John Muir and Environmental Values Workshop

The Fox the Deer and the Trees

Philosopher Emily Brady asked us to put together a presentation that referenced Muir while talking about our research on the Black Wood at Rannoch in Highland Perthshire. We worked from a paper that Reiko had drafted “Perceptions and symbolic relationships in a Caledonian pine forest.” We rewrote it with the intent to close the workshop by offering a counterpoint to Muir, beginning with a reference to Duncan Ban MacIntyre’s ‘Song to the Foxes‘ as a way to talk about the often conflicted relationship, but the fundamental social and cultural interrelationship with nature in Scotland. We also tried to provide some insight into how we work from a philosophical and experiential point of view to conduct a deep reading of place and its historic and contemporary meaning.

This was a brilliant series of presentations with each speaker adding another layer to how Muir is understood across the shifting sands of time and how it informs (and at times misinforms) what we understand today. The breadth of the presentations were as inspiring as the depth of connected issues and meaning that could be drawn through them all. We also had the benefit of a great discussions with philosopher and performing arts critic and theorist Wallace Heim who traveled with us on the way home.

John Muir and Environmental Values

Old Library, Geography Building, University of Edinburgh
Friday, 3rd July 2015

Programme

10:00-10:15
Workshop welcome

10:15-11:15
Simon James (Philosophy, Durham)
Nothing Truly Wild is Unclean: Muir, Misanthropy, and the Aesthetics of Dirt

11:15-11:45
Coffee

11:45-12:45
Emily Brady (Geography, Edinburgh)
Muir and the Sublime

12:45-13:45
Lunch

13.45-14:15
Fraser MacDonald (Geography, Edinburgh)
Scotland After Muir

14:15-15:00
Jeremy Kidwell (Divinity, Edinburgh)
Muir the Presbyterian: Reading the book of nature, eco-piety and modern ecological action.

15:00-15:30
Tea

15.30-16.30
Reiko Goto and Tim Collins (Collins-Goto Studio)
The Fox the Deer and the Trees

16.30-17.00
Closing discussion

Location: The Old Library is in the Geography Building, on Drummond Street (EH8 9JX) within the High School Yards area of the University of Edinburgh campus.

We are grateful to the Institute for Geography and the Lived Environment, University of Edinburgh, for supporting this event.