In the present condition of mankind, it is no longer possible to ignore the variety of human cultures and the potential of each to contribute to our common understanding. Cultural exchange presupposes mutual respect, of course, and calls for a growing appreciation of the special character of each culture and of what it can contribute to our shared humanity. The present colloquium is of the greatest interest, therefore, because it promises an exchange between philosophers situated in different cultural and social milieus.¹ Nevertheless, since it is best to speak of what one knows best, I will speak of the relation between man and nature as it has been understood in so-called "Western" societies and cultures.

I ought to say from the outset, however, that I find the equation often made between "modernity" and so-called Western ideas to be both premature and presumptuous. The resilience of some non-Western cultures today in the face of the pressures of what is called "modernization" indicates that the present and the future remain open to significant developments within a variety of cultures, and that no one present culture may lay claim to the whole future of mankind. My own remarks are offered, then, as a modest contribution to our common reflection.

The way in which a society relates to the natural world both expresses its life-situation as a whole and shapes that situation. Now, I take metaphysics to be the most comprehensive and fundamental study of the whole scope of reality, and so I find that the relation between man and nature has metaphysical significance. The specific question to be considered in this essay, then, may be put into metaphysical terms as follows: Is there at present in Western society and culture a basic, comprehensive understanding or dominant paradigm of the relation between man and nature? In putting the question in these general terms, I hope that it can be adapted to other social, cultural and individual backgrounds.

Before beginning, however, several terms need to be clarified. By the short-hand term "Western," I mean the societies of Eastern and Western Europe, South and North America, and of Australasia, as well as some parts of the Middle East and a few enclaves throughout the world. Moreover, I use the term not only to indicate ideas and values rooted in the present-day Euro-American cultures, but also to refer to ideas and values which have their original source in several earlier civilizations, societies and cultures of the Mediterranean basin. These civilizations no longer exist as such, but they do form the basis for later Western civilization. The earliest stratum of this basis is formed by two of the original civilizations: by Mesopotamia (including Sumeria and subsequent societies) and by Ancient Egypt.² Until recent archaeological explorations, these early Mediterranean civilizations were very imperfectly known, except through the Hebrew Bible, whose materials reach back to about 1400 B.C. (before Christ). The influence of these ancient, non-extant civilizations is, therefore, largely implicit and indirect, but nonetheless real.

On the other hand, the next stratum or stage of Western culture--the Hebraic and the Hellenic--has been explicit in two ways. First of all, the Biblical narrative has been enormously influential; it has continued to shape Western society through the Christian understanding of the New and Old Testaments, as well as through the continuing presence of Judaism in the West and the indebtedness of the medieval West to Islam. Secondly, the civilizations of early and classical Greece, and of Republican and Imperial Rome, as well as of the Hellenistic culture of Asia Minor, have been, along with the Bible, part of the actual memory operative in the formation of Western Euro-American culture. For that memory reaches back by way of the Psalms of David, and the poetry of Homer and Hesiod into the second millennium B.C. ln sum, the twin influences of Biblical religion and Greek philosophy, drama and literature have become inseparable from and constitutive of the Euro-American cultures. Indeed, they have been the main, even though not the only, pillars upon which later ideas, values and orientations were consciously developed. Or, to change the metaphor, Israel, Greece and Rome provided initial and enduring patterns on the basis of which later events and personalities, material forces of production and spiritual energies have been, and continue to be, woven in order to constitute the fabric of later Western societies and cultures. The use of the term "Western", then, contains three stages: the most ancient is implicit, the next is explicit, and the third is its present modern form.

By "nature" or the "natural world" I mean to include living as well as non-living things, and humankind itself insofar as it is a part of nature. I say, "insofar as humankind is a part of nature," for Western culture is characterized by a tension between humanity and nature, which has been brought about by two sources. The first source of tension is the Biblical understanding that humankind is made in the image and likeness of God, and has, therefore, a certain transcendence about it; and secondly, by the stance of disengagement brought about by Greek discourse. This double tension has been at the origin of much of Western culture's energy for good and for ill. For good, insofar as mankind assumes responsibility as steward of nature, or more rarely (as with St. Francis of Assisi) takes nature as its companion; but for ill, insofar as it has thought of itself as absolute master of nature and destined to dominate it by force.

By "paradigms" I do not mean patterns of thought which depict the natural world by a direct isomorphism, as would a scale model. Indeed, in that sense these basic paradigms are not direct models at all, but are more like what have been called indirect or analogue models.³ The paradigms I have in mind are primarily and properly contexts, elaborated by thought, for the interpretation of nature. They do not picture the world so much as give direction within it and in relation to it. These basic ways of understanding nature touch upon all aspects of human life,--social, cultural and spiritual as well as physical and biological; for these paradigms are rooted in an even more fundamental orientation towards reality itself, an orientation that gives them their metaphysical importance. Moreover, it is characteristic of dominant paradigms of nature that they can captivate the intelligence and imagination of society as a whole for a very long time.

Every society and culture has one or more dominant conceptions which set forth the relation of man to nature, or within nature.⁴ Now, given its complex and variegated beginnings, it is not surprising that there have been several basic paradigms of nature within Western society itself. Undoubtedly, there are common characteristics in these various paradigms that mark them as distinctively Western,⁵ but their differences are equally important. Several conceptions of the relation of man to nature have gained the status of eminent paradigms, though not without competition from concurrent alternative paradigms. Nevertheless, these eminent paradigms have set the agenda of things to be done and of thought for centuries at a time. Some of these conceptions are still attractive to many individuals and groups within Western societies. For that reason, as well as for their intrinsic meaning, they are important resources to be used creatively and critically in the examination, re-direction or transformation of existing trends.

