Loren Eiseley
Encyclopedia
Loren Eiseley was an American anthropologist, educator, philosopher, and natural science
writer, who taught and published books from the 1950s through the 1970s. During this period he received more than 36 honorary degree
s and was a fellow of many distinguished professional societies. At his death, he was Benjamin Franklin Professor of Anthropology and History of Science at the University of Pennsylvania
.
He was noted as a “scholar and writer of imagination and grace,” which gained him a reputation and record of accomplishment far beyond the campus where he taught for 30 years. Publishers Weekly
referred to him as "the modern Thoreau." The broad scope of his many writings considered such diverse topics as the mind of Sir Francis Bacon, the prehistoric origins of man, and the contributions of Charles Darwin
.
Eiseley’s national reputation was established mainly through his books, including The Immense Journey (1957), Darwin's Century (1958), The Unexpected Universe (1969), The Night Country (1971), and his memoir, All the Strange Hours (1975). Science author Orville Prescott praised him as a scientist who “can write with poetic sensibility and with a fine sense of wonder and of reverence before the mysteries of life and nature.“ Naturalist author Mary Ellen Pitts saw his combination of literary and nature writings as his "quest, not simply for bringing together science and literature... but a continuation of what the 18th and 19th century British naturalists and Thoreau had done."
According to his obituary in the New York Times, the feeling and philosophical motivation of the entire body of Dr. Eiseley’s work was best expressed in one of his essays, The Enchanted Glass: “The anthropologist wrote of the need for the contemplative naturalist
, a man who, in a less frenzied era, had time to observe, to speculate, and to dream.” Shortly before his death, he received an award from the Boston Museum of Science for his “outstanding contribution to the public understanding of science” and another from the U.S. Humane Society
for his “significant contribution for the improvement of life and environment in this country.”
, Nebraska
, Eiseley lived his childhood with a hardworking father and deaf mother who suffered from possible mental illness
. Their home was located on the outskirts of town, where, as author Naomi Brill writes, it was "removed from the people and the community from which they felt set apart through poverty and family misfortune." His autobiography, All the Strange Hours, begins with his "childhood experiences as a sickly afterthought, weighed down by the loveless union of his parents."
His father, Clyde, was a hardware salesman who worked long hours for little pay, writes Brill. However, as an amateur Shakespearian actor, he was able to give his son a "love for beautiful language and writing." His mother was a self-taught prairie artist who was considered a beautiful woman, but had lost her hearing in childhood. Her deafness often gave rise to irrational and destructive behavior which left Eiseley feeling distant from her, and which contributed to his parents' unhappy marriage.
Living at the edge of town, however, led to Eiseley's early interest in the natural world, to which he turned when being at home was too difficult. There, he would play in the caves and creek banks nearby. Fortunately, there were others who opened the door to a happier life. His half-brother, Leo, for instance, gave him a copy of Robinson Crusoe, with which he taught himself to read. Thereafter, he managed to find ways to get to the public library and became a voracious reader.
Eiseley later attended the Lincoln Public Schools; in high school, he wrote that he wanted to be a nature writer. He would later describe the lands around Lincoln as "flat and grass-covered and smiling so serenely up at the sun that they seemed forever youthful, untouched by mind or time—a sunlit, timeless prairie over which nothing passed but antelope or wandering bird." But, disturbed by his home situation and the illness and recent death of his father, he dropped out of school and worked at menial jobs.
Eiseley eventually enrolled in the University of Nebraska, where he wrote for the newly formed journal, Prairie Schooner, and went on archeology digs for the natural history
Museum
. In 1927, however, he was diagnosed with tuberculosis
and left the university to move to the western desert
, believing the drier air would improve his condition. While there, he soon became restless and unhappy, which led him to hoboing around the country by hopping on freight trains (as many did during the Great Depression
). Professor of religion, Dr. Richard Wentz, writes about this period: "Loren Eiseley had been a drifter in his youth. From the plains of Nebraska he had wandered across the American West. Sometimes sickly, at other times testing his strength with that curious band of roving exiles who searched the land above the rippling railroad ties, he explored his soul as he sought to touch the distant past. He became a naturalist and a bone hunter because something about the landscape had linked his mind to the birth and death of life itself.
Eiseley received his Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania
in 1937 and wrote his dissertation entitled "Three Indices of Quaternary Time and Their Bearing Upon Pre-History: a Critique", which launched his academic career. He began teaching at the University of Kansas
that same year. During World War II
, Eiseley taught anatomy to reservist pre-med students at Kansas.
In 1944 he left the University of Kansas to assume the role of head of the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at Oberlin College
in Ohio
. In 1947 he returned to the University of Pennsylvania to head its Anthropology Department. He was elected president of the American Institute of Human Paleontology
in 1949. From 1959 to 1961, he was provost
at the University of Pennsylvania, and in 1961 the University of Pennsylvania created a special interdisciplinary professorial chair for him.
Dr. Eiseley was also a fellow of many distinguished professional societies, including the American Association for the Advancement of Science
, the United States National Academy of Sciences
, the National Institute of Arts and Letters and the American Philosophical Society
.
At the time of his death in 1977, he was Benjamin Franklin Professor of Anthropology and History of Science, and the curator of the Early Man section at the University of Pennsylvania Museum. He had received thirty-six honorary degrees over a period of twenty years, and was the most honored member of the University of Pennsylvania since Benjamin Franklin
. In 1976 he won the Bradford Washburn
Award of the Boston Museum of Science for his "outstanding contribution to the public understanding of science" and the Joseph Wood Krutch
Medal from the Humane Society of the United States
for his "significant contribution for the improvement of life and the environment in this country."
In an interview on National Public Radio (NPR), author Michael Lind
said, "Before the rise of a self-conscious intelligentsia, most educated people – as well as the unlettered majority – spent most of their time in the countryside or, if they lived in cities, were a few blocks away from farmland or wilderness... At the risk of sounding countercultural, I suspect that thinkers who live in sealed, air-conditioned boxes and work by artificial light (I am one) are as unnatural as apes in cages at zoos. Naturalists like Eiseley in that sense are the most normal human beings to be found among intellectuals, because they spend a lot of time outdoors and know the names of the plants and animals they see... For all of his scientific erudition, Eiseley has a poetic, even cinematic, imagination."
However, because of Eiseley's intense and poetic writing style, and his focus on nature and cosmology
, he was not accepted or understood by most of his colleagues. "You," a friend told him, "are a freak, you know. A God-damned freak, and life is never going to be easy for you. You like scholarship, but the scholars, some of them, anyhow, are not going to like you because you don’t stay in the hole where God supposedly put you. You keep sticking your head out and looking around. In a university that’s inadvisable."
His first book, The Immense Journey, was a collection of writings about the history of humanity, and the rare science book that appealed to a mass audience. It has sold over a million copies and has been published in at least 16 languages.
Author Orville Prescott wrote, "Consider the case of Loren Eiseley, author of The Immense Journey, who can sit on a mountain slope beside a prairie-dog town and imagine himself back in the dawn of the Age of mammals eighty million years ago: 'There by a tree root I could almost make him out, that shabby little Paleocene
rat, eternal tramp and world wanderer, father of all mankind.' ... his prose is often lyrically beautiful, something that considerable reading in the works of anthropologists had not led me to expect. ... The subjects discussed here include the human ancestral tree, water and its significance to life, the mysteries of cellular life, 'the secret and remote abysses' of the sea, the riddle of why human beings alone among living creatures have brains capable of abstract thought and are far superior to their mere needs for survival, the reasons why Dr. Eiseley is convinced that there are no men or man-like animals on other planets, ...".
He offers an example of Eiseley's style: "There is no logical reason for the existence of a snowflake any more than there is for evolution. It is an apparition from that mysterious shadow world beyond nature, that final world which contains—if anything contains—the explanation of men and catfish and green leaves."
