A growing literature testifies to the persistence of place as an incorrigible aspect of human experience, identity, and morality. Place is a common ground for thought and action, a community of experienced particulars that avoids solipsism and universalism. It draws us into the philosophy of the ordinary, into familiarity as a form of knowledge, into the wisdom of proximity. Each of these essays offers a philosophy of place, and reminds us that such philosophies ultimately decide how we make, use, and (...) understand places, whether as accidents, instruments, or fields of care. (shrink)

Neither ecologists nor economists can teach us what we most need to know about nature: how to value it. The Hebrew prophets claimed that there can be no intelligent human ecology except as people learn to use land justly and charitably. Lands do not flow with milk and honey for all unless and until justice rolls down like waters. What kind of planet ought we humans wish to have? One we resourcefully manage for our benefits? Or one we hold in (...) loving care? Science and economics can't teach us that; perhaps religion and ethics can. (shrink)

Invited response by Holmes Rolston, III, to the previous three articles in this issue of Environmental Values.

Technology involves artifacts, both in its etymology, from the Greek tekhne, “art” or “skill,” and in its central idea, the body of knowledge available to a culture for fashioning and using implements. This has so dramatically escalated in modern times, with the coupling of science and industry, that we have entered the first century in the 45 million centuries of life on Earth in which one species can aspire to manage the planet’s future. Since Galileo, Earth seemed a minor planet, (...) lost in the stars. Since Darwin, humans have come late and last on this lonely planet. Today, on our home planet at least, we are putting these once de-centered humans back at the center. We have entered the Anthropocene Epoch, the... (shrink)