ÒThe Historical Roots of Our Ecologic
CrisisÓ : White's article was based on the premise that "all forms of life modify their context", that is:
we all create change in our environment. He
believed man's relationship with the natural environment was always a dynamic and interactive
one, even in the Middle Ages, but
marked the Industrial Revolution as a fundamental turning point in our ecological history. He suggests that
at this point the hypotheses of science were
married to the possibilities of technology and our ability to destroy and exploit the environment was vastly
increased. Nevertheless, he also suggests that the
mentality of the Industrial Revolution, that the earth was a resource for human consumption, was much older than
the actuality of machinery, and has its roots
in medieval Christianity and attitudes towards nature. He suggests that "what people do about their ecology
depends on what they think about themselves
in relation to things in their environment." He argued that Judeo-Christian theology was fundamentally
exploitative of the natural world because:
1. The Bible asserts man's dominion over nature
and establishes a trend of anthropocentrism.
2. Christianity makes a distinction between man
(formed in God's image) and the rest of creation, which has no
"soul" or "reason" and is thus inferior.