Lynn White Thesis,” Articulated in Its Most Well- Others, Had Earlier Suggested General Causal Links

A sample entry from the Encyclopedia of Religion and Nature (London & New York: Continuum, 2005) Edited by Bron Taylor © 2005 All Rights Reserved White, Lynn 1735 Taylor, J. Garth. “The Arctic Whale Cult in Labrador.” ford until becoming president of Mills College in 1943. In Études/Inuit/Studies 9:2 (1985), 121–32. 1958 he left Mills and until his retirement in 1974 was Turner, Edith. “American Eskimos Celebrate the Whale: Professor of History at the University of California at Los Structural Dichotomies and Spirit Identities among the Angeles, where he published Medieval Technology and Inupiat of Alaska.” The Drama Review 37:1 (1993), 98– Social Change (1962), demonstrating the profound effects 114. of technological innovation on medieval society, and See also: Animals; Biocentric Religion – A Call for; Medieval Technology and Religion: Collected Essays Cetacean Spirituality; Dolphins and New Age Religion; (1978). He continued to write and engage in intellectual Elephants; Hyenas; Nile Perch; Primate Spirituality; debate until his death in 1987. Radical Environmentalism (and adjacent, Rodney Coro- White’s work was informed by his view that not only nado and the Animal Liberation Front); Watson, Paul – were the Middle Ages the decisive period in the genesis of and the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society; Whales and Western technological supremacy but that the uniquely Japanese Culture. activist character of medieval Christianity provided the “psychic foundations” of modern technological inven- tiveness. White was hardly the first scholar to associate White, Lynn (1907–1987) – Thesis of Christianity with the birth of Western science and technology. Max Weber, Robert Forbes, and Ernst Benz, among The “Lynn White thesis,” articulated in its most well- others, had earlier suggested general causal links. How- known form in White’s “The Historical Roots of Our ever, White refined these arguments by pointing not only Ecologic Crisis,” (1967) was one of the most important to broad elements within the Judeo-Christian tradition interpretations of history to come out of medieval studies (the biblical mandate of Genesis 1:28 giving humankind in the second half of the twentieth century. Linking the “dominion over the Earth,” Christian compassion, the ethos of medieval Christianity to the emergence of what destruction of pagan animism, and the notion of matter as White called an “exploitative” attitude toward nature in inert material) but also to the specific characteristics of the Western world during the Middle Ages, White’s ideas Western monasticism as the fundamental cause of Western set off an extended debate about the role of religion in technological development. European monks, White creating and sustaining the West’s increasingly successful argued, believed work to be an essential form of worship control of the natural world through technology. The and embodied this assertion not only in the Rules govern- explosiveness of this debate, which still reverberates, was ing their lives but also in their practice of their faith. touched off by a confluence of factors: urgency in the late Monastic communities spearheaded new technological 1960s and 1970s over the newly discovered environ- techniques. Their cathedrals, in marked contrast to Byzan- mental crisis, White’s ability to reach an audience beyond tine churches, were typically equipped with mechanical that of professional historians, and the perception that clocks and organs, two of the most complex machines White’s ideas constituted an “attack” on Christianity known prior to the early modern period. Additional evi- which needed to be answered before additional damage dence that medieval Christianity sanctioned technological was done to the value of conventional religious beliefs. advance can be found in manuscript illuminations, among Alongside and to some extent at odds with this debate, them a ninth-century illustration of David’s army using a were the responses to White’s work by medieval historians rotary grindstone driven by a mechanical crank to sharpen and historians of technology. These historians, concerned their swords while the heathen enemy uses an old- with specific issues raised by historical evidence and fashioned whetstone, and a fifteenth-century illustration methods, found much to criticize about White’s argu- of a personification of the virtue of Temperance, standing ments, yet acknowledged White as the founder and shaper on a windmill, a bridle and bit in her mouth, spurs on her of the new field to which they themselves now belonged. feet, holding eyeglasses and wearing a clock on her head. White’s ideas, and the range of responses to them, consti- This kind of evidence, taken together with the record of tute an