In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:The Sunflower Forest: Ecological Restoration and the New Communion with NatureEric Katz (bio)Review of William R. Jordan III, The Sunflower Forest: Ecological Restoration and the New Communion with Nature. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2003. Pp. 256, Index.In The Sunflower Forest, William Jordan presents the process of ecological restoration as a new environmental paradigm for a "new kind of environmentalism" which will be "adequate to the task (...) of ensuring the survival of the world's natural landscapes or of providing the basis for a healthy relationship with them" (p. 3). It is unfortunate that this overall vision for the process of ecological restoration (if not for the argument of the book) begins with an equivocation on the task of this new environmental paradigm—is the task of ecological restoration to ensure the survival of natural landscapes or is it merely to provide humans with a healthy relationship with these landscapes? Jordan, who for many years was in charge of publications and public outreach at the University of Wisconsin Arboretum (a leading research center in the science of ecological restoration), as well as the founding editor of the journal Ecological Restoration (originally: Restoration and Management Notes) and a founding member of the Society for Ecological Restoration, should be the perfect candidate to explain and to justify the processes and goals of ecological restoration. But the equivocation noted above is a warning that the book's main theses are poorly argued and expressed; Jordan's arguments [End Page 97] and presentation do not serve to advance the understanding of restoration as a fundamental and essential task of contemporary environmentalism. On the contrary, the book bolsters the arguments of critics, such as myself, who believe that ecological restoration is a misguided and inappropriate environmental policy.Ecological restoration is the process by which we humans attempt to bring an ecological system (such as a prairie, lake, river, wetland, mountain) back to some prior or original state before it was modified (usually negatively) by human impacts and interventions. Sometimes this means re-creating an entirely new ecosystem that no longer exists; in other cases it means the repair and rehabilitation of damaged ecosystems. Jordan does not, in this book, defend this practice directly. Although he mentions the main anthropocentric benefits that restored systems will maximize (e.g., "rebuilding the ecological capital of soil, air, water, biological diversity, and productivity that is the basis for all human economies" [p. 50] ), his chief interest lies in other directions. He is critical of traditional environmentalism because it has failed "to provide the basis for a satisfactory relationship between culture and nature as it is represented by classic landscapes" (p. 8). Ecological restoration, for Jordan, does provide the basis of this relationship: "Understood not merely as an emergency measure, to be deployed in response to dramatic or acute insults to ecosystems... but as an ongoing process of ecological compensation, restoration quite simply defines the terms of our relationship with natural landscapes, and the terms on which they will survive..." (p. 15).Ecological compensation seems to be the key idea here. Restoration provides a means for humans to inhabit a landscape in a respectful manner and overcome the so-called "dilemma of use" (p. 16)—for we must use the natural world as we simultaneously try to preserve and protect it. But for Jordan, the mere concept of "use" is too mild; the fact is that the human species is self-conscious of its "contributions to the violent process of creation"—the domestication of animals and the invention of agriculture are cited as two primary examples (p. 39). The self-consciousness of our participation in this necessary violence against the non-human natural world creates in us a deep sense of shame, and it is this shame, and our attempts to overcome it, that explains and justifies the process of ecological restoration, which is itself shameful. Thus, for Jordan: [End Page 98]Restoration is shameful because it involves killing and a measure of hegemony over the land; because the restoration effort is never fully successful and never complete; because it dramatizes not only our troubling dependence on the natural landscape, but—equally troubling—its... (shrink)

We are in trouble just now because we do not have a good story. We are in between stories. The old story, the account of how the world came to be and how we fit into it, is no longer effective. Yet we have not learned the new story.... We need a story that will educate us, a story that will heal, guide, and discipline us. Thomas Berry, The Dream of the Earth.

Lisa Sideris proposes a new way of thinking about the natural world, an environmental ethic that incorporates the ideas of natural selection and values the processes rather than the products of nature.

