Western Pond Group A

This topic submitted by G. Knight, B. Spinks, E. Jenkins ( same as last time ) on 3/2/02 .

Western College Publishing House:

We are writing requesting funding for the research and development of our new novel, tentatively called Simple Human Nature. Included in this request are a description of the piece including character sketches and a “jacket cover” summary, a project outline that describes the technique and craft of the text and literature review, and a discussion of the interdisciplinary nature of the process and the novel itself. All of this is done to present you with a well-developed look into our process as authors and researchers. We feel that after reading this proposal, you will agree that a partnership on this project will be mutually beneficial.
This whole project was berthed in a discussion we had one evening while out to dinner. Our conservation shifted from a discussion of the way humanity views and interacts with nature to how we see this generalized world-view play out in our day-to-day lives. Given our common background in interdisciplinary studies, we began to try to take an interdisciplinary approach to understanding this very broad concept.
In the spirit of interdisciplinary study we decided to compile a text that discussed the environmental, philosophic, and humanities aspects of human interaction with nature. We were particularly interested in how humans perceived natural landscapes, whether or not humans seek to dominate or cooperate with nature, and how they do so.
Our text is itself an interdisciplinary experience, one that has taken an academic debate in between courses at dinner to novel length ambition.

The Text

Simple Human Nature is a novel that uses an distinctive narrative style to present a thorough look at the way human’s see and interact with nature. It features three main characters, who themselves represent a three different areas of academia and who have distinct views of humanity, nature, and their interaction in the natural world.

Character Sketches
Virginia
If this story were to be analyzed for the purposes of instruction (be it in a high school or college classroom), Virginia would be called the protagonist. (As it will shown later, there might be no clear protagonist in this narrative.) She is a reporter for a large national magazine in whom most of the major conflict of the narrative is apparent. From our prospective, Virginia is a great character in whom to demonstrate the power of literature and culture in the discussion of humanity and nature. As a reporter, she also allows us the opportunity to provide a degree of synthesis for our readers.

Geoffrey
Geoff is an Environment Studies graduate student. He is an environmentalist who also has a developed sense of global capitalism. These distinct backgrounds allow for his character to be an expert on the ultimate motivating forces of current environmental movement as well as the natural processes of the earth. He is also internally conflicted in that he cannot say with definition what is the best way for humans to cooperate/ cohabitate with the rest of the natural world.

Stanley
Stan is a philosophy professor who like Geoff is internally conflicted. Though at the heart, he is an anthropocentrist, he also has an understanding for the finite nature of humanity within the context of geologic time. He is then forced to explain or justify why he feels it is appropriate for humans to act with out consideration of the world around them.

“Jacket Cover” Summary

Virginia is a big city reporter who finds herself in a small college time covering a story she does not really want to. Simple Human Nature follows her journey into a foreign world borne of academia and everyday society that ultimately forces her to question everything she believes in.
Virginia leaves the city to cover the affects of budget cuts on her editor’s alma-mater, a story she believes will take her nowhere. Once she arrives in her seemingly quaint college town, she begins to see how much these budget cuts are affecting the people.
After an afternoon of studying a local duck pond, Virginia meets Geoffery and Stanley, two intellectual rivals. As she begins to chronicle their conflict, she begins to see how their fight is both broad and essential to understanding the human experience.
Simple Human Nature is a biting look at academia, society, and ultimately how we as people look at and interact with nature. It is unbiased and written with a shocking immediacy. It calls into question how each of us acts and what we want, and what affect these actions and desires will impact the globe long after humans have left the planet.

The Craft
Simple Human Nature is an interdisciplinary novel in craft as well as presentation. It is being developed in three stages: a narrative, an appendix, and a discussion guide.

The Narrative
Simple Human Nature is written in a distinctive style. It is presented as a series of journals, spliced by third person narration, and its format follows the story. In short, the reader is given the dramatic and thematic details from the viewpoints of the characters, and a narrator is used for select expository information. Furthermore, the story is revealed as if the reader were participating in Virginia’s reporting (the final chapter is actually Virginia’s finished piece). This is done purposefully, the goal in mind is to allow the reader to actively synthesize the varying positions on humanity and the environment. The text will also be supplemented by actual interviews “conducted by Virginia.”