essential chapter in contemporary discussion medieval technological invention, White argued, demon- about the relationship of religion and attitudes toward strated that deep-seated values embedded within Latin nature. Christianity made the pursuit of technology appear mor- Lynn Townsend White, Jr. was the first American his- ally virtuous, leading ultimately not only to Western tech- torian seriously to examine the role of technological nological dominance but also to the continuing impact on invention in the Middle Ages. Although best known in the the environment of an aggressive stance toward nature. larger world for his ideas on the causes of contemporary White’s ideas on the relationship of Christian values, environmental problems, within the scholarly community technological dynamism and environmental decline can he was regarded first and foremost as a pioneer in the field only properly be understood within the context of his of medieval technology. After receiving his Ph.D. from overall approach to the study of history. White believed Harvard in 1938, he taught briefly at Princeton and Stan- that religion was perhaps the most important force 1736 White, Lynn shaping human societies and, furthermore, that religious Power Bratton, Paul Santmire, Roger D. Sorrel, and Clar- values often operated below the level of conscious expres- ence Glacken – White found an appreciation for nature on sion yet had direct effects on human behavior. As a its own terms and a sense that human use of nature and medievalist, he was inclined to see the Middle Ages as the animals should be governed by spiritual and moral obliga- wellspring of Western culture. He also thought that the tions found to be normative within medieval theology. A study of history was not a merely antiquarian enterprise detailed study by Jeremy Cohen of the medieval exegesis but held meaningful lessons for the present. Finally, of Genesis 1:28 showed that medieval commentators typi- despite his negative assessment in “Roots,” elsewhere he cally dealt with questions of God’s covenant and human frequently asserted that technology was a fundamentally sexuality, bypassing the issue of technological dominion humane and liberating force, and he implicitly suggests an of nature altogether. George Ovitt, Jr. argued, against image of an inherently dynamic, progressive and Christian White, that by the thirteenth century most monastic orders West in which “values” rather than politics or economics no longer directly performed work with their hands and, determine history. These underlying views informed his far from elevating manual labor in and of itself, consist- work, giving it a power and resonance beyond narrower ently subordinated it to spiritual ends. A number of historical interpretations. scholars provided evidence that non-Western and pre- The impact of White’s thesis on the community of Christian cultures also had records of environmental environmentalists, philosophers of technology, and damage. Other scholars, including Carl Mitcham, John religion scholars concerned with environmental issues Passmore, Robin Attfield and others, found a sympathetic was immediate and long lasting. In the twenty years fol- attitude toward human control of the natural environment lowing the publication of “The Historical Roots of Our Eco- in Classical, chiefly Stoic, writers, similarly cutting into logic Crisis,” over two hundred books and articles used White’s argument that Christianity had a uniquely aggres- White’s ideas as a focal point. His ideas penetrated the sive approach to nature. Finally, some writers questioned popular press, appearing in Time Magazine, Horizon, The whether White had done more than show an association New York Times, The Boy Scout Handbook and The Sierra between Christianity and technology in an age in which a Club Bulletin. The great bulk of these responses were to religious perspective permeated every dimension of one particular aspect of White’s argument, his claim in human life. Had White shown that religion was a cause of “Roots” that Christianity inculcated a specifically technological development, or simply that technological “exploitative” attitude toward nature and consequently development taking place for economic and political that Christianity bore “a great burden of guilt” for the reasons was framed in Christian terms by medieval and current environmental crisis. Biblical scholars and eco- later people? theologians, among them James Barr, Carl Braaten, John This broad range of responses demonstrated that the Cobb, and Joseph Sittler, argued instead that the Judeo- links between religion, technology and environmental Christian tradition could more accurately be described as decline were hardly as direct or straightforward as White mandating a care-taking or stewardship relationship

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