What is more, not only have there been several paradigms of the relation of man to nature in Western society in the past, there is some evidence that Western attitudes towards the natural world are in flux today. As a result, several older conceptions have once again become "live options," or at least significant resources, for the current discussion about the "nature of nature." I mean that no single conception of nature at present holds the Western intelligence and imagination completely in its grip. The West seems to be in a period of transition in this regard. Indeed, several older conceptions show a resilient staying power and may even have the capacity to help re-formulate a fresh paradigm of nature.

It is the aim of this paper to sketch broadly and generally the character of four basic conceptions of nature which have been dominant or eminent paradigms in Western society; and to do this in order critically to assess the problems and opportunities facing Western societies and cultures today in regard to the relation between man and the natural world. Using a very broad brush, then, I shall consider the following five paradigms: (i) from the Greek, that of physis (or physical nature); (ii) from the Latin, that of natura (or nature); (iii) from the French, that of la nature (or the system of nature as a machine); and (iv) from the German, that of die Natur (or the system of nature as an organism). To this I would add a current paradigm: hominization. The linking of a particular language and culture with each of the paradigms may seem somewhat artificial a mnemonic device. Nevertheless, it is true that each paradigm is in fact associated rather closely with the designated language and culture, without in any way being its sole possessor. Thus, for example, the French (e.g. Descartes, de la Mettrie, D'Holbach and Condillac) gave clear expression to the philosophical underpinnings of mechanism; but, of course, it remained to the English genius, Isaac Newton, to present it as a full-fledged "System of Nature." Moreover, in his great work, he brought together the achievements of Polish, Danish and Italian astronomers and physicists (Copernicus, Kepler and Galileo, respectively). In a word, these paradigms were by no means insulated from mutual influence, development, alteration and transformation. Still, each of the four represents a rather stable core intuition into the nature of reality and of the relation between man and the natural world within that reality.⁶ So much, then, by way of introduction. Now, I shall consider each of the four paradigms in their chronological order.

A COSMOLOGICAL PARADIGM

I turn first to the Greek conception of physis. Greek culture originally expressed its understanding of man and nature in the mythical and poetic terms of cosmogony and theogony. The Greek mythical heritage was from the beginning a mixture of quite diverse sources and versions, myths of nature, of society and of the gods and was formed out of the experience of quite diverse racial stocks. ln a very influential composite version (Hesiod's Theogony, 700 B.C.), the darker divinities of the under world and the gods of the upper-world took shape through the mythic imagination as vague personifications which at the same time were thought of as different regions of the world: Gaia, the earth goddess, was both the earth and yet a goddess; Ouranos, the sky-god, was both god of the sky and the very sky itself; Okeanos was a kind of personification of the fast-flowing river that bounded the solid earth; and Chronos was both crafty, shadowy Titan and relentless principle of division (time itself).

Through this mytho-poetic process of representation an ordered whole took shape; out of a latent Ur-chaos there emerged a Cosmos. This primordial sense of order must not be thought of as a merely theoretical, "value neutral" description. On the contrary, the early expressions of it in Hesiod, in the Attic tragedians and in the earliest Greek philosophers included what today we might call--too precisely perhaps--moral and aesthetic concerns as well as metaphysical and scientific ones. Thus, for example, Anaximander rebukes things for staying too long lest they offend justice (dike), and Parmenides deprecates motion, difference and plurality as unworthy of genuine being (on).

But there was also incipient rationality in this value-laden cosmos of the poets and philosophers. Rationality has its own history in other cultures, such as in the Chinese and in the Indian; in Greece, it took shape as logos. By logos I mean a twofold process of conceptualization or concept-formation and of objectification by which the thinker and speaker gained a certain "distance" from his or her immediate absorption in the world, while at the same time remaining physically involved in it. This process of logos took form in Greece from the eighth century B.C.E. and soon developed a fourfold pattern of rational discourse: in philosophy (concerning being), in mathematics (concerning number), in history (concerning temporal actions). and in linguistics (concerning grammar, logic and rhetoric). Now, this "logical" or "rational" view of cosmic order arose with the adaptation of Phoenician writing and with the formation of a unique social institution: the polis, which is neither a city in our sense nor a state in our sense. Moreover, this incipient rationality (logos) remains fixed in the cultural memory of Western society and provides it with an initial understanding of nature as cosmos. As cosmos the universe is understood to be the ordered arrangement of the various regions, parts, elements and forces of a totality which is to be analyzed and explained in terms of principles and causes (archai) and (aitiai). In sum, the cosmos is accounted for by means of rational discourse; and rationaldiscourse is the logos of the cosmos, in a word: cosmology.⁷

Among the various understandings of nature presented by the Greek philosophers, including those of Pythagoras, the Atomists, Plato and the Stoics, the most influential for later cultures is arguably that of Aristotle. What caught his attention about nature was, first of all, its movement, its change, its coming to be and passing away. And he gave to all of physical nature just this paramount name: physis. and to its study was given the name physike.⁸ The word comes from phuo, meaning: to bring forth, to produce, to cause to grow; also: to generate, to beget; but also: to be formed in a certain way, to have a definite shape or structure or constitution. Aristotle thought of this structured unfolding (physis) as an inborn dynamic feature of things. According to Aristotle each thing possesses within itself its own orientation (telos) towards realizing its nature, and each thing comes to be by nature (kata physin) insofar as it comes to be in accordance with the natural order of the cosmos. This natural order stands in contrast with what comes about either by positive human decree (kata nomon), or by violence or chance (tyche), i.e. accidentally. Chance, however, is not due to the absence of causes but to their conflict. The opposite of natural order, then, disorder, comes about either by vice or by chance. This basic paradigm of ordered movement underlies the Aristotelian doctrine of the four causes (the productive or efficient, the constitutive or formal, the material or elemental, and the final or teleological); and it underlies the doctrines of the four elements (earth, air, fire and water), of the fifth element (aether), and of the orientation of all movement towards the imitation (mimesis) of the separated intelligences (noesis noeseos).

