Life with Lepidoptera












Forgotten but not gone


Walden Warming by Richard Primack. University of Chicago Press 2014



















Evolution and Revolution

Kelly, Aileen M. 2016. The Discovery of Chance. The Life and Thought of Alexander Herzen. Cambridge MA. Harvard University Press. 592pp.

painting by Frédéric Sorrieu

I was drawn to this book on the library shelf because I thought it was about mathematics and probability, but I took it to read because on closer examination, it was about the first thinker to connect politics and biological evolution. He was not, however, a crude social-Darwinist. In fact, Alexander Herzen was thinking about evolution and politics even before Darwin’s theory came out. Besides that, he was a fascinating individual.

This is an intellectual biography of one of the founders of Russian socialist thought. Herzen, an illegitimate son of a minor aristocrat, was born in 1812, the year Napoleon took and then retreated from Moscow. Educated at Moscow University, he was part of the intelligentsia of the 1830s, under strict czarist censorship. As a young man, Herzen experienced several periods of exile to towns in the provinces. Back in Moscow, his circle was influenced by romanticism and various versions of Hegel’s philosophy, but Herzen was distinguished by his interest in biology, especially early evolutionary thought. By the late 1840s, he was in exile in the west, eventually settling in London, where he operated a radical printing house and edited publications aimed at fellow Russian exiles and the reformers and radicals back in Russia.

He came to believe that human societies are subject to the same natural laws as the rest of the living world and do not develop along lines laid down by overarching forces of History or Reason. Kelly’s title reflects Herzen’s view that although ideas like liberty may arise and take root in societies, they are expressed in ways that depend on the individual circumstances, just as the selective value of a biological variant is determined by the environment. Thus it is impossible to predict the future form of society, and there is no final end towards which civilization develops, as Hegel and his followers believed. In Darwin’s theory, the function of a trait, or gene, may change over the course of evolution into something completely different than it had originally. The idea of individual freedom may have one manifestation in the agrarian and proto-industrial world of Jefferson and Hamilton (taking US history as a case) another in the rapidly industrializing world of Lincoln, another in the industrial world of the Roosevelts and still another in the post-industrial world of today. However much conservatives may deny it, these meanings do evolve, and forcing people to accept old understandings is no easier than forcing them to accept a radical utopia. The same is true of policies: in one situation, restriction on markets may be inimical to human welfare, in another, it may be the only way to protect it. Socialism may stifle initiative and essential development, or it may promote them.

I see a connection between Herzen’s thought and the developmental theory of Stanley Greenspan and Stuart Shanker, described in The First Idea: How Symbols, Language, and Intelligence Evolved from Our Primate Ancestors to Modern Humans (Da Capo Press, 2006). In their view, human intellect and language develop through the interactions of the infant and its caregiver. The inborn genetic potential must be realized through specific interactions to create in each individual a capacity what they call “co-regulated exchanges.” The process cannot be fully controlled or predicted in advance. Furthermore, as societies developed historically through these contingent processes, the environment that individuals encountered varied, applying selection pressure on the frequencies of genetic variations in each separate group. Learned behaviors thus fed back into innate tendencies. It seems to me that these modified Darwinian perspectives on the questions raised by social and behavioral sciences may yield useful understanding. I plan to write more about this later.

Herzen came to despise the allegiance of his fellow radical exiles to ideologies, like communism, that promised a perfect society after the revolution. He argued strongly that one must focus on the present reality and seek whatever opportunity for advancement presents itself. My reservation about this, and I think Herzen would have admitted it, is that unlike plants or animals in the struggle for existence, we humans are influenced by our imaginations, the things we hope for. Since Plato’s Republic, imaginary societies have helped us focus our attention on what we believe to be the good. The trouble comes if we expect them to be made into realities by superhuman forces.