Recent discussions concerned with the problematical human relationship with nature have justifiably focused on the important role that language plays in both defining and limiting knowledge of the natural world. Much concern about language among environmental thinkers has been focused at the semantic level—proposing and analyzing definitions of certain key terms, such as anthropocentric, biocentric, wilderness, ecology, or holistic. Work at the semantic level, however, has had very little effect in challenging the scientific metanarrative of nature which is based on (...) the primacy of objective knowledge. Using examples from three postmodern stories, we suggest that the only real challenge to the way humans presently construct and understand their relationship to nature can be found at the narrative level. In our discussion of these stories, we show that nature ceases to be a passive, designified object of the human eye. The result of these narrative shifts is a conception of nature composed of other subjects and otherrealities rather than a nature rendered meaningless by objectivity. (shrink)

Throughout, this book questions our accepted definitions and biases, showing the self-reflective nature of scientific activity within society.

[Although research in wildlife management is repeating the history of agriculture, unlike agricultural research, which employs scientific means for economic ends, the ends of wildlife research are judged in terms of aesthetic satisfactions as governed by “good taste.” Wild animals and plants are economically valuable only in the sense that human performers and works of art are: the means are of the brain, but the ends are of the heart. Wildlife management has forged ahead of agriculture in recognizing the invisible (...) interdependencies in the biotic community. Moreover, it has admitted its inability to replace natural equilibria and its unwillingness to do so even if it could. Because many animals do not exhibit their natural behavior under laboratory conditions, researchers are dependent on observation in the wild. The difficulties involved in isolating variables are especially clear in the study of the natural cycle. It is a problem which seems to defy the experimental method.]. (shrink)

"There are books—few and far between—which carefully, delightfully, and genuinely turn your head inside out. This is one of them. It ranges over some central issues in Western philosophy and begins the long overdue job of giving us a radically new account of meaning, rationality, and objectivity."—Yaakov Garb, _San Francisco Chronicle_.

Using path-breaking discoveries of cognitive science, Mark Johnson argues that humans are fundamentally imaginative moral animals, challenging the view that morality is simply a system of universal laws dictated by reason. According to the Western moral tradition, we make ethical decisions by applying universal laws to concrete situations. But Johnson shows how research in cognitive science undermines this view and reveals that imagination has an essential role in ethical deliberation. Expanding his innovative studies of human reason in Metaphors We Live (...) By and The Body in the Mind, Johnson provides the tools for more practical, realistic, and constructive moral reflection. (shrink)

I present a Third World critique of the trend in American environmentalism known as deep ecology, analyzing each of deep ecology’s central tenets: the distinction between anthropocentrism and biocentrism, the focus on wildemess preservation, the invocation of Eastem traditions, and the belief that it represents the most radical trend within environmentalism. I argue that the anthropocentrism/biocentrism distinction is of little use in understanding the dynamics of environmental degredation, that the implementation of the wildemess agenda is causing serious deprivation in the (...) Third World, that the deep ecologist’s interpretation of Eastem traditions is highly selective, and that in other cultural contexts radical environmentalism manifests itself quite differently, with a far greater emphasis on equity and the integration of ecological concems with livelihood and work. I conclude that despite its claims to universality, deep ecology is firmly rooted in American environmental and cultural history and is inappropriate when applied to the Third World. (shrink)

While environmental philosophers have been striving to extend ethics to deal with future generations and nonhuman life forms, very little work has been undertaken to address what is perhaps a more profound deficiency in received ethical doctrines, that they have very little impact on how people live. I explore Alasdair MacIntyre’s work on narratives and traditions and defend a radicalization of his arguments as a direction for making environmental ethics efficacious.

An ethics-based epistemology is necessary for environmental philosophy—a sharply different approach from the epistemology-based ethics that the field has inherited, mostly implicitly, from mainstream ethics. In this paper, we try to uncover this inherited epistemology and point toward an alternative. In section two, we outline a general contrast between an ethics-based epistemology and an epistemology-based ethics. In section three, we examine the relationship between ethics and epistemology in an ethics-based epistemology, drawing extensively on examples from indigenous cultures. We briefly explore (...) several striking implications of an ethics-based epistemology in sections four and five. (shrink)

Reveals how the scientific revolution of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries changed our view of the earth and argues that the advance of science set back the cause of women.

