Annotated Bibliography

Setting the Lake Annecy Story in context

Most scholarly books have a bibliography and list of references, but Douglas Hofstadter’s Gödel, Escher, Bach has an annotated bibliography.   Here, in the style of a conversation with a friend, the author introduces the principal books that inspired his work. Good idea! So in the spirit of Hofstadter here are some books which inspired this work by describing Mankind's changing understanding and appreciation of Nature, and how we have arrived at seeing our tiny planet as a wonderful, fragile, water-blessed and unique home to life in a vast universe.

Silent Spring

by

Rachel Carson

When it was serialised in the New Yorker in June 1962 this book sparked a national debate on the use of chemical pesticides, the responsibility of science, and the limits of technological progress and for this reason has been described as the classic that launched the modern environmental movement. It has many stirring declarations, as for instance: “The ‘control of nature’ is a phrase conceived in arrogance, born of the Neanderthal age of biology and philosophy, when it was supposed that nature exists for the convenience of man.” [p 297]

By contrast Dr Servettaz’s book was a retrospective account that reflected upon, rather than launched, his environmental campaign. As did Rachel Carson, he employed scientific arguments to explain to the general public a previously unnoticed threat posed by human activity, and exhorted his readers to consider what they could do to prevent this, but by contrast his book was a complete story, recounting not just his efforts to alert local citizens, but their response, the immense work that was eventually carried out over a period of more than twenty years, and the results. Of course the scale of the impact of these two books bears no comparison. Silent Spring reached out to every single person in America, not just those living by fields where crop-spraying took place, but anyone who ate the food those fields produced.

l’eau, la vie d’un lac alpin, spoke in French to a local audience, the riverside community of one lake, and perhaps not to all, just to those who cared about their lake and their environment. Following the spirit of Dr. Servettaz I have illustrated the books discussed below, as well as many of the pages of this website where photographs are not attributed,  with scenes I have taken from this lake and its endlessly enchanting environment.  

On the Origin of Species

by

Charles Darwin

Origin of Species doesn't just put the story of Lake Annecy in context, it puts the story of all Life in context. After the ground-breaking explorations of nature by those such as Horace-Benedict de Saussure, and Alexander van Humboldt, he is finally the one to succeed in describing a law of motion of Nature as profound as Newton’s laws of motion of the physical world. As he says in his introduction: “When on board H.M.S. ‘Beagle’, as a naturalist, I was much struck with certain facts in the distribution of the inhabitants of South America, and in the geological relations of the present to the past inhabitants of that continent. These facts seemed to me to throw some light on the origin of species – that mystery of mysteries, as it has been called by some of our greatest philosophers.”

Dr Servettaz was no immortal figure, just a man of ordinary human scale, but in one small way he had something in common with the great scientist. He too was struck with certain facts of the lake he knew so well through diving, and they seemed to him to throw some light on a law of motion of the lake that was carrying it towards degradation. And like Darwin he spent many years speculating on the subject, studying, debating, researching until he was finally able to convince his contemporaries of a Great Truth (the threat of human-induced eutrophication of urban freshwater resources) of which they were previously in ignorance. 

The Ancestors Tale

by 

Richard Dawkins

The Ancestor’s Tale is one of a series of books by Richard Dawkins explaining to the general reader the immensely rich seam of scientific enquiry opened up by Darwin’s theory of evolution. Here he presents the history of evolution as a reworking of Chaucer’s Canterbury tales, where it is not pilgrims who meet up occasionally, but species which rendezvous with their common ancestors going back into the depths of geological time.