Darwin's Century (1958)
According to naturalist author Mary Ellen Pitts, in the "seminal" Darwin's Century, Eiseley was studying the history of evolutionary thinking, and he came to see that "as a result of scientific studies, nature has become externalized, particularized, mechanized, separated from the human and fragmented, reduced to conflict without consideration of cooperation, confined to reductionist and positivist study." The results for humankind, "as part of the 'biota
' – Eiseley's concern as a writer – are far reaching." In the book, his unique impact as a thinker and a literary figure emerges as he reexamines science and the way man understands science. She concludes that "Nature," for Eiseley, "emerges as a metonym for a view of the physical world, of the 'biota,' and of humankind that must be reexamined if life is to survive."
The book won the Phi Beta Kappa prize for best book in science
in 1958.
Discussing the book, Professor of Zoology, Leslie Dunn wrote, "How can man of 1960, burdened with the knowledge of the world external to him, and with the consciousness that scientific knowledge is attained through continually interfering with nature, 'bear his part' and gain the hope and confidence to live in the new world to which natural science has given birth? ... The answer comes in the eloquent, moving central essay of his new book." The New Yorker wrote, "Dr. Eiseley describes with zest and admiration the giant steps that have led man, in a scant three hundred years, to grasp the nature of his extraordinary past and to substitute a natural world for a world of divine creation and intervention... An irresistible inducement to partake of the almost forgotten excitements of reflection." And the review in The Chicago Tribune, added, "[This book] has a warm feeling for all natural phenomena; it has a rapport with man and his world and his problems; ... it has hope and belief. And it has the beauty of prose that characterizes Eiseley’s philosophical moods."
It was awarded the 1961 John Burroughs
Medal for the best publication in the field of Nature Writing.
The Unexpected Universe (1969) Read excerpts online
Poet W.H. Auden wrote, "The main theme of The Unexpected Universe is Man as the Quest Hero, the wanderer, the voyager, the seeker after adventure, knowledge, power, meaning, and righteousness." He quotes from the book:
"Every time we walk along a beach some ancient urge disturbs us so that we find ourselves shedding shoes and garments or scavenging among seaweed and whitened timbers like the homesick refugees of a long war... Mostly the animals understand their roles, but man, by comparison, seems troubled by a message that, it is often said, he cannot quite remember or has gotten wrong... Bereft of instinct, he must search continually for meanings... Man was a reader before he became a writer, a reader of what Coleridge
once called the mighty alphabet of the universe."
Reviewers at Amazon.com: "I think every book this man ever wrote is a masterpiece. His style is thoughtful, haunting, and beautiful. They are all good. Evolutionary biologist, Theodosius Dobzhansky
described him as "...a Proust miraculously turned into an evolutionary anthropologist..." and science fiction novelist Ray Bradbury
wrote glowing reviews of many of his books including this one. ... Here he writes from a naturalist's perspective on the unexpected and symbolic aspects of the universe. Read about seeds, hieroglyphs
on shells, the Ice Age
, lost tombs, city dumps and primitive Man. The underlying theme is the desolation and renewal of our planet's history and experience."
"Loren Eiseley's dark, brooding prose is unique in the annals of nature writing. The Unexpected Universe features some of what are considered Eiseley's best essays. Heavily autobiographical and deeply personal, these essays are not cheerful ramblings on the joy of communing with nature. They are bleak, lonely musings on the human condition."
Gregory McNamee, of Amazon.com writes, "In 1910 young Loren Eiseley watched the passage of Halley’s Comet with his father. The boy who became a famous naturalist was never again to see the spectacle except in his imagination. That childhood event contributed to the profound sense of time and space that marks The Invisible Pyramid. This collection of essays, first published shortly after Americans landed on the moon, explores inner and outer space, the vastness of the cosmos, and the limits of what can be known. Bringing poetic insight to scientific discipline, Eiseley makes connections between civilizations past and present, multiple universes, humankind, and nature.
"Eiseley took the occasion of the lunar landing to consider how far humans had to go in understanding their own small corner of the universe, their home planet, much less what he called the 'cosmic prison' of space. Likening humans to the microscopic phagocytes that dwell within our bodies, he grumpily remarks, 'We know only a little more extended reality than the hypothetical creature below us. Above us may lie realms it is beyond our power to grasp.' Science, he suggests, would be better put to examining that which lies immediately before us, although he allows that the quest to explore space is so firmly rooted in Western technological culture that it was unlikely to be abandoned simply because of his urging. Eiseley's opinion continues to be influential among certain environmentalists, and these graceful essays show why that should be so.
Book excerpt:
The Night Country (1971) Read excerpts online
Kirkus Reviews
wrote, "... like the medievalists, Eiseley reads nature as the second book of God's revelation, mysterious and heavy with latent, lurking fertility. His sizable audience should welcome the latest voyage in search of the secret springs of creativity - evolutionary, cosmic, mental - as a muted adumbration of temporal mortality." Other reviews: "Eiseley has met strange creatures in the night country, and he tells marvelous stories about them ... For Eiseley, storytelling is never pure entertainment. The autobiographical tales keep illustrating the theses that wind through all his writing - the fallibility of science, the mystery of evolution, the surprise of life."- Time Magazine; "A sort of Odyssey by a man in dialogue with nature and evolution; Eiseley remains one of our foremost humanists-and prose stylists." - Christian Century;
In a published essay, alumnus Carl Hoffman wrote, "An old man who had done almost all of his writing late, late at night, was speaking to a younger man who liked to read in those same dark hours. In a chapter entitled 'One Night’s Dying,' Eiseley said to me: 'It is thus that one day and the next are welded together, and that one night’s dying becomes tomorrow’s birth. I, who do not sleep, can tell you this.' Today, well into my fifties, in the midst of a lifetime of almost compulsive reading, I still regard The Night Country as my all-time favorite book."
All the Strange Hours: The Excavation of a Life (1975) Read excerpts online
"In All the Strange Hours," states Amazon.com, "Eiseley turns his considerable powers of reflection and discovery on his own life to weave a compelling story, related with the modesty, grace, and keen eye for a telling anecdote that distinguish his work. His story begins with his childhood experiences as a sickly afterthought, weighed down by the loveless union of his parents. From there he traces the odyssey that led to his search for early postglacial man—and into inspiriting philosophical territory—culminating in his uneasy achievement of world renown. Eiseley crafts an absorbing self-portrait of a man who has thought deeply about his place in society as well as humanity’s place in the natural world."
The Star Thrower (1978)
His friend and science fiction author Ray Bradbury
, wrote,"The book will be read and cherished in the year 2001. It will go to the Moon and Mars with future generations. Loren Eiseley's work changed my life." And from the Philadelphia Sunday Bulletin, "An astonishing breadth of knowledge, infinite capacity for wonder and compassionate interest for everyone and everything in the universe.
Darwin and the Mysterious Mr. X (1979)
The book attempts to solve a mystery: "Samuel Butler, a master of acrimonious polemic, confronted Charles Darwin
with the sorest of all scientific subjects—a dispute about priority. In Evolution
Old and New (1879), Butler accused Darwin of slighting the evolutionary speculations of Buffon, Lamarck, and his own grandfather Erasmus." The Kirkus Reviews
calls it, "...an essay devoted to resurrecting the name and importance of Edward Blyth
, a 19th-century naturalist. Eiseley credits Blyth with the development of the idea, and even the coining of the words "natural selection
," which Darwin absorbed and enlarged upon...[and] some thoughts on Darwin's Descent of Man; and a concluding speculation on the meaning of evolution. The last piece is very much Eiseley's poetic from-whence-do-we come/whither-do-we-go vein.
Eisley's ideas as set out in this book have been further investigated - with the complete texts of the relevant articles by Edward Blyth - by retired history teacher Andrew Bradbury
Just before his death, he asked his wife to destroy the personal notebooks which he kept since 1953. However, she compromised by disassembling them so they couldn't be used. After great effort, however, his good friend, and the editor of this compilation, Kenneth Heuer, managed to reassemble most of his notebooks into readable form. It includes a variety of Eiseley's writings, such as childhood stories, sketches while he was a vagabond, old family pictures, unpublished poems, portions of unfinished novels, and letters to and from literary admirers like W.H. Auden, Howard Nemerov
, Lewis Mumford
and Ray Bradbury
.
