30 August 2011 by Tristan Gooley
The research that I have been doing for the book I am currently writing led me to an interesting study. Academics have found that there is an inverse relationship between wealth and awareness of nature. This trend appears to be true in places as different as Indonesia and the UK.
The number of local plant species that people can identify tends to be inversely proportional to their income. The study did not reveal whether this was a cultural phenomenon or purely economic one, ie. do people know solely because they need to or also because they want to?
I was reminded of this study yesterday evening as I re-read an old favourite of mine, George Orwell’s ‘Down and Out in Paris and London‘. One of my favourite passages about the stars can be found in this book. Orwell is spending time with a ‘screever’, a pavement artist, and finds this…
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Tags: Aldebaran, astronomy, Eton, George Orwell, natural, natural awareness, natural observation, nature, nature philosophy |
22 June 2010 by Tristan Gooley
My thanks to Stuart Goring for sending over these great Thomas Hardy celestial quotes. Those who know this blog or my book will be aware that I love it when nature and the arts come together. The two following excerpts are taken from ‘Far From the Madding Crowd.’
“He stood and carefully examined the sky, to ascertain the time of night from the altitudes of the stars. The Dog-star and Alderbaran, pointing to the restless Pleiades, were halfway up the Southern sky ,and between them hung Orion, which gorgeous constellation never burnt more vividly than now, as it soared forth above the rim of the landscape. Castor and Pollux with their quiet shine were almost on the meridian: the barren gloomy square of Pegasus was creeping round to the north-west; far away through the plantation Vega sparkled like a lamp suspended amid the leafless trees, and Cassiopeia’s chair…
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Tags: Aldebaran, Betelgeuse, cassiopeia, fiction, literature, north star, orion, pleiades, Sirius |
