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SUMMARY:From Cook to Cousteau: the many lives of coral reefs - Alistair Sp
 onsel (Harvard University)
DTSTART:20120523T160000Z
DTEND:20120523T173000Z
UID:TALK37609@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:Caitlin Wylie
DESCRIPTION:This paper sketches the history of changes in Western attitude
 s toward coral reefs. I trace a broad shift from the view that coral reefs
  were robust and threatening natural phenomena to the late-twentieth centu
 ry view that they are fragile and threatened. I also examine the different
  moral lessons that have been drawn from changing understandings of reef f
 ormation. In the final section I attend to the recent concept of the 'deat
 h' of a reef. I suggest that this description (or metaphor) was linked not
  only to environmentalist concerns of the late-twentieth century\, but als
 o to SCUBA and the other technologies that encouraged their users in the f
 lourishing science of marine biology to equate the reef with its actively 
 growing portion rather than with the entire (mostly dead) reef structure. 
 I conclude by offering a reason why the unfamiliar cultural history of ree
 fs seems to follow an arc that is rather familiar to environmental histori
 ans\, arguing that the transition was driven by shifts in the ways in whic
 h scientists were able to encounter reefs.
LOCATION:Seminar Room 1\, Department of History and Philosophy of Science
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