Greek culture was possessed of a fine sense of limit, not least in their tragic sense awakened by its transgression. The Greek ideal of virtue was moderation ("nothing in excess"); and tragedy for them came about through an action--committed either knowingly (e.g. Antigone) or unknowingly (e.g. Oedipus)--which exceeds the limit set for mortal beings (thnete physis: mankind, those born to die). Among artefacts we still admire Greek sculpture and architecture for its vibrant symmetry. Finally, their concept of nature expressed a just sense of the due proportion and limitation of things, a cosmic order already pre-determined in its fundamental character by the causes which make it up. Indeed, so firmly did the Greeks embrace the principle of limit, that it may well have prevented them from fashioning a political union beyond that of a loose and warring set of independent, small city-states.

A THEOLOGICAL PARADIGM

For the ancient Greeks, then, nature was the field of limited, well-proportioned beings; indeed, even the gods were limited in shape and power. lt may seem surprising, therefore, to insist that the ancient Greeks with their emphasis upon limit knew nothing of what the medieval Latin Christians spoke of as finitude. Nevertheless, it is true that the terms "limited" and "finite" are not, strictly speaking, synonymous.⁹

ln order to translate what is limited (ancient Greek: horos, peras; ancient Latin: finis) into what is finite (esse finitum), one must take up a position that is at once both "beyond" the finite and "within" it. Such a position is assumed originally as the faith-response to a divine revelation, in which the finite believer is placed by grace within the infinite horizon of the divine life itself. For the revelation is taken to disclose an eternal, personal being, who is no part of the created world, not even its highest part;¹⁰ and for that very reason this infinite being is the intimate and necessary continuing support of all finite being. To use the technical terms: in relation to nature God is at once and through the same relation both transcendent and immanent, but he is immanent because he is transcendent.¹¹

This paradoxical position is at the root of the second paradigm, according to which nature is viewed as creation. While the second paradigm does, indeed, draw upon the Greek and Roman heritage, its principal source is Biblical religious faith. If the ancient Greek paradigm is cosmological, the medieval Latin paradigm is theological: at its center is the personal God, who is the creative source and providential lord of all that exists, and without whose active sustenance nothing would exist. In Europe the form of this paradigm is predominantly Christian, but it also has its Judaic and Islamic parallels. It continued as the dominant, and all but exclusive, paradigm for almost 1500 years during the European Middle Ages, from about 300 A.D. (anno Domini, from the beginning of the Christian era) to about 1800 A.D. Indeed, it is still a remarkably powerful paradigm in the West, though it has been in contention for the past two or three centuries with more recent paradigms associated with the European Enlightenment. While its central insights are religious, it inspires an extraordinary intensity of rational speculation, and has borne remarkable fruit in philosophy, science, social organization, and art.

In the 17th century A.D., towards the end of the period of the exclusive dominance of this second paradigm, René Descartes helped to launch what came to be known as "modern" philosophy. "Modern" philosophy is supposed to be the work of an autonomous reason, separated rigorously from Christian theology. Nevertheless, an historian of Western thought¹² has pointed out that Descartes was concerned about ideas which were quite unknown to the ancient Greek philosophers, but which he had taken over from medieval thought: and especially the idea of an infinite, omnipotent, omniscient, wholly free personal Being, who creates the world out of nothing except his own power and love (creatio ex nihilo).¹³ According to this theological paradigm, then, the very being of the natural world (as well as of man) is completely dependent upon a Creator who brings it into being out of nothing (ex nihilo).

It is this lack of ultimate resources within nature itself that sets it off as not merely limited but as actually finite. In place of an eternal, unbegotten and self-sufficient cosmos, nature is at once both poorer (when considered in itself alone) than the Greek cosmos, yet richer than it by far (because its very being is sustained and suffused by the presence of the divine Glory to it). On the one hand, the natural world is not self-sufficient, but has to be begotten (natura from nascitur: to be born, to emerge from, to come to be); on the other hand, it is born of an infinitely glorious parentage. As a consequence, nature is perceived to have an interiority and depth of which the ancient Greeks were unaware, and also a touch of infinity that transcends the limits of the Greek cosmos. Man, too, made in the image of the infinite Creator takes up his stewardship over such a nature: creature facing creature within the divine creative abundance.

Out of this encounter between God, man and nature have come significant philosophical conceptions, such as: a new sense of wonder, bearing upon the question of existence as such; the conception of person as the highest embodiment of being; the consequent conviction that nature being created by the divine person was meant to sustain personal values; and a new sense of human liberty and human possibility. With the help of rational discourse, this paradigm brought to the fore the philosophical questions of the origin of the universe (Why anything at all? Why not rather nothing?), the fundamental nature of being (the primacy of existence: actus essendi), the status of nature (as a created world receiving its being through its relation to God), and the tension between the determinations of nature and the limited freedom of man (the problem of nature and history).

