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. “