Ecological Prospects

Scientific, Religious, and Aesthetic Perspectives

Edited by Christopher Key Chapple

Subjects: Ecology
Paperback : 9780791417409, 236 pages, October 1993
Hardcover : 9780791417393, 236 pages, November 1993

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Table of contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction
Christopher Key Chapple and Mary Evelyn Tucker

Part I. The Definition and Preservation of Living Systems
1. Gaian Views
Dorion Sagan and Lynn Margulis
2. Ecological Disaster in Madagascar and the Prospects for Recovery
Patricia C. Wright
3. The Homogenization of the Planetary Biome
Alfred W. Crosby
4. The Wilderness Idea Revisited
J. Baird Callicott
5. Ecological Theory and Natural Resource Management
Daniel B. Botkin
6. Individual or Community?
David Rothenberg
7. Environmental Action Choices
Albert J. Frisch, S.J.

Part II. Religion, Aesthetics, and Ecology
8. An Ecological Cosmology
Mary Evelyn Tucker
9. Emerging Options in Ecological Christianity
Jay B. McDaniel
10. Ecofeminism
Rosemary Radford Ruether
11. The Land Aesthetic
J. Baird Callicott
12. Earth First!'s Religious Radicalism
Bron Taylor
13. Review and Prospects
Louke Van Wensveen Siker
Contributors
Index

Description

Ecological Prospects addresses pressing issues that will shape ecological awareness and activism into the next century. From a variety of perspectives, the book explores topics such as how ecological insight can serve as a management model for appropriate economic development, the possible categories that can be used to determine land use priorities, working models for environmental activism, potential paradigms for spiritually attuned environmentalism, and the role of aesthetic appreciation in the development of one's sensitivity to the environment.

Christopher Key Chapple is Associate Professor of Theology at Loyola Marymount University. He is the author of Karma and Creativity and Nonviolence to Animals, Earth, and Self in Asian Traditions, both published by SUNY Press.

Reviews

"This book addresses ecological problems from different disciplinary perspectives in ways that general readers can easily understand. Several of the essays concisely summarize the major players and points of view on particular issues while presenting new points that contribute to the ongoing discussion about what needs to be done and how." — Daniel Kealey, Towson State University

"What I like most about this book is its varied approaches to the issue of environmental concern. There is a genuine awareness in the book that welds such disparate views together into a coherent, readable text." — John Grim, Bucknell University