Subject: Re: AUT: science, technology and ecology
Date: Mon, 4 Feb 2002 19:03:59 +0100



-----Original Message-----
From: Ben Hoh <jebni-AT-bigpond.com>
To: aut-op-sy-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu
<aut-op-sy-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu>
Date: 4. februar 2002 10:25
Subject: Re: AUT: science, technology and ecology



Ben,

ecology is "the branch of biology that deals with the relations
between living organism and their environment," to use a
standard dictionary definition. To me an "ethical relationship
with ecology" makes as much sense as talking about such
a relationship with mathematics. Even if you define ecology
as the relations it describes, an etchical realtionship with
relations still does not make much sense.

Apart from this, what is wrong with anthropocentrism, I cannot
understand. To argue that anthropocentrism is some kind of
analogy of racism is a dangerous path to follow. It has been
travelled before with disasterous results. This is precisely the
kind of thinking that nourished racial theories.

There is no such thing as a "non-dominative interaction [with
non-human nature] that challenges the presumed identities of
both parties". Nor could it ever exist. 


I might use words as respect for non-human nature. I can get
a certain religious feeling, a feeling of being alive and part of
something greater than me, in the mountains, woods or at sea.
But no one shall tell me that when I catch a fish to fry this is or
could ever be a "non-domintative, interactive relationship, no
more than that between the cat and the mouse. 

Harald



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