Author Robert Finch, in a review of the book, writes, "Like Melville
, Eiseley thought of himself, and by extension all mankind, as 'an orphan, a wood child, a changeling,' a cosmic outcast born into a world that afforded him no true home." He adds that his "distinctive gift as a writer was to take powerfully formative personal influences of family and place and fuse them with his intellectual meditations on universal topics such as evolution, human consciousness and the weight of time. ... he found metaphors that released a powerful view of man's fate in the modern world." As Kenneth Heuer writes, "there are countless examples of Eiseley's empathy with life in all its forms, and particularly with its lost outcasts...the love that transcends the boundaries of species was the highest spiritual expression he knew.
Finch adds, "We are grateful for a life and a sensibility that would be welcome in any age, but never more so than in our increasingly depersonalized world. ... he made a generation of readers 'see the world through his eyes.' In an undated passage, circa 1959, Eiseley wrote, 'Man is alone in the universe...Only in the act of love, in rare and hidden communion with nature, does man escape himself.'" The Lost Notebooks contains numerous examples of his "creative and sympathetic imagination, even when that creation takes place in the solitude of journals never meant for public eyes."
From other reviews: "Eiseley has rightly been called 'the modern Thoreau.'" -Publishers Weekly; "[an] extensive and enlightening glimpses ... into the intellectual and emotional workshop of one of the most original and influential American essayists of this century." -New York Times Book Review; "Eiseley's great genius for the art of the word coupled with a poetic insight into the connection between science and humanism shines through in page after page... This is a book that will be read and quoted and whose pages will grow thin with wear from hands in continued search of new meaning within its words and images." -Los Angeles Times; "it will enhance any dedicated reader's knowledge of this most remarkable literary naturalist... They provide more than a glimpse into Eiseley's mind and imagination." -The Bloomsbury Review; "It is a joy, like finding a lost Rembrandt in the attic, to discover that Eiseley left behind a legacy." -San Francisco Examiner-Chronicle.
and Thoreau, he is at home among the poets and philosophers and among those scientists whose observations also were a form of contemplation of the universe."
But Wentz considered the inherent contradictions in the statements: "We do not really know what to do with religiousness when it expresses itself outside those enclosures which historians and social scientists have carefully labeled religions. What, after all, does it mean to say, "the religious chord does not sound in someone," but that the person vibrates to the concerns historically related to religion? If the person vibrates to such concerns, the chord is religious whether or not it manages to resound in the temples and prayer houses of the devout."
Wentz quotes Eiseley, from All the Strange Hours and The Star Thrower, to indicate that he was, in fact, a religious thinker:
Wentz encompasses such quotes in his partial conclusion: "He was indeed a scientist -- a bone hunter, he called himself. Archaeologist, anthropologist and naturalist, he devoted a great deal of time and reflection to the detective work of scientific observation. However, if we are to take seriously his essays, we cannot ignore the evidence of his constant meditation on matters of ultimate order and meaning."
. He takes the circumstances of whatever “business" he is about as the occasion for new questioning, new searching for some sign, some glimpse into the meaning of the unknown that confronts him at every center of existence." He quotes Eiseley from The Star Thrower, "We are, in actuality, students of that greater order known as nature. It is into nature that man vanishes."
In comparing Eiseley with Thoreau, he discusses clear similarities in their life and philosophies. He notes that Eiseley was, like Thoreau, a 'spiritual wanderer through the deserts of the modern world.' However, notes Wentz, "Thoreau had left the seclusion of Walden Pond
in order to pace the fields of history, sorting out the artifacts that people had dropped along the way." But "it was those 'fossil thoughts' and 'mindprints' that Eiseley himself explored in his wanderings. These explorations gave depth, a tragic dimension and catharsis to what he called the 'one great drama that concerns us most, the supreme mystery, man.'"
Eiseley realized, according to Wentz, that there is nothing below a certain depth that can truly be explained, and quotes Eiseley, that there is "nothing to explain the necessity of life, nothing to explain the hunger of the elements to become life . . . ." And Wentz adds, Eiseley tells us that "the human version of evolutionary events [is] perhaps too simplistic for belief."
Wentz noted Eiseley's belief that science may have become misguided in its goals: "Loren Eiseley thought that much of the modern scientific enterprise had removed humanity ever farther from its sense of responsibility to the natural world it had left in order to create an artificial world to satisfy its own insatiable appetites." Interpreting Eiseley's messages, he adds, "It would be well, he tells us, to heed the message of the Buddha
, who knew that 'one cannot proceed upon the path of human transcendence
until one has made interiorly in one’s soul a road into the future.' Spaces within stretch as far as those without."
master or a shaman who has seen into the very heart of the universe and shares his healing vision with those who live in a world of feeble sight. We must learn to see again, he tells us; we must rediscover the true center of the self in the otherness of nature."
Loren Eiseley died on July 9, 1977, and was buried in West Laurel Hill Cemetery
in Bala Cynwyd, Pennsylvania
. Eiseley's wife, Mabel Langdon Eiseley, died on July 27, 1986, and is buried next to him, in the Westlawn section of the cemetery, in Lot 366. The inscription on their headstone reads, "We loved the earth but could not stay", which is a line from his poem The Little Treasures.
A library in the Lincoln City Libraries
public library
system is named after Eiseley.
Loren Eiseley was awarded the Distinguished Nebraskan Award and inducted into the Nebraska Hall of Fame. A bust of his likeness resides in the Nebraska State Capitol.
On October 25, 2007, the Governor of Nebraska, Dave Heineman
, officially declared that year "The Centennial Year of Loren Eiseley." In a written proclamation, he encouraged all Nebraskans "to read Loren Eisely's writings and to appreciate in those writings the richness and beauty of his language, his ability to depict the long, slow passage of time and the meaning of the past in the present, his portrayal of the relationships among all living things and his concern for the future."
Natural science
The natural sciences are branches of science that seek to elucidate the rules that govern the natural world by using empirical and scientific methods...
writer, who taught and published books from the 1950s through the 1970s. During this period he received more than 36 honorary degree
Honorary degree
An honorary degree or a degree honoris causa is an academic degree for which a university has waived the usual requirements, such as matriculation, residence, study, and the passing of examinations...
s and was a fellow of many distinguished professional societies. At his death, he was Benjamin Franklin Professor of Anthropology and History of Science at the University of Pennsylvania
University of Pennsylvania
The University of Pennsylvania is a private, Ivy League university located in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. Penn is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States,Penn is the fourth-oldest using the founding dates claimed by each institution...
.
He was noted as a “scholar and writer of imagination and grace,” which gained him a reputation and record of accomplishment far beyond the campus where he taught for 30 years. Publishers Weekly
Publishers Weekly
Publishers Weekly, aka PW, is an American weekly trade news magazine targeted at publishers, librarians, booksellers and literary agents...
referred to him as "the modern Thoreau." The broad scope of his many writings considered such diverse topics as the mind of Sir Francis Bacon, the prehistoric origins of man, and the contributions of Charles Darwin
Charles Darwin
Charles Robert Darwin FRS was an English naturalist. He established that all species of life have descended over time from common ancestry, and proposed the scientific theory that this branching pattern of evolution resulted from a process that he called natural selection.He published his theory...
.
Eiseley’s national reputation was established mainly through his books, including The Immense Journey (1957), Darwin's Century (1958), The Unexpected Universe (1969), The Night Country (1971), and his memoir, All the Strange Hours (1975). Science author Orville Prescott praised him as a scientist who “can write with poetic sensibility and with a fine sense of wonder and of reverence before the mysteries of life and nature.“ Naturalist author Mary Ellen Pitts saw his combination of literary and nature writings as his "quest, not simply for bringing together science and literature... but a continuation of what the 18th and 19th century British naturalists and Thoreau had done."