Herzen also became skeptical of the effectiveness of violence, especially after he saw how the revolution of 1848 ended. He was convinced that the way forward in Russia in the 1860s was through the peasant communes, a rudimentary form of socialism, tied to their commitment to common ownership of land. He agitated for a constituent assembly, without distinction of classes, to begin the transition away from autocracy. It never happened. As he feared, the autocracy stood almost until the Bolshevik revolution in 1917. Herzen was right that the course of history did not follow a progression towards some ideal society, whatever the revolutionaries may have claimed. The outcome was a mixture of the communist idealistic view with the pure naked power of the police state, yielding Leninist and Stalinist totalitarianism. This appeared to have finally faded out under Gorbachev and Yeltsin. Post-communist Russia in the 21st century seems to be a mix of elements from the past plus the globalizing ideology of neo-liberalism. But will the old way be given new life under Putin?

Looking at the American 2016 election, what elements in the current debates will be the ones that comprise the next stages in our history? It’s like trying to predict the course of evolution, or trying to see how to give one species an advantage in the struggle for existence: the problem is simply too complex. As in Darwin’s analogy between the struggle for existence and throwing up a handful of feathers, there are too many forces besides simple gravitational pull that determine the precise place each feather will land, where each species will survive or how each society will develop. This does not stop futurologists, but it ought to give the rest of us pause.

I think Bernie Sanders resembles Herzen. He is opposed to the repressive neoliberalism of the current establishment that brings growth only at the cost of rising inequality and environmental degradation. Like Herzen, he hopes for a peaceful transition to Socialism, meaning not abolition of the market and private property or government ownership of industry, but rather, a democratic government restraining the excesses of the free market and the financial system. He wants to insure that the economy benefits everyone, not just the rich owners of private capital. Like Herzen, he knows that history is contingent, not invariably progressive, not moving towards a perfect future, but sometimes presenting opportunities for progress and reform. In that understanding, he gives his support to Clinton, because she promises at least some reforms, and she will be a better guardian of the public interest than the crude nationalist, Trump. Sanders’ followers divide into those willing to go along with the compromise, who see the critical danger in an overthrow of basic values of tolerance and inclusion, etc. and those who want revolution and an ideal world now, no matter how impossible that is. It will be interesting to see which candidate they choose come November.

There are many more interesting ideas in the worthy book, which I think everyone inclined towards radical politics would do well to consider. Herzen’s major work, From the Other Shore, is available online.



Freedom and Exile in Florida

Giddings, Joshua (1795 – 1864) The Exiles of Florida, Or, the Crimes Committed by Our Government Against the Maroons, who Fled from South Carolina and Other Slave States, Seeking Protection Under Spanish Laws. 1858. Columbus OH. Follett, Foster and Co.

[image: By USMC – NARA archive, Public Domain,

I listened to the very fine Librivox recording.

A remarkable polemic by a U.S. Representative from Ohio (1838-1859). This account of events in Florida from the late 1600s to the date of publication, was supported by numerous documents from the records of the US Congress, including treaties, military reports, letters and legal filings. The basic story is very simple: Africans fled from slavery, first in South Carolina and later in Georgia, and sought refuge in Spanish Florida, where Spanish authorities granted them freedom. The slaveowners sought desperately to get them back, even after several generations of the original slaves’ descendants had been settled in communities under Spanish law. Escaped slaves and their offspring were considered lost or stolen property, just like stray cattle. [Note the similarity to some peoples’ attitude towards the children of undocumented immigrants, despite the 14th Amendment.] As time passed, slaves continued to flee to Florida, and joined native Americans, often living in close proximity, sometimes intermarrying. Some of the natives were a subgroup of the Creek Nation, who became estranged from the main body of Creeks, who lived in Georgia. These Africans and Americans became known in Spanish Florida as “Seminoles,” which basically means “exiles” or “runaways.”

By the beginning of the 19th Century, conflict was rife along the border between the new United States and Florida. Between 1810 and 1819, the US and Great Britain made various attempts to gain control of the Florida panhandle. The destruction of the “Negro Fort” on Prospect Bluff above the Apalachicola River by the US Navy, resulted in the deaths of over 300 free Africans. The Seminoles, including the remaining free Africans, continued to resist to attempts of the Georgians, white Floridians and Creeks to capture them or drive them out of the border territories. These raids and counter raids led to Andrew Jackson bringing the US Army into the Seminole territory (which was still legally Spanish) to drive the natives out and seize the Africans for sale into slavery. Jackson’s ruthless policies were popular with many Americans but criminal in the eyes of others. In the end, the US acquired Florida from Spain and convinced the British that future trade relations were more important than resisting the violent overthrow of their interests in Florida and Jackson’s arbitrary execution of two of their officers. Congressional resolutions condemning Jackson’s behavior failed. The Seminoles were forced to accept a treaty confining them to central Florida.

