Ecologism
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TENSIONS WITHIN . . . ECOLOGISM ‘Shallow’ ecology v. ‘Deep’ ecology environmentalism ecologism
ecocentrism
‘light’ anthropocentrism
mysticism
science
nature
humankind
radical holism
limited holism
value-in-nature
instrumental value
biocentric equality
modified humanism
animal rights
animal welfare
anti-growth
sustainable growth
ecological consciousness
personal development
Systems thinking Traditional political ideologies have typically assumed that human beings are the masters of the natural world, and have therefore regarded nature as little more than an economic resource, available to satisfy human ends. Fritjof Capra (1982) traced the origin of such thinking to the ideas of figures such as the French philosopher René Descartes (1596–1650) and the British scientist Isaac Newton (1642–1727). Instead of seeing the world as organic, Descartes and Newton portrayed it as a machine, implying that, like any other machine, it can be tinkered with, repaired, improved on or even replaced. Capra thus described nature, from this perspective, as the ‘Newtonian world-machine’. Based on the application of scientific method, in which hypotheses are formulated and tested against empirical evidence, what became orthodox science enabled remarkable advances to be made in human knowledge and provided the basis for the development ofmodern industry and technology. So impressivewere the fruits of science, that intellectual inquiry in the modern world has come to be dominated by scientism . However, green theorists argue that these benefits have come at a high cost. By encouraging human beings to think of themselves not as part of the natural world but as its master, themechanisticworld-view that lay at the heart of the ‘Cartesian-Newtonian paradigm’
fundamentally destabilized the relationship between humankind and nature. This led to a search for a new, non-mechanistic paradigm, a search that has drawn green thinking into the spheres of both modern science and ancient myths and religions. One attempt do this was made through the notion of holism . The term ‘holism’ was coined in 1926 by Jan Smuts, a Boer general and twice prime minister of South Africa. He used it to describe the idea that the natural world could only be understood as a whole and not through its individual parts. Smuts believed that science commits the sin of reductionism: it reduces everything it studies to separate parts and tries to understand each part in itself. In contrast, holism suggests that
Scientism: The belief that scientific method is the only value-free and objective means of establishing truth, and is applicable to all fields of learning. Holism: A belief that the whole is more important than its parts; holism implies that understanding is gained by studying relationships among the parts.
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