The John Muir Newsletter, Fall/Winter 2011/2012

• Main Author: The John Muir Center
• Format: Text
• Language: unknown
• Published: Scholarly Commons 2011
• Subjects: John Muir; Newsletter; Holt-Atherton Special Collections; University of the Pacific; Holt-Atherton Pacific Center for Western Studies; Stockton; California; John Muir Center for Regional Studies; American Studies; Natural Resources and Conservation; United States History; Atherton; Pacific; Sea ice
• Online Access: https://scholarlycommons.pacific.edu/jmn/93; https://scholarlycommons.pacific.edu/context/jmn/article/1092/viewcontent/fall_winter11_12.pdf

Fall/Winter 2011/2012 LA--/*. oJW J\\AAAA, uLwtiAjU)OlGA, THE JOHN MUIR CENTER SPECIAL POINTS OF INTEREST: The present is the key to the past. Muir would apply geological formation and specifically the action of glacial ice to the handiwork of God. Muir chose to live "to entice people to look at Nature's loveliness." In the beginning and to the end botany was the foundation upon which Muir's work as a preservationist grew and glacial studies were seamlessly connected to his study of plants. An Essay P h e n o m on John E N A L S C I Muir E N C E IN THIS ISSUE An Essay on John Muir's Phenomenal Science by 1 Bonnie J. Gisel 59th California History Institute to focus on . "Women as History- Makers in California" John Muir Class Visits "A Walk in the Wild" and the Muir House By Bonnie Johanna Gisel Curator, LeConte Memorial Lodge, Yosemite National Park Author, Nature's Beloved Son: Rediscovering John Muir's Botanical Legacy I. Origins of Muir's Scientific Self The world John Muir sauntered through was one in which the distribution of erratics was attributed to a diluvial theory, a wave of sea ice due to catastrophic sudden and violent floods released from the interior of the Earth or caused by the upheaval of -^F" "*"> mountains. This diluvial theory gave way to a theory that provided a more rational explanation to account for the appearance of erratic boulders, and that theory was that erratics had been moved by vast sheets of moving glaciers. A debate—sea ice vs. land ice-remained a feature of geological discussion until about 1902. As well Muir found himself inquiring into the inner workings of science when fossil remnants—relicts of a world of unusual and exceptional creatures and plants, and the study of strata, continued to expand upon what James Hutton of Edinburgh regarded as an Earth im- James Hutton From http://etc.usf.edu/ clipart/60973/60973James hutton.htm mensely older than the thousands of years allowed by the chronology of the Old Testa- ment.1 Then, too, up from the sod of science, a ...