Academica Press, LLC
Titles appearing in SciTech Book News — March 2008
The decline of nature; environmental history and the Western worldview.
LaFreniere, Gilbert F.
Academica Press, LLC, ©2007 457 p. $74.95 GF75
978-1-933146-40-9
This book is a historical review of changing Western worldviews towards humanity's relationship with the environment, which is to a significant extent, in the eyes of the author, determined by worldviews on the nature of history itself. Both the views arising out of Christian providential views of history and those based on the idea of endless progress in technological innovation and economic growth are argued to be incapable of confronting today's massive environmental problems. The author calls for resurrecting and extensively modifying a version of the cyclical view of history described by Oswald Spengler in The Decline of the West. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
