Natural History of Silence

About this book

In our busy, noisy world, we may find ourselves longing for silence. But what is silence exactly? Is it the total absence of sound? Or is it the absence of the sound created by humans – the kind of deep stillness you might experience in a remote mountain landscape covered in snow, far away from the bustle of human life?

When we listen closely, silence reveals a neglected reality. Neither empty nor singular, silence is instead plentiful and multiple. In this book, eco-acoustic historian Jerome Sueur allows us to discover a vast landscape of silences which trigger the full gamut of our emotions: anxiety, awe and peace. He takes us from vistas resplendent with full and rich natural silences to the everyday silence of predators as they stalk their prey. To explore silences in animal behaviour and ecology is to discover a counterpoint to the acoustic diversity of the natural world, throwing into sharp relief the grating reverberations of the human activity which threatens it. It is to attune ourselves to a world that our human insensitivities have closed off to us, to take a moment simply to breathe and listen to the place of silence in nature.

Contents

Acknowledgements
Preface by Gilles Boeuf

1. In the Alps
2. The essence of sound
3. In the tropics
4. The nature of sound
5. In the heart of the Jura
6. The enemy
7. In the laboratory
8. Absolute
9. Natural
10. Pleyel
11. Music
12. Ourselves and others
13. To hear or not to hear
14. At the museum
15. Past
16. Hiding
17. Solar days
18. Romantic
19. Together
20. Sharing
21. Battles
22. Where?
23. Great silences
24. Silence, lockdown!
25. Preserving silence
Conclusion

Notes

Customer Reviews

Biography

Jérôme Sueur is an associate professor at the Muséum national d'histoire naturelle in Paris, where he is director of the eco-acoustic laboratory.