An examination of the Scientific Revolution that shows how the mechanistic world view of modern science has sanctioned the exploitation of nature, unrestrained commercial expansion, and a new socioeconomic order that subordinates women.

Philosopher and essayist Paul Shepard (1925-1996) brought to the environmental literature of the 1960s and '70s the political passion of the time, but a passion matched with a demand for scholarly precision. This anthology from his work, which Shepard himself assembled not long before his death, addresses themes touched on in many of his books. Many of these themes deal in one way or another with the disastrous consequences of humankind's increasing detachment from the natural world as a by-product of (...) "the ecological insolence of the last century." In Shepard's view, the natural world--and particularly the world of animals--is the source of human intelligence and the wellspring of the imagination. He examines, for instance, the antiquity of the human eye, an organ essential to the cognitive revolution that distinguishes us from other primates; the origins of language and literature in the imitation of birdsong; and the lessons animals of many species can teach us about ourselves. Shepard delves into environmental psychology, anatomy, history, linguistics, and a host of other topics to make his strikingly original arguments, which have helped shape modern environmental thinking and influenced the writings of such successors as Barry Lopez and Terry Tempest Williams. (shrink)

The Spirit of the Soil challenges environmentalists to think more deeply and creatively about agriculture. Paul B. Thompson identifies four `worldviews' which tackle agricultural ethics according to different philosophical priorities; productionism, stewardship, economics and holism. He examines current issues such as the use of pesticides and biotechnology from these ethical perspectives. This book achieves an open-ended account of sustainability designed to minimise hubris and help us to recapture the spirit of the soil.

A leading theorist addresses a wide spectrum of topics central to the field of environmental philosophy.

Arguing that ecological thinking can animate an epistemology capable of addressing feminist, multicultural, and other post-colonial concerns, this book critiques the instrumental rationality, hyperbolized autonomy, abstract individualism, and exploitation of people and places that western epistemologies of mastery have legitimated. It proposes a politics of epistemic location, sensitive to the interplay of particularity and diversity, and focused on responsible epistemic practices. Starting from an epistemological approach implicit in Rachel Carson’s scientific projects, the book draws, constructively and critically, on ecological theory (...) and practice, on (post-Quinean) naturalized epistemology, and on feminist and post-colonial theory. Analyzing extended examples from developmental psychology, from medicine and law, and from circumstances where vulnerability, credibility, and public trust are at issue, the argument addresses the constitutive part played by an instituted social imaginary in shaping and regulating human lives. The practices and examples discussed invoke the responsibility requirements central to this text’s larger purpose of imagining, crafting, articulating a creative, innovative, instituting social imaginary, committed to interrogating entrenched hierarchical social structures, en route to enacting principles of ideal cohabitation. (shrink)

Following in the fashion of Stephen Jay Gould and Peter Medawar, one of the world's leading scientists examines how "pure science" is in fact shaped and guided by social and political needs and assumptions.

[Although research in wildlife management is repeating the history of agriculture, unlike agricultural research, which employs scientific means for economic ends, the ends of wildlife research are judged in terms of aesthetic satisfactions as governed by “good taste.” Wild animals and plants are economically valuable only in the sense that human performers and works of art are: the means are of the brain, but the ends are of the heart. Wildlife management has forged ahead of agriculture in recognizing the invisible (...) interdependencies in the biotic community. Moreover, it has admitted its inability to replace natural equilibria and its unwillingness to do so even if it could. Because many animals do not exhibit their natural behavior under laboratory conditions, researchers are dependent on observation in the wild. The difficulties involved in isolating variables are especially clear in the study of the natural cycle. It is a problem which seems to defy the experimental method.]. (shrink)