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ultimate presumption and also the ultimate blasphemy. Homo Scientificus has deified himself. It is incumbent on him to recreate the world.

The critical importance of maintaining the order of the living world is only just becoming apparent to what is still a minority of scientists, largely as a result of the work of James Lovelock and Lynn Margulis. They have shown that the biosphere, or world of living things, together with its geological substrate and atmospheric environment constitute a single being. Lovelock refers to it as 'Gaia' - the Greek Goddess of the Earth. Lovelock stresses the critical importance of maintaining the order of Gaia. I f the atmosphere's oxygen content were too low, then some species would not be able to breathe, while i f it were too high, the Earth's atmosphere would become so inflammable that a single spark could set off uncontrollable fires. I f its carbon dioxide contents were in turn too low, the Earth would be too cold, and i f too high, its temperature would exceed that which most forms of life could support - a principle which scientists have ignored to the cost of humanity and the natural world. We are only now realising this; for we have systematically changed the composition of the atmosphere, and are caught up in what appears to be a chain-reaction towards ever-worsening climatic destabilisation.

The Importance of Holism This brings us to the thesis of this unique Millennium Issue of The Ecologist. Contrary to what mainstream scientists tell us, I have consistently argued that natural systems at different levels of organisation seek, consciously or not, to maintain the order of the larger wholes of which they are part. The biologist Ludwig von Bertalanffy was struck by the "whole maintaining character" of life processes at the level of the biological organism.9 So was the Austrian biologist Ungerer, who was so

The Fine Flowers of Histories. A map of the universe showing seven stages of the sun at the centre of the cosmos and the signs of the zodiac, 1583 impressed by the "whole maintaining function of life processes" that he decided to replace the biological consideration of purpose with that of wholeness.10

That the constituent parts of any natural system must strive to maintain its overall order is clear, because they evolved to fulfil their specific functions within it, and are thereby totally dependent on its preservation for their welfare and indeed for their survival. Eugene Odum, whose Fundamentals of Ecology was the standard textbook in American universities for decades, points out that "the individual cannot survive for long without its population, any more than the organ would be able to survive for long as a self-perpetuating unit without its organism."11 Thus children brought up in a broken home, as any social worker wil l confirm, wil l often tend to be emotionally unstable and have a far greater chance of becoming social misfits, delinquents and criminals.

The family, however, cannot thrive

as a little oasis of order in a sea of social disorder, and it needs to be part of a cohesive community, which is of such importance in the traditional world that people cannot imagine life outside of it. Nor, of course, can individuals, families, and communities, survive i f the order of the natural world or the ecosphere is destroyed, as even the most extreme adept of the cult of selfishness wil l soon realise.

Unfortunately, this key principle only becomes apparent when life processes are seen in terms of their relationship with the whole of which they are part. Mainstream scientists who

Gaia and Science The reason why the notion of this enclosing whole concerns us is that it corrects a large and disastrous blind spot in our contemporary world-view. It reminds us that we are not separate, independent, autonomous entities. Since the Enlightenment, the deepest moral efforts of our culture have gone to establishing our freedom as individuals. The campaign has produced great results, but like all moral campaigns it is one-sided and has serious costs when the wider context is forgotten.

One of these costs is our alienation from the physical world. We have carefully excluded everything non-human from our value system, and reduced that system to terms of individual self-interest. We are mystified - as surely no other set of people would be - about how to recognise the claims of the larger whole that surrounds us - the material world of which we are part. Our moral and physical vocabulary, carefully tailored to the social contract, leaves no language in which to recognise the environmental crisis. - James Lovelock, quoting Mary Midgely, in a speech to the Gaia Society

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insist on looking at life processes in isolation from the whole whose very existence most of them choose to ignore - continue to see them as random, malleable, goalless and self-serving. This could not be better illustrated than by the writings of Professor Richard Dawkins of Oxford University, for whom there is "no selective advantage in displaying any concern for the stability and integrity of the larger whole."12

I f behaviour is looked at reductively, there is no way in which its 'whole-maintaining' function can be established, and hence no way of distinguishing between behaviour that serves to maintain and that which serves to disrupt the order of the living world. This key distinction is foreign to mainstream science - though critical to early archaic religions such as Judaism, as Margaret Barker in particular, makes clear elsewhere in this issue.