According to his obituary in the New York Times, the feeling and philosophical motivation of the entire body of Dr. Eiseley’s work was best expressed in one of his essays, The Enchanted Glass: “The anthropologist wrote of the need for the contemplative naturalist
Naturalist
Naturalist may refer to:* Practitioner of natural history* Conservationist* Advocate of naturalism * Naturalist , autobiography-See also:* The American Naturalist, periodical* Naturalism...
, a man who, in a less frenzied era, had time to observe, to speculate, and to dream.” Shortly before his death, he received an award from the Boston Museum of Science for his “outstanding contribution to the public understanding of science” and another from the U.S. Humane Society
Humane Society
A humane society may be a group that aims to stop human or animal suffering due to cruelty or other reasons, although in many countries, it is now used mostly for societies for the prevention of cruelty to animals...
for his “significant contribution for the improvement of life and environment in this country.”
Early life
Born in LincolnLincoln, Nebraska
The City of Lincoln is the capital and the second-most populous city of the US state of Nebraska. Lincoln is also the county seat of Lancaster County and the home of the University of Nebraska. Lincoln's 2010 Census population was 258,379....
, Nebraska
Nebraska
Nebraska is a state on the Great Plains of the Midwestern United States. The state's capital is Lincoln and its largest city is Omaha, on the Missouri River....
, Eiseley lived his childhood with a hardworking father and deaf mother who suffered from possible mental illness
Mental illness
A mental disorder or mental illness is a psychological or behavioral pattern generally associated with subjective distress or disability that occurs in an individual, and which is not a part of normal development or culture. Such a disorder may consist of a combination of affective, behavioural,...
. Their home was located on the outskirts of town, where, as author Naomi Brill writes, it was "removed from the people and the community from which they felt set apart through poverty and family misfortune." His autobiography, All the Strange Hours, begins with his "childhood experiences as a sickly afterthought, weighed down by the loveless union of his parents."
His father, Clyde, was a hardware salesman who worked long hours for little pay, writes Brill. However, as an amateur Shakespearian actor, he was able to give his son a "love for beautiful language and writing." His mother was a self-taught prairie artist who was considered a beautiful woman, but had lost her hearing in childhood. Her deafness often gave rise to irrational and destructive behavior which left Eiseley feeling distant from her, and which contributed to his parents' unhappy marriage.
Living at the edge of town, however, led to Eiseley's early interest in the natural world, to which he turned when being at home was too difficult. There, he would play in the caves and creek banks nearby. Fortunately, there were others who opened the door to a happier life. His half-brother, Leo, for instance, gave him a copy of Robinson Crusoe, with which he taught himself to read. Thereafter, he managed to find ways to get to the public library and became a voracious reader.
Eiseley later attended the Lincoln Public Schools; in high school, he wrote that he wanted to be a nature writer. He would later describe the lands around Lincoln as "flat and grass-covered and smiling so serenely up at the sun that they seemed forever youthful, untouched by mind or time—a sunlit, timeless prairie over which nothing passed but antelope or wandering bird." But, disturbed by his home situation and the illness and recent death of his father, he dropped out of school and worked at menial jobs.
Eiseley eventually enrolled in the University of Nebraska, where he wrote for the newly formed journal, Prairie Schooner, and went on archeology digs for the natural history
Natural history
Natural history is the scientific research of plants or animals, leaning more towards observational rather than experimental methods of study, and encompasses more research published in magazines than in academic journals. Grouped among the natural sciences, natural history is the systematic study...
Museum
Museum
A museum is an institution that cares for a collection of artifacts and other objects of scientific, artistic, cultural, or historical importance and makes them available for public viewing through exhibits that may be permanent or temporary. Most large museums are located in major cities...
. In 1927, however, he was diagnosed with tuberculosis
Tuberculosis
Tuberculosis, MTB, or TB is a common, and in many cases lethal, infectious disease caused by various strains of mycobacteria, usually Mycobacterium tuberculosis. Tuberculosis usually attacks the lungs but can also affect other parts of the body...
and left the university to move to the western desert
Desert
A desert is a landscape or region that receives an extremely low amount of precipitation, less than enough to support growth of most plants. Most deserts have an average annual precipitation of less than...
, believing the drier air would improve his condition. While there, he soon became restless and unhappy, which led him to hoboing around the country by hopping on freight trains (as many did during the Great Depression
Great Depression
The Great Depression was a severe worldwide economic depression in the decade preceding World War II. The timing of the Great Depression varied across nations, but in most countries it started in about 1929 and lasted until the late 1930s or early 1940s...
). Professor of religion, Dr. Richard Wentz, writes about this period: "Loren Eiseley had been a drifter in his youth. From the plains of Nebraska he had wandered across the American West. Sometimes sickly, at other times testing his strength with that curious band of roving exiles who searched the land above the rippling railroad ties, he explored his soul as he sought to touch the distant past. He became a naturalist and a bone hunter because something about the landscape had linked his mind to the birth and death of life itself.
Academic career
Eiseley eventually returned to the University of Nebraska and received a Bachelor of Arts in English and a Bachelor of Science in Geology/Anthropology. While at university, he served as editor of the literary magazine The Prairie Schooner, publishing his poetry and short stories. Undergraduate expeditions to western Nebraska and the southwest to hunt for fossils and human artifacts provided the inspiration for much of his very early work. He later noted that he came to anthropology from paleontology, preferring to leave human burial sites undisturbed unless destruction threatened them.Eiseley received his Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania
University of Pennsylvania
The University of Pennsylvania is a private, Ivy League university located in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. Penn is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States,Penn is the fourth-oldest using the founding dates claimed by each institution...
in 1937 and wrote his dissertation entitled "Three Indices of Quaternary Time and Their Bearing Upon Pre-History: a Critique", which launched his academic career. He began teaching at the University of Kansas
University of Kansas
The University of Kansas is a public research university and the largest university in the state of Kansas. KU campuses are located in Lawrence, Wichita, Overland Park, and Kansas City, Kansas with the main campus being located in Lawrence on Mount Oread, the highest point in Lawrence. The...
that same year. During World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
, Eiseley taught anatomy to reservist pre-med students at Kansas.
In 1944 he left the University of Kansas to assume the role of head of the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at Oberlin College
Oberlin College
Oberlin College is a private liberal arts college in Oberlin, Ohio, noteworthy for having been the first American institution of higher learning to regularly admit female and black students. Connected to the college is the Oberlin Conservatory of Music, the oldest continuously operating...
in Ohio
Ohio
Ohio is a Midwestern state in the United States. The 34th largest state by area in the U.S.,it is the 7th‑most populous with over 11.5 million residents, containing several major American cities and seven metropolitan areas with populations of 500,000 or more.The state's capital is Columbus...
. In 1947 he returned to the University of Pennsylvania to head its Anthropology Department. He was elected president of the American Institute of Human Paleontology
Paleontology
Paleontology "old, ancient", ὄν, ὀντ- "being, creature", and λόγος "speech, thought") is the study of prehistoric life. It includes the study of fossils to determine organisms' evolution and interactions with each other and their environments...
in 1949. From 1959 to 1961, he was provost
Provost (education)
A provost is the senior academic administrator at many institutions of higher education in the United States, Canada and Australia, the equivalent of a pro-vice-chancellor at some institutions in the United Kingdom and Ireland....
at the University of Pennsylvania, and in 1961 the University of Pennsylvania created a special interdisciplinary professorial chair for him.
Dr. Eiseley was also a fellow of many distinguished professional societies, including the American Association for the Advancement of Science
American Association for the Advancement of Science
The American Association for the Advancement of Science is an international non-profit organization with the stated goals of promoting cooperation among scientists, defending scientific freedom, encouraging scientific responsibility, and supporting scientific education and science outreach for the...
, the United States National Academy of Sciences
United States National Academy of Sciences
The National Academy of Sciences is a corporation in the United States whose members serve pro bono as "advisers to the nation on science, engineering, and medicine." As a national academy, new members of the organization are elected annually by current members, based on their distinguished and...
