Tolkien the naturalist

[Eönwë]

Was Tolkien a naturalist?

I know this has been mentioned in various threads (I can't find any right now, but there are alot), but I want to pull them all together here.

SO what do you think?
Was he against ctting down the trees and industrialisation (like in the Scouring Of The Shire and the Ents's attack on Isengard, and various other ideas)

[Mithalwen]

Just to clarify do you mean naturalist (as in one who studies fauna and/or fauna) or as your examples suggest rather environmentalist - though I suspect the term was not used much until the end of Tolkien's life.

While I am sure naturalists tend to be environmentalist, not all environmentalists could call themselves naturalists.

[Lalwendë]

He was very much a proto-Greenie. I believe he even got rid of his car because he disliked the damage they were doing. There's reams and reams about this topic out there, but I'm afraid it's not one of the big themes that gets picked up on about Tolkien these days, strangely

Maybe Al Gore could make use of Tolkien in selling his film to the young 'uns?

Interestingly, when the BBC did the Big Read to find the UK's favourite book, each was championed by a famous person. Lord of the Rings, which won, was championed by Ray Mears, well known in the UK for being a keen outdoorsman and environmentalist, and one of the things he loved most about Tolkien was his love for the unspoiled natural world.

[Nogrod]

Originally Posted by Mith

Just to clarify do you mean naturalist (as in one who studies fauna and/or fauna) or as your examples suggest rather environmentalist - though I suspect the term was not used much until the end of Tolkien's life.

In the academic circles 'naturalism' is something that is adopted by people like Dawkins and Dennet. That means taking a stance that: a) there is only the natural world (and thence nothing "supernatural" like gods, fairies, telepathy, fate...) and b) the natural sciences are the best guide for humans to understand how this world works.

So the word 'environmentalist' would suit your examples better.

It's easy to see Tolkien as a "proto-greenie" as Lal names him but then again that goes to much of the old time conservatism & radical luddites in general.

One should be careful with labels that have arised after the time the persons to whom those labels are applied to have thenselves lived.

Like:

Plato is the father of totalitarianism.

Democritos formed the theory of atoms.

Michelangelo was an artist expressing his emotions.

The "founding fathers" were for the NRA principles.

Nietzsche was a nazi.

Samuel Beckett was a post-modernist.

Tolkien was an environmentalist.

Looking from one angle these statements make sense but with some understanding of both history of ideas and the persons involved one sees the connection is more than less awkward and fabricated to suit some agendas of today / yesterday.

But yes. Tolkien didn't like felling down trees or putting up factories. But his "feelings" probably weren't aroused by any general environmental concerns that would apply to global circumstances. On the contrary it looks like the romanticism of one's own neighbourhood. "When I (my parents) was a child there was this great birch and a meadow but now there's a road with cars in it..."

That's not environmentalism but more like a wish to see the world unchanged.

Nothing bad in that reaction in itself but worth noticing.

PS. I am a card-carrying environmentalist myself: with two children what else could I be?

[William Cloud Hicklin]

And Tolkien's idyllic Shire was a place of green fields and well-tilled earth: in other words a man-made landscape, even if organic. Bucolic rural England is (or was) the product of millenia of human habitation, clearing, ditching, draining, hedging, introducing species (the oh-so-English Peter Rabbit is a descendant of immigrants).

What Tolkien really objected to was industrialization, not anthropogenic change in general.

[Nogrod]

Originally Posted by William Cloud Hickli

And Tolkien's idyllic Shire was a place of green fields and well-tilled earth: in other words a man-made landscape, even if organic. Bucolic rural England is (or was) the product of millenia of human habitation, clearing, ditching, draining, hedging, introducing species (the oh-so-English Peter Rabbit is a descendant of immigrants).

So true!

And what's even more fun is that after the mode of the 18th century Versailles' geometric gardens being the top of the pops there emerged this romantic idea in the GB for a wild or natural "garden" which would look like an original forest... well bettered a little bit to please the human eye of course.