An interesting article in The Chronicle of Higher Education on visions of our planet and Gaia in light of modern science. Written by Michael Ruse, a noted philosopher and historian of biology, it is both an ode to balance (in perspective, if nothing else) and a pithy introduction to the history of science. He takes the reader from Heraclitus and evolution to mechanism, romanticism, the fate of the earth and back again, emphasizing how important it is to consider the nature of life from manifold perspectives. He could have used the word vitalism, but didn’t — so many seem to shy away from it because of misconstrued associations. Alas, what he is essentially getting at is a kind of vitalism…
By way of Arts & Letters Daily.
August 4, 2009 at 4:48 pm |
Not sure about his emphatic “We must do something”. Maybe we should stop doing things all the time, generating more stuff do to things with, and reflect for a while.
August 4, 2009 at 7:13 pm |
Please check out these references which affirm that planet earth is an Indivisible Unity in which everything is in one way or another inter-connected.
http://www.fearnomorezoo.org/literature/all.php
Plus a set of essays on the baneful limitations of scientism as ideology rather than open ended free enquiry.
http://www.adidam.org/teaching/aletheon/truth-science.aspx
Plus a related essay.
http://www.aboutadidam.org/readings/bridge_to_god/index.html
August 4, 2009 at 7:32 pm |
ricki: Amen.
John: At the risk of sounding like an inveterate skeptic (which, frankly, sometimes I am) these links represent a vision of the world/nature/universe/whatever that is as embedded in its cultural context as scientific materialism is in western European “civilization”. The duality of western materialism and eastern spiritualism has become a bothersome trope in modern esoteric/occult thought. I’m with Alan Watts and his acceptance of the ultimately unknowable difference represented by eastern mysticism. At the same time, many of the attempts to re-frame our Eurocentric paradigms into more pleasing forms are, I think, doomed to failure. I dunno, some days I think it’s duality “all the way down” — Manichean, if you will. We’re made of this material meat stuff and we’ll never really get it.
But I appreciate the attempt to find wholeness, unity, etc…Maybe, like I said, I’m just too skeptical. Or maybe I just didn’t eat my Wheaties today…