, the National Institute of Arts and Letters and the American Philosophical Society
American Philosophical Society
The American Philosophical Society, founded in 1743, and located in Philadelphia, Pa., is an eminent scholarly organization of international reputation, that promotes useful knowledge in the sciences and humanities through excellence in scholarly research, professional meetings, publications,...
.
At the time of his death in 1977, he was Benjamin Franklin Professor of Anthropology and History of Science, and the curator of the Early Man section at the University of Pennsylvania Museum. He had received thirty-six honorary degrees over a period of twenty years, and was the most honored member of the University of Pennsylvania since Benjamin Franklin
Benjamin Franklin
Dr. Benjamin Franklin was one of the Founding Fathers of the United States. A noted polymath, Franklin was a leading author, printer, political theorist, politician, postmaster, scientist, musician, inventor, satirist, civic activist, statesman, and diplomat...
. In 1976 he won the Bradford Washburn
Bradford Washburn
Henry Bradford Washburn, Jr. was an American explorer, mountaineer, photographer, and cartographer. He established the Boston Museum of Science, served as its director from 1939–1980, and from 1985 until his death served as its Honorary Director .Washburn is especially noted for exploits in four...
Award of the Boston Museum of Science for his "outstanding contribution to the public understanding of science" and the Joseph Wood Krutch
Joseph Wood Krutch
Joseph Wood Krutch was an American writer, critic, and naturalist.Born in Knoxville, Tennessee, he initially studied at the University of Tennessee and received a masters degree and Ph.D. from Columbia University. After serving in the army in 1918, he travelled in Europe for a year with friend...
Medal from the Humane Society of the United States
Humane Society of the United States
The Humane Society of the United States , based in Washington, D.C., is the largest animal advocacy organization in the world. In 2009, HSUS reported assets of over US$160 million....
for his "significant contribution for the improvement of life and the environment in this country."
Books
In addition to his scientific and academic work, in the mid-1940s Eiseley began to publish the essays which brought him to the attention of a wider audience. Anthropologist Pat Shipman writes, "the words that flowed from his pen... the images and insights he revealed, the genius of the man as a writer, outweigh his social disability. The words were what kept him in various honored posts; the words were what caused the students to flock to his often aborted courses; the words were what earned him esteemed lectureships and prizes. His contemporaries failed to see the duality of the man, confusing the deep, wise voice of Eiseley's writings with his own personal voice. He was a natural fugitive, a fox at the wood's edge (in his own metaphor)..."In an interview on National Public Radio (NPR), author Michael Lind
Michael Lind
Michael Lind is an American writer. Currently Lind is Policy Director of the Economic Growth Program at the New America Foundation in Washington, D.C., Editor of New American Contract and its blog Value Added, and a columnist for Salon magazine. Lind was a guest lecturer at Harvard Law School and...
said, "Before the rise of a self-conscious intelligentsia, most educated people – as well as the unlettered majority – spent most of their time in the countryside or, if they lived in cities, were a few blocks away from farmland or wilderness... At the risk of sounding countercultural, I suspect that thinkers who live in sealed, air-conditioned boxes and work by artificial light (I am one) are as unnatural as apes in cages at zoos. Naturalists like Eiseley in that sense are the most normal human beings to be found among intellectuals, because they spend a lot of time outdoors and know the names of the plants and animals they see... For all of his scientific erudition, Eiseley has a poetic, even cinematic, imagination."
Purposes of his writings
Dr. Richard Wentz describes what he feels are the significance and purposes of Eiseley's writings:"For Loren Eiseley, writing itself becomes a form of contemplation. Contemplation is a kind of human activity in which the mind, spirit and body are directed in solitude toward some other. Scholars and critics have not yet taken the full measure of contemplation as an art that is related to the purpose of all scholarly activity – to see things as they really are... Using narrative, parable and exposition, Eiseley has the uncanny ability to make us feel that we are accompanying him on a journey into the very heart of the universe. Whether he is explicating history or commenting on the ideas of a philosopher, a scientist or a theologian, he takes us with him on a personal visit."However, because of Eiseley's intense and poetic writing style, and his focus on nature and cosmology
Cosmology
Cosmology is the discipline that deals with the nature of the Universe as a whole. Cosmologists seek to understand the origin, evolution, structure, and ultimate fate of the Universe at large, as well as the natural laws that keep it in order...
, he was not accepted or understood by most of his colleagues. "You," a friend told him, "are a freak, you know. A God-damned freak, and life is never going to be easy for you. You like scholarship, but the scholars, some of them, anyhow, are not going to like you because you don’t stay in the hole where God supposedly put you. You keep sticking your head out and looking around. In a university that’s inadvisable."
1950s
The Immense Journey (1957)His first book, The Immense Journey, was a collection of writings about the history of humanity, and the rare science book that appealed to a mass audience. It has sold over a million copies and has been published in at least 16 languages.
Author Orville Prescott wrote, "Consider the case of Loren Eiseley, author of The Immense Journey, who can sit on a mountain slope beside a prairie-dog town and imagine himself back in the dawn of the Age of mammals eighty million years ago: 'There by a tree root I could almost make him out, that shabby little Paleocene
Paleocene
The Paleocene or Palaeocene, the "early recent", is a geologic epoch that lasted from about . It is the first epoch of the Palaeogene Period in the modern Cenozoic Era...
rat, eternal tramp and world wanderer, father of all mankind.' ... his prose is often lyrically beautiful, something that considerable reading in the works of anthropologists had not led me to expect. ... The subjects discussed here include the human ancestral tree, water and its significance to life, the mysteries of cellular life, 'the secret and remote abysses' of the sea, the riddle of why human beings alone among living creatures have brains capable of abstract thought and are far superior to their mere needs for survival, the reasons why Dr. Eiseley is convinced that there are no men or man-like animals on other planets, ...".
He offers an example of Eiseley's style: "There is no logical reason for the existence of a snowflake any more than there is for evolution. It is an apparition from that mysterious shadow world beyond nature, that final world which contains—if anything contains—the explanation of men and catfish and green leaves."
Darwin's Century (1958)
According to naturalist author Mary Ellen Pitts, in the "seminal" Darwin's Century, Eiseley was studying the history of evolutionary thinking, and he came to see that "as a result of scientific studies, nature has become externalized, particularized, mechanized, separated from the human and fragmented, reduced to conflict without consideration of cooperation, confined to reductionist and positivist study." The results for humankind, "as part of the 'biota
Biota (ecology)
Biota are the total collection of organisms of a geographic region or a time period, from local geographic scales and instantaneous temporal scales all the way up to whole-planet and whole-timescale spatiotemporal scales. The biota of the Earth lives in the biosphere.-See...
' – Eiseley's concern as a writer – are far reaching." In the book, his unique impact as a thinker and a literary figure emerges as he reexamines science and the way man understands science. She concludes that "Nature," for Eiseley, "emerges as a metonym for a view of the physical world, of the 'biota,' and of humankind that must be reexamined if life is to survive."
The book won the Phi Beta Kappa prize for best book in science
Phi Beta Kappa Award in Science
The Phi Beta Kappa Award in Science is given annually by the Phi Beta Kappa Society to authors of significant books in the fields of science and mathematics. The award was first given in 1959 to anthropologist Loren Eiseley.-Award winners:-References:...
in 1958.
1960s
The Firmament of Time (1960) Read excerpts onlineDiscussing the book, Professor of Zoology, Leslie Dunn wrote, "How can man of 1960, burdened with the knowledge of the world external to him, and with the consciousness that scientific knowledge is attained through continually interfering with nature, 'bear his part' and gain the hope and confidence to live in the new world to which natural science has given birth? ... The answer comes in the eloquent, moving central essay of his new book." The New Yorker wrote, "Dr. Eiseley describes with zest and admiration the giant steps that have led man, in a scant three hundred years, to grasp the nature of his extraordinary past and to substitute a natural world for a world of divine creation and intervention... An irresistible inducement to partake of the almost forgotten excitements of reflection." And the review in The Chicago Tribune, added, "[This book] has a warm feeling for all natural phenomena; it has a rapport with man and his world and his problems; ... it has hope and belief. And it has the beauty of prose that characterizes Eiseley’s philosophical moods."