THE GENERAL CONCEPT OF SYSTEM AND MECHANISM

Nevertheless, although Descartes owed much to the medieval paradigm which preceded him,¹⁴ he also played a role in the formation of a new very general paradigm which emerged in European society during the 16th and 17th centuries. It drew upon conceptions and motivations in the first two paradigms, but--in conjunction with certain religious, socio-economic and political changes,¹⁵ and in association with certain cultural, scientific and philosophical developments--this new paradigm reached its definitive formulation in the conception of nature as a system.

Now, the ancient meaning of systema was that of a composition or arrangement of elements or parts which formed a whole (cf. Lucretius: concilium, assemblage). The modern sense of system has a stronger coherence, however, for it takes a system to be a whole in which the reality and significance of the parts consists principally in their function within the whole. This added power operative within the modern conception is undoubtedly due in part to the determining role played by mathematics in the formation of the modern conception of system. For its completion, the modern conception of system required the explicit formulation of a mathematically systemic concept of space, to be followed eventually by a systemic understanding of time. The work of Newton contributed greatly to such an undertaking, and Kant's conception of an architectonic system¹⁶ certainly gave articulation to the stronger modern conception.

To be sure, the melding of mathematics and physics in the study of nature was not unknown in ancient and medieval times, especially in those circles influenced by the atomism of Epicurus and the idealizations of Plato; but it took the form of an unprecedented collaboration in the 16th and 17th centuries. The need for a more unified conception undoubtedly arose also in order to accommodate the modern demand for experimental control in scientific enquiry, a control to which mathematics lent its precision. Moreover, the mathematization of the conception of system provided an idealization that served the anthropocentric turn which has been so influential in modern Europe from the Renaissance period onwards. Indeed, along with a genuine theoretical interest among scientists and philosophers (many of whom were practicing scientists), the study of nature was often justified practically for the sake of a higher utility: the "commodity," "commodiousness," or "comfort" of humankind (thus, for example, Descartes, Bacon, and Hobbes).¹⁷ And so, the unprecedented mathematization of science and technology, as well as the related effort to control the conditions of enquiry, served the theoretical and practical aims of the anthropocentric turn and led to the formation of the specifically modern, stricter sense of system. The modern systemic paradigm has played an important role in the modern West over the past three centuries, but during that period it has taken shape in two quite different versions.

The early modern investigation of nature in the 16th and 17th centuries took place under the hegemony of mathematical astronomy and physics, and more precisely of mechanics; so that the first versions of the paradigm were mechanistic. The term "mechanism" expresses the initial intuition and conviction that nature is best interpreted when viewed as a "machine," albeit an extraordinary one. By extension, then, the term designates a general philosophical position that understands the natural world to be a system produced by more or less discrete particles of matter, existing in space and time, and moving in accordance with deterministic physical laws. It was the dual task of science to discover the fundamental units of reality and the laws which govern them and to present the whole in the form of a system. The classical statement of the mechanistic system was given by Isaac Newton in The Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy. Although he voiced caution about taking his account as the final and fundamental reading of reality, it has served just such a metaphysical purpose for many scientists and non-scientists in the West during the past three centuries. Now because modern mechanism is more cohesive (through the power of its systemic laws) than ancient atomism (with its blind necessity), one of the achievements of modern mechanistic systems has been to contain randomness, which was gradually rendered more explicable (more rational or reasonable) by the laws of probability. The system, then, presents nature as a totality of discrete units externally related to one another in space and time in accordance with mathematically formulated laws.

A SECOND SYSTEMIC PARADIGM: ORGANICISM

Although the mathematization of nature proceeded brilliantly in the spheres of physics, astronomy, chemistry and cognate fields, nevertheless its mechanistic formulations seemed less satisfactory when applied to the sphere of biology proper (as distinct, that is, from bio-chemistry). And so an alternative, non-mechanistic version of the system of nature came to the fore about two centuries ago. Of course, its roots lay more broadly and deeply in the cultural traditions of the West, as, for example, in the various conceptions of the world-soul (anima mundi). More recently, it was also discernible in Leibniz and certain Scholastics in the later 17th and the 18th centuries as a kind of residual Aristotelianism. And it even assumed a quasi-scientific form as "vitalism," though the latter did not meet with wide acceptance among scientists. In the face of the fragmentation brought about by the very success of mechanism, however, poets, philosophers and others sought to express a more intimate degree of unity in nature than mechanism represented. Among these thinkers was Goethe, poet, philosopher and amateur scientist. But, for the most part, the poets were Romantics, and the philosophers were Idealists. They deliberately sought to recover the sense of the immanent unity of nature found in the ancient Greek cosmological paradigm by translating the Greek cosmos into modern systematic form. Some even went so far as to rehabilitate the Platonic notion of the world-soul.

Against mechanism they argued that, although life can be interpreted in mechanical principles, it cannot be reduced to them without losing what is distinctive about life. Positively, they argued that, if nature is the all-inclusive system from which and within which all that is takes its origin and plays out its existence, then nature must include within itself all of the resources for generating modes of being higher than that of bodies moving mechanistically in space. They argued that, as the source of all that is, nature must include within itself life in all of its multiple forms and levels: vegetal and self-reproductive, animal and sensitive, human and rationally conscious. In a word, if nature is the source of various forms of life, it must be understood in organic terms: the alternative to mechanism, then, is to represent the system of nature according to the paradigm of organicism. Thus, in Ideas on a Philosophy of Nature, Schelling claims that the idea of nature as a self-enclosed purposive totality arises in us out of the necessity of thought.¹⁸

The paradigm of nature as a sort of "super-organic" unity represents nature as a more integrated system than that of mechanism, with its loose collectivity of law-governed particulars related to one another functionally and contextually (i.e., operating upon one another externally in space and successively in time in accordance with the system of laws). In the organicist paradigm, on the other hand, the individual beings of nature are bound to one another by deep, internal relations, for they receive their meaning and reality from their membership within nature as a whole. This emphasis upon unity and harmony has proven attractive to those who find in it an anti-dote for excessive pre-occupation with individualism. Above all, they find in the organicist paradigm a key to the harmony between man and nature that is obscured, if not lost outright, by the exaggerated dualism so pronounced in the modern West. This dualism was expressed by the Kantian antinomies between sense and intellect, appearance and reality, necessity and freedom, faith and reason, and also by the antinomies of mind and body, individual and community, man and nature.