Towards the end of this journey, approaching the origin of life on Earth, after 37 such encounters, Dawkins arrives at the Great Historic Rendezvous, perhaps two billion years ago, where “some kind of proto-protozoan, entered into a strange kind of relationship with a bacterium” and began a process of symbiosis – an idea promoted by Lynn Margulis and now all but universally accepted. “What are the biochemical tricks that these once free bacteria brought into our lives: tricks that they perform to this day, tricks without which life would instantly cease? The two most important ones are photosynthesis, which uses solar power to synthesize organic compounds, and oxygenates the air as a by-product; and oxidative metabolism, which uses oxygen (ultimately from plants) to slow burn the organic compounds and redeploy the energy that originally came from the sun.” And with this we arrive in the dim distant past at Cyanobacteria, the very same bacteria alive and flourishing today which are at the key actors at the heart of our drama of Lake Annecy.

The Man who Knew Too Much

by 

Stephen Inwood

This is a biography of an eccentric Englishman who lived during the eighteenth century and had little to do with France, the Alps, or Lakes – so why is it here? One pervasive theme of our lake story is how Dr Servettaz used science to explain to the general public what the problem was and how to solve it. This book is a work popularizing scientific ideas in the same tradition as other authors mentioned in this bibliography; Mukherjee, Lane, Sagan, Ferris and Kolbert.  This is an important literary tradition, given the scientifically engineered world in which we now live and the importance of the general population being sufficiently well-informed to ensure appropriate ethical oversight over the progress of science and technology, and in particular the decisions their governments take in their regard.   If this is by the 21^st Century a well established and thriving literary tradition, then Robert Hooke who lived from 1635 to 1703 could fairly claim to be the father of this tradition. He was the first secretary of the Royal Society, founded on November 28 1660, the first such society specifically set up to promote scientific inquiry (The Academie Francaise was set up in 1635 but only set up its scientific branch, the French Academy of Science in 1666). He established the practice of demonstrations of scientific experiments for the general public and worked tireless for decades doing much original work in the process. One of his great achievements was his beautifully  illustrated book Micrographia which introduced the public to the microscopic world recently revealed by Leuwenhoek's new optical devices. This microscopic world, invisible to the naked eye,  is at the heart of our story of the Lake.   Understanding its cast of tiny animal characters, Daphnia, Copepods, Rotifers and the tiny plant life they feed off, Diatoms and Algae was central to Dr Servettaz's campaign.  Dr Servettaz was very much in Robert Hooke's tradition when he set about popularizing among  his  fellow citizens the science of the microscopic world of lake Annecy.

The Sixth Extinction

by

Elizabeth Kolbert

Just as I was pleasantly surprised to to find a recent biography of Humboldt just a few months after I had first stumbled across him when reading up on Charles Darwin, I was similarly surprised to discover Elizabeth Kolbert’s very recent Pulitzer prize winning account “The sixth extinction” published just a few months after I had come across Georges Cuvier. Cuvier was the first person ever to prove that we did not live in a natural world of animals and birds as they had originally been created, but that there had been prior worlds, inhabited by strange creatures now  extinct. And I had stumbled across George Cuvier not because he was the author of the idea of global extinction but because he had written a eulogy for his great colleague Horace Benedict de Saussure, whose statue I had come across in Chamonix, celebrating the life of the first great scientist of the Alps, not far from my new home in Annecy. Just as Cuvier shocked the world by his revelation that we didn't live in the original world of God’s creation, and that much of previous Creation had been wiped out by dramatic events in world history, (five periods of mass extinction in fact) so Kolbert’s book shocks us into realising that we are in the midst of a sixth period of extermination of species, entirely the result of human destruction, an idea not explored by Cuvier. More shocking is that this book is being received as a fresh revelation twenty years after the subject was first popularised in another book, with the same title, this time by Richard Leaky. Kolbert's well-documented evidence of the destructive impact humanity is having upon the natural world, is in the tradition not just of Richard Leaky but one which goes way back to its founder, George Perkins Marsh.  And along the path between them lies Dr Servettaz's "l'eau la vie d'un lac alpin"

