A Genealogy of Ecological Rhetoric: Heraclitus, Bacon, Darwin and Huxley Jared Grogan Wayne State University
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Wayne State University Wayne State University Dissertations 1-1-2014 A Genealogy Of Ecological Rhetoric: Heraclitus, Bacon, Darwin And Huxley Jared Grogan Wayne State University, Follow this and additional works at: http://digitalcommons.wayne.edu/oa_dissertations Part of the Ecology and Evolutionary Biology Commons, Other Philosophy Commons, and the Rhetoric Commons Recommended Citation Grogan, Jared, "A Genealogy Of Ecological Rhetoric: Heraclitus, Bacon, Darwin And Huxley" (2014). Wayne State University Dissertations. Paper 1048. This Open Access Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by DigitalCommons@WayneState. It has been accepted for inclusion in Wayne State University Dissertations by an authorized administrator of DigitalCommons@WayneState. A GENEALOGY OF ECOLOGICAL RHETORIC: HERACLITUS, BACON, DARWIN AND HUXLEY by JARED GROGAN DISSERTATION Submitted to the Graduate School of Wayne State University, Detroit, Michigan in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY 2014 MAJOR: ENGLISH Approved by: Advisor Date ii © COPYRIGHT BY JARED GROGAN 2014 All Rights Reserved iii DEDICATION To Anna and Jack ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Thanks first to Jeff Pruchnic for advising with wisdom, patience and wit in many generous conversations about the many sides of rhetoric. These were always exciting and challenged me to take up more pressing intersections in the field with a sophistication and eloquence that few can muster. As I forayed back into Grad-school somewhat ‘late in the game,’ thanks moreover for helping me find confidence and slay a guilty conscience during a drawn-out writing process. With comments like “Jared, I only care about the future,” and much constructive feedback, you helped turn the monstrously- meticulous and the rowdier arguments of a few botched drafts into a small plot of land worth building on. I also owe a tremendous debt in gratitude to Gwen Gorzelsky, whose mix of compassion and expertise is unparalleled, and had it not been directed at me, I may not have finished course-work. I hope this kind of debt continues to grow. A huge thanks to Richard Marback for the breadth of knowledge brought to superb courses in rhetoric, and for helping me shrug off more than a few bad ideas. I am also very thankful to Julie Klein for the countless times I was given timely support for my teaching and scholarship, to Frances Ranney for extending her teachings to recent years and recent interests, and to Ellen Barton for her unwavering work as wonderful chair, and for spearheading the great program at Wayne State. Thanks also to Tom Trimble, Latoya Faulk, Adrienne Jankins, and Nicole Varty for being remarkable colleagues and teachers to look up to, and to my peers (mostly) in rhetoric and composition for all their great conversations, collaborations and support as we moved through the program: Mike McGinnis, Kim Lacey, Wendy Duprey, Laura Estill, Jule Thomas, Andie Silva, Crystal Starkey, Jenn Niester- iii v Mika, Clay Walker, Andy Engel, Connor Shaw-Draves, Derek Risse, Whitney Hardin, Joe Paszek, Amy Metcalf, and the rest. Most of all thanks to my wife Jennifer Kathen-Grogan, my mom Pat Grogan, my dad(s) Jack Wetherall and Bud Yukich, and the rest of my family for their love and support. iv vi TABLE OF CONTENTS Dedication……………………….……………………………………………………………………. ii ............... Acknowledgements……………………………….………………………………………………………….. i . ii Chapter One Introduction: An Ecological Rhetoric Reclaimed ……….……………… ..1 : .. Chapter Two First Second Nature: Heraclitus and the Ecologist’s Challenge… .45 : . Chapter Three The Whole Strategy/To Stir the Earth: Bacon’s Ruse of Mastery and the Precepts of Rhetorical Invention …..80 : ... Chapter Four Darwin’s Ecology, Huxley’s Eth Artificial Selection nd Rhetoric … ……………… ………………….127 : ics: a .................................... ......... Chapter Five Conclusion: Towards a Responsible Ecological Rhetoric…………174 : Appendix A: Endnotes ……………….………………………………………………………… ……….208 .. References….……………..……………………………………………………………………………………215 Abstract……….……………….……………………………………………………….……………………….235 Autobiographical Statement…………..