The organicist version of the third paradigm has proven more attractive to literary and humanist scholars than to scientists and technologues; this provides at least some basis for what the British novelist, C. P. Snow, called "the two cultures."¹⁹ The one "culture" is scientific and technological, and is cultivated mostly by scientists, mathematicians and engineers; the other "culture" is literary and humanistic, and is cultivated mostly by scholars, writers and artists. Although somewhat overdrawn, this rough division within Western culture as a whole is not entirely inaccurate.

A CURRENT PARADIGM: HOMINIZATION?²⁰

The present situation of Western society, however, is more complex and transitional; for it exhibits a certain ambivalence regarding the role of scientific technology in shaping man's relation to nature. In place of the indiscriminately positive attitude that has generally inspired public confidence in science and technology over the past three centuries in the West, many people now look upon scientific technology as an endeavour that produces serious new problems as well as solutions to old ones. Except for a few earlier prophetic voices, mostly philosophical, the first great shock to the public mind undoubtedly came with the contribution of "pure" science to the production and deployment of the atomic bomb. The confidence of many (including not a few scientists) in the purported "innocence" of modern scientific enquiry was shaken by this collaboration. Despite the long-standing symbiosis between modern Western society and scientific technology, some scientists (along with others) have organized groups for reflection upon the possibilities for good and evil that are implicit in basic and applied research. Among non-scientists, some current expressions of mistrust even suggest the possibility of an irrational reaction against scientific technology on a broad front, not wholly unlike that of the Luddites of early industrial times. Of course, if such a sudden reaction were to become general, it would greatly disrupt Western society, since it has committed itself so single-mindedly to reshaping the human relation to nature by means of the present scientific technology.

The notion of continuous progress has been rightly challenged in some spheres of human life, such as that of art, but there is no denying that over the long history of mankind there has been gradual technical progress. The precarious stance of early man was one of adaptation to the environment. Relatively primitive traditional technologies usually strove for a prudent relation between man and nature, if only because the limits of human survival had to be carefully observed and the demands of nature respected. Only gradually, here and there, were human groups able to emancipate themselves progressively from immediate and direct domination by nature. This seeming emancipation came about technically in pre-historical times through the control of fire, the cultivation of plants, the domestication of animals, and through the exploitation of minerals, chemicals and inorganic forces. Further technical development occurred in historical times. In the past three centuries, however, the basic process has been greatly accelerated. Industrialization has been propelled by a technology guided by modern scientific research; and this technology has thereby achieved an insistent momentum. The momentum has produced an almost exponential increase of human power over nature; so that we can speak without exaggeration today of a radical shift in the immemorial relationship between man and nature.

What has happened is that there has been a transformation and re-emergence of the first (mechanistic) version of the systemic paradigm, but in the form of a new technology. Now, like the first version (mechanism), this new technology addresses itself above all to the inorganic levels of nature. It is, therefore, a return to physics, and to a technology based upon physics, but not a return to Newtonian physics. It is rather a turn to the physics of electronic forces and chemical energies, drawing upon the elementary particles and field theory of sub-atomic physics. Interestingly, a number of theoretical physicists are attempting to reformulate the contemporary post-Newtonian physics in non-mechanistic, holistic terms, such as the concept of "implicate order" in the work of David Bohm.²¹ In biology, there are attempts to re-introduce a limited version of the teleological principle within a more holistic approach to the study of life. Nonetheless, the formal language of the sciences remains mathematical, and the inorganic realm of particles and fields continues to contribute the formative materials to the new paradigm for man's relation to nature.

One of the most notable applications of contemporary physics to technology has been made, of course, in the development of nuclear energy, along with the development of electronic systems, telecommunications, computers, automation and space exploration. All of these take their origin from sub-atomic physics. Perhaps the most notable technical application of chemistry is in the combination of fertilizers and insecticides which has revolutionized food production; but the development of food preservatives and additives is closely associated with the processing and marketing of that food. ln biology, one is struck by the rapid strides taken in bio-genetics, at first in the breeding of domesticated animal stock by artificial insemination, and more recently by the applications of certain techniques to human reproduction. In medicine, new medicaments, organ transplants, by-pass surgery and the like have succeeded in all but eradicating some diseases, reducing others, and generally prolonging life. These remarkable achievements of scientific technology have transformed the lives of individuals and the fabric of society, and their genuine contribution to human well-being must not be under-estimated.

At the same time, as with all rapid social change, they also have brought about new problems and reactions. Nuclear energy has brought with it not only the possibility of genocide and the malfunction of power plants, but also the problem of the disposal of nuclear wastes. Even more drastically perhaps, the chemical revolution has produced not only regional pollution, but also the possibility of global pollution, including the weakening of the protective ozone layer about the earth, acid rain, deforestation, and soil erosion. In medicine, the very success in prolonging life has led to problems of aging; new medicaments often enough have side-effects; drug-resistant strains of viruses develop, and stubborn low-grade infections make their appearance in hospitals. A complex of causes has led to the withdrawal of productive land to meet the insistent pressures of urbanization and conurbation. The list of problems and negative phenomena can be extended further. Because the problems are too complex and pervasive to be solved by traditional technologies, a simple return to less developed technologies seems neither wise nor likely. In the face of this ambivalence of scientific technology, it is not surprising that practices and social movements have developed, ranging from critical concern to outright rejection of certain technological developments.

