At 12:49 PM 6/14/99 -0500, Windward, Rolfe wrote:
>What we truly observe, in sympathy as the biologist Barbara McClintock
>might say, changes as well as informs us. E.O. Wilson (1994) comments
>on some of the early influences in his life are in a similar
>vein. In the summer of 1936, at the age of 7, he describes an encounter
>with an "astonishing jellyfish ...that existed outside my previous
>imagination" (which he later learned was a "sea nettle," a scyphozoan
>called Chrysaora quinquecirrha). His early explorations of Perdido Bay in
>Florida begin at that time which, perhaps not coincidentally, is also the
>time his parents separate.
>
>He then says, "Why do I tell you this little boy's story of medusas, rays,
>and sea monsters, nearly 60 years after the fact? Because it illustrates I
>think, how a naturalist is created. A child comes to the edge of deep water
>with a mind prepared for wonder. Hands on experience at the critical time,
>not systematic knowledge, is what counts in the making of a naturalist.
>Better to be an untutored for a while, not to know the names or anatomical
>detail. Better to spend long stretches of time just searching and
>dreaming."
>
>Wilson, E. O. (1994). Naturalist. Washington, D.C.: Island Press/Shearwater
>Books.
>