National Research Council. "Appendix G Ethics in the Protection of the Environment." The Experiences and Challenges of Science and Ethics: Proceedings of an American-Iranian Workshop. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press, 2003. 1. Print.
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The Experiences and Challenges of Science and Ethics: Proceedings of an American-Iranian Workshop
other towns easy to be seen, and we apportioned the journey therein. Travel through them night and day, secure.”24
In the ninth century, an Irish thinker named Johannes Scotus Eriugena25 wrote a commentary on the Holy Bible in which he tried to establish an intimate link between the Lord, the Cosmos, and human beings. In this respect, he strongly defied some of the theologians and philosophers who, due to lack of precise understanding of metaphysical and cosmological concepts of nature, were inclined to classify any such speculation as pantheism, naturalism, and polytheism. Eriugena thus stated, “The Cosmos has a transcendental origin, and all creatures are from the Lord, but created through Jesus.”26
Finally in the person of Saint Francis of Assisi27 we behold the most fantastic, respective attitude towards nature within the framework of a Christian saintly life. His life among the birds and animals is a firm example of this Christian conviction that human beings cannot relate to nature through consecration. In his Canticle of the Sun and his many other canticles, he displays a deep, penetrating insight free of any human gainfulness. In his conversation with animals, he displays the sincerity that a saint attains by connecting with the divine essence that has breathed into nature.28 Dante’s Divine Comedy teaches that human beings must trek throughout the universe so that they would recognize that the force that surrounds all beings is, “love and kindness that moves the sun and stars.”29 While this way of observing nature based on post-medieval teachings was confronted with fluctuations and challenges, it continued until the end of the nineteenth century. People like John Ray still searched nature for signs and indications of the Lord. In his work, Unsere Farbenlehre, Goethe30 dealt with the existing symmetry in nature and called people to recover a perception of this pure and eternal nature.
Following Christianity and Judaism are Islamic teachings. The Majestic Koran has a very interesting and penetrating view of nature. It does not allow man to lay prostrate before nature as his lord because of its
26
Bett, Henry. Johannes Scotus Eriugena. A Study in Mediaeval Philosophy. pp. 204. University Press: Cambridge, 1925.
27
Founder of the Franciscan Order, born at Assisi in Umbria, in 1181 or 1182 — the exact year is uncertain; died there, 3 October, 1226.
28
Williams, George Huntston, Wilderness and Paradise in Christian Thought; the Biblical Experience of the Desert in the History of Christianity & the Paradise Theme in the Theological Idea of the University. [1st ed.] New York, Harper [1962], p. 42.
29
The New Encyclopedia Britannica, v. 16, pp. 971-976, 15th Edition, 1989.
30
German poet, novelist, playwright, and natural philospoher, the greatest figure of the German Romantic period and of German literature as a whole. The New Encyclopedia Britannica, v. 20, pp. 133-140, 15th Edition, 1989.