It was awarded the 1961 John Burroughs
John Burroughs
John Burroughs was an American naturalist and essayist important in the evolution of the U.S. conservation movement. According to biographers at the American Memory project at the Library of Congress,...
Medal for the best publication in the field of Nature Writing.
The Unexpected Universe (1969) Read excerpts online
Poet W.H. Auden wrote, "The main theme of The Unexpected Universe is Man as the Quest Hero, the wanderer, the voyager, the seeker after adventure, knowledge, power, meaning, and righteousness." He quotes from the book:
"Every time we walk along a beach some ancient urge disturbs us so that we find ourselves shedding shoes and garments or scavenging among seaweed and whitened timbers like the homesick refugees of a long war... Mostly the animals understand their roles, but man, by comparison, seems troubled by a message that, it is often said, he cannot quite remember or has gotten wrong... Bereft of instinct, he must search continually for meanings... Man was a reader before he became a writer, a reader of what Coleridge
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Samuel Taylor Coleridge was an English poet, Romantic, literary critic and philosopher who, with his friend William Wordsworth, was a founder of the Romantic Movement in England and a member of the Lake Poets. He is probably best known for his poems The Rime of the Ancient Mariner and Kubla...
once called the mighty alphabet of the universe."
Reviewers at Amazon.com: "I think every book this man ever wrote is a masterpiece. His style is thoughtful, haunting, and beautiful. They are all good. Evolutionary biologist, Theodosius Dobzhansky
Theodosius Dobzhansky
Theodosius Grygorovych Dobzhansky ForMemRS was a prominent geneticist and evolutionary biologist, and a central figure in the field of evolutionary biology for his work in shaping the unifying modern evolutionary synthesis...
described him as "...a Proust miraculously turned into an evolutionary anthropologist..." and science fiction novelist Ray Bradbury
Ray Bradbury
Ray Douglas Bradbury is an American fantasy, horror, science fiction, and mystery writer. Best known for his dystopian novel Fahrenheit 451 and for the science fiction stories gathered together as The Martian Chronicles and The Illustrated Man , Bradbury is one of the most celebrated among 20th...
wrote glowing reviews of many of his books including this one. ... Here he writes from a naturalist's perspective on the unexpected and symbolic aspects of the universe. Read about seeds, hieroglyphs
Hieroglyphs
Hieroglyph or hieroglyphics may refer to:*Anatolian hieroglyphs*Chinese character*Cretan hieroglyphs*Cursive hieroglyphs*Dongba script*Egyptian hieroglyphs*Hieroglyphic Luwian*Mayan hieroglyphs...
on shells, the Ice Age
Ice age
An ice age or, more precisely, glacial age, is a generic geological period of long-term reduction in the temperature of the Earth's surface and atmosphere, resulting in the presence or expansion of continental ice sheets, polar ice sheets and alpine glaciers...
, lost tombs, city dumps and primitive Man. The underlying theme is the desolation and renewal of our planet's history and experience."
"Loren Eiseley's dark, brooding prose is unique in the annals of nature writing. The Unexpected Universe features some of what are considered Eiseley's best essays. Heavily autobiographical and deeply personal, these essays are not cheerful ramblings on the joy of communing with nature. They are bleak, lonely musings on the human condition."
1970s
The Invisible Pyramid (1971) Read excerpts onlineGregory McNamee, of Amazon.com writes, "In 1910 young Loren Eiseley watched the passage of Halley’s Comet with his father. The boy who became a famous naturalist was never again to see the spectacle except in his imagination. That childhood event contributed to the profound sense of time and space that marks The Invisible Pyramid. This collection of essays, first published shortly after Americans landed on the moon, explores inner and outer space, the vastness of the cosmos, and the limits of what can be known. Bringing poetic insight to scientific discipline, Eiseley makes connections between civilizations past and present, multiple universes, humankind, and nature.
"Eiseley took the occasion of the lunar landing to consider how far humans had to go in understanding their own small corner of the universe, their home planet, much less what he called the 'cosmic prison' of space. Likening humans to the microscopic phagocytes that dwell within our bodies, he grumpily remarks, 'We know only a little more extended reality than the hypothetical creature below us. Above us may lie realms it is beyond our power to grasp.' Science, he suggests, would be better put to examining that which lies immediately before us, although he allows that the quest to explore space is so firmly rooted in Western technological culture that it was unlikely to be abandoned simply because of his urging. Eiseley's opinion continues to be influential among certain environmentalists, and these graceful essays show why that should be so.
Book excerpt:
- "Man would not be man if his dreams did not exceed his grasp. ... Like John DonneJohn DonneJohn Donne 31 March 1631), English poet, satirist, lawyer, and priest, is now considered the preeminent representative of the metaphysical poets. His works are notable for their strong and sensual style and include sonnets, love poetry, religious poems, Latin translations, epigrams, elegies, songs,...
, man lies in a close prison, yet it is dear to him. Like Donne's, his thoughts at times overleap the sun and pace beyond the body. If I term humanity a slime mold organism it is because our present environment suggest it. If I remember the sunflower forest it is because from its hidden reaches man arose. The green world is his sacred center. In moments of sanity he must still seek refuge there. ... If I dream by contrast of the eventual drift of the star voyagers through the dilated time of the universe, it is because I have seen thistledownThistledownThistledown is:* The soft feathery material which protects the fruiting part of a thistle.* Thistledown, a 1938 British musical film* One of the servers in which the Massively Multi-player Online Role Playing Game Asheron's Call takes place, with characters you create, set in the fictional land of...
off to new worlds and am at heart a voyager who, in this modern time, still yearns for the lost country of his birth."
The Night Country (1971) Read excerpts online
Kirkus Reviews
Kirkus Reviews
Kirkus Reviews is an American book review magazine founded in 1933 by Virginia Kirkus . Kirkus serves the book and literary trade sector, including libraries, publishers, literary and film agents, film and TV producers and booksellers. Kirkus Reviews is published on the first and 15th of each month...
wrote, "... like the medievalists, Eiseley reads nature as the second book of God's revelation, mysterious and heavy with latent, lurking fertility. His sizable audience should welcome the latest voyage in search of the secret springs of creativity - evolutionary, cosmic, mental - as a muted adumbration of temporal mortality." Other reviews: "Eiseley has met strange creatures in the night country, and he tells marvelous stories about them ... For Eiseley, storytelling is never pure entertainment. The autobiographical tales keep illustrating the theses that wind through all his writing - the fallibility of science, the mystery of evolution, the surprise of life."- Time Magazine; "A sort of Odyssey by a man in dialogue with nature and evolution; Eiseley remains one of our foremost humanists-and prose stylists." - Christian Century;
In a published essay, alumnus Carl Hoffman wrote, "An old man who had done almost all of his writing late, late at night, was speaking to a younger man who liked to read in those same dark hours. In a chapter entitled 'One Night’s Dying,' Eiseley said to me: 'It is thus that one day and the next are welded together, and that one night’s dying becomes tomorrow’s birth. I, who do not sleep, can tell you this.' Today, well into my fifties, in the midst of a lifetime of almost compulsive reading, I still regard The Night Country as my all-time favorite book."
All the Strange Hours: The Excavation of a Life (1975) Read excerpts online
"In All the Strange Hours," states Amazon.com, "Eiseley turns his considerable powers of reflection and discovery on his own life to weave a compelling story, related with the modesty, grace, and keen eye for a telling anecdote that distinguish his work. His story begins with his childhood experiences as a sickly afterthought, weighed down by the loveless union of his parents. From there he traces the odyssey that led to his search for early postglacial man—and into inspiriting philosophical territory—culminating in his uneasy achievement of world renown. Eiseley crafts an absorbing self-portrait of a man who has thought deeply about his place in society as well as humanity’s place in the natural world."
