Customer Reviews
History of environmental thinking
Book is an anthology on environmental thinking with biographical essays from ancient to present period throughout the world.
Fifty essays,covering 50 personalities ,begins with the quotations which beautifully expresses the environmental thinking.
Various personalities are from religion as Buddha;spiritual as St.Francis Assisi;philosopher as Rousseau,Heidegger;environmental philosopher as Rachael carson,John Muir;environmental activist as Chica Mendes;economist as Karl Marx,E.F.Schumacher;literary persons as Gothe,Wordsworth,Rabindranath Tagore;and person as Gandhi,M.K. and Nobel peace prize winner as Albert Schweitzer.
Buddha said 'How astonishing it is,that man should be so evil as to break a branch of the tree,after eating his fills."
Martin Heideggar quoted,'Man is not the lord of being,man is the shephard of being."
E.F.Schumacher,an ecological economist wrote in his book'small is beautiful' as follows "fight against pollution cannot be successful if the patterns of production and consumption continue to be of scale,a complexity,and a degree of violence,which,as is becoming more and more apparent,donot fit into the laws of universe,to which man is just as much subject as the rest of creation."
Environmental thought through the ages
A useful addition to the Routledge key thinkers series and a very helpful guide for students in various types of 'environmental studies'.
Clearly, any choice of 'key thinkers' in any area will be partial and provisional. However, Palmer has done a good job of offering a broad selection, from religious founders to philosophers to writers to scientists to activists. The compilers are also well chosen, experts by and large. For instance J. Baird Callicott and Holmes Rolston III appear both as 'key thinkers' and as contributors.
A particular strength of this collection of biographical essays is that is covers a much wider historical scope than many of the standard readers in environmental studies. Thus it goes some way towards setting more recent thinkers in their historical context. Also very helpful are the bibliographies appearing with each entry of the individual's 'major writings' and of recommended 'further reading'.
A book of this sort succeeds if it gently makes readers aware of what they do not know, arouses their interest, makes them keen to explore further. While many of the subjects described here were already known to me, there are many others about whom I am now looking forward to learning more. In short, success.