The later chapters of the Seminole Wars repeated the pattern: South Carolinians and Georgians clamored for seizure of their lost “property,” namely the Africans living freely in Florida. Raiding and retaliation went on, and the US Army again intervened, only to face guerilla resistance from the Seminole. Throughout the period from 1819 to 1858, as Giddings documents, Congress struggled with the impetuous calls of the southerners for war and the northerners’ demands that existing treaties be respected and the free Africans be left alone. The anti-slavery Members argued that these wars, which cost tens of millions of dollars, were making all Americans complicit in the dirty business of hunting and enslaving people who had been free for generations and who lived on US soil.

The Second Seminole War, from 1835 to 1842, ended with the removal of most of the Seminoles, including the free Africans, to the Indian Territory, where the Creeks and other southeastern Nations had already been forced to go. Along the way, the slavers never gave up trying to get the Africans into their possession, by legal maneuvers or by force, but thanks to the honor and integrity of a few US Army officers, notably General J.W. Worth, the assurances of safe passage to the Seminoles were made good. Giddings particularly commends his handling of the war chief Wild Cat, whom Giddings evidently met in 1857. The peaceful removal of a large body of Africans and Native Americans to the territory was made possible by the respect and trust between Worth and the chief.

Not that the Black Seminoles’ troubles ended after resettlement: they were required, by a treaty to which they were never a party, to settle in the lands assigned to the Creeks. The Creeks and their co-conspirators, the southern slavers, insisted that the Africans were slaves and wanted to seize them. General Matthew Arbuckle did all he could to uphold the honor of the US by sticking to treaty stipulations that those who submitted to removal to the Territory were free. Once the Africans left the protection of the Army’s fort, however, nearly a hundred were seized in a raid by Creeks and slavers, and despite a habeus corpus hearing (before a pro-slavery judge) in Arkansas, were shipped to New Orleans and sold, disappearing into the general slave population. Seeing that they could not expect protection from the laws and treaties of the US, a group of the black Seminoles and some Native allies left for exile in Mexico, where they resided until the late 20th century, serving as border guards in the local militia, and before the Civil War ended slavery, fending off efforts of Texas slavers to seize them. For more fascinating information about the diverse fates of these exiles and their continuing struggles to be recognized and respected, see the Wikipedia article on “Black Seminoles.”

Giddings was a great investigator, and although his biases are clear, a good reporter. In this account he lays bare the unremitting efforts to force all Africans into bondage, in accordance with the laws of every southern state, which saw all Negros as either someone’s property, or subject to seizure by whomever could lay hold of them. He exposes the duplicity of successive Presidents and cabinet officers, trying to walk the tightrope between the pro and anti-slavery forces and the bitter divisions in Congress over the issue. In 1842 Giddings was censured by the House for persistently bringing up the question of slavery. He resigned his seat, but was immediately reelected by his constituents. Later, he made public the contents of a treaty, which had been kept secret by the Administration, because it contained assurances the lives and property of the Seminoles, including the free Africans, would be protected. When he pointed out how the State of Georgia had been violating these terms by pursuing the exiles, he was threatened on the floor of the House by a Member from Georgia, wielding his cane as a weapon. Giddings died while serving as Lincoln’s consul general in Montreal, before the victory of the Union and passage of the 13th amendment. His The Exiles of Florida is a masterpiece of polemic as well as fascinating history.


The search for Cíbola

Castañeda, Pedro de. The Journey of Coronado, with other accounts of the journey, including Jaramillo, Hernando de Alvarado and Coronado himself, translated from the Spanish by George Parker Winship. Librivox.