The Appendix
Simple Human Nature will feature an in depth appendix at the end of the narrative. This is done to provide endnotes referencing the specific environmental and philosophic arguments in the narrative as well explaining some of the choices we have made as authors with regard to the information we have included in the text. There will also be an extensive discussion of the research done in the creation of each main character’s world-view. This will be done to demonstrate both the research involved in the project as well as the interdisciplinary nature and applicability of the text. Some of the texts we will be using appear at the end of this section.

Our general question concerns the costs and benefits of having the Western Pond. To enable us to fully and interdisciplinarily address this question, what we need to ask in terms of natural sciences is: “What is physically involved in the upkeep of the Pond?” Answering this question will rely largely on communication with Physical Facilities, but we will need a more thorough and specifically scientific view than theirs to adequately assess our entire question. To see this view we must acquire knowledge of the current physical conditions of the Pond. These conditions and their maintenance are determined by the social expectations and cultural meanings of the Pond, as the rest of our investigation will show. Our sources of information for this section of our investigation will be Physical Facilities and scientific research on the Pond, both our own and previous.
The central question that addresses upkeep of the Pond is that of sediment load. In order to evaluate this, we will need to know the flow in and out of the Pond as well as its volume and bathymetry, and sediment flow in from the streams, out over the dam, and sediment deposition within the Pond. We will find these things through conducting research of our own closely modeled on that of previous Western students studying these aspects of the Pond, and with input from Hays on how to improve upon their designs.
In our final project, we will not present our findings in a typical lab-report format. They will be largely integrated into the narrative. Geoff, the IES Grad student, will be Virginia’s source of information on the hard science, NS aspects of her study of Western Pond, and thus our data will be presented through him in their interviews. If it becomes necessary to present data tables of some sort, Geoff will provide Virginia with print-outs from ‘his research and that of his colleagues’ which she will stick into her journal and thus would be included as an appendix to the journal section of our story. In the piece Virginia will be sending to her editor, the scientific data and explanations will not be entirely integrated into the narrative, but rather will appear as explanatory sidebars in the final magazine article, in the format commonly found in science articles in news magazines.

The Discussion Guide
This section will be included specifically for literary discussion of the text. It will ask the readers to examine what we think are important questions about our literary choice (i.e., symbolism, literary devices, and allegorical references. It will also ask the readers to evaluate the presentation of philosophy, environmental sciences, and literature and journalism in the Simple Human Nature.

The Relevancy of Simple Human Nature
This publishing house has a long-standing tradition of backing authors who are themselves committed to the processes of literature and science. We are proposing a text that demonstrates understanding science and society as a developing process. Furthermore, our story does this in a manner that relates the natural world and humanity in a way that is interdisciplinary and well developed. This is much more than a simple discussion of the results of a scientific experiment, it is an attempt to synthesize those results and use them to spark a debate that will hopefully benefit humanity’s understanding of the planet it inhabits.
At the conclusion of our project, we expect to be able to offer some outlook into the social, cultural, and environmental contributors to the way that man views and interacts with nature. These results will necessarily be qualitative in nature. They incorporate the process of research and science and make a critical analysis of these processes. Though it is to this point unclear what we will uncover, we are clear that we will be able to articulate the impact of the duck pond as an artificial landscape on the humans who created it as well as the impact of humans on the duck pond. Though here we have demonstrated here how we can use sediment testing as a vehicle for moving our narrative, let it be stated that our goal is to do more than “just a science project.” We are proposing an interdisciplinary outlook on a specific physical phenomenon. It is from this that we will develop our larger goal, stimulating a critical debate of humanity and its role nature.
The research for the book is itself an experiment in academic synthesis and development across the traditional lines of study. We are proposing a breakdown of the old canon in favor of a new candid look at the world around us given a more thorough look at science and philosophy. We hope to accomplish this by looking at field and textual data from both disciplines. We hope that you will share our vision and join us in trying to understand what nature means to humanity today.

