Reconstructing Nature

One of the main features of the contemporary environmental crisis is that no one has a clear idea of what is going on. The author uses an extension of Marx's theory of alienation to explain why people find it so difficult to relate their different knowledges of the natural and social world. He argues that nevertheless it is possible to relate these to the abstractions of ecological discourse. Emancipation can come only through embracing science and rationality rather than rejecting them and, in the process, humanity as well as the non-human world will benefit.

This book, first published in the U.K. by T&T Clark, expands on the authors' prestigious Glasgow Gifford Lectures of 1995-6. Brooke and Cantor herein examine the many different ways in which the relationship between science and religion has been presented throughout history. They contend that, in fact, neither science nor religion is reducible to some timeless "essence"--and they deftly criticize the various master-narratives that have been put forward in support of such "essentialist" theses. Along the way, they repeatedly demolish the clichés so typical of popular histories of the science and religion debate, demonstrating the impossibility of reducing these debates to a single narrative, or of narrowing this relationship to a paradigm of conflict.

In the present ecological crisis, it is imperative that human beings reconsider their place within nature and find new, more responsible and sustainable ways of living. Assumptions about the nature of God, the world, and the human being, shape our thinking and, consequently, our acting. Some have charged that the Christian tradition has been more a hindrance than a help because its theology of nature has unwittingly legitimated the exploitation of nature. This book takes the current criticism of Christian tradition to heart and invites a reconsideration of the problematic elements: its desacralization of nature; its preoccupation with the human being to the neglect of the rest of nature; its dualisms and elevation of the spiritual over material reality, and its habit of ignoring or resisting scientific understandings of the natural world. Anna Case-Winters argues that Christian tradition has a more viable theology of nature to offer. She takes a look at some particulars in Christian tradition as a way to illustrate the undeniable problems and to uncover the untapped possibilities. In the process, she engages conversation partners that have been sharply critical and particularly insightful (feminist theology, process thought, and the religion and science dialogue). The criticisms and insights of these partners help to shape a proposal for a reconstructed theology of nature that can more effectively fund our struggle for the fate of the earth.

Shortlisted for the Templeton Foundation Prize for Outstanding Books in Theology and Natural Sciences John Brooke and Geoffrey Cantor discuss exciting developments in the sciences, whether in Big Bang cosmology, chaos theory or genetic engineering, in relation to moral and spiritual questions. Contemporary discussion can, however, be blind if it ignores previous forms of engagement between science and religion. In their Gifford Lectures the authors argue that not one but several historical approaches are required to achieve critical perspective and balanced understanding. Accordingly, each chapter demonstrates the value of a particular historical method. Ranging from alchemy to new-age philosophies, from the Galileo affair to the Darwinian controversies, this is an indispensable and highly accessible book for all interested in science and religion.

In the light of the confusion surrounding the environmental crisis, Peter Dickens explores how the natural world relates to the social. The book aims to find ways of reorganising knowledge in the light of ecological consciousness.

America has a love–hate relationship with individualism. In Reconstructing Individualism, James Albrecht argues that our conceptions of individualism have remained trapped within the assumptions of classic liberalism. He traces an alternative genealogy of individualist ethics in four major American thinkers—Ralph Waldo Emerson, William James, John Dewey, and Ralph Ellison. These writers’ shared commitments to pluralism (metaphysical and cultural), experimentalism, and a melioristic stance toward value and reform led them to describe the self as inherently relational. Accordingly, they articulate models of selfhood that are socially engaged and ethically responsible, and they argue that a reconceived—or, in Dewey’s term, “reconstructed”—individualism is not merely compatible with but necessary to democratic community. Conceiving selfhood and community as interrelated processes, they call for an ongoing reform of social conditions so as to educate and liberate individuality, and, conversely, they affirm the essential role individuality plays in vitalizing communal efforts at reform.

Zhu Xi, the twelfth-century architect of the neo-Confucian canon, declared Zhou Dunyi to be the first true sage since Mencius. This was controversial, as many of Zhu Xi's contemporaries were critical of Zhou Dunyi's Daoist leanings, and other figures had clearly been more significant to the Song dynasty Confucian resurgence. Why was Zhou Dunyi accorded such importance? Joseph A. Adler finds that the earlier thinker provided an underpinning for Zhu Xi's religious practice. Zhou Dunyi's theory of the interpenetration of activity and stillness allowed Zhu Xi to proclaim that his own theory of mental and spiritual cultivation mirrored the fundamental principle immanent in the natural world. This book revives Zhu Xi as a religious thinker, challenging longstanding characterizations of him. Readers will appreciate the inclusion of complete translations of Zhou Dunyi's major texts, Zhu Xi's published commentaries, and other primary source material.