“Bird-watching is an exercise in balance. It has a built-in acknowledgment that nature is finite: you…”
“Bird-watching is an exercise in balance. It has a built-in acknowledgment that nature is finite: you don’t shoot the bird, you look at it. You bring along a guidebook, emblem of the library world, even as you wander out into nature in pursuit of something wild. You get the thrill of seeing an untamed creature, but immediately you cage it in its common or scientific name and link the bird, and yourself, to a Linnaean system of nomenclature that harks back to an Enlightenment notion that nature can be ordered. And behind Linnaeus lurks the biblical belief that, like Adam, we name the animals. It is simply our job.”
– Jonathan Rosen, The Life of the Skies (via birdscout)
Well, you don’t have to do it like that. But many people do. I think that reflects the fact that human beings in Linnaeus’ time and our time are not all that different, which isn’t surprising when you think about it.
But beyond classification there are more levels. Anyone who tells you what birdwatching _is_ in some negative, constrained sense is revealing the limit of their own understanding, not a limit inherent in the activity.
Reposted from http://ift.tt/1iFIGWL.