Life Ascending

by

Nick Lane

As with Mukherjee’s Emperor of Maladies, it is not immediately obvious why Life ascending should be included here, and what the connection is with our story, other than that this book is a tremendously well-written exposition of scientific ideas for the general reader, its chapters have the page turning continuity of a novel, and it covers  the evolution of life since the dawn of time, which serves as an important backdrop to our story. But the specific reason it is included is that it treats of the miraculous in the work of Nature. Miraculous not in the religious sense of the word, i.e. a suspension by God of the laws of nature,  but miraculous in a more astounding sense, the very operation of those laws of Nature:  the astonishing complexity and ingenuity of Nature in solving so many technical problems required for the life we know to exist. Subtitled “The Ten great inventions of evolution” it discusses subjects such as movement, sight, sex, and hot blood. And with its discussion of photosynthesis and the complex cell it brings us close to the heart of our story of Lake Annecy. Dr Servettaz’s book extols at length the miraculous nature of water which features everywhere in dozens of ways in our daily lives, and describes the complex processes of photosynthesis which drive all life in the Lake, and which at the same time, threaten all life in the lake, and all in a well-written exposition of scientific ideas for the general reader.   

The Sixth Extinction

by 

Richard Leaky

Richard Leaky’s book was published 24 years before Kolbert’s “Sixth Extinction” but being a naturalist rather than a talented journalist he never got a Pulitzer prize. Here he explains the processes by which humanity is rapidly – in terms of geological time - destroying species. First he points out that man’s time as hunter-gather was not some kind of pre-civilisation idyll where man lived in harmony with nature. On the contrary homo was so sapiens that it succeeded in hunting to extinction large parts of the animal world. So, for instance, half of the large fauna in South America which had lived for millions of years in South America went extinct within a few thousand years of homo sapiens’ migration there.  The fossil evidence indicates that the fauna went extinct in a wave over time moving south just as homo sapiens migrated south. The invention of agriculture, then civilisation and our world of big cities seems to have been a development forced on mankind by their extreme success in wiping out naturally occurring food supplies in the forests and the savanna.  But hunting was only the beginning of the destruction of animal species.  The second means is indirect,  but no less effective  - by destroying animals' natural habitats. Clearly his point has not had an immediate impact on human behaviour, since in September 2016 it was reported in the journal Current Biology, that “a tenth of the world's wilderness has vanished in the past two decades,” (ie since Leaky’s book was published).  Clearly not satisfied with this scale of destruction, the third means humans employ to eradicate species is by travel and logistics and the introduction of alien species from one continent to another.  Just one recent example of this trend was reported in the Journal of Ecology in May 2016. The ash tree is likely to be wiped out in Europe, by the fungal disease ash-dieback along with an invasive beetle called the emerald ash borer.  According to the research, the British countryside will never look the same again. Kolbert’s and Leaky’s books are pleas to the world to recognise this process of devastation and take steps to protect natural habitats from the consequences of relentless and reckless urbanisation. This is exactly Dr Servettaz’ message in his “l’eau, la vie d’un lac alpin” .

Man and Nature

by

George Perkins Marsh

George Perkins Marsh (1801 – 1882) was an American diplomat and philologist who is considered by some to be America's first environmentalist and the harbinger of the sustainability concept. He surrounded himself with books in his library, and filled his head with their facts and ideas, making connections and seeking patterns until he could form a big picture of mankind’s impact on the natural world. Man and Nature is a gigantic book in terms of its vision – an overview of human interaction with the natural world around the globe since the beginning of written history. His conclusions are as drastic as they are detailed, and run somewhat contrary to the spirit of his age in America where rapid industrialisation and the subjection of the American continent were seen to be the height of human achievement.  He presents an encyclopaedic portrait of Man's destructive impact upon the natural world  - one which Dr Servettaz repeats with equal passion in his account.

