The purpose of this research is to examine preservation philosophy. The plan of the research will be to set forth in general terms the content of such philosophy, and then to discuss how its ideas are treated in law and in culture in respect of the historical landmarks, national parks, wilderness areas, rivers, and so on.
To discuss preservation philosophy is to discuss a whole range of attitudes and ideas that touch in some way on the value attached to the aesthetic or public-health benefits of unspoiled landscape. The vastness of North America, which is seen as large enough to contain a fully industrialized economic base and fragile enough to warrant vigilance in regard to the extent and character of industrialization, has been the focus of a variety of American environmental commentary and case law through the whole of the 20th century. One effect has been the emergence of a full-blown philosophy of preservation, with advocates coming at the issue from many sides.
An emotional and psychological attachment to the land has been a feature of the American experience throughout the 20th century. Writing in 1973, Shields develops a philosophical/social frame of reference for environmental issues, citing various concepts of wilderness that have informed U.S. consciousness since 1620, the year of the landing of the Pilgrims. What is significant about Shields's approach is that it describes nuances of definition and basis for discussion that have been with the environmental debate in America for many years. He makes a distinction between the concepts of conservation and preservation, the former having to do in general with humanity's encouragement of the resilience of natural processes, and the latter having to do in general with humanity's assumption of a moral obligation to regard nature in general and wilderness in particular as inviolable. Claiming that neither one concept nor the other sufficiently answers the paradoxes confrontin...