The Lost Tapes of Ian McHarg

Collaboration with Nature, Ecological Planning Lecture

Experience the wisdom of this life-long environmental activist as he clarifies his vision with unprecendented articulateness, brutal honesty, and humor in his own booming voice.

Attention ecologists, environmentalists, and the intellectually curious: we now have available the immortal voice of the legendary landscape architect, Ian McHarg. A self-styled “crypto-pseudo-quasi-scientist,” McHarg presents in his inimitable Scots accent his unique theory of energy and matter processes inclusive of “human needs and desires” in a finite universe. Listen as he discusses the interdisciplinary theory that astonished good scientists including the director of Brookhaven National laboratory. A gift to future generations, this CD, made from rare tapes lost until now, presents McHarg waxing profound on a thermodynamic definition of creativity as matter and energy raised to higher levels of order; evolution both physical and biological (plants, animals, and microorganisms) in the context of nature; and the criteria and attributes of the creative process (e.g., does a given region move from randomness to dynamic equilibrium, or is it retrogressive and therefore heading toward pathology?). McHarg argues that L. J. Henderson’s concept of “fitness of the environment,” although nearly unknown, is as important as Sir Charles Darwin’s idea of “fitness of the organism.”

The companion book to his CD, Ian L. McHarg, Dwelling in Nature, will be published by Princeton Architectural Press in Fall 2006 as part of the Conversations with Students series.

Ian McHarg helped found Landscape Architecture at the University of Pennsylvania and has pioneered ecological planning and design. He is well known for the classic Design with Nature, a finalist for the National Book Award in 1969.

Lynn Margulis is Distinguished University Professor in the Department of Geosciences at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. She was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 1983 and received the Presidential Medal of Science in 1999. Her publications, spanning a wide range of scientific topics, include original contributions to cell biology and microbial evolution.