The Star Thrower (1978)
His friend and science fiction author Ray Bradbury
Ray Bradbury
Ray Douglas Bradbury is an American fantasy, horror, science fiction, and mystery writer. Best known for his dystopian novel Fahrenheit 451 and for the science fiction stories gathered together as The Martian Chronicles and The Illustrated Man , Bradbury is one of the most celebrated among 20th...
, wrote,"The book will be read and cherished in the year 2001. It will go to the Moon and Mars with future generations. Loren Eiseley's work changed my life." And from the Philadelphia Sunday Bulletin, "An astonishing breadth of knowledge, infinite capacity for wonder and compassionate interest for everyone and everything in the universe.
Darwin and the Mysterious Mr. X (1979)
The book attempts to solve a mystery: "Samuel Butler, a master of acrimonious polemic, confronted Charles Darwin
Charles Darwin
Charles Robert Darwin FRS was an English naturalist. He established that all species of life have descended over time from common ancestry, and proposed the scientific theory that this branching pattern of evolution resulted from a process that he called natural selection.He published his theory...
with the sorest of all scientific subjects—a dispute about priority. In Evolution
Evolution
Evolution is any change across successive generations in the heritable characteristics of biological populations. Evolutionary processes give rise to diversity at every level of biological organisation, including species, individual organisms and molecules such as DNA and proteins.Life on Earth...
Old and New (1879), Butler accused Darwin of slighting the evolutionary speculations of Buffon, Lamarck, and his own grandfather Erasmus." The Kirkus Reviews
Kirkus Reviews
Kirkus Reviews is an American book review magazine founded in 1933 by Virginia Kirkus . Kirkus serves the book and literary trade sector, including libraries, publishers, literary and film agents, film and TV producers and booksellers. Kirkus Reviews is published on the first and 15th of each month...
calls it, "...an essay devoted to resurrecting the name and importance of Edward Blyth
Edward Blyth
Edward Blyth was an English zoologist and pharmacist. He was one of the founders of zoology in India....
, a 19th-century naturalist. Eiseley credits Blyth with the development of the idea, and even the coining of the words "natural selection
Natural selection
Natural selection is the nonrandom process by which biologic traits become either more or less common in a population as a function of differential reproduction of their bearers. It is a key mechanism of evolution....
," which Darwin absorbed and enlarged upon...[and] some thoughts on Darwin's Descent of Man; and a concluding speculation on the meaning of evolution. The last piece is very much Eiseley's poetic from-whence-do-we come/whither-do-we-go vein.
Eisley's ideas as set out in this book have been further investigated - with the complete texts of the relevant articles by Edward Blyth - by retired history teacher Andrew Bradbury
Posthumous
The Lost Notebooks of Loren Eiseley (1987) Read excerpts onlineJust before his death, he asked his wife to destroy the personal notebooks which he kept since 1953. However, she compromised by disassembling them so they couldn't be used. After great effort, however, his good friend, and the editor of this compilation, Kenneth Heuer, managed to reassemble most of his notebooks into readable form. It includes a variety of Eiseley's writings, such as childhood stories, sketches while he was a vagabond, old family pictures, unpublished poems, portions of unfinished novels, and letters to and from literary admirers like W.H. Auden, Howard Nemerov
Howard Nemerov
Howard Nemerov was an American poet. He was twice appointed Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 1963 to 1964, and again from 1988 to 1990. He received the National Book Award, Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, and Bollingen Prize for The Collected Poems of Howard Nemerov...
, Lewis Mumford
Lewis Mumford
Lewis Mumford was an American historian, philosopher of technology, and influential literary critic. Particularly noted for his study of cities and urban architecture, he had a broad career as a writer...
and Ray Bradbury
Ray Bradbury
Ray Douglas Bradbury is an American fantasy, horror, science fiction, and mystery writer. Best known for his dystopian novel Fahrenheit 451 and for the science fiction stories gathered together as The Martian Chronicles and The Illustrated Man , Bradbury is one of the most celebrated among 20th...
.
Author Robert Finch, in a review of the book, writes, "Like Melville
Melville
-In Australia:*Melville, Western Australia - the suburb*City of Melville, Western Australia - the local government authority*Melville Island, Northern Territory in Australia-In Canada:*Melville, Saskatchewan*Melville, Ontario*Melville Peninsula, Nunavut...
, Eiseley thought of himself, and by extension all mankind, as 'an orphan, a wood child, a changeling,' a cosmic outcast born into a world that afforded him no true home." He adds that his "distinctive gift as a writer was to take powerfully formative personal influences of family and place and fuse them with his intellectual meditations on universal topics such as evolution, human consciousness and the weight of time. ... he found metaphors that released a powerful view of man's fate in the modern world." As Kenneth Heuer writes, "there are countless examples of Eiseley's empathy with life in all its forms, and particularly with its lost outcasts...the love that transcends the boundaries of species was the highest spiritual expression he knew.
Finch adds, "We are grateful for a life and a sensibility that would be welcome in any age, but never more so than in our increasingly depersonalized world. ... he made a generation of readers 'see the world through his eyes.' In an undated passage, circa 1959, Eiseley wrote, 'Man is alone in the universe...Only in the act of love, in rare and hidden communion with nature, does man escape himself.'" The Lost Notebooks contains numerous examples of his "creative and sympathetic imagination, even when that creation takes place in the solitude of journals never meant for public eyes."
From other reviews: "Eiseley has rightly been called 'the modern Thoreau.'" -Publishers Weekly; "[an] extensive and enlightening glimpses ... into the intellectual and emotional workshop of one of the most original and influential American essayists of this century." -New York Times Book Review; "Eiseley's great genius for the art of the word coupled with a poetic insight into the connection between science and humanism shines through in page after page... This is a book that will be read and quoted and whose pages will grow thin with wear from hands in continued search of new meaning within its words and images." -Los Angeles Times; "it will enhance any dedicated reader's knowledge of this most remarkable literary naturalist... They provide more than a glimpse into Eiseley's mind and imagination." -The Bloomsbury Review; "It is a joy, like finding a lost Rembrandt in the attic, to discover that Eiseley left behind a legacy." -San Francisco Examiner-Chronicle.
Religion
Dr. Richard Wentz, professor of religious studies, noted that The Christian Century magazine, called attention to a study of Loren Eiseley by saying: “The religious chord did not sound in him, but he vibrated to many of the concerns historically related to religion.” Wentz adds, "Although Eiseley may not have considered his writing as an expression of American spiritually, one feels that he was quite mindful of its religious character. As an heir of EmersonRalph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson was an American essayist, lecturer, and poet, who led the Transcendentalist movement of the mid-19th century...
and Thoreau, he is at home among the poets and philosophers and among those scientists whose observations also were a form of contemplation of the universe."
But Wentz considered the inherent contradictions in the statements: "We do not really know what to do with religiousness when it expresses itself outside those enclosures which historians and social scientists have carefully labeled religions. What, after all, does it mean to say, "the religious chord does not sound in someone," but that the person vibrates to the concerns historically related to religion? If the person vibrates to such concerns, the chord is religious whether or not it manages to resound in the temples and prayer houses of the devout."
Wentz quotes Eiseley, from All the Strange Hours and The Star Thrower, to indicate that he was, in fact, a religious thinker:
- "I am treading deeper and deeper into leaves and silence. I see more faces watching, non-human faces. Ironically, I who profess no religion find the whole of my life a religious pilgrimage."
- "The religious forms of the present leave me unmoved. My eye is round, open, and undomesticated as an owl’s in a primeval forest -- a world that for me has never truly departed."
- "Like the toad in my shirt we were in the hands of God, but we could not feel him; he was beyond us, totally and terribly beyond our limited- senses."
- "Man is not as other creatures and. . . without the sense of the holy, without compassion, his brain can become a gray stalking horror -- the deviser of Belsen."
