God and Gaia

Science, Religion and Ethics on a Living Planet
1. Auflage 2022
ISBN: 978-0-367-62774-4
Verlag: Routledge

Buch, Englisch, 282 Seiten, Format (B × H): 156 mm x 234 mm, Gewicht: 436 g

Reihe: Routledge Environmental Humanities

God and Gaia explores the overlap between traditional religious cosmologies and the scientific Gaia theory of James Lovelock. It argues that a Gaian approach to the ecological crisis involves rebalancing human and more-than-human influences on Earth by reviving the ecological agency of local and indigenous human communities, and of nonhuman beings.

Present-day human ecological influences on Earth have been growing at pace since the Scientific and Industrial Revolutions, when modern humans adopted a machine cosmology in which humans are the sole intelligent agency. The resultant imbalance between human and Earthly agencies is degrading the species diversity of ecosystems, causing local climate changes, and threatens to destabilise the Earth as a System. Across eight chapters this ambitious text engages with traditional cosmologies from the Indian Vedas and classical Greece to Medieval Christianity, with case material from Southeast Asia, Southern Africa and Great Britain. It discusses concepts such as deep time and ancestral time, the ethics of genetic engineering of foods and viruses, and holistic ecological management.

Northcott argues that an ontological turn that honours the differential agency of indigenous humans and other kind, and that draws on sacred traditions, will make it is possible to repair the destabilising impacts of contemporary human activities on the Earth System and its constituent ecosystems. This book will be of considerable interest to students and scholars of the environmental humanities, history, and cultural and religious studies.

Zielgruppe

Postgraduate and Undergraduate Advanced

Autoren/Hrsg.

Northcott, Michael S

Fachgebiete

• Naturwissenschaften Biowissenschaften Biowissenschaften Biowissenschaften, Biologie: Sachbuch, Naturführer
• Geisteswissenschaften Religionswissenschaft Religionswissenschaft Allgemein Religion & Wissenschaft
• Geowissenschaften Geographie | Raumplanung Geographie: Sachbuch, Reise
• Naturwissenschaften Biowissenschaften Biowissenschaften Ökologie

Inhaltsverzeichnis

1. From Deep Time to Ancestral Time 2. In Borneo 3. Diversity and Development 4. Reverse Engineering Life 5. Biosecurity, Covid-19 and Human-Earth Healing 6. The Earth as Gaia 7. Gaia and Religions 8. Gaian Ethics

Über Autor(innen)

Michael S. Northcott is Professor Emeritus of Ethics at the University of Edinburgh, Scotland; and Guest Professor at the Indonesian Consortium of Religious Studies, Gadjah Mada University, Yogyakarta, Indonesia, and the Evangelische Theologische Faculteit, Leuven, Belgium.