I have spoken of an exponential increase in human power over nature. Nevertheless, it is important not to over-state the case. Nature can still inflict great damage upon puny man: through storm and flood, fire and drought, plague and pollution. What is more, in any contest between man and nature, nature will be the ultimate victor, since it can survive in some fashion even if all life is destroyed, even if mankind mismanages itself to death. But the special state of nature which is the support and companion of humankind what we usually think of when we speak of "nature" must now receive protection from mankind itself, if only to ensure the continuation of human life. We have been moving not only in the West but on a planetary scale across a threshold, towards an increase in technological power that is putting humankind in a qualitatively different relation to technical power itself. In an increasing number of ways nature itself has become dependent upon humankind for its present "habitable" condition. It is now no exaggeration to speak of nature itself, i.e. in the present condition in which it can support human life, as being held in jeopardy by mankind. Of course, this means that mankind holds its own life hostage in its uncertain hands. The relation between humankind and nature is rapidly becoming, and in some aspects already is, one whose basic quality is to be determined by what mankind will do or fail to do.

It is not too much to speak of the present shift as a reversal in the age-old relation of man to nature. For better and for worse, and within the ultimate limits set by nature, a new reciprocity has begun to emerge in which more and more of the regions and processes of nature are subject to human power, and in which the initiative is passing over from nature to man. We may be in transition, therefore, to a new paradigm which as I have suggested might be fittingly called: hominization. Unlike the previous paradigms which situated human life within nature, hominization places the significance of nature as habitable within the concerns of human life. The new paradigm tends to center its attention primarily (though not exclusively) upon the natural world of our planet.²² The danger in the new situation is that the horizon of concern may be drawn too narrowly and may center too exclusively upon immediate human concerns. What is called for is a broader and less self centered attitude towards nature, which values it in and for itself as well as for its service to humankind. The term "hominization" is not meant to promote a sense of human power, but to call us to a new sense of responsibility. For it requires us to recognize human power within a larger context in which nature is not thought of primarily as either an enemy to be conquered or as a mere slave to every human desire. Instead, it calls us to break free of the slavery of the master-slave attitude toward nature, in which we are supposedly master and nature our slave. It calls upon us to place technical knowledge (techne) at the service of wiser modes of knowing (sophia). It is just here that reflection upon the earlier paradigms can provide the West with the possibilities for enlarging and deepening the scope of this new paradigm, for example, through further studies of the nature of space and time, and of the nature of life, as well as through reflection upon the ultimate questions of origin and destiny.²³ It is here that we can still learn from older paradigms in orienting ourselves towards nature: inexorability from a cosmic order, trans-human values from a created world, pre-human stability from mechanism and the insistent recursiveness of life from organicism.

Certain current movements of concern in Western society manifest this new sense of responsibility and take on added significance when interpreted according to the paradigm of hominization. Thus, for example, the preservation of endangered wild species of animals. For some time now, there have been conservationist groups interested in reforestation, preservation of wet lands and sanctuaries, and the protection of endangered species. But perhaps the paradigm of hominization is most strikingly illustrated by the programs which seek to save certain species of animals by breeding them in zoos, with the intention of keeping them there, or of releasing them if their habitation still exists. An even more striking illustration of the reversal of the relation between man and nature is afforded by the establishment in northern Canada of wilderness parks. These are quite different from the domesticated "wildparks" of 18th century European aristocrats, for the new wilderness parks are vast areas from which humans are excluded except under strictly controlled conditions. This is an ironic reversal, since the very concept of "wilderness" is precisely of a region in which man has no proper place and in which he would stand in need of protection, whereas the concept of "wilderness parks" is, on the contrary, that of a region that itself stands in need of protection by man from man.

A related phenomenon is that of social movements concerned with the "rights" of animals. Of course, the domestication of animals is an ancient practice. It consists in assimilating a few amenable kinds of animals to the purposes and conditions of human living. The relationship has often been characterized by a high degree of utility, but it is not uncommon for there to emerge elements of trust and even of affection between master and animal. In the last several centuries, however, the concept of pets has become widespread, i.e., of animals kept purely as household companions, without serving the utilitarian functions of farm animals, watch dogs, etc. No doubt the association with animals as pets has contributed to the formation of associations for the protection of animals, beginning with the various "humane" societies. (These are societies for the prevention of cruelty to animals, but which were initially for the prevention of cruelty to children as well, especially against industrial abuse.) More recently, however, social and even political movements have arisen, such as the Greens in Germany, or the Greenpeace movement; while others have organized to secure the protection of what has come to be known as "animal rights." Some of the latter have taken a very strong stand against the use of animals in medical research, even going so far as to release animals from their cages or laboratories, so that a conflict is dramatized between the perceived needs of medical research and the perceived rights of the objects of that research.

The paradigm of hominization and the concomitant sense of responsibility seems to function in the West today within two limiting principles. First, as already mentioned, there is the growing caution that technological successes may well be attended by new problems, so that there are few problems which are solved absolutely, without residue. Relative success is thought to be attained if the new problems (e.g. medical side-effects of a cure) are less serious than the problem solved. But there is a recognition that the new problems may well be of a different order (e.g. chemical fertilizers increase specific crop production but may cause long term pollution). At times the new problems are more difficult to resolve than the original ones they "solved" (e.g. the increase in food-production through a reduction of mortality may be attended by an increasing population-density).

