Environmental Issues

Introduction
Human beings relationship with nature is an important and highly problematic philosophical issue. The progress of science served as a destructive stimulus which through technological innovations forced human race to realize its potential for the satisfaction of human needs and desires. These motivations and impulses resulted in technological, social, political, and industrial transformations which taken together constitute what is usually meant by the mastery over nature. Traditional religious dogmas and scientism are directly related to this transformation in the human power to make the best use of natural environment in the everyday world. There, of course, appeared many unpleasant and negative effects of scientific and technological progress. Actually, destructive human control of nature has become a real problem. The following pages of this essay will be concerned primarily with the analysis of how the destructive relationship between humans and the rest of nature have evolved over time through scientism and how science and technology relate to the social and cultural conflicts which arise out of this despotic relationship.

Main Body
There are many myths and legends in different cultures in which one can find the contradictory emotions of horror and desire which people had towards the tools invented by men to improve daily work and life. Such stories are discussed and analyzed in a book by Mircea Eliade, The Forge and the Crucible (1962). The author demonstrates that in various ancient cultures all over the world there is a constant characteristic which Eliade describes as the sacredness of metal and consequently the ambivalent, eccentric and mysterious character of all mining and metallurgical operations (pp. 99-100). The creation and production of instruments out of various kinds of metal had magical or divine meanings from the very beginnings of human civilisation. Moreover, men who worked with metal were always regarded as people with extraordinary skills and who practised magic because they supposedly possessed the magic formulas that empowered them to produce things which were supernatural. People had very contradictory emotions in this regard. On the one hand, they felt the power and independence in their activity and had the attitude of mastery over nature that is conquered by the use of tools. On the other hand, people had fears that these metal tools possess demonic power and, therefore, religious ceremonies were required in order to appease the spirits and to make the tools more like natural elements by means of which people could change the natural environment to satisfy their needs. In fact, this inner desire and dread which characterize mankinds earliest experiences with technological innovations continue to be present today. People feel a kind of fatalism in relation to science and technology. While people gratefully accept the benefits of human ingenious devices, they also fear the outburst of uncontrollable social conflicts and environmental problems which result from technological advances.

In one of his lectures, the historian Lynn White (1968) made the statement that the present increasing disruption of the global environment is the product of a dynamic technology and science which. . . cannot be understood historically apart from distinctive attitudes toward nature which are deeply grounded in Christian dogma (p. 93). Like many other researchers in this field, he tried to demonstrate that a religious attitude towards nature and supernatural power of humans was received by modern Western civilisation from its predecessors. Moreover, this attitude had been directly related to the growing scientific and technological progress in Western civilization and to a great extent had determined the way in which this progress was put to practical use in the service of humanitys needs and desires. Thus, as White suggests, the origin of the todays environmental crisis is religious in nature. Moreover, change of religious views, rather than technological inventions which would improve present conditions, should be accomplished to solve the growing problems of modern civilisation.

A prevailing characteristic of the religions that were practiced by the ancient civilisation was the belief that all elements of natural environment which surrounded people had spirits. Therefore, nature and its spirits had to be honoured in order to protect humans from harm and evil. Before taking natural objects for ones own use man had to placate the spirits by preparing gifts and organising sacred rituals. The Christian religion, nevertheless, had quite the opposite attitude. For Christians, spirit was detached from nature and, moreover, it controlled nature they also believed that to some degree humans inherited Gods mastery over nature. Only men and women had spirit, and thus people did not have to be afraid of the powers of nature. In this way, it seems the Bible suggested that the planet Earth was created to be in the service of people and their desires. In this regard, White makes conclusion that by destroying pagan animism, Christianity made it possible to exploit nature in a mood of indifference to the feelings of natural objects (p. 86).

Taking into account above conclusions, it seems that White has determined a central aspect of the destructive relationship between humans and nature. Besides the mythical roots discussed in the beginning, religious elements inherited from the early religious formations constitute a main source for studying the origin of mastery over nature. According to White, up to the eighteenth century all influential scientists also worked on religious problems and concerns. It is logical to conclude, therefore, that their concerns with God, his designs, and will influenced their ideas of the significance of scientific and industrial movement towards rationalism. Scientists inherited Christian position toward natural resources which was grounded on certain Christian teachings about a humans role in the creation of the world and which had guided Christianitys victory over pagan beliefs that natural objects and the universe itself have spirits, desires, and intentions.

The role of Christian religion in making the foundation for the idea to master the Earth is clearly seen in the Book of Genesis. Here one can see how attitudes towards nature have been shaped. The creation story in the Book of Genesis declares the supreme and unrestricted power of God over the universe and the right of human beings to have control over all animals on the earth. Ideas found in the Book of Genesis indicate the possession of absolute power as the foundation of humanity, and it is absolute power which in essence separates human beings from other living creatures on the earth In the idea of a covenant between man and lower creation, man is distinguished not by the possession of spiritual faculties, but by being lord of the universe under God, Who is Supreme Lord. For man does not rule over the animal kingdom because he is Gods image rather, he is Gods image precisely because he rules over the animal kingdom, thus sharing Gods universal dominion (Asselin, 1954, pp. 281-283).
It is particularly interesting how the Book of Genesis interpreted the Fall in relation to mans power on earth. The existence of animals living independently of man was considered as a sign that there had been a partial loss of power to control because of human sin. It is explained by the fact that the Book of Genesis indicates a man had power over all animals in the Garden of Eden and animals obeyed mans commands. The taming or killing of all wild animals would be an indication that the earthly paradise had been reconstructed to its original condition. The stories which recount the deeds of the early saints who went into the wild areas all tell about their success in subduing wild animals as evidence that they were returning the inherent human supreme power which they enjoyed before the Fall (Glacken, 1976, pp. 310, 349). In this way, the powerful Christian tradition generated a deep-rooted image of a human being as master of nature founded on the Biblical story of creation of the world and man.

The revolutionary changes in philosophy of human life and finding of new concepts in physics and chemistry also produced considerable transformation in opinions and ideas. Particularly, progress in the sciences of nature was thought to improve the quality of human life. This considerable change is associated with the fruitful work and achievements of the alchemists, in particular the advocates of Paracelsus. Their point of view and bold ideas ultimately inspired the scientific efforts of those seventeenth- and eighteenth-century scientists who prepared the solid ground for modern natural science. The Renaissance influence obviously introduced and reinforced the idea that an exact science of nature can be understood in mathematical terms. The Englishman John Dee, a great mathematician who all his life applied his mind to the learning and understanding of magic in order to find the secrets of nature, represents one of the best examples of a philosopher and scientist caught in this extending trend.

What makes the achievements of alchemists directly relevant to the present study is the fact that the alchemists search for the secrets of nature has become the driving force of the modern science. In his study of alchemists work, Jung (1983) says that alchemy was the dawn of the scientific age, when the daemon of the scientific spirit compelled the forces of nature to serve man to an extent that had never been known before. Jung also claims that the psychic sources of the will to gain control of the nature can be easily found in the alchemical documents. In the same manner, Eliade (2001) makes an argument that the concepts of industrial progress and the mastery of nature by means of science and technology were found and consolidated in the nineteenth century and became the heart of todays social ideology. It is in the specific dogma of the nineteenth century, Eliade observes, according to which mans true mission is to transform and improve upon Nature and become her master, that we must look for the authentic continuation of the alchemists dream. Therefore, Eliade believes that the alchemists anticipated what is in fact the essence of the ideology of the modern world (Jung, 1983, 172-174 and Lewis, 2001, pp. 52-53).

Based on the alchemists findings, early in the seventeenth century Bacon and Descartes became to work on the possibility of creating a completely new method to lead scientific investigation. The supporters of this idea were considered by their contemporaries to be the individuals who spoke by divine inspiration and who advocated a new age for humankind, claiming that by accepting this novel method humans would become masters of nature. Bacon and Descartes formula included two distinct ideas first, the new scientific investigation would allow to explore natural phenomena in a much superior way to what was done earlier second, the fruits of this approach also would include tremendous social benefits  in particular, a constantly growing supply of material goods and a general liberation of the human mind from irrational beliefs. Eventually, that would enable people to have total control over their desires and attain their mutual desires faster and more efficiently (Wartofsky, 1969, p. 51).

In this manner, the rationality of the new system of scientific methods and principles was regarded as an effective force capable of improving the social environment. More and more people believed that this rationality would spread in ever wider spheres of human life and thereby achieve a better condition for social life. This message of rationality is nicely summarized in the following statement The hope is that scientific knowledge, as the mode of adaptation and of human control over nature, may also be a major instrument of human self-control, by means of rational intelligence (Wartofsky, 1969, p. 29). This is a precise statement of a belief which has been polished during the last three centuries and which has remained a central element of thought in todays Western civilization.
The destructive mastery over nature developed even further when the welfare-state machine and the ideological bodies of capitalism and socialism promised material abundance to all people. Economic systems of modern Western world tried to prove that a constant rise in the citizens standard of living could be achieved. For all, the route to this goal was the same which consisted of industrialization and the extremely growing extraction and wasteful exploitation of natural resources.

Now people begin to understand that this road leads to nowhere. Rising level of wasteful consumption in the industrialized countries is intrinsically self-destructive process and it cannot succeed. Destructive process of delivery of goods and services to the developed and industrialized world and then to the developing countries have become a real threat to the continued vitality of the biosphere on the planet. Actually, there is no real chance that the human race in the future would be able to obtain the material standard of living which is today enjoyed by most people in industrialized countries. And if people make attempt to achieve this goal by means of scientific and technological mastery over nature, these attempts will fail and will lead to even worse crisis. People already live in the century of global environmental crisis. Further catastrophic environmental degradation will make this crisis to humans as an inevitable fate. When people comprehend and consider this fate in their minds, as intelligent observers of the whole human history, and not as careless consumers, they will begin by rejecting the idea of mastery over natural environment which came to them from their predecessors.

Conclusion
Rooted in religion, the Renaissance conceptions of science, capitalism and socialism with their scientific and technological innovations, the idea of the mastery of nature presents extreme difficulties and problems to the modern society. It is true that people are indebted to technical skills for the sufficiency of material provisions and the various technological innovations which increased mankinds happiness and well-being. But, at the same time, everyone can clearly see how the mastery of nature and careless exploitation of its rich resources has produced many kinds of destructive consequences, which eventually can lead to the destruction of an entire civilization.