The Metaphysics of Ecology: What Makes Our Environment Worthy of Care

In this lecture, Professor Caner Dagli presented on the metaphysics of modern science. After examining its philosophical underpinnings, he highlighted its mechanistic view of nature and scientism's claim to a monopoly on truth as problematic. The Cartesian view of nature as soulless, contemporary considerations of the human being as a "moist machine," and similar ideas all rob nature of its worth. Our speaker here noted that if we wish to change our ethical approach to the world of nature in a way that is more than simply sentimental or a result of naked self-interest, we must engage questions at a metaphysical level, that is at the level of first or ultimate questions.

Professor Caner Dagli is Associate Professor of Religious Studies at the College of the Holy Cross. He is a scholar in the fields of Islamic philosophy and mysticism. This lecture was delivered as part of the Religion and Nature series of Munjed M. Murad's Junior Fellowship at the Center for the Study of World Religions at Harvard University.

—By Munjed M. Murad