Process Ecology: Creatura at Large in an Open Universe

Abstract

Gregory Bateson maintained that access to the Sacred was being impeded by contemporary scientific attitudes. He urged that, in order to avoid a bad end, society must adopt an ecological vision. The conventional perspective can be described as the legacy of a Newtonian metaphysic, which consists of five postulates about how to view nature. Consideration of some aspects of ecosystem dynamics reveals, however, that they violate each of the five assumptions. In order that science may progress in its treatment of living systems, it thus becomes imperative that a new ecological set of assumptions supplant the former foundations. Nature is thus seen as open, contingent, historical, organic and granular. That these attributes allow more ready access to the Sacred is seen when one considers how they either obviate or mitigate former controversies such as free will, the origin of life, the possibility for Divine intervention and theodicy.