Voyages into ocean space: A view from the humanities

There is a serious need for academic humanists to bring the value-centered concerns of their disciplines to the current effort by marine educators to achieve what has become known as "nationwide marine literacy." But the terms of humanist\´s involvement must first be defined. For the humanist is not simply the person who provides cultural embellishment on the work of other marine educators to make the efforts by those educators aesthetically pleasing; rather his main task is to assist in the creation and maintenance of a worthwhile culture, or more specifically, to help ocean scientists and technologists realize who they are and how they\´re doing. As an example, a study of the sea fiction of such writers as James Fenimore Cooper, Herman Melville, and Joseph Conrad can help us understand the historical development of the Anglo-American idea of frontier as that idea has shaped the counterplay of human and natural forces which is the American imperial epic. The best novels by these men mark the limits of rational inquiry and suggest dangerous consequences if we continue our voyage into ocean space without understanding those limits.