdainful dismissal, it nevertheless alludes to a
substantial debate on the status of transgender
practices and identities in lesbian feminism. H. S.
Hubin, in a sociology dissertation in progress at
Brandeis University, argues that the pronounced
demographic upsurge in the female-to-male transsexual population during the 1970s and 1980s is
directly related to the ascendancy within lesbianism of a “cultural feminism” that disparaged and
marginalized practices smacking of an unliberated
“gender inversion” model of homosexuality – especially the butch-femme roles associated with
working-class lesbian bar culture. Cultural feminism thus consolidated a lesbian-feminist alliance
with heterosexual feminism on a middle-class basis
by capitulating to dominant ideologies of gender.
The same suppression of transgender aspects of
lesbian practice, I would add, simultaneously
raised the spectre of male-to-female transsexual
lesbians as a particular threat to the stability and
purity of nontranssexual lesbian-feminist identity.
See Echols for the broader context of this debate,
and Raymond for the most vehement example of
the anti-transgender position.
2. The current meaning of the term “transgender”
is a matter of some debate. The word was originally coined as a noun in the 1970s by people who
resisted categorization as either transvestites or
transsexuals, and who used the term to describe
their own identity. Unlike transsexuals but like
transvestites, transgenders do not seek surgical alteration of their bodies but do habitually wear
clothing that represents a gender other than the
one to which they were assigned at birth. Unlike
transvestites but like transsexuals, however, transgenders alter the vestimentary coding of their gender only episodically or primarily for sexual gratification; rather, they consistently and publicly express an ongoing commitment to their claimed
gender identities through the same visual representational strategies used by others to signify that
gender. The logic underlying this terminology reflects the widespread tendency to construe “gender” as the socio-cultural manifestation of a material “sex.” Thus, while transsexuals express their
identities through a physical change of embodiment, transgenders do so through a non-corporeal
change in public gender expression that is nevertheless more complex than a simple change of
clothes.
KVINDER, KØN & FORSKNING NR. 3-4 2011
This essay uses “transgender” in a more recent
sense, however, than its original one. That is, I use
it here as an umbrella term that refers to all identities or practices that cross over, cut across, move
between, or otherwise queer socially constructed
sex/gender boundaries. The term includes, but is
not limited to, transsexuality, heterosexual transvestism, gay drag, butch lesbianism, and such nonEuropean identities as the Native American berdache or the Indian Hijra. Like “queer,” “transgender” may also be used as a verb or an adjective. In
this essay, transsexuality is considered to be a culturally and historically specific transgender practice/identity through which a transgendered subject enters into a relationship with medical, psychotherapeutic, and juridical institutions in order to
gain access to certain hormonal and surgical technologies for enacting and embodying itself.
3. Mikuteit 3-4, heavily edited for brevity and clarity.
4. The preceding paragraph draws extensively on,
and sometimes paraphrases, O’Hartigan and
Kahler.
5. See Laqueur 1-7, for a brief discussion of the
Enlightenment’s effect on constructions of gender.
Feminist interpretations of Frankenstein to which
Brooks responds include Gilbert and Gubar, Jacobus, and Homans.
6. Openly transsexual speech similarly subverts the
logic behind a remark by Bloom, 218,
that “a beautiful ‘monster,’ or even a passable one,
would not have been a monster.”
7. Billings and Urban, 269, document especially
well the medical attitude toward transsexual surgery as one of technical mastery of the body;
Irvine, 259, suggests how transsexuality fits into
the development of scientific sexology, though
caution is advised in uncritically accepting the interpretation of transsexual experience she presents
in this chapter. Meyer, in spite of some extremely
transphobic concluding comments, offers a good
account of the medicalization of transgender identities; for a transsexual perspective on the scientific
agenda behind sex reassignment techniques, see
Stone, especially the section entitled “All of reality
in late capitalist culture lusts to become an image
for its own security” (280-304).
8. Russo 49-50: “Homosexual parallels in Frankenstein (1931) and Bride of Frankenstein (1935)
arose from a vision both films had of the monster
as an antisocial figure in the same way that gay
people were ‘things’ that should not have happened. In both films the homosexuality of director
James Whale may have been a force in the vision.”
9. In the absence of a reliable critical history of
MY WORDS TO VICTOR FRANKENSTEIN
transsexuality, it is best to turn to the standard
medical accounts themselves: see especially Benjamin, Green and Money, and Stoller. For overviews
of cross-cultural variation in the institutionalization
of sex/gender, see Williams, “Social Construtions/
Essential Characters: A Cross-Cultural Viewpoint,”
252-76; Shapiro 262-68. For accounts of particular institutionalizations of transgender practices
that employ surgical alteration of the genitals, see
Nanda; Roscoe. Adventurous readers curious
about contemporary non-transsexual genital alteration practices may contact E.N.I.G.M.A. (Erotic
Neoprimitive International Genital Modification
Association), SASE to LaFarge-werks, 2329 N.
Leavitt, Chicago, 1L 60647.
10. See Butler, “Introduction,” 4 and passim.
11. A substantial body of scholarship informs these
observations: Gayle Rubin provides a productive
starting point for developing not only a political
economy of sex, but of gendered subjectivity; on
gender recruitment and attribution, see Kessler and
McKenna; on gender as a system of marks that naturalizes sociological groups based on supposedly
shared material similarities, I have been influenced
by some ideas on race in Guillaumin and by Wittig.
12 Although I mean “chaos” here in its general
sense, it is interesting to speculate about the potential application of scientific chaos theory to
model the emergence of stable structures of gendered identities out of the unstable matrix of material attributes, and on the production of proliferating gender identities from a relatively simple set
of gendering procedures.
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Susan Stryker
Associate Professor of Gender and Women’s
Studies
Director of the Institute for LGBT Studies
University of Arizona