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Famed biologist and humanist Garrett Hardin was a member of the faculty of UC Santa Barbara for many years. A small but steady stream of books from his library make their way to local sales. I always buy these up because they have a fascinating bookplate that Dr. Hardin afixed to the front paste-down of his books. The bookplates come in a variety of colors, as you can see from the samples shown here.
What I did not know until recently is that under magnification (2nd image from the top), the image reveals unexpected complexity. I quote from John Gustav Delly's on-line article MICROSCOPICAL BOOKPLATES
"The bookplate of Garrett Hardin is quite intriguing, and can be explained, in part, by knowing that its owner was Professor Emeritus of Biology at the University of California at Santa Barbara. He was trained as an ecologist and microbiologist at the University of Chicago, and at Stanford University. He is perhaps best known for his 1968 essay, The Tragedy of the Commons (Science 162), now reprinted in over 100 anthologies; it has to do with ecology, population theory, economics, and political science. In the bookplate, the winged and horned demon-like figure guides the ambiguous ear-trunk-arm in writing on sheaves of paper that turn into the likeness of a tape worm, but as we get farther out, the writing paper segments become, successively, a paramecium, algae, euglenoid forms, planaria, amoebae, . . . and they trail off ever more minute. Interesting."
While the bookplate is somewhat surreal, the concept of the "tragedy of the commons" is simple and cogent. A common is an area belonging to the community as a whole, available for all to use as they see fit. The common would usually be used for grazing livestock, because none of the users has any incentive to improve it. The tragedy of the common is that it inevitably becomes degraded by overuse. Each individual user must take what he can get from the common, because if he uses it less, someone else will use it more. The legal status of joint ownership is now obsolete, except in the more general sense that what no one owns (such as the oceans), everyone owns. This is an idea with broad applicability, as Dr. Hardin showed in his long history of publication on environmental and social issues. A champion of population control, he sometimes generated controversy by his openness to coercive social policy. At the local level, he was a friend of reproductive rights. Dr. Hardin and his wife Jane believed that individuals should be free to take their own life; they committed suicide in their Santa Barbara home in September 2003. He was 88 and she was 81.
A selection of books with Garrett Hardin bookplates are listed to the right-->.
Dr Hardin had wide-ranging interests; many of the books from his library will appeal to the general reader. You can find additional books with Garrett Hardin bookplates, and other books with interesting and historic bookplates, by browsing the Category "Cool Bookplates". Good hunting! |