This was the famous expedition in search of Cíbola, the “seven cities of gold.” The search was prompted by reports from Cabeza de Vaca and his companions, when they returned to Mexico in 1535, after their eight-year odyssey from the Gulf Coast (Cabeza’s account is also available on Librivox – I may write about it later). One of his companions, the African Estevan, made it to Zuni pueblo in 1539, as part of a scouting party led by Friar Marcos de Niza. There he was killed or perhaps simply dropped out of sight. The reports of de Niza convinced Coronado and Viceroy Antonio de Mendoza to mount an expedition. In three years of exploring the southwest of what is now the United States, various parties of the expedition reached as far as the southern end of the Grand Canyon of the Colorado and its South Rim, Zuni Pueblo, the pueblos of the Rio Grande valley, Blanco Canyon in the Texas Panhandle and the Arkansas River, east of present day Dodge City, Kansas. None of these places yielded any gold or other valuables. Either de Niza had a bad case of giving the answer wanted rather than the truth, or his zeal to spread the gospel made him try to see how far he could convince the army go among these unconverted peoples. The native communities could not even feed the expedition without being reduced to near starvation themselves. Some of the Rio Grande pueblos resisted and were overcome by force in bloody assaults. The difficulties of maintaining an army in the field in that country, with only horses and humans for transport, are hard to imagine (they did have a supply flotilla sail up the Gulf of California into the Colorado, but it could not enter the Grand Canyon, and at any rate, was much too far west to help). Once they were out on the plains, east of the Rio Grande and the mountains, they found it impossible even to keep track of where they were. Hunting parties wandered lost for days in the featureless landscape of grass and shrubs, with only the occasional river canyon as a landmark.

Castañeda gives dramatic accounts of the buffalo (which the translation renders as “cows,” presumably for the Spanish, “vacas”) and the natives who hunted them, living in tents on the open plains. His other botanical and ethnographic accounts are interesting but colored by his outlook as a Spaniard: The natives in the pueblos, camps and villages are described as to dress and customs, with frequent specifics on sexual matters, as “they do not practice sodomy,” in one place or “they are very great sodomites,” in another. One peculiar topic was the deadly poisoned arrows made by some of the natives the expedition fought with, which apparently included poison from the same plant that yields Mexican jumping-beans (Sebastiania bilocularis S. Watson, arrow poision plant, according to the USDA plants database). Even more interesting was the antidote: quinces, which Castañeda notes growing in many places the expedition passed through. The quince (genus Cydonia) is native to Asia, but could have been introduced to Mexico early in the 16th century. Northern Mexico is a minor quince producing region today, according to the Wikipedia article. Perhaps it was spread by the natives ahead of the Spanish themselves, or possibly Castañeda was just confused about the identity of a native fruit, as he seems to have been about the “cows.”

Overall, this is more of a reading for the historian or ethnographer than the naturalist. To give account of the landscape you are passing through, so that it can be recognized later, you have to be interested in more than gold.

The Librivox readers were outstanding as usual.

John Wesley Powell

The Exploration of the Colorado River and Its Canyons by John Wesley Powell. Revised edition, published by the Smithsonian Institution. 1895. I listened to the Librivox version, by a very able group of readers.

I remember seeing the six-cent John Wesley Powell expedition commemorative stamp, when it was issued in 1969, but I never gave it much thought, except to notice that the steersman has only part of his right arm. I had learned somewhere, sometime, that he was the leader of the first United States expedition through the Grand Canyon of the Colorado. When I came across this account in the Librivox catalog, I thought I ought to listen to it, and I’m glad I did. This is the story of an epic journey told by an extraordinary individual.

Checking Powell’s biography on Wikipedia, I learned that by the time he was 25, he had rowed the entire Mississippi, Ohio, Illinois, and Des Moines Rivers and been elected to the Illinois Natural History Society. After his service in the Civil War (he lost the forearm at Shiloh) Powell taught geology at Illinois Wesleyan University. Along with his students and his wife, he made an expedition to Colorado to collect geological specimens.

