Publisher's Synopsis
The environmental philosophy that has grown out of the ecological movement has often been accused of providing no rational arguments for the holistic concepts it embraces. This is one of the first book-length treatments of the metaphysical foundations of ecological ethics. The author offers a metaphysical view of the ecological intuition that we are in some sense "one with" nature and that everything is connected with everything else. "The Ecological Self" considers and rejects the dominant atomistic metaphysics implicit in Newtonian physics. By drawing on Einsteinian cosmology, modern systems theory and the philosophy of Spinoza, Freya Mathews is able to elaborate a new "metaphysics of interconnectedness". The work is aimed at those who study environmental philosophy, as well as those wishing to explore how traditional disciplines such as physics and metaphysics can throw light on some areas of the ecological movement.
