Control of Nature, Mcphee Mcphee,

Control of Nature, McPhee

McPhee, John. The Control of Nature. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1990.

Humanity calls nature 'Mother Nature.' But more often than not, in the human battle for survival and technological improvement, humans have striven to control nature with a militaristic intensity. We are at war for our own survival as a species with nature, even while it is our 'mother.' This is John McPhee's central, driving thesis in his 1990 work the Control of Nature.

Although McPhee's analysis could apply to any modern or even ancient society, he specifically focuses on then-topical case studies of how nature threatens and thwarts human control. One of the most poignant examples, in light of recent events, is the Army Corps of Engineers' struggle to craft the Mississippi River to flow against its original bends. Human beings have come to depend upon these man-made configurations in the river. Although the drainage system comes at great financial cost, Louisiana can flood if the river is not controlled.

The book was written pre-Katrina, but it is a powerful reminder of how the city is threatened by flooding by its very nature, even in the absence of hurricanes. The city exists as an artifice, going, like so many human structures, against nature's inclination, but McPhee is no radical environmentalist. Rather, he believes that sometimes human beings have to go against nature to survive and to preserve their culture. However, some of the attempts he chronicles seem so quixotic, like an attempt in Iceland to cool the magma of an erupting volcano, the hubris of humankind borders on the ridiculous.