[Oe List ...] SMH Obituary for Charles Birch

Wed Dec 23 09:24:50 CST 2009

Truly!

  _____  

From: oe-bounces at wedgeblade.net [mailto:oe-bounces at wedgeblade.net] On Behalf
Of frank bremner
Sent: Tuesday, December 22, 2009 7:40 PM
To: Dialogue OE
Subject: [Oe List ...] SMH Obituary for Charles Birch

>From the Sydney Morning Herald.  An interview with Paul Ehrlich (the Paul
Ehrlich), on ABC Radio on Monday, revealed that Charles Birch's 1950s
writings made Ehrlich an ecologist, not just an evolutionist.  Ehrlich
visited Birch in Australia every year.

Cheers

Frank Bremner

While the US weather reminds me of the 1979 Chicago blizzard (Mayor Michael
Bilandic, the slow organisation of snow ploughs, Mayor Jane Byrne), our
weather in Adelaide is rather warm!

  _____  

To: scmfriends at yahoogroups.com
From: p.farleigh at ieee.org
Date: Tue, 22 Dec 2009 23:37:36 +0000
Subject: [scmfriends] SMH Obituary for Charles Birch

A man of science and religion
December 23, 2009

1918-2009, Charles Birch

Charles Birch started out as an agricultural scientist, switched to biology
and ecology and soon confronted questions that were to occupy him for the
rest of his life: where humankind was really going, preoccupied as it was
with its its eternal conflicts and relentless pursuit of wealth. The world
could not sustain this forever and he believed progress could only be made
when spiritual values were married to the empirical world he probed as a
scientist.

These were fundamental questions, he believed, which had to be asked in a
century which saw 2 billion people on the planet and 6 billion, and
counting, at the end of it, where resources obviously were finite, the
global ecology was being rapidly depleted and the harmony that Christianity
preached appeared further from reach than ever.

Birch's quest for answers took him into academia. For 25 years he was
Challis Professor of Biology at the University of Sydney and had visiting
professorships in Sao Paulo, Brazil, Minnesota and California. His strong
advocacy of social responsibility for the World Council of Churches earned
him the Templeton Prize in 1990 for science and religion.

Louis Charles Birch was born in Melbourne on February 8, 1918, the son of
Harry Birch, a New Zealand-born bank manager with the ES&A Bank, and his
Irish-born wife, Nora. He had a twin brother, Sidney, and an older brother,
Hugh. Birch attended Scotch College, Melbourne, and graduated in agriculture
at the University of Melbourne in 1939.

>From there he went to the Waite Agricultural Research Institute at the
University of Adelaide, working for six years under the supervision of Dr
Herbert Andrewartha, who had a great influence on him, teaching him ''to
think'' and to discover ''the social responsibility of the scientist'', as
Birch expressed it. ''In view of the enormous transformation of the modern
world as a result of science and technology, the scientist is responsible
for much that has happened both good and bad. This understanding is based on
the premise that science is not value free.''

In 1941, Birch took a master of science degree at the University of Adelaide
then National Service, working on projects such as preserving the stockpile
of wheat, which could not be exported and was in danger of rotting. His
brother Hugh went off to pilot flying boats for the RAAF over the English
Channel but Charles, though knowing Hitler had to be stopped, had a strong
aversion for war, making him virtually a pacifist.

At war's end, drawn to teaching and students, he decided on a change of
direction and took the opportunity of a research fellowship at the
University of Chicago in 1946 to study biology. He had also had his interest
in religion enriched by his association with the Student Christian Movement,
which moved him away from

the rather rigid evangelical outlook of Anglican Melbourne to a more
questioning, liberal view of the faith.

In 1947 he studied animal population dynamics at Oxford University and in
1948 joined the staff of the University of Sydney as a senior lecturer in
zoology. Serving also as vice-master of the university's Wesley College, he
progressed through the academic ranks to his appointment as Challis
Professor of Biology in 1958.

When the renowned anthropologist Margaret Mead told the World Council of
Churches it should have a program on science, technology and the future,
Birch was invited to become part of it. He remained in the program for 20
years. For 13 years he was the council's vice-moderator, church and society.
Birch met many of the world's great thinkers in population and genetics,
including Paul Ehrlich. For years he was prominent in the Zero Population
Growth movement, which attracted widespread support in Australia.

When the Vietnam War started in earnest in 1965, Birch was at the forefront
of opposition, addressing huge meetings on the front lawn of Sydney
University. He risked arrest through his membership of Committee on
Conscience, which supported and gave free legal advice to conscientious
objectors. ''When that became public I received hundreds of telegrams of
support from trade unions throughout Australia,'' he said later.

For 10 years Birch was active in the Wayside Chapel, which had been
developed by the Reverend Ted Noffs into a community forum for people who
were normally at the fringes of society. He participated in Friday night
discussion groups and on Sunday nights at Question Time. Birch, answering a
question on world overpopulation, said that one solution would be for each
person to try to eat another. One of the fringe-dwellers called out: ''Well,
I'll have you!'' Noffs's enlightened policies were seen to work. A crisis
centre at the chapel was manned not by detached professionals but by people
who had been through crises themselves.

Birch's Templeton Prize was one of a host of awards. He enjoyed fellowship
of the Australian Academy of Science, the Club of Rome and the American
Association for the Advancement of Science. He had nine books and 150 papers
published, the former including The Distribution and Abundance of Animals
with H.G. Andrewartha (1954), Nature and God (1965); Genetics and the
Quality of Life (1975); The Liberation of Life: From Cell to the Community
(1981); On Purpose (1984); Regaining Compassion: for Humanity and Nature
(1993) and his last book, Science & Soul, published last year.

An underlying theme of these books was process thought, as understood by
A.N. Whitehead, Charles Hartshorne and John Cobb. He was to the end a quiet,
wistful, far-sighted man whose ideas and outlook are likely to be even more
relevant as the decades progress.

Charles Birch never married. He is survived by his twin, Sidney, and
sister-in-law, Jenny. A private funeral was held yesterday and a memorial
service is being planned for early in the new year.

Malcolm Brown

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