Wentz encompasses such quotes in his partial conclusion: "He was indeed a scientist -- a bone hunter, he called himself. Archaeologist, anthropologist and naturalist, he devoted a great deal of time and reflection to the detective work of scientific observation. However, if we are to take seriously his essays, we cannot ignore the evidence of his constant meditation on matters of ultimate order and meaning."
Evolution
Wentz writes, "Loren Eiseley is very much in the tradition of Henry David ThoreauHenry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau was an American author, poet, philosopher, abolitionist, naturalist, tax resister, development critic, surveyor, historian, and leading transcendentalist...
. He takes the circumstances of whatever “business" he is about as the occasion for new questioning, new searching for some sign, some glimpse into the meaning of the unknown that confronts him at every center of existence." He quotes Eiseley from The Star Thrower, "We are, in actuality, students of that greater order known as nature. It is into nature that man vanishes."
In comparing Eiseley with Thoreau, he discusses clear similarities in their life and philosophies. He notes that Eiseley was, like Thoreau, a 'spiritual wanderer through the deserts of the modern world.' However, notes Wentz, "Thoreau had left the seclusion of Walden Pond
Walden Pond
Walden Pond is a 31-metre-deep lake in Massachusetts . It is in area and around, located in Concord, Massachusetts, in the United States...
in order to pace the fields of history, sorting out the artifacts that people had dropped along the way." But "it was those 'fossil thoughts' and 'mindprints' that Eiseley himself explored in his wanderings. These explorations gave depth, a tragic dimension and catharsis to what he called the 'one great drama that concerns us most, the supreme mystery, man.'"
Eiseley realized, according to Wentz, that there is nothing below a certain depth that can truly be explained, and quotes Eiseley, that there is "nothing to explain the necessity of life, nothing to explain the hunger of the elements to become life . . . ." And Wentz adds, Eiseley tells us that "the human version of evolutionary events [is] perhaps too simplistic for belief."
Science and progress
Eiseley talked about the illusions of science in his book, The Firmament of Time:- "A scientist writing around the turn of the century remarked that all of the past generations of men have lived and died in a world of illusion. The unconscious irony in his observation consists in the fact that this man assumed the progress of science to have been so great that a clear vision of the world without illusion was, by his own time, possible. It is needless to add that he wrote before Einstein... at a time when MendelGregor MendelGregor Johann Mendel was an Austrian scientist and Augustinian friar who gained posthumous fame as the founder of the new science of genetics. Mendel demonstrated that the inheritance of certain traits in pea plants follows particular patterns, now referred to as the laws of Mendelian inheritance...
was just about to be rediscovered, and before the advances in the study of radioactivity..."
Wentz noted Eiseley's belief that science may have become misguided in its goals: "Loren Eiseley thought that much of the modern scientific enterprise had removed humanity ever farther from its sense of responsibility to the natural world it had left in order to create an artificial world to satisfy its own insatiable appetites." Interpreting Eiseley's messages, he adds, "It would be well, he tells us, to heed the message of the Buddha
Buddha
In Buddhism, buddhahood is the state of perfect enlightenment attained by a buddha .In Buddhism, the term buddha usually refers to one who has become enlightened...
, who knew that 'one cannot proceed upon the path of human transcendence
Transcendence (philosophy)
In philosophy, the adjective transcendental and the noun transcendence convey the basic ground concept from the word's literal meaning , of climbing or going beyond, albeit with varying connotations in its different historical and cultural stages...
until one has made interiorly in one’s soul a road into the future.' Spaces within stretch as far as those without."
Purpose for mankind
"In essay after essay," writes Wentz, "he writes as a magus, a spiritualSpirituality
Spirituality can refer to an ultimate or an alleged immaterial reality; an inner path enabling a person to discover the essence of his/her being; or the “deepest values and meanings by which people live.” Spiritual practices, including meditation, prayer and contemplation, are intended to develop...
master or a shaman who has seen into the very heart of the universe and shares his healing vision with those who live in a world of feeble sight. We must learn to see again, he tells us; we must rediscover the true center of the self in the otherness of nature."
Death and burial
West Laurel Hill Cemetery
West Laurel Hill Cemetery is a cemetery located in Bala Cynwyd, Pennsylvania, United States. It is the site of many notable burials, and has been listed on the National Register of Historic Places since 1992...
in Bala Cynwyd, Pennsylvania
Bala Cynwyd, Pennsylvania
Bala Cynwyd is a community in Lower Merion Township which is located on the Main Line in southeastern Pennsylvania, bordering the western edge of Philadelphia at US Route 1 . It was originally two separate towns, Bala and Cynwyd, but is commonly treated as a single community...
. Eiseley's wife, Mabel Langdon Eiseley, died on July 27, 1986, and is buried next to him, in the Westlawn section of the cemetery, in Lot 366. The inscription on their headstone reads, "We loved the earth but could not stay", which is a line from his poem The Little Treasures.
A library in the Lincoln City Libraries
Lincoln City Libraries
Lincoln City Libraries is the official public library system in Lincoln, Nebraska, USA. There are eight total branches.The main location is Bennett Martin Public Library in Lincoln's downtown area, which includes three floors and a basement. Bennett Martin is also home to Polley Music Library and...
public library
Public library
A public library is a library that is accessible by the public and is generally funded from public sources and operated by civil servants. There are five fundamental characteristics shared by public libraries...
system is named after Eiseley.
Loren Eiseley was awarded the Distinguished Nebraskan Award and inducted into the Nebraska Hall of Fame. A bust of his likeness resides in the Nebraska State Capitol.
Legacy
In summarizing some of Eiseley's contributions, the editor of The Bloomsbury Review wrote, "There can be no question that Loren Eiseley maintains a place of eminence among nature writers. His extended explorations of human life and mind, set against the backdrop of our own and other universes are like those to be found in every book of nature writing currently available... We now routinely expect our nature writers to leap across the chasm between science, natural history, and poetry with grace and ease. Eiseley made the leap at a time when science was science, and literature was, well, literature... His writing delivered science to nonscientists in the lyrical language of earthly metaphor, irony, simile, and narrative, all paced like a good mystery."On October 25, 2007, the Governor of Nebraska, Dave Heineman
Dave Heineman
David Eugene "Dave" Heineman is the 39th and current Governor of Nebraska. He is a member of the Republican Party.-Early life, education and career:...
, officially declared that year "The Centennial Year of Loren Eiseley." In a written proclamation, he encouraged all Nebraskans "to read Loren Eisely's writings and to appreciate in those writings the richness and beauty of his language, his ability to depict the long, slow passage of time and the meaning of the past in the present, his portrayal of the relationships among all living things and his concern for the future."
See also
- American philosophyAmerican philosophyAmerican philosophy is the philosophical activity or output of Americans, both within the United States and abroad. The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy notes that while American philosophy lacks a "core of defining features, American Philosophy can nevertheless be seen as both reflecting and...
- List of American philosophers
- Ian McHargIan McHargIan L. McHarg was born in Clydebank, Scotland and became a landscape architect and a renowned writer on regional planning using natural systems. He was the founder of the department of landscape architecture at the University of Pennsylvania in the United States. His 1969 book Design with Nature...
External links
- Returning Insight to Storytelling: Science, Stories, and Loren Eiseley An essay exploring Eiseley's memoir All The Strange Hours: The Excavation of a Life.
- The Man from the Sunflower Forest: A Loren Eiseley Reader
- Searching for Loren Eiseley: An Attempt at Reconstruction from a Few Fragments
- NET Television
- http://www.lincolnlibraries.org/depts/hr/wpa/ne_fwp_12.html Loren Eiseley and the Nebraska Federal Writers' Project.
- http://www.lincolnlibraries.org/depts/hr/ArchiveGuides/EiseleyFront.html Archival collections relating to Loren Eiseley.
- Biography-West Laurel Hill Cemetery web site
- City21 Movie - Perspectives on Shaping the 21st Century City Includes footage of Loren Eiseley