Not Just “Mr. Peanut”

Painting by Betsy Graves Reyneau

Give a word-association test to any middle-schooler in the U.S., ask the student what word first comes to mind when they hear "George Washington Carver," and hands down the most frequent answer will be the word "peanuts."  Many people think Carver invented peanut butter.  Although credit for that goes to someone else, the peanut connection is quite true.  In the early 20th century, George Washington Carver helped pioneer research into the chemistry of agriculture products.  As part of that work, he figured out how to synthesize 300 products from peanuts, all the way down to cheese, dyes, and linoleum.

It is another aspect of Carver's thought that interests me, however.  Not that the story of this African-American botanist's life isn't inspiring.  After all, he was disadvantaged by being born to slave parents near the end of the Civil War.  Within only a month, kidnappers stole George and his mother in order to profit from selling "property" in the form of slaves.  The young man Carver, growing up in a society with deep racial discrimination, became the first black scientist to become prominent even to whites.

It is, as I say, another aspect of Carver's thought that interests me. As I have read more and more books relating Nature and ecology to spirituality and religion, I have been surprised by the quotations I have encountered by him that speak of God.  What I sense in them is not any habitual, perfunctory religion, but a wise and vibrant life in and of a Higher Spirit.  Carver's work elevated agriculture as a whole, but his initial motive was to help the lowest in society: Specifically, poor black farmers, the soil of whose farms had been depleted from cotton having been grown on it for decades.  He published pamphlets to educate poor farmers in better practices.  Despite those accomplishments, he lived a modest life, turning down several opportunities to advance his personal wealth.  My favorite quotation by him is a modern updating of the traditional Christian idea of the Book of Nature:

"I love to think of nature as an unlimited broadcasting station,

 through which God speaks to us every hour if we will only tune in."

As to that matter of peanuts, I have one particular childhood memory.  The cub-scout pack I was in was on a half-day outing to an historical site a couple hours away from home.  In order to hold off our appetites until lunch, the pack's leader had brought along a large bag of unshelled peanuts.  How simple it was, and yet how pleasant it seemed to me, for us to sit on the ground together in a park area, breaking open and eating peanuts together, while a few of us chatted. At that age, I had little self-confidence among the other boys.  But at that peanut-eating moment, life seemed quite good.

In the future, as our human race tries to figure out how to wean itself off its dependence on finite, non-renewable, and diminishing petroleum, Carter's synthesizing hundreds of non-food products out of peanuts, sweet potatoes, and soybeans might prove inspirational.  So might his openness to hearing the voice of the sacred in Nature.

~~~

Have you read about, or do you find inspiring, a person whose life was related to Nature?

(The quotation by Carver is taken from

 The Mind of God & Other Musings, ed. Shirley A. Jones, © 1994.)

Byways of Chocolate and Flowers

I have no doubt that sales of chocolates and flowers increase in the U.S. before every Valentine's Day.  Hardly anyone shopping on Feb. 12th & 13th would know, however, that chocolate and flowers intersect at a point in history a little over three centuries ago. That conjunction tells a story involving, of all things, British imperialism, science, and religion.

As with many such incidents in the byways of history, the connecting character in the story is now one of the little-known figures of history.  His name is Hans Sloane (1660-1753), and he is the person who introduced milk-chocolate to the United Kingdom.  A larger story begins to emerge when we find out that Sloane had a collection of 71,000 objects that, after his demise, became the basis for the British Museum in London. Flowers enter the picture as we learn that among those objects were 800 new species of plants from around the world that he had collected.

What had brought that about?  Sloane's collecting was not just a personal mania.  He was part of a wave of collecting plants and animal specimens by the English during the 1600's and 1700's. That foundation for botanical and zoological studies rode the wave of British expansionism as the British Navy spread throughout the globe, establishing colonies, and securing trade in goods and slaves.  Plants -- particularly flowering tropical ones -- were among the cargo brought back to England.

It is the connections surrounding the milk-chocolate man Sloane that get us more specifically to matters involving flowers, science, and religion.  Sloane, with his vast collection of specimens, corresponded with the botanist John Ray (1627-1705), who  would come to publish a three-volume catalogue of over 16,00 plant species.

John Ray

Ray was able to accomplish such an astonishing feat because he developed an innovative system of classification, the key to which was concentrating on the seeds produced by flowers. Although modern biological classification has evolved beyond Ray's system, he established species as the basic unit.  Also, modern botany still employs Ray's major division of plants into monocotyledons (such as corn), which have a single leaf sprouting from the seed, and dicotyledons (such as lima beans), which have two leaves sprouting from the seed.

In the historical study of the relationship between science and religion, John Ray is best know for another book he wrote, The Wisdom of God Manifested in the Works of the Creation.  That title dates Ray as being from an earlier era of science, in which scientists more freely mixed their scientific observations with their belief about God.  It is an approach no longer used by scientists today.

Nevertheless, virtually everybody feels that Nature's cacao plant and the chocolate derived from it were very smart inventions.  And countless people love flowers.  Hopefully, we have all been able at times to feel (as Ray did) a love for the marvelous intricacy of living beings, whether or not we depict it as being the wisdom of God.

~~~

Have chocolate or flowers added anything to your spirit for living?  How?

(The drawing of John Ray is in the Public Domain

 because its copyright has expired.)