The second limiting principle within which hominization functions is the growing awareness that, not only the technological development that results from basic research, but research itself is socially determined in important ways. Science and technology do not operate in a vacuum, but are the joint product of technical, social, economic and political forces. For this latter reason, in addition to building upon recent scientific and technical achievements, the paradigm of hominization must make room within itself for ethical concerns.²⁴ Further, it must provide for continuing study of the cultural and historical past of the society within which public policy is being made regarding scientific research and technological development: ignorance of the past foreshortens our concern for the future.

As in most human affairs, there are moderate and immoderate actions. What is clear, however, is that the increased pressure upon the earth's resources is not likely to be solved by the renunciation of the positive possibilities inherent in the new knowledge once it is placed in the service of wiser human attitudes. Nostalgia for past ways is tempting, but it is no general solution. What is best in these current phenomena is not an effete sentimentalism, but a new sense of responsibility in the face of what seems to be a reversal in the traditional relation between man and nature. This calls for the courage to see through and beyond the problems in order to realize the opportunities in the new knowledge. To the degree that a reversal is actually at work in the contemporary situation, the paradigm of hominization gives these disparate phenomena a coherence and suggests to human beings certain lines of action.

The danger inherent in the paradigm of hominization is that it may settle too narrowly and functionally upon what constitutes "livable" nature, and too immediately upon present needs and wants. The value of the older paradigms is that they suggest that the "fragile complicity" between man and nature can be preserved and nourished only on two conditions: first that something of the vastness of the mechanistic and the intimacy and mutuality of the organicist systems can be incorporated into the paradigm of hominization; and second that the priority of nature to man in the cosmic paradigm and the transcendence and tension between man and nature in the paradigm of creation inspire humankind to a genuine respect for, and reciprocity with, nature. Hominization will deteriorate into one more form of human hubris unless technical power is subordinated to the metaphysical, social and ethical good of humankind as a whole.

Finally, to the extent that the achievements and problems have a global impact, the question and its answer cannot be confined to Western society. It remains to the West to look into its own resources for a reflection upon the relation, and to look with hope to other societies and cultures for their contribution to resolving this unprecedented challenge to all humankind.

Trinity College

University of Toronto

1. The present version of this paper has benefitted from the general discussion which followed its presentation, and among others from the remarks of Professors Li and Tang Yi-jie (China), Tomonobu Imamichi (Japan), Margaret Chatterjee (India) and George McLean (USA).

2. China is itself, of course, another original civilization, and the only fully extant one, although that of the Indus Valley and the Mayan retain tenuous lines of descent, respectively to existing Indian and Latin American cultures.

3. Cf. Max Black, Models and Metaphors (Ithaca: Cornell, 1962), especially pp. 219, 243. Nevertheless, he stresses more than I do an underlying, deeper isomorphism in what he calls "analogue models." Nor do I quite use the term "paradigm" in its simple meaning (cf. Black, op. cit., pp. 156ff.) of a clear case which can serve as an example. The paradigms I have in mind are much more than examples; they provide what Kant might have called a generative schema for further thought and action, as when we are given the paradigm for the declension of a type of noun or the conjugation of a type of verb. We think within the paradigm and by means of it. -- Finally, I use the term "paradigm" in a metaphysical sense broader than that of Thomas Kuhn in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, nor am I committed to the epistemology implied in that work.

4. I have added the last phrase in order to accommodate as far as possible an African colleague's insistence (on a later occasion) that "there is no [distinct] concept of nature [as such] in African thought" (Prof. M'Bedy, W. Germany, Cameroun). Indeed, the exaggerated divorce of the human from nature, epitomized by Cartesian dualism, for example, has contributed greatly to the false emancipation of technology from nature, and has even led to what Adorno and others criticize as merely "instrumental" rationality. (See Horkheimer and Adorno, The Concept of Enlightenment.) Prof. Imamichi has remarked that for the Greeks techne is contained within nature itself, and indeed is one of the several kinds of knowledge by which human nature reaches its fulfillment. At the same time, the energy of Western technology arises in part from the tension between the human and the non-human already mentioned, a tension expressed by such phrases as "the relation between man and nature," or "the relation of man to nature." Professors Tang Yi-jie and Chen Kui-de reminded us that the central concern of classical Chinese philosophy was not the relation between man and nature, but that between man and man, within which the understanding of nature is to be situated.

5. Professor Quiles (Spain) observed (on a later occasion) that all of the paradigms mentioned are paradigms of discourse (logos) and in that respect are "Greek." Discourse is, undoubtedly, one of the sources of that tension that is characteristic of the "Western" relation between man and nature. (See footnote n. 7.)

6. These paradigms are, it seems to me, more than metaphors (cf. S.C. Pepper, World Hypotheses [Berkeley: University of California, 1942]). They do not arise by selection of an already existing meaning which is then transferred to a larger and different medium, but arise out of the convergence of many insights, experiences, values and actions that pervade a society as a whole.

7. I have developed the concept of discourse (logos) in more detail in "Gibt es fuer den Menschen Wichtigeres, als zu ueberleben? Das Erbe Griechenlands: Rationalitaet," Das europaeische Erbe unde seine christliche Zukunft (Koeln: Hanns Martin Schleyer-Stiftung, Bd. 16, 1985), pp. 95-105 (English text, pp. 348-356).

8. As well as "Lectures on Physics" (physike akroasis), Aristotle also refers to some of the books on physics under the title: "the books about motion" (ta peri kineseos). -- Professor Imamichi has correctly observed that the term physis" cannot be translated in any direct way from the Greek; the more so, if we consider the important variations among the Greeks themselves. I can consider here only the most general sense of the term with some emphasis upon Aristotle's influential meaning. It is worth remarking that so many of the terms we use in Western philosophy remain transliterated in their Greek form rather than translated (e.g., "philosophy," "school," "economy," "politics," "ethics," etc.). The question may be asked: whether the transformations of meaning which they have undergone have left only an empty shell of their original meaning, or whether a Greek residue remains that contains the still germinal seeds of discourse (logos). It seems that a Greek root does remain as an abiding determinant, and with it the logical weight of discourse.

9. Hegel has drawn the difference very sharply in his discussion of the finite and the infinite in the first book of the Wissenschaft der Logik, 2d. edn. The distinction can be accepted without having to accept his whole system.

10. Cf. Robert Sokolowski, The God of Faith and Reason (Notre Dame: Univ. of Notre Dame Press, 1982).

11. See K. L. Schmitz, "Le transcendance coincidente: fondement de 1'interrogation religieuse," in: Urgence de la philosophie (Quebec: Presse Universitaire de Laval), pp. 591-597.

12. Etienne Gilson, The Philosopher and Theology (New York: Random House, 1962), p. 90.

13. See, for example, St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, Part 1, Question 44, especially Article 2. See also my own consideration of the topic: The Gift: Creation (Milwaukee: Marquette U.P.; Aquinas Lecture, 1982). It might be well to differentiate such a philosophical and theological view of creation (which is quite compatible with scientific theories of evolution) from the current Christian fundamentalist views of "creationism," which are based upon a crude, anachronistic and literalist reading of Genesis.

14. Gilson in The Philosopher remarks: "This philosophy that Descartes had found in scholasticism, how did it get there? Through Greece, no doubt, and especially owing to Aristotle; but Aristotle happened to be precisely what Descartes detested in scholasticism, the Christian conclusions of which were the only points he retained. The existence of a unique God, infinite, simple, supremely free, Creator of the universe as an all-powerful efficient cause, and of man himself, made to His image and likeness, endowed with an immaterial soul capable of surviving its body: not one of these notions could be found in Aristotle. But they all were easy to find in any scholastic theologian and Descartes inherited all of them. It is therefore a fact that Greek philosophy came out of the middle ages other than it had been in the minds of the ancient philosophers. On every one of these points Descartes came after the middle ages almost as if the Greeks had never existed."

15. I mean respectively: those brought about by the Reformation and Counter-Reformation, the rise of mercantile capitalism, and the rise of bourgeois liberalism.

16. See Critique of Pure Reason A832 B860ff.

17. I have developed this interpretation somewhat more at length in "Analysis by Principles and Analysis by Elements," Graceful Reason: Essays in Ancient and Medieval Philosophy Presented to Jos. Owens, CSSR, ed. L. P. Gerson (Papers in Medieval Studies, 4; Toronto: PIMS, 1983), pp. 315-330.

18. An English translation by Priscilla Hayden-Roy has appeared in Philosophy of German Idea1ism, ed. E. Behler (The German Library, vol. 23; New York: Continuum, 1987), pp. 167-202; based upon the second edition of 1803.--Schelling continued the "organicist" line of interpretation in the System of Transcendental Idealism, but there he looked to art as the "sole true and eternal organon as well as document of philosophy" (Alfred Hofstadter's translation of the concluding section of the System appears in the volume just cited, pp. 203-216.)--Already in Leibniz, as contrasted with the Scholastic "vitalists" and their Aristotelian emphasis upon quality, it seems to me that more is at work than an interpretation using organism as its key. For the meaning and prominence Leibniz gives to perceptions and to appetition points to the ideality of human consciousness present within his account, rather than to the distinctively pre-conscious, qualitative nature of organic life. In Schelling, too, it is clear that his talk about organism and art work is subordinated to his attempt, on the one hand, to break out of the limitations of Kant's and Fichte's conceptions of consciousness, while yet, on the other hand, to preserve an enlarged sense of the "unconscious-conscious." And so, the unity which he seeks is still in function of consciousness, whose limitations Schelling tries to overcome with dubious results in his later work. If the fore-going is correct, then, the most influential forms of the so-called "organicist" version are idealist.

19. The Two Cultures (1959): and A Second Look (1964) (Cambridge: Cambridge U.P., 1964).

20. I take the term from the Jesuit anthropologist, Teilhard de Chardin (who worked upon "Peking Man"), but use it in a somewhat different sense than he did.

21. More recently he has preferred the term "integrative" order.

22. "Not exclusively:" indeed, the exponential increase in power has produced in astronomy and astrophysics a remarkable extension and refinement of our knowledge of distant stars and planets, and in geology a remarkable prolongation of our knowledge of the history of our planet. Professor Chatterjee remarked upon the new sensibility towards the earth experienced by space-travellers as well as by those who view the pictures of "mother earth" transmitted by television from afar.

23. Professor Imamichi gave expression to the deeply rooted Japanese insight into the fruitfulness of nature as a privileged teacher of mankind; and Professor Chatterjee remarked that nature still provides us with paradigms of interconnection. So that, although the future may rest in our fragile hands, we are not without recourse beyond ourselves.

24. One of the most promising developments in medical technology is the appointment of "ethicians" to the consulting teams in major hospitals in North America. In addition, the most rapidly expanding field in North American philosophy is that of professional, medical, legal and environmental ethics, along with bio-ethics.