………………………………………………………………236 v 1 A Genealogy of Ecological Rhetoric: Heraclitus, Bacon, Darwin and Huxley Not all ‘ecological’ situations are equal, especially when they include members of the human species among their protagonists Isabelle Stengers, Cosmopolitics (32) I would suggest that one of the richest legacies of classical rhetorical traditions may be the relative ‘poverty’ of its theories – its resistance to setting fixed boundaries to the always evolving and incalculable complexity of rhetorical practice. Janet Atwill, “Rhetoric and Civic Virtue” (89) It’s an issue of dramatizing, conveying how unprecedented are the questions raised by what we call global warming or climatic disorder, and by all of the “inconvenient truths” whose common characteristic is, precisely, to “inconvenience” the perspectives put in place by this same “we” who pride ourselves on no longer believing in sorcery. Isabelle Stengers, “History through the Middle : Between Macro and Mesopolitics” Chapter One: An Ecological Rhetoric Reclaimed Humans have attained the magnitude of a geological force in terms of our ability to change Earth’s Environment and impact its climate system. NASA’s “Statement on how the Global Earth System is Changing” That we are living through an ecological ‘crisis’ that is no longer uncertain, and that our social and political responses to a changing climate are too slow, often reactionary, or contradictory, should confirm that the real dilemma is currently one of (or for) rhetoric. When we grapple with ‘ecological’ issues today, we take on a challenge that now has more to do with mobilizing socio-political and economic responses than with building further scientific proof, which has demonstrated without a reasonable doubt that global warming, ocean acidification and mass extinctions are occurring at a faster rate than it ever in human history, and that humans are now the major cause of any changes, positive or 2 negative, on the planet. To say, however, that ecological problems are rhetorical problems ready-made for the bread and butter work of rhetorician, philosopher, linguists, critical theorists, or sociologist working with language can still seem potentially ingratiating, or (more reasonably) rather inadequate in the face of unenviable challenges to keep up with rapidly changing science, policies and ‘development’ fueled by the advances of capital and technoscience we’ve long struggled to control. This dissertation is a response to a number of such challenges for (environmental) rhetoric in recent decades, and an investigation into a longer history of thought that intersects rhetoric and ecology, looking specifically at the rhetorical interventions of Heraclitus, Francis Bacon, Charles Darwin and T.H. Huxley as “bridge figures” in the history of rhetoric, science and ecological thought. The result is a historical work examining moments where rhetorical and ecological thought are connected in theory and practice and appropriate to a rhetorical tradition, and a genealogical work that foregrounds rhetorical theories and strategies (as discursive practices, performances and techniques) that are suitable to appropriate in rhetorical studies, teaching, and public work. Recent decades have proven that the rhetorical theories and practices in fields like (environmental) rhetoric, (environmental) science studies, or (eco) linguistics have made prominent contributions to better argumentation, improved inter-disciplinary research, more persuasive policies and successful advocacy in networks of science, politics, policy and activism. At the start, a dissertation offering a long and periodic history of ecological rhetoric may seem out of step this kind of work, especially as contemporary scholarship works avidly to keep pace with an ‘ecological situation’ rapidly expanding with changing exigencies. As the sciences grapple with our shifting relationships with nature we are witnessing previously unimaginable capacities to transform, speed up, slow down, or extinguish ecosystems, capacities which Thomas Princen captures in his analytic snapshot of new terminology that ripples through discourse communities of “scientists, business leaders, policy makers, and citizens alike” (5).1 Princen hones in on terms that have rapidly becomes commonplace and which reflect “many 3 people’s struggle to fathom fundamental shifts” -- terms like “surprise (which now has a technical definition), threshold (as in, ‘cross that threshold and your environment is completely different’), irreversibility (there is no going back, no recovery), nonsubstitutability (things like an atmosphere and water cannot be replaced), unprecedented rates of change (trends of the past are poor indicators of the present, let alone the future), and that all-purpose, ever-popular crisis (both fast and slow)” (5-6). The changes marked by such “fundamental shifts” are now only imperceptible to those beguiled enough (often by a sizable effort by industries and think tanks to persecute scientists and flummox the public) to miss the disappearance of the great pollinators, the devastating impact of migrating species like the mountain pine-beetle on North American forests, an international state of the ocean report that points to a “high risk” of entering a phase of unprecedented extinction, a 2007 IPCC report concluding that emissions growth must end by 2014 to avoid irreversible tipping