Sincerely,
Genevieve Knight
Ben Spinks &
Erasmus Jenkins
Sources

Mussman, Humes, Nance, Rush, Dawson “Sedimentary Budget Analysis” 1997
http://jrscience.wcp.muohio.edu/Research/NaturalSystemsArticles/FINAL.SedimentaryBudgetAnA.html
This NSI group did a study much like the one we will have to do to obtain the data we need for the scientific background of our project. Not only will their experimental design be an immense help as a model in designing our experiment, but their data will be useful as we may (depending upon how much conditions have changed) be able to use them in our calculations of the time until the Pond will fill in completely. The more dependable data we have with which to make these calculations, the more dependable they will be.

Franklin, Finney, Ebeck, and Bush “Final Sediment in the Western Duck Pond” 1997
http://jrscience.wcp.muohio.edu/Research/NaturalSystemsArticles/12-11FinalSedimentintheWe.html
This NSI group did a similar study and came up with quite unexpected results. An in-depth review of their experimental design, contrasted with those of other groups (including ours), will hopefully lead us to understanding the differences in the results.

Capasso, Hixon, and Williams “Water Evaporation at the Western Duck Pond” 1997
http://jrscience.wcp.muohio.edu/Research/NaturalSystemsArticles/December91997.Final.Water.html
Evaporation is a frequently overlooked factor in how long it would take the Pond to fill with sediment. This source will be helpful in showing us how (or how not) to go about measuring it and taking it into account, if we determine that it will be a significant factor.

Boukalik, Collins, Risch, and Vankat “Evaporation at Western Pond” 1999, 2001
http://jrscience.wcp.muohio.edu/nsfall99/FinalArticles/EvaporationatWesternPond.html
This article will also be useful for its insights into studying evaporation on Western Pond. Mostly, however, its introduction will be useful for what it says about how Western students value the pond, as will the introductions of the other Student Research Projects.

Man-made Lakes
http://www.thecontentwell.com/Fish_Game/Catfish/Lakes_manmade.html
This site explains how elements of man-mad lakes affect fish behavior – specifically catfish. This site relates to the NS portion of project in that in will give us a context for understanding how the fish in the Western Pond act and live.

Pond & river [videorecording] / a CAFE production for BBC Worldwide Americas, and Dorling Kindersley Vision in association with Oregon Public Broadcasting ; director, Leanne Pooley ; producer, Richard Thomson ; writer, David Hanson
This video focuses on how ponds and rivers have influences and affected human history and development. The information that the video presents relates to our projects overlying context and could prove to be an assets for our “reporter” character.

Ponds : their wildlife and upkeep / Robert Burton
This book provides some of the background information we need to investigate the biological aspects of our watershed. We will be able to identify some of the wildlife found in and around the pond and how they relate to our project.

Have an ice day Waller, Kim Victoria p. 84-87 Jan 2002
This journal article talks about activities relating to frozen ponds and the like. It will give us a better understanding of what things must have been like before the aireators were added to the pond.

Creating a friendlier pond Harler, Curt Landscape Management p. 48-49 Oct 2001
This article talks about the design elements that go into making a bio-friendly man-made pond. This information will give us a context to formulate suggestions for updating and/or improving the pond – making it more environmentally friendly.

Return of a native Nickens, T Edward National Wildlife p. 28-33 Oct/Nov 2001
This article explains how people are attempting to bring back native species of fish to Eastern rivers, lakes, and ponds. It gives us a framework for developing our own “naturalization” strategies for the Western Ponds native species.

Scientific American at
www.scientificamerican.com

Poets & Writers at
www.pw.org

Discover Magazine at
www.discover.com

Science Magazine at
www.sciencemag.org

Victoria University’s Philosophy Database at
www.vuw.ac.nz

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