Soils

"For science to be useful there must be more than facts about things and relationships between things.  Even though soil science made great progress in the study of just soils, that would not be enough.  People use these soils.  They have blessed them and cursed them, sweated over them and loved them, lived from them and died for them.  The soil is absorbed into the life of a farmer.  Races have their roots in them.  In the application of his science, the scientist is dealing also with the relationships of facts to men.  His researches, his quests for information, must be partly shaped by these relationships....Although in his researches the scientist must be calm and objective, in the application of the principles he formulates from his results, the people are as important as the soil.  At the same time the scientist must be not less a scientist but rather more of an artist."

Soils: A Self Teaching Course

Selected and prepared by the editorial staff US armed forces institute

Charles E. Kellogg

1941

It appears that in 1941 our government had very wise things to say about land...somewhere along the way we have diverged from this understanding of being in relationship with the land.   Maybe there is more hope for our world if these are the 70 year old writings of our country.  May we all be artist in the way we interact with our landscape.