Lochs, Lakes and Loughs

by 

Brian Moss

I was looking for a way to bring the life in the lake into the comprehension of the general reader and came across this excellent work by the, sadly recently deceased,  Brian Moss. This is a text book written by one of the most respected limnologists in Europe.  It is a much more detailed introduction to limnology than Edmondson's, because Edmondson had different goals for his book. In particular there is a lovely section where Brian Moss  shrinks the reader, Alice in Wonderland style, to the size of the zooplankton floating through the lake, and takes them on a journey through the lake describing all the strange creatures we come across.  The book is written with fascinating detail, clarity and wry humour.  I think a better title for the book would have been Lakes, lochs, loughs and laughs because Brian Moss' penchant for witty barbs pervades his work. 

The Yosemite

by

John Muir

John Muir was not primarily a scientist but an enthusiast for Nature and a campaigner to protect nature, or at least some parts of nature, from the encroachment and seemingly inevitable degradation brought by human economic development. The name of this Scotsman is revered in his adopted country as the founder of the conservation movement, and the motive force for the creation of a string of nature reserves across the county the most famous of which is his beloved Yosemite. So great was the influence of Muir’s writings that he was invited to join President Roosevelt on a hike in Yosemite and discuss great questions such as the limits to industrialisation and economic growth, and what is the purpose of our lives as a nation: to endlessly acquire manufactured objects or to appreciate the beauty of the natural world in which we live? Dr Servettaz makes the same appeal in his book:  to stop and think about the consequences of industrialisation, and the vast amount of pollution it generates to despoil nature, and to appreciate the wonder of the natural world around us.

The Emperor of all Maladies

by

Siddartha Mukherjee

At first glance there may seem to be little connection between the story of a lake and this medical history of cancer, and no reason to include it on this list other than that it is a tremendously well written story, by a doctor – a cancer specialist - turned author, turning scientific inquiry and discovery into a page-turning thriller. However, it was this book that first gave me the idea of writing some kind of equivalent 'biography' of the environmental movement to give a context to the lake story. Mukherjee’s book is not a history of cancer per se, but of the medical profession’s growing understanding of the disease and the consequent evolution of types of treatment, from ignorance and neglect, through brutal surgery to a more balanced course of treatment based on a deeper understanding of the disease.  It seemed to me there was a clear parallel between this history, and the history of Mankind’s growing understanding of the environment and the consequent treatment of it. Mukherjee has subsequently applied his great literary talent to the subject of the Gene and is becoming firmly established as a leading light in a growing literary tradition of our age: employing the stylistic techniques of a novel to bring deep scientific understanding to the general reader.  Dr Servettaz was no great novelist but his book does convey his deep passion for his subject as well as imparting  important scientific understanding.

The Dawn of Green

by 

Harriet Ritvo

After Mukherjee's book gave me the idea of writing a history of the environmental movement, I soon discovered that it had already been done – and not so long ago - in a thorough and scholarly manner by Harriet Ritvo. Dawn of the Green traces the origins of the modern environmental movement back to Manchester, England in the second half of the 19th Century. She recounts the story of the ambitious decision by Manchester’s civic leaders to turn Thirlmire lake into a reservoir to supply drinking water to the city’s rapidly growing population. This was a bold and complex engineering project requiring the construction of a 50 mile pipeline. In opposition to this project, a campaign arose led by an assortment of Lake District citizens, academics, artists and intellectuals from across the country, invoking an unprecedented claim - that the beauty of Lake Thirlemere belonged to all citizens of England - not just local landowners, and should not be damaged for the benefit of one particular town. The campaign was a failure and the reservoir project went ahead successfully, although after significant delay and additional expense. On reading this, the parallels and contrasts with our story leapt out. Ritvo’s story was about a campaign to safeguard a lake, set in beautiful, mountainous countryside, a huge and complex engineering project, the pressing need to secure clean drinking water supplies to a growing population, and the argument that the beauty of nature should be preserved for all to enjoy, including future generations. But the Lake Annecy story turns out to be in direct contrast to that of Lake Thirlemere. The Lake Annecy campaign was not to prevent a large engineering project from taking place and damaging the environment but on the contrary to undertake such a project to protect the environment.  The initiative to take action to ensure a supply of clean drinking water came not from a big municipal  local authority but from one local citizen.  The campaign was entirely locally organised and not reliant on support from a diverse group of activists from across France.  And not least the campaign was tremendously successful, and rather than being the cautionary tale to all environmentalists portrayed in Ritvo’s account, is a fine example of an environmental campaign to he held up as an inspiration to others.

