The Star Thrower Book

Loren Eiseley was an anthropologist, evolutionist and literary naturalist of the twentieth century. He wrote prolifically'books, essays and poetry'Star Thrower being a collection. The title was taken from an essay by the same name. You've probably heard the story before, for Gandhi adapted it as an inspirational story about a boy saving beached starfish and, in whatever way he can, "making a difference." Gandhi's version leans towards sentimentality, whereas Eiseley goes into the heart of darkness'from indignation and apathy to introspection and understanding. It is soul-searching, both intellectual and raw, that is refreshing to experience from a scientist.

In W.H. Auden's introduction to Star Thrower, he describes Eiseley as melancholic, pensive. Perhaps that's the gift of the melancholic: to see the big picture in a seemingly mundane event. Through memoir, Eiseley sets the stage for an idea. He uses his own observations'whether a dog buried at sea awash on the shore or a girl with a Neanderthal brow'then uses poetry to open the mind to the larger Idea. And here, he doesn't fill you with The Answer, but takes you to a place of humble awe at the mysteries of the universe.

As an anthropologist, Eiseley's writing centers around the idea of human evolution and consciousness'how we perceive the world and adapt'or relate'to it. In the essay "Science and the Sense of the Holy," he writes, "In the end, science as we know it has two basic types of practitioners. One is the educated man who still has a controlled sense of wonder before the universal mystery, whether it hides in a snail's eye or within the light that impinges on that delicate organ. The second kind of observer is the extreme reductionist who is so busy stripping things apart that the tremendous mystery has been reduced to a trifle, to intangibles not worth troubling one's head about. The world of the secondary qualities'color, sound, thought'is reduced to illusion. The only true reality becomes the chill void of ever-streaming particles….Blaise Pascal, as far back as the seventeenth century, foresaw our two opposed methods. Of them he said: "There are two equally dangerous extremes, to shut reason out, and to let nothing else in." It is the reductionist who, too frequently, would claim that the end justifies the means, who would assert reason as his defense and let that mysterium which guards man's moral nature fall away in indifference, a phantom without reality."

And as a naturalist, Eiseley's writing urges us to use our glorious consciousness to care for the world we inhabit'that we are not exempt from extinction. But it is not hysterical urging. Loren Eiseley is a translator'speaking for the slow roll of Earth evolution'the sound of earth tremors, rolling river rocks, grinding glaciers. In "The Hidden Teacher" he says, "In three billion years of slow change and groping effort only one living creature has succeeded in escaping the trap of specialization that has led in time to so much death and wasted endeavor. It is man, but the word should be uttered softly, for his story is not yet done."