A01=Neil W. Browne
American critical thinking
American ecological writing
American nonfiction philosophy
assumptions
Author_Neil W. Browne
Barry Lopez
Category=DSBH
critical thinking
decision making
Deweyan pragmatism
Ecocriticism
Ecological philosophy
enviornmental
Environmental ethics
Environmental literature
eq_bestseller
eq_biography-true-stories
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
ethical reasoning
Human-nature relationship
Interdisciplinary environmental studies
John Dewey philosophy
Nature and democracy
Neil W. Browne
Philosophy
Pragmatist ecology
Rachel Carson
Twentieth-century nature writing
US philosophy education
Product details
- ISBN 9780817315818
- Weight: 526g
- Dimensions: 183 x 234mm
- Publication Date: 31 Oct 2007
- Publisher: The University of Alabama Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Hardback
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American philosopher John Dewey considered all human endeavors to be continuous with the natural world. In his writings, particularly Art as Experience (1934), Dewey insists on the primacy of the environment in aesthetic experience. Dewey's conception of environment includes both the natural and the man-made. Neil Browne highlights this notion in order to define what he terms ""pragmatist ecology,"" a practice rooted in the interface of the cultural and the natural, which he finds to be a significant feature of some of the most important ecological writing of the last century. To fully understand human involvement in the natural world, Browne argues, disciplinary boundaries must be opened up. This is primarily important between the arts and science, with profound implications for the practice of democracy. The degradation of the physical environment and democratic decay, for Browne, are rooted in the same problem: our persistent belief that humans are somehow separate from their physical environment. Browne probes the work of a number of major American writers through the lens of Dewey's philosophy. Among other texts, he examines John Muir's ""My First Summer in the Sierra"" (1911); ""Sea of Cortez"" (1941) by John Steinbeck and Edward Ricketts; Rachel Carson's three books about the sea, ""Under the Sea Wind"" (1941), ""The Sea Around Us"" (1951), and ""The Edge of the Sea"" (1955); John Haines' ""The Stars, the Snow, the Fire"" (1989); Barry Lopez's ""Arctic Dreams"" (1986); and Terry Tempest Williams' ""Refuge"" (1991). Together, these texts - with their combinations of scientific observation and personal meditation - challenge the dichotomies to which we've become accustomed and affirm the values of a pragmatist ecology, one in which ecological and democratic values go hand in hand.
Neil W. Browne is Assistant Professor of English at Oregon State University Cascades, where he teaches American literature and culture.