His expedition, ten men in four boats, left Green River, Wyoming, on May 24, 1869, and reached the mouth of the Virgin River, at the lower end of the Grand Canyon on August 30, with two or three boats and six men. Three men had left to climb out of the canyon shortly before the end, because the expedition was dangerously short on food and still faced unknown risks on the river. As it happened, they were the unlucky ones: Powell later was told they were killed by Shivwits Indians, who believed they were part of a party that had  murdered some other Indians shortly before Powell’s men passed through.

Powell’s book reads like a journal and is based on the records he kept, but some later editing occurred, apparently. Whatever the case, it is a harrowing tale. One boat was wrecked early, and the rest were frequently capsized. Food was lost or spoiled by wetting, so by the end, they were in danger of running out. Many stretches had to be portaged round or the boats lowered and hauled through on ropes. That and the rowing made every day exhausting. At one point their fire spread into some driftwood and nearly incinerated them in a narrow alcove where they had camped. Powell and some of the others also made regular ascents of the canyon walls to take instrument readings, examine the landscape and scout ahead where possible. These involved rough and dangerous ascents of thousands of feet and tortuous scrambles through narrow slot canyons. This by a man with only one hand!

Perhaps the most disturbing aspect of the voyage was the uncertainty of what they faced ahead. Around the bends of the river, they were sometimes confronted by large falls or dangerous rapids, with little time to decide whether to go ahead and try to run them or make desperately for some safe stopping point. It seemed possible that they might meet an impassable obstacle at a point where they could not escape from the canyon. They could face a choice between starvation and near-certain drowning. Today, hundreds raft down the Grand Canyon, aided by years of experience, modern equipment and a flow now controlled by the Glen Canyon Dam. Powell’s trip was a plunge into the unkn0wn, Samuel Walter Foss’ opening lines for The Coming American “Bring me men to match my mountains,” could be applied to Powell and his crew, perhaps modified to “…men to match my canyons.”

Powell and Tau-gu, a Paiute, 1871-72

His descriptions of the geology, the river, the landscape and vegetation are vivid and sometimes enthralling. The latter part of the book describes the trip he made in 1870 and 1871 back over some of the same ground, but visiting many of the Native Americans resident in the lands north of the canyon and eastwards to the Pueblos of New Mexico. These are also fascinating. He worked for the rest of his life as a geographer, ethnologist and administrator at the US Geological Survey and the Smithsonian Institution and was a strong advocate that development in the arid western states, should be carefully limited.


Death Valley Days

Land of Little Rain by Mary Hunter Austin, first publication 1903 by Houghton Mifflin.

The Librivox recording of this wonderful book from the first decade of the twentieth century is a pleasure to listen to. Mary Austin’s descriptions of the desert country east of the southern Sierra Nevada are beautifully clear, evoking the harsh land, the hardy plants and animals and the various humans who live among them. My favorite was the pocket hunter, a prospector traveling with his burros and a gold pan that is cleaner than his cooking pots, and who dreams of finding a strike rich enough to allow him to set up as a middle class Londoner. Twice, he made enough to visit England, but each time he returned, with only a pair of elegant green canvas traveling bags to show for the trips. He told how once in a blinding snowstorm he sought shelter with what he thought were a flock of domestic sheep. Looking about in the morning, he saw he had slept among wild mountain bighorns. They bounded away through the drifts like God’s own flock. Breathtaking.

Whether it is the denizens of a mining town or the native Paiute, among them the blind basket weaver and the Shoshone exile medicine man, who must be killed when he can’t prevent an epidemic of pneumonia from taking away a third of the band, Austin tells the stories simply and with evident deep compassion.

She has a soft spot for the coyote, that butt of Warner Brothers cartoons, but in her view far from a fool. She gives loving descriptions of the numerous desert rodents and the jackrabbits whose tracks lead to the waterholes like the spokes of giant wheels, along with their enemies the birds of prey and the scavengers who watch all that goes on from far above, waiting for the predator’s kill or the dying gasp of the starving.

Plants get just as careful attention, some of the best botanical description I’ve read. Whether in her neighbor’s field or on the mesa, she evokes the marvels of the California desert flora with its tough shrubs and delicate ephemerals that blossom only in years when enough rain falls to waken the seeds out of dormancy.

Everything about this book makes me want to visit this land.