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Leonardo, Vol. 9, pp. 245-258. Pergamon Press 1976. Printed in Great Britain BOOKS Readers are invited to recommendbooks to be reviewed. Ingeneral, only books in English and in French can be reviewed at this stage. Those who would like to be added to Leonardo’s panel of reviewers should write to the Founder-Editor, indicating their particular interests. M a n ’ sReepOnsibUity for Natare: Ecological Problems and WesternTrnditioaa John Passmore. Duckworth, London, 1974. 213 pp. Paper, E2.95. Reviewed by J. Lukaslewia* Passmore in his Preface states that the literature in most fields is ‘now so vast as to encourage despair’. This observation is applicable to the area loosely defined as environmental concern and ecology. The past decade has seen a proliferation of publications, ranging from sensational , naive and emotional to semi-popular and scientific. But this book does not add to the despair: on the contrary, Passmore presents a scholarly, impassioned and impartial exposition of the philosophical and ethical problems that face people as they exploit and modify the world around them. His careful treatment ranges from an examination of religions, philosophical and ideological traditions to the ecological problems of pollution, conservation, preservation and population growth. Two fundamental meanings of ‘nature’ are discerned: ‘whatever is subject to natural law’, including human beings and their artifacts and excluding only the supernatural and (the more restricted sense adopted by the author) ‘everything except man and what obviously bears the mark of man’s handiwork’. Also of importance, Passmore is careful to distinguish between ‘a problem in ecology’, a scientific problem whose solution brings an understanding of a particular ecological phenomenon (e.g. how DDT finds its way into the fat of Antarctic birds), and ‘an ecological problem’, without which society would be better o f f . Typical of Passmore’s style of investigation in his discussion of the widely held view that the roots of the West’s troubles stem from ‘Christian arrogance towards Nature’. He points out that ‘it is only as a result of Greek influence that Christian theology was led to think of nature as nothing but a system of resources’ and that ‘the West has never been wholly committed to the view that man has no responsibility whatsoever for the maintenance and preservation of the world around him’. The complexity and ambivalent quality of ecological problems is clearly illustrated by his discussion of the conservation (as opposed to preservation) issue. There is the basic moral question: should people be concerned with the needs of posterity or should they concentrate their efforts on making the best of today? Could it be that conservation of resources for posterity will leave it ‘worse o f f , in respect to both pollution and excessive population and so in the long run to resources’? Moreover , ‘we cannot be certain that posterity will need what we save ... or that it will not need what we should not think of saving’. Indeed, ‘by doing what is just in the present [e.g. afforestation and the control of soil erosion], we may be doing what is best for posterity’. Passmore concludes his examination of the conservation problem by observing that ‘society, as much as nature, resists men’s plans; it is not wax at the hands of the scientist, the planner, *Dept. of Mech. &Aero. Engineering, Carleton University, Ottawa KIS 5B6, Canada. the legislator. To forget that fact, as a result of conservationist enthusiasm, is to provoke rather than to forestall disaster’. While appreciating to the fullest extent human difficulties in coping with ecological problems, Passmore does not subscribe to the ‘doomsday mood of paranoic melancholia’ or to Commoner’s ‘first ecological law-everything is connected to everythingelse’-which Passmore says ‘makes it appear that to act at all is the height of imprudence’. His sole concern is that ‘we should do nothing which will reduce [our] freedom of thought and action, whether by destroying the natural world which makes that freedom possible or the social traditions which permit and encourage it’. This brief review cannot do justice to Passmore’s book but it will serve a useful purpose if it draws attention to his serious and balanced evaluation of ecological problems. Man and Nature...

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