Thinking Nature

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Thinking Nature tracks the history of the concept of nature from the Hebrew Bible, through Renaissance philosophy and science, to Dark Ecology. Critical of the post-humanist trend in contemporary eco-criticism, Sean McGrath makes a compelling case for a new anthropocenic humanism - a humanism that is not at the expense of nature, and a naturalism that is not at the expense of the human. Nature as the stable backdrop of human civilization appears to have vanished in the light of climate change, mass extinction, and genetic engineering. And yet the term 'nature' remains vital to both metaphysics and to public ecological discourse. This is because 'nature', in McGrath's view, is a living symbol, and can survive the extinction of one or another of its meanings. Contemporary ecology must proceed in the absence of a clear concept of nature, not because none are possible, but because of the depth of the transformation occurring to the earth in the Anthropocene. Whatever shape the new concept of nature will take, it must include the one who thinks nature, the human being, since the separation of nature from culture, facts from values, is no longer tenable.