Dissertation Research: Exploring the Oceanic Frontier: American Naturalists as Amateur Conservationists

本论文的研究项目是对科学史和环境史的贡献，因为它试图分析海洋勘探与保护之间的辩证关系。它将研究一些流行的海洋博物学家在20世纪的历史，重点是他们在海洋前沿的原位探索和随后的探索叙事，在流行文化中流传。在19世纪的美国，探险是一种合法的科学实践；它与自然历史的工作密切相关，自然历史的主要目标是绘制美国风景的地图和目录。但在20世纪的大学里，探索在很大程度上被以实验室为基础的科学所取代，这些科学通常是在慈善赞助的支持下进行的。在很大程度上，20世纪美国科学史是关于实验室的主导地位，技术的惊人爆炸和科学的日益扩大。这篇论文的研究项目集中在少数博物学家身上，他们把注意力集中在一个几乎没有被探索过的地区——海洋。罗伊·查普曼·安德鲁斯、罗伯特·库什曼·墨菲、威廉·毕比、雷切尔·卡森、尤金妮·克拉克、托尔·海尔达尔和雅克·库斯托都是博物学家，但他们也构建了流行的海洋形象。他们的探索工作的附带成果之一是他们对保护措施的支持。

This dissertation research project is a contribution to both the history of science and environmental history in that it seeks to analyze the dialectic between ocean exploration and conservation. It will examine the history of a number of popular oceanic naturalists in the twentieth-century by focusing on their in situ exploration of the oceanic frontier and the consequent narratives of exploration that circulated in popular culture. Exploration was a legitimate scientific practice in nineteenth-century America; it was bound up with the work of natural history whose primary goal was to map and catalogue the American landscape. But in twentieth-century universities, exploration was largely displaced by laboratory-based science, often under the aegis of philanthropic patronage. For the most part, the history of twentieth-century American science is about the dominance of the lab, the staggering explosion of technology, and the increasing bigness of science. This dissertation research project focuses on a handful of naturalists who directed their attention to a barely explored region- the ocean. Roy Chapman Andrews, Robert Cushman Murphy, William Beebe, Rachel Carson, Eugenie Clark, Thor Heyerdahl, and Jacques Cousteau were all naturalists, but also constructed popular representations of the ocean. One of the spin-offs of their exploratory efforts was their support for conservation measures.