Box 21, Item 705: Draft abstract of Paradigmatic roots of environmental problems

Box 21, Item 705: Draft abstract of Paradigmatic roots of environmental problems

Printout of draft, dated 24 May 1995. Trimmed paper pasted on leaf with annotations. Handwritten top of printout: Run new copy.

One of ten papers digitised from item 705.

The University of Queensland's Richard Sylvan Papers UQFL291, Box 21, Item 705

1995-05-24

This item was identified for digitisation at the request of The University of Queensland's 2020 Fryer Library Fellow, Dr. N.A.J. Taylor.

For all enquiries about this work, please contact the Fryer Library, The University of Queensland Library.

[1] leaf. 2.6 MB.

Manuscript

Como - Shelves - Top - Pile 3

PARADIGMATIC ROOTS
OF
ENVIRONMENTAL PROBLEMS
Abstract. Virtually all diagnoses of the roots, and sources, of environmental
problems are defective. While defective diagnoses persist, problems will not
be adequately addressed.
Focal questions ask why human communities so frequently degrade,
impoverish or even destroy their own environments, and more generally why
the whole earth is now in jeopardy through human enterprise. More
immediate answers, sometimes correct so far as they go (which is not deep
enough), look to components of environmental impact equations. More
thorough-going answers fall into two classes: first those that do not question
entrenched paradigms, but seek (unsuccessfully) to explain widespread
problems simply through defective practice, and secondly those that, rightly
recognising that defective practice is no adequate answer, look to deeper
paradigmatic sources of problems. A fatal flaw in most of the latter answers
lies in their monistic concentration on a single paradigm, or single narrow
band of paradigms. These flaws are exposed, whence a wider, more
satisfactory answer can be broached.
Background busy work includes firstly, explaining problems and relevant
paradigms and how paradigms operate regarding environmental problems,
and secondly, detailed disentangling of proposed and alleged sources of the
problems. With this done, it is argued that none of these answers,
fashionable or other, to the focal questions is satisfactory. Here lies the
important hard, but very negative and decidedly incomplete, work of the
present investigation.
A different more complex investigation is accordingly instigated. An initial
answer is located through broader classes of paradigms : environmentally
friendly and unfriendly. Further effort is expended, profitably, in trying to
characterize these classes. Among significant corollaries, one is striking:
philosophy as portrayed through its standard history is dismal environmental
news.

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