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Ecologic Crisis and View of Nature with Special Emphasis on the White, Jr. Thesis

In a celebrated lecture at the AAAS meeting in 1966, Lynn White, Jr. argued that ecologic crisis is rooted in the Judeo-Christian concept of nature. The White, Jr. thesis was a shock to philosophical and theological communities bringing forth hot debates. Though the Bible can be interpreted differently, it seems undeniable that Christianity is on the whole anthropocentric. All out drive for the conquest of nature started with the Scientific Revolution. All the modem philosophers from Bacon to Marx were unanimous in the belief that man is the master of nature. White, Jr. claims that since the roots of the trouble are religious, the remedy must be also religious. However, we can learn from the naturalistic tradition which saw man as a part of nature.