136-506 Science and Discovery in the Pacific

Usually admission to the postgraduate diploma or fourth-year honours, or a postgraduate coursework program.

There are two interwoven streams in this subject: a study of the role of the Pacific as a scientific laboratory, and issues in the environmental history of the Pacific. The Pacific or Oceania has been of central significance for many of the major scientific discoveries, theories and understandings which have shaped Western science. The subject will examine some of these, such as the scientists on the voyages of James Cook, and the work of such people as Charles Darwin, Alfred Russell Wallace, Patrick Vinton Kirch, Bahn & Flenley, and Athol Anderson. In parallel, the Pacific has provided a number of fundamental case studies in the evolution of human understandings of, and interaction, with the non-human environment. Such studies of human interactions with Pacific environments (the environmental history in a broad sense) provide invaluable insights into broader aspects of human settlement and exploitation. This is particularly accessible given that most initial human settlement has taken place within the last 1500 years, and the European wave in the last 250 years. The scholarship about this is new and vibrant, and the subject will contain case studies drawn from such issues as the debates over Polynesian migration, contrasting early settlement interactions in Tikopia and Mangaia, Maoris in New Zealand, the impact of alien introductions in Hawaii and the environmental impact of the sandalwood trade.

Written work totalling 5000 words.