Re-conceptualizing the Self in United States Forestry: An Historical and Comparative Study of the Ideas of Aldo Leopold and the Zhuangzi Qi Feng Lin Department of Natural Resource Sciences McGill University Montreal October 2015 A thesis submitted to McGill University in partial fulfillment of the requirements of the degree of Ph.D. in Renewable Resources (Environment Option) © Qi Feng Lin 2015 ii Contents Abstract .................................................................................................................................. vi Abstract ................................................................................................................................ viii Acknowledgements ................................................................................................................. x Preface .................................................................................................................................. xii Chapter 1: Introduction ................................................................................. 1 Chapter 2: The Modern Western Concept of the Self and Environmental Narratives of the United States .................................................... 5 2.1 Introduction ................................................................................................................ 5 2.2 The Modern Western Concept of the Self ................................................................... 5 2.2.1 Characteristics ........................................................................................................ 6 2.2.2 Interpretation ....................................................................................................... 10 2.2.3 The Concept of the Self in the United States ......................................................... 15 2.2.4 Developing a New Concept of Self in Relation to the Environment ..................... 16 2.3 Environmental Narratives of the United States......................................................... 19 2.3.1 The Wilderness ...................................................................................................... 19 2.3.2 The Frontier .......................................................................................................... 20 2.3.3 Jeffersonian Agrarianism ...................................................................................... 21 2.3.4 Recovery of Eden Narrative .................................................................................. 22 2.3.5 American Romanticism ........................................................................................ 24 2.3.6 Indigenous Peoples’ Perspectives ......................................................................... 25 2.4 Conclusion ................................................................................................................. 28 Chapter 3: The Foundational Concept of the Self in United States Forestry . 29 3.1 Introduction .............................................................................................................. 29 3.2 History of German Forestry (Eighteenth to Nineteenth Century) ........................... 30 3.2.1 Intellectual Origins of Forestry Thought .............................................................. 30 3.2.2 Emergence of Modern Forestry ............................................................................. 31 3.2.3 Sustained-Yield of Timber: Normal Tree and Normal Forest ............................. 34 3.2.4 Financial Returns from Forestry .......................................................................... 38 3.2.5 Reaction to the Normal Forest: The Dauerwald Movement ............................... 39 3.3 The Forests of the United States ............................................................................... 40 iii 3.4 Early Beginnings of Forestry during the Late Nineteenth Century .......................... 42 3.5 Bernhard E. Fernow .................................................................................................. 43 3.6 Gifford Pinchot .......................................................................................................... 45 3.7 The Progressive Conservation Movement ................................................................ 47 3.8 The Forest Service and the National Forests ............................................................ 49 3.9 Pinchot’s Conservation Philosophy........................................................................... 53 3.10 Forest Management from 1900 to 1945: Sustained-Yield Forestry ......................... 55 3.11 Pinchot’s The Training of a Forester (1914, 1937) .................................................... 57 3.12 Differences between German and United States Forestry ....................................... 59 3.13 Paradigms of Forest Management after World War II .............................................. 61 3.13.1 1945 to 1960s: Production Forestry ...................................................................... 61 3.13.2 1960s to 1980s: Scientific, Multiple-Use Forestry ............................................... 62 3.13.3 1980s to 2007: Ecosystem-Based Management .................................................. 64 3.13.4 2007 to present: Ecological Restoration .............................................................. 65 3.14 Textbook Survey ........................................................................................................ 66 3.14.1 Definition and Description of Forestry and/or Silviculture................................. 66 3.14.2 Ecological Paradigm ............................................................................................. 68 3.14.3 Paradigm of Natural Resource Management ....................................................... 68 3.15 The Foundational Concept of the Self in United States Forestry ............................. 81 3.16 New Paradigms of Forestry ....................................................................................... 84 3.16.1 Ecological Forestry ............................................................................................... 85 3.16.2 Forests as Complex Adaptive Systems ................................................................. 86 Chapter 4: Aldo Leopold .............................................................................. 91 4.1 Introduction ............................................................................................................... 91 4.2 Biographical Background .......................................................................................... 92 4.2.1 Family Upbringing ................................................................................................ 92 4.2.2 Education at Yale Forest School ........................................................................... 93 4.2.3 Career in the United States Forest Service ........................................................... 95 4.2.4 Game Surveyor and Consulting Forester ............................................................. 96 4.2.5 Professor at University of Wisconsin ................................................................... 96 4.2.6 Personal Character ............................................................................................... 97 4.2.7 Spiritual & Religious Attitude............................................................................... 98 4.3 Literature Review .................................................................................................... 102 iv 4.3.1 Jeffersonian Agrarianism ................................................................................... 102 4.3.2 Citizenship .......................................................................................................... 103 4.4 Development of Leopold’s Ecological Thinking ..................................................... 104 4.4.1 During the 1920s ................................................................................................ 105 4.4.2 During the 1930s ................................................................................................ 108 4.5 Rethinking Economics ............................................................................................. 114 4.5.1 Conservation Economics Research Prospectuses (1934–1938).......................... 114 4.5.2 Proposed Ecological Economics Position (1947) ................................................ 115 4.6 A Sand County Almanac and Sketches Here and There (1949) ............................... 115 4.6.1 Part I: “A Sand County Almanac” (The Shack Sketches) .................................... 117 4.6.2 Part II: “Sketches Here and There” .................................................................... 120 4.6.3 Part III: “The Upshot” ......................................................................................... 123 4.7 Leopold’s Concept of the Self and Implications for Forestry .................................. 134 Chapter 5: Personhood in the Zhuangzi .................................................... 137 5.1 Introduction ............................................................................................................. 137 5.2 Religion and Ecology ................................................................................................ 139 5.3 Practical Nature of Chinese Classical Philosophy .................................................... 141 5.4 Historical Context: