ABSTRACT
Rachel Carson was born in 1907 in Springdale, Pennsylvania, and had positive formative experiences in nature and in literature under the tutelage of her mother, Maria. Carson's writing about the sea fulfilled a childhood inland dream. Carson contextualized her scientific writing within this vastness of time and space. Carson's combined knowledge and love of nature has been compared in a feminist critique of her writing to Barbara McClintock's 'feeling for the organism'. A qualitatively different stage of Carson's writing began in 1956 when she wrote an article for Woman's Home Companion entitled 'Help Your Child to Wonder'. Carson's environmental philosophy raises questions about the nature of nature and human knowledge of it; it invites the reader to stand in wonder at the depth of nature's influence upon values and attitudes; and it calls a people to their responsibility to halt its destruction.