Cosmos

by 

Carl Sagan

Having decided to embark on a history of the environmental movement, two books encourage me to look a little further back that the second half of the 19^th Century. Ferris I have already mentioned. Carl Sagan’s Cosmos is another good example of a writer bringing scientific understanding to the general reader, in this case painting a history of Mankind’s understanding of the history of the World. It celebrates intellectual discovery and shows the great scientific achievements of thinkers more than two thousand years ago. Aristarchus for instance managed for instance not just to understand that the world was round, but to form an understanding of the size of the planet using a couple of wooden posts, and his brain. It brings to mind the nice story of Wittgenstein’s rebuke to an arrogant student who scoffed at the ignorance of those who had once though the sun orbited the earth. “Well what would it have looked like then?” Or the story of Gallileo who looked at a great swinging pendulum with a big brass ball on the end, and saw, not a pendulum swinging from side to side, but a brass ball slowing rising and descending, and from the fact that all pendulum’s swing at the same rate regardless of the weight of the brass ball at the end, concluded that all objects fall at the same speed regardless of their mass – he did not need to drop two balls from the tower of Piza.

Voyages in the Alps

by

Horace-Benedict de Saussure

Horace Benedict de Saussure is an obvious inclusion because he is one of the great scientific figures from the alpine region neighbouring Annecy. But in the great (and sadly lost tradition) of scientists of the day he was happy to mix sentiment and emotion into his scientific work. Voyages in the Alps combines praise for the beauty of the Alps with his scientific exploration and discoveries. In this he serves as a direct inspiration to Dr Servettaz who combines passion for the beauty of Lake Annecy with detailed scientific explanation of its physical, chemical and biological properties. De Saussure's book gave me the idea that the history of the environmental movement should have two distinct streams, the scientific and the aesthetic, and there was once a time when these two streams resided in, and even thrived in, the minds of great thinkers. De Saussure’s work was also of historical importance being a founding text heralding outset of the alpine tourist industry. Alpine tourists were explorers, courageous people seeking physical and intellectual challenges. Such tourism was education by other means and is a fine tradition continued to this day.

Dr Servettaz’s account of the story of the safeguarding of Lake Annecy is dealt with extensively elsewhere in this site. Here a short summary is sufficient. He opens by extolling the miraculous world of nature we are privileged to enjoy and in particular water - its most precious substance and the myriad  ways in which human life is daily dependent upon it. He turns from this pure miracle we receive from nature to the vast quantities of pollution of every sort which human civilization returns to nature in its gratitude. There follows an exhortation of the steps needed to counter this pollution and protect freshwater sources. He then goes deeper into the science of lakes in general (limnology), and what he calls the 'intimate life' of the microorganisms that form the basis for all life there. Finally he focuses on Lake Annecy, the long struggle to alert people to the dangers of eutrophication and then the great work organised by Annecy Mayor Charles Bosson together with a succession of local mayors and leaders of SILA, the water authority set up to safeguard the lake. He includes reference to the annual scientific studies of the lake which have been carried out for the past fifty years and which confirm its recovery. He concludes with thoughts about the future, since the battle to safeguard our environment is always with us. It is a book containing a concise summary of an enlightened relationship with Nature, bringing together the two great currents informing our relationship to nature - scientific understanding and aesthetic appreciation.  It evidences one of the most successful, comprehensive environmental campaigns in history.   And, unlike every other book referred to in this annotated bibliography,  no-one has heard of it.