Word: naturalist
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1970-1979
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...left to Ralph Ellison to develop the Afro-American in all of his indivisible and invisible wholeness. In the tradition of the classical epic of Western literature, an unnamed protagonist, neither naturalist demigod nor realist picaresque, sets out on a journey on which depends the future of his race or his nation. He sets out to achieve his identity in the most widely accepted tradition of Western literature: the journey. From the Odyssey to Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, amidst the background of superhuman danger, virtue came in the struggle of the hero and his triumph over evil forces...
Though this insight is urgent, the au thor never belabors it. Instead of preaching about interdependence, Janovy celebrates the simple delights of a naturalist: discovering a creek full of snails or a marsh full of flies, observing a colony of birds and musing that "the individual cliff swallow is the philosophical equivalent of a single cell of the multicellular colony-organism," realizing that every good biologist must also be a philosopher. "The biologist," he concludes, "approaches nature in the form of a plant or animal and immediately begins asking questions about the innermost soul, the innermost characteristics, the true spectrum...
...Named for the ship that carried British Naturalist Charles Darwin on his 1831-36 voyage...
DIED. W. Douglas Burden, 80, naturalist and explorer; in Charlotte, Vt. Trained in paleontology, Burden led an expedition to the Dutch East Indies island of Komodo in 1926 in search of the vicious Komodo dragon. He became the first white man to capture the reptile, the world's oldest and, at 10 ft. and 250 Ibs., largest lizard; of the 14 specimens he collected, two may be seen in the American Museum of Natural History. Burden's exploits inspired a friend, Film Director Merian Cooper, to make King Kong. Interested in filming undersea life, Burden in 1938 joined...
Till now Peter Matthiessen's readers have known him primarily as a novelist, a naturalist and a travel writer. The Snow Leopard reveals a more private Matthiessen, a 51-year-old widower searching for peace of mind and, of course, material for a book...