“Man named all the animals, thus establishing his dominance over them. No purpose but to serve mans purpose.” White believes that anthropocentrism and the bible are mutually inclusive, “Christianity is the most anthropocentric religion the world has seen.” When reading the bible it is hard to ignore the ethnocentric ideas presented, and while White acknowledges the complexity of Christianity, and different views that are presented in different texts, he also clearly points out the consequences with believing everything one reads. Galileo was one of the first to disprove the ideas of the bible by confirming the heliocentric system by Nicolaus Copernicus. This created huge conflict within the Catholic Church since they believed in geocentrism, “…the professionals resented his intrusion.” By refusing a clearly factual non-anthropocentric view because it conflicted with the Bible texts demonstrates that their ideas and advancements on the expense of others, directly correlates from the scriptures. How we comprehend the ecologic crisis has greatly to do with Christian dogma. Through creation God has gave us life and nature, and in order to reveal his divine mentality the religious studies of nature occurred, known as natural theology. At first the study of nature was artistic rather than scientific, but as time progressed and advancements were not quickly occurring the reading of the text began to shift. Justification for dominance and/or anthropocentrism occurred by “religious motivations,” thus it was widely accepted.
While my theory strongly coincides with Whites theory I believe that Darwin's Origin of Species is the reason for our anthropocentric society. Before the work was published people did not view the world in the same anthropocentric way that they do today. These outlooks that have formed overtime have led to non-human testing, on products that make life more convenient for humans, extinction of many species and an ecological crisis. Anthropocentric ideology has no doubt changed since Darwin's paradigm, and it is my contention that we since Darwin a more potent form of self centrism has derived.
Pre-Darwinian Anthropocentrism rests heavily on the un-educated view of the world, the earth is not a part of the universe, but is the cosmos itself. This anthropocentric view is demonstrated through several passages in the bible as White mentions throughout the text. "And the fear of you and the dread of you shall be upon every beast of the earth, and upon every fowl of the air, and upon all that moveth on the earth, and upon all the fishes of the sea; into your hands they are delivered." Anthropocentrism and biblical readings are mutually inclusive, especially regarding the belief that man was created “to rule the world” and everything in it, “And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth." Thunder and lightning represented anger of God, sun and good crops represented the friendship with god and plagues sweeping across the land were the cause of God upon errant people.
Both religion and non-religion driven philosophical beliefs entail the exclusivity of man, furthermore scientists, psychologists, and other professionals arrive to the assumption that human consciousness is a vast leap above that of animal consciousness. The secular and non-secular followers credit our superiority to our consciousness, language, reasoning ability and imposable thumb. Charles Darwin who compared the physical and emotional aspects between humans and animals did not agree with those beliefs, finding much commonality between the both (a position I myself hold true) through evolution and biotic phylogeny. Charles Darwin's work was anti-anthropocentric and influenced others to his similar thinking through his evolutionary and biotic phylogeny works, illustrating that man is just another spec in the circle of life, no better than the trees and birds. The Origin of Species was a blow to anthropocentrism in 1859 proving that we all involved from a single cell, ameba, nonetheless taking away the belief that man was the most superior creation of God. The Origin of Species not only questioned but challenged man's distinction from the rest of creation. The resultant aftermath shook the ideology of anthropocentrism; proving man was no longer superior but equal. But was equality a good thing? Many started to view humans as un-responsible for animals because according to The Origin of Species we are animals, furthermore our domination of another species is in turn just “survival of the fittest”1, and we are the fittest.
The “Survival of the fittest” manifests from the competition of survival or predominance. This predominance is evident in the extinction of animals and deforestation. Every year I travel to Wallowa Lake in Oregon and witness first hand the ecological crisis as the once barely known vacation destination has now become more popular.
Here are some pictures from my last trip, that I took in June.
