Event

“Seeing Like a Turtle”: Ecologists, Light Pollution, and the Anthropocene: At an interdisciplinary conference on artificial light at night, an Australian biologist critiqued satellite visualizations of light pollution from low-Earth orbit. She explained that she instead tries to “see like a turtle.” This talk examines how ecologists became concerned about nocturnal anthropogenic illumination, especially since the late twentieth century. These life scientists have emphasized the phenomenon’s complexity, the anthropocentrism of many other disciplines studying light at night, and the importance of considering nonhuman vision systems, while arguing that scientists need to study and measure nocturnal light from new points of observation. In the process, they have incorporated night into ecological research and argued for nocturnal ecology, yet artificial light at night remains marginal within mainstream ecology. Nonetheless, ecologists, along with other scientists investigating the phenomenon, push us to consider not only night as environment but also light pollution as an emblem—if not marker—of the Anthropocene.

Professor Sara Pritchard is an environmental STS scholar specializing in the history of technology and environmental history. Her current research program critically examines the history, science, and ethics of excessive artificial light at night. Sara’s book, Night as Environment: Light Pollution and the Anthropocene, explores how different scientific disciplines have studied light pollution since the 1970s. Her research has been supported by grants from the US National Science Foundation (Scholars’ Award #1555767, Program in Science, Technology, and Society), as well as Cornell’s Society for the Humanities, Center for the Social Sciences, and Atkinson Center for a Sustainable Future.
 

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