Luther Burbank: Environment

Luther Burbank was American botanist, horticulturist and pioneer in agricultural science. Explore interesting quotes on environment.
Luther Burbank: 60   quotes 1   like

“A knowledge of Mendelism is recognized by me as only the ABC to the broader knowledge of heredity necessary for success in animal and plant improvement, and all variations and all mutations of every nature are responses to environment which, by repetition and combination, are slowly but surely fixed in heredity and at last made tangible, most often through the crossing of varieties, species, or genera, either by nature or that part of nature called man.”

Luther Burbank

How Plants are Trained to Work for Man (1921) Vol. 1 Plant Breeding

Nature , Knowledge , Success , Animals

“But with those who are mentally defective—ah, here is the hardest question of all!—what shall be done with them? …In the case of human beings in whom the light of reason does not burn… shall they be eliminated from the race? Go to the mother of an imbecile child and get your answer. …For these helpless unfortunates, as with those who are merely unfortunate from environment, I should enlist the best and broadest state aid.”

Luther Burbank

The Training of the Human Plant (1907)

Question , Light

“We may compare this sum of the life forces, which we call heredity, to the character of a sensitive plate in the camera. Outside pictures impress themselves more or less distinctly on the sensitive plate… Stored within heredity are all joys, sorrows, loves, hates, music, art, temples, palaces, pyramids, hovels, kings, queens, paupers, bards, prophets and philosophers, oceans, caves, volcanoes, floods, earthquakes, wars, triumphs, defeats, reverence, courage, wisdom, virtue, love and beauty, time, space, and all the mysteries of the universe. The appropriate environments will bring out and intensify all these general human hereditary experiences and quicken them again into life and action, thus modifying for good or evil, character—heredity—destiny.”

Luther Burbank

p, 125
The Training of the Human Plant (1907)

Love , Life , Wisdom , Hate

“Do not be cross with the child; you cannot afford it. If you are cultivating a plant, developing it into something finer and nobler, you must love it, not hate it; be gentle with it, not abusive; be firm, never harsh. I give the plants upon which I am at work in a test, whether a single one or a hundred thousand, the best possible environment. So should it be with a child, if you want to develop it in right ways. Let the children have music, let them have pictures, let them have laughter, let them have a good time; not an idle time but one full of cheerful occupation. Surround them with all the beautiful things you can. Plants should be given sun and air and the blue sky; give them to your boys and girls. …for all the years. We cannot treat a plant tenderly one day and harshly the next; they cannot stand it. Remember that you are training not only for to-day, but for all the future, for all posterity.”

Luther Burbank

The Training of the Human Plant (1907)

Love , Hate , Children , Beauty

“Here appears a child plainly not normal, what shall we do with him? Shall we, as some have advocated, even from Spartan days, hold that the weaklings should be destroyed? No. In cultivating plant life, while we destroy much that is unfit, we are constantly on the lookout for what has been called the abnormal, that which springs apart in new lines. How many plants are there in the world to-day that were not in one sense once abnormalities? No; it is the influence of cultivation, of selection, of surroundings, of environment, that makes the change from the abnormal to the normal. From the children we are led to call abnormal, may come, under wise cultivation and training, splendid normal natures.”

Luther Burbank

p, 125
The Training of the Human Plant (1907)

Life , Children , World , Spring

“In child rearing environment is equally essential with heredity.”

Luther Burbank

p, 125
The Training of the Human Plant (1907)

“It is increasingly necessary to impress the fact that there are two distinct lines in the improvement of any race: the environment which brings individuals up to their best possibilities; the other, ten thousand times more important and effective, selection of the best individuals through a series of generations.”

Luther Burbank

Jordan's Commentary: These two lines correspond respectively to Galton's two elements in individual development, "Nurture" and "Nature."
How Plants are Trained to Work for Man (1921) Vol. 1 Plant Breeding

Time

“When certain hereditary tendencies are almost indelibly ingrained, environment will have a hard battle to effect a change in the child; but that a change can be wrought by the surroundings we all know. The particular subject may at first be stubborn against these influences, but repeated application of the same modifying forces in succeeding generations will at last accomplish the desired object in the child as it does in the plant.”

Luther Burbank

p, 125
The Training of the Human Plant (1907)

Change

“Heredity is not the dark specter which some people have thought—merciless and unchangeable, the embodiment of Fate itself. This dark, pessimistic belief which tinges even the literature of to-day comes, no doubt, from the general lack of knowledge of the laws governing the interaction of these two ever-present forces of heredity and environment wherever there is life.
My own studies have led me to be assured that heredity is only the sum of all past environment, in other words environment is the architect of heredity; and I am assured of another fact: acquired characters are transmitted and—even further—that all characters which are transmitted have been acquired…”

Luther Burbank

p, 125
The Training of the Human Plant (1907)

Life , Fate , People , Law

“Power to vary in plants or animals is itself a feature as readily transmissible as is stability of character. The quality of varying to meet varying environments is therefore one of the hereditary traits which the plant breeder must consider, and which may itself be extended or overcome by the processes of crossing and selection.”

Luther Burbank

How Plants are Trained to Work for Man (1921) Vol. 1 Plant Breeding

Animals