Quotes: World Views

1. Read the following statements and decide which ones you agree with and which ones you don’t. 

2. Decide which statements most closely represent a deep ecology/ecocentic world view and which represent a traditional ecology/anthropocentric world view. Explain.

A. “Plants exist for the sake of animals, and brute beasts, for the sake of man - domestic animals for his use and food, wild ones