Science and Ethics

The Taoist thought which created the beginning of science in China also was the underlying reason for the Chinese not to destroy the earth. As Needham points out: "... the sciences of China and Islam never dreamed of divorcing science from ethics." But, in Europe it was quite different. "Science needs to be lived alongside religion, philosophy, history and aesthetic experience; alone it can lead to great harm." He warns of the "unbelievably dangerous powers of atomic weapons" developed by modern science and hopes that "maniacs will not release upon mankind powers that could extinguish not only mankind but all life on earth." - Dolores LaChapelle, Sacred Land

vegetation. The main preoccupation of the Kono, like all tribal people, is to maintain cosmic harmony."14

Why Mainstream Religions Have Failed th e Earth I f it is impossible to reconcile the notion that environmental destruction is a sin with either mainstream science or Gnostic religion, so it is also difficult - though by no means so much so - to reconcile it with modern mainstream religions. For though they do not see the natural world and indeed the cosmos as evil, they have scarcely any interest in it.

The anthropologist Henrick Kraemer15 also notes how, in primal societies, "the dominating interest is to preserve and perpetuate social harmony, stability and welfare. Religious cults and magic practices have chiefly this purpose in view. Everyone who has lived with a 'primitive people' and has tried to immerse his or her mind in theirs, knows the deep-rooted

dread fostered towards any disturbance of the univer­

Indeed, today, these religions have become increasingly 'otherworldly', and have ceased to fulfil their original role of linking people to their society, to the natural world, and to the all-encompassing cosmos. In the atomised society we have created, only interpersonal relationships make any sense, and even religion becomes little more than an interpersonal relationship between a now asocial and J H an-ecological man and a God to whom is attributed these same characteristics.

sal and social harmony and equilibrium. Whether a

violation of this harmony issues from the univer­

sal sphere - for example, by an unusual

occurrence in nature - or from the social,

by a transgression of tradition or a disturbing event, it calls forth a ^H L corporate and strenuous religious

activity towards restoring the harmony and thereby saving the fertility of their fields, their health, the security of their families, the stability and welfare of their tribe from becoming endangered.

Mainstream religion has lost its way, and needs to return to its roots, and even

In fact, just about all the activities of tribal people are geared to the achievement of this same end, whether it be their agricultural activities, the technologies they use, the design of their houses,

Mainstream religion has lost its way, and needs to return to its roots. go further and learn from the wis dom of primal people, a point strongly made by Father Bede Griffith in this issue. Darryl Wilson's article 'Grandfather's Story' confirms this same point by providing some idea of how American Indian tribal people saw their relationship to the cosmos.

of their temples, of their settlements or I the performance of sacred rituals.

Painted hide of the Snake Clan, Arizona, 20th century.

Beyond their utilitarian functions, they all serve to maintain, in their

eyes, the order of the cosmos. m> Indeed, to violate this principle, in

particular to neglect the performance of these sacred rituals, is to violate all sorts of taboo - and in

The relevance of tribal religions is that they are totally reconcilable with the notion that the destruction of the environment is a sin - more so, it is often their most fundamental teaching. For example, Robert Parsons, in his book on the religion of the Kono people of Sierra Leone, shows that their religion "is not only an organisation of human relationships, but it includes also the relationships of people with the Earth as a whole, with their own land, and with the unseen world of constructive forces and beings in which they believe. Religion brings them all into a consistent whole."13

To the Kono, "the Earth is more than a composition of inanimate particles of soil; it is a living being, the wife of God, with unlimited procreative powers producing the abundant tropical

the words of Roger Caillois, "an act is taboo because it disrupts the universal order, which is at once that of nature and society." By so doing, "the Earth might no longer yield a harvest, the cattle might be struck with infertility, the stars might no longer follow their appointed course, death and disease could stalk the land."16 To violate a taboo is to be guilty of cosmic sin.

And, in fact, this can be seen to be true. The recent storms and floods in Orissa and Vietnam, and the increased incidence of devastating droughts throughout the world, are the result of cutting down forests and of transforming the chemical composition of the atmosphere so that it resembles ever less that which is required to maintain the order of the ecosphere. Whether we like it or not, the religio-culture of tribal peoples

The Ecologist, Vol. 30, No 1, January/February 2000

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