| Acknowledgments |
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| Preface: `Till - Turning, Turning We Come Round Right |
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| Introduction: Cosmology, Ecology |
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The circles and cycles of the Ptolemaic universe were first dismantled and rearranged by Copernicus; then the understanding of their natural motion was resolved from circular movement into vectors of rectilinear motion by Descartes and Newton. This paradigm shift changed our conception of the cosmos and our notion of time, and in doing so, influenced the fundamental metaphors with which we think about everything else, including terrestrial models of ecology and biology, nudging us toward a worldview that has enabled systematic destruction of the biological systems upon which life depends |
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Dante's rhyme scheme for La Divina Commedia is not only elegant; it also perfectly and completely embodies the Ptolemaic universe with its circles, cycles and epicycles, spiraling through time just as the planets were imagined to do around a stationary Earth. The privileged place of the circle in Dante, as in medieval cosmology, suggests a permanency, a vast, perfect enclosedness, a comforting sense of cycles coming full circle again that is difficult to recapture now, even in imagination, and that contrasts fundamentally with contemporary ideas of the universe |
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Chapter 2 Enlightenment Echoes |
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While after the scientific revolutions of Copernicus, Galileo, Descartes, and Newton, there was some lingering attachment to the circular and spherical paradigms of the past, the dominant metaphors switched quite suddenly to linear concepts, with an acknowledgement of the revolution in the heavens the new cosmology entailed. This chapter examines the echoes of these metaphors in natural philosophy and literature of the Early Modern period through The Enlightenment |
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Chapter 3 The Infinite Line |
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The metaphoric shifts the Copernican universe triggered apply not only to the positions of the heavenly bodies but to the nature of motion itself, and this had profound consequences in perceptions of time, progress, change, and systems of ordering all things. These underlying semiotics, nearly invisible to us in their commonplaceness, in turn influence environmental practices in the world |
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Chapter 4 Environmental Legacies |
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107 | (28) |
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The implications of the shift to linear metaphors play out in the major post-industrial environmental catastrophes of our time: climate change and toxic environmental chemicals. These two greatest threats not only to individual human health but to civilization itself depend on the breakdown of circular processes into linear ones, with inputs and outputs, accumulating consequences, and irreversible tipping points. These threats are predicated on paradigms, metaphors, and symmetries that do not match what we otherwise know of nature and reality |
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Chapter 5 Paradigm Shifts |
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135 | (26) |
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Why, to our great detriment, have we overgeneralized from cosmology to ecology with explanatory metaphors that do not fit ecological systems? Metaphors and paradigm shifts have tremendous power, and human psychology nudges us in the direction of simplicity, a unified theory, if you will, even when greater nuance and complexity are called for. No master metaphor or overriding paradigm can accommodate all reality, yet, hobbled by strong cognitive biases, we force them to fit as best we can, hanging onto inherited notions even when outdated, even when, under their influence, we are careening toward disaster. Scientific change, once recognized by scientists, emerges gradually into popular culture, but new lessons can dangerously take decades to be translated into more adaptive behaviors |
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Chapter 6 Alternate Metaphors |
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Reimagined explanatory metaphors, not only from medieval European culture, but from non-Western cultures and from new eco-critical thinking, may enable us to correct for the deficits of prevailing paradigms by holding alternate models in our minds simultaneously, to see the world more fully by rejecting binaries and abjuring flat absolutes, embracing complexity, and containing multitudes: "Do I contradict myself? / Very well then I contradict myself / (I am large, I contain multitudes.)" (Whitman, Song of Myself, 51). In this way, cultural understanding and cultural change may catalyze the kinds of real-world metamorphosis we must undergo, or perish |
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| Conclusion: In the conclusion, I proffer some advice, including the practical: how do we use our understanding of the power of metaphor and the compulsion of culture to choose to succeed, not fail, paraphrasing Jared Diamond in Collapse? We face existential environmental threats and must solve them within a few decades, at most. How can readers change their own mindsets and influence those of friends, family, students, patients, colleagues, and others? And what would a future that incarnated holistic lives on Aldo Leopold's Round River look like? |
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187 | (14) |
| References |
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201 | (44) |
| Index |
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245 | (14) |
| About the Author |
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259 | |
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