Rachel Carson’s poetic scientific writings translated technical material in a way that made it accessible to a larger audience. She said that in order to write truthfully about the sea you had to include the poetry. This insight resulted in a unification of both truth and beauty. Out of the three spheres of experience, beauty, truth and goodness it is perhaps beauty that is the most obvious, the most difficult to overlook. Carson’s unification of the truth of science and the beauty of poetry in her writings about the natural world and, how necessary it is to protect it, proved a powerful statement that has had lasting effects on our society and culture. To write SILENT SPRING, her most influential work, she compiled her own painstaking research to make an argument for a more cautious use of chemical pesticides. Carson chose the middle way by not arguing for outright pesticide bans but instead talking about the necessity of stewardship and ongoing study. These tactics, pointed at furthering ecological awareness, eventually lead to the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency.
In Carson’s day and age books, periodicals and news papers were major forms of media. These were the venues in which her writings were featured. She published 4 books and was featured in such periodicals as THE NEW YORK TIMES, GOOD READING and ATLANTIC. Since all publicity is good publicity being published in any venue helped her cause. The only way that these venues could have been hurtful to her cause is if they had not published her. If I made an important discovery similar to that of Carson I would have access to many more media/communication venues then she did. Especially of note is that I could post online in multiple venues without having to wait for anybody else to decide that my writings were worth publishing! I could generate my own online demand that would help to get the attention of publishers and therefore get my work out to my audience through multiple avenues.
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