The Unity of Nature

The following sections are included:

• ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

• CONTENTS

What is the nature of Nature? Is it harmonious and graceful? Is it divine and providential? Is it cruel and wild? These days, answers to the question ‘What is the nature of Nature?’ often reverberate with claims of natural unity: every living thing in nature, and this includes humanity, is united…

Part A recounts the commonly accepted idea that the unity of nature concept is, essentially, an environmental idea. Environmentalists have colonised the unity concept, reinvented it, and reinvigorated it to serve as a legitimising tool for their ecopolitical goals. This colonisation, reinvention and reinvigoration has been so successful that, nowadays, the unity of nature is commonly accepted within many facets of Western culture as the intellectual preserve of environmentalists, ecologists and their sympathisers. Part A contains only one chapter: ‘Unity as an Environmental Idea: An Introduction to the Unity of Nature in Contemporary Thought’. This chapter serves as an introduction to the rest of the chapters in this work. It is important since it lays down, as a baseline, the fundamental partnership between environmentalism and the ‘unity of nature’ idea as conceived by its environmental supporters. It is important in another respect since it also lays down the fundamental relationship between scientific thinking and social practice as conceived by both environmental thinkers and many philosophers of Nature. It also recounts a peculiarly environmental narrative with regards to the history of scientific thought; a narrative which divides the history of Western philosophy of nature into three distinct stages whilst proposing that early Twenty First century society sits at the cusp of the second and third stages.

The following sections are included:

• Thinking About Nature: Why Is It Important?

• The Story So Far: The History of Scientific Worldviews According to ‘New Paradigmers’

• Technical Prelude to Parts B and C

• Notes to Chapter 1 (Unity as an Environmental Idea)

Part B rewrites the story of the unity of nature to differ from that recounted in Part A. Instead of suggesting that the unity of nature is a construction of environmentalism this part of the book suggests that the unity of nature idea is the construction of potent conservative, fascist, capitalist and technocentric forces in contemporary Western culture. The unity of nature could thus be described by those of a left-wing persuasion as a product of the bourgeoisie; the product of those with capital and power…

The following sections are included:

• Introduction

• Ecological Fascism

• Frederic Clements and the Use of Unity as a Metaphor

• Ecological Science and the Intellectual Development of the Superorganism

• Divergent Types of Ecological Study

• Systems Ecology and The Unity of Nature

• The Association Perspective: Gleason's Ecology of Individuals

• Systems Ecology: A Reductionist Type of Holism?

• Ecological Unity and Hierarchy

• The Order of Things

• Summary: The Unity of Nature as Ecological Fascism

• Notes to Chapter 2 (Falling Into Wholes: Ecological Fascism)

The following sections are included:

• Introduction: Gaia–The Ultimate Organism and the Ultimate Ecosystem

• Gaia and Ecological Functionalism

• Gaia and Physical Reductionism

• Gaia and Environmental Policy

• The Selling of Gaia as Science and Philosophy

• Gaia and Non-Anthropocentrism

• The Reproduction of Gaia: Lovelock's Technocentric Imperialist Organism

• Conclusion: Gaia as an Environmental Goddess?

• Notes to Chapter 3 (Gaia)

The following sections are included:

• Introduction: Unity Between Ecology and Society

• Unity via the ‘System’

• Unity and Social Holism

• Social Systems and Change

• Social Systems and Functions

• Social Systems and the Individual

• Natural Conservatism: Summary and Conclusions

• Notes for Chapter 4 (Natural Conservatism)

The following sections are included:

• Introduction: The Rise of Cybernetics

• Systems Ecology as Management Ecology

• Order out of Chaos: the ‘New Sciences’

• The ‘New Sciences’ and Ecology

• Chaos, Self-Organisation and Capitalism

• The Ecosystem and the Economy: are they ‘Birds of a Feather’?

• Are Self-Regulating Entities as Free as They are Made Out to Be?

• The Reliance upon Hierarchy within Self-Regulating Systems

• Fractals, Blobs and Boundaries

• Self-Organisation and God

• The ‘Self’ in Self-Regulation

• Summary and Conclusions

• Notes for Chapter 5 (Uniting the Ecosystem and the Economy)

Part C focuses in on a particular idea: that the unity of nature idea is a construction of various breeds of postmodernism. These breeds of postmodernism attempt to locate themselves in opposition to what they term Modernism. Part C, therefore, is devoted to an investigation of the postmodern attitudes that may lay within, or contribute to, the contemporary enunciation of the unity of nature. It examines the claim that if we postmodemise science–making it reject the Modernist ideals that stem from the onset of Modernity during the Renaissance and Enlightenment–then we can produce a ‘Postmodern Science’ that offers a post-mechanistic, post-reductionistic, postatomistic, post-fragmentary worldview…

The following sections are included:

• Introduction

• Postmodern Characteristics

• What Is This Thing Called Postmodern Science?

• Postmodernism in (a) Word(s)

• Postmodern Science as Postmodernism: The Verdict

• Intellectual Imperialism/Scholarly Totalitarianism

• Conclusion

• Notes for Chapter 6 (What Is This Thing Called Postmodern Science?)

The following sections are included:

• Introduction

• The Metaphysics of Organicism and Mechanicism

• The Intellectual Heritage of Organic Thought

• Organicism and the Cyberneticists

• Pre-Cybernetic and Pre-Odumist Mixing of Metaphors

• Conclusion

• Notes for Chapter 7 (Organicism Vs Mechanicism)

The following sections are included:

• Introduction

• A Postmodern Gleason?

• Ungluing The Ecological World

• The Postmodern Ecological Individual

• The Metaphors in a Postmodernised Gleasonian Ecology

• The Reflection Section

• Dissolving Humanity and Nature

• The Broadening of Social Constructionism

• Conclusions: Postmodern Associationism as a Possible Form of Postmodern Ecology

• Notes for Chapter 8 (An (Other) Postmodern Ecology)

The following sections are included:

• SUMMARY

• GLOSSARY

• BIBLIOGRAPHY

• INDEX