The following is an excerpt from a  published by the Climate Commitment:

鈥淪tudy nature, not books,鈥 is one of ecologist Brian Silliman鈥檚 guiding principles and favorite phrases. It鈥檚 a quote from 19th-century naturalist Louis Agassiz that is (wonderfully, hilariously) on a sign outside a library at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts. That鈥檚 not to say Silliman doesn鈥檛 also love books. The Rachel Carson Distinguished Professor of Marine Conservation Biology and director of the Duke Wetland and Coasts Center at the Nicholas School of the Environment started his academic career as a double major in history and science at University of Virginia.  

鈥淭he great thing about studying the humanities is that they teach you to question everything where science teaches you to conform to everything. That鈥檚 just the way it is. My lab, my students and I, we鈥檝e had a lot of papers that have been paradigm changing and I attribute that to the fact that we spend a lot of time in the field. We ask nature, not books, how things work. Of course, this then creates a feedback where we seek to focus on areas where nature tells us something different than books.  When it does, we revise understanding. Confronting theory with real data from nature to see if it鈥檚 right or wrong is one of our favorite things to do.鈥 

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