Daedalus articles from September 2001

Daedalus archives from September 2001

Introduction: The Emerging Alliance of World Religions and Ecology.
September 22, 2001... THIS ISSUE OF DAEDALUS brings together for the first time diverse perspectives from the world's religious traditions regarding attitudes toward nature with reflections from the fields of science, public policy, and ethics. The scholars of...

Religion, Modern Secular Culture, and Ecology.
September 22, 2001... AS AN OCCASIONAL PARTICIPANT in the meetings that led to this issue of Daedalus, I have been invited to sketch the historical, religious, and academic context that these deliberations on religion and ecology presuppose. I can summarize that...

Perspectives on Environmental Change: A Basis for Action.
September 22, 2001... INTRODUCTION WE LIVE AT A UNIQUE POINT in the history of planet Earth. After almost four billion years of evolution, a single species, Homo sapiens sapiens, has evolved with the capacity to think, to contemplate not only its place in the...

The Ethical Dimensions of Global Environmental Issues.
September 22, 2001... INTRODUCTION IN 1950, THE WORLD'S POPULATION was 2.5 billion people. By the year 2050 it is expected to have grown to between nine and ten billion people. During this time of dramatic population growth, the human impact on the planet has...

Multicultural Environmental Ethics.
September 22, 2001... INTRODUCTION ONE MAIN APPROACH to a theory of environmental ethics is "anthropocentricism"--that is, the human-centered approach. A single individual's actions with regard to the environment may have an impact on all human beings. We are...

Nature in the Sources of Judaism.
September 22, 2001... INTRODUCTION ALONG WITH CHRISTIANITY, JUDAISM has been indicted as one cause of our current environmental crisis. In his famous essay, Lynn White Jr. alleged that the anthropocentrism of the Judeo-Christian tradition "made it possible to...

New House Rules: Christianity, Economics, and Planetary Living.
September 22, 2001... INTRODUCTION IS THE ENVIRONMENT A RELIGIOUS ISSUE? Many do not think so. For most Americans, the problems with our deteriorating planet can be fixed by science, managed with new technology. [1] Let us hope that this is so, that science...

Islam and Ecology: Toward Retrieval and Reconstruction.
September 22, 2001... A CONSIDERATION OF THE QUESTION of Islam and ecology ought to begin with one fundamental observation of a historical kind: in the construction of what we call the modern world, Islam has had only an indirect role to play. To be sure, one cannot...

Water, Wood, and Wisdom: Ecological Perspectives from the Hindu Traditions.
September 22, 2001... FROM THE CRADLE that is a baby's first bed to the cremation pyre that is the last resting place for the body in many Hindu traditions, wood is an integral part of Hindu lives. From home hearths to religious sacraments, wood and fire are...

The Living Cosmos of Jainism: A Traditional Science Grounded in Environmental Ethics.
September 22, 2001... IN THE ARISTOTELIAN SYSTEM of defining life, animals are grouped into genus and species. According to Aristotle, "Of animals, some resemble one another in all their parts, while others have parts wherein they differ.... By 'genus' I mean, for...

Principles and Poetry, Places and Stories: The Resources of Buddhist Ecology.
September 22, 2001... THE WORLD'S RELIGIOUS AND SPIRITUAL traditions are a rich source of ethical values and principles for reflecting on environmental issues. Both religious adherents and scholars who are concerned about the environmental crisis are mining...

The Ecological Turn in New Confucian Humanism: Implications for China and the World.
September 22, 2001... TODAY VIRTUALLY ALL AXIAL-AGE CIVILIZATIONS are going through their own distinctive forms of transformation in response to the multiple challenges of modernity. [1] One of the most crucial questions they face is what wisdom they can offer to...

Envisioning the Daoist Body in the Economy of Cosmic Power.
September 22, 2001... INTRODUCTION AS MARY EVELYN TUCKER AND JOHN GRIM have shown in their pioneering work on religions and ecology, the crux of the debate lies in the question of worldviews. From a sociological perspective, religious traditions represent and...

Indigenous Americans: Spirituality and Ecos.
September 22, 2001... THE COSMIC VISIONS OF INDIGENOUS PEOPLES are Significantly diverse. Each nation and community has its own unique traditions. Still, several characteristics stand out. First, it is common to envision the creative process of the universe as a...

Where Do We Go from Here?
September 22, 2001... HAVA TIROSH-SAMUELSON speaks for nearly all religious traditions when she writes that for Jewish thinkers, until very recently, "environmentalism has remained a marginal concern." It's not that religions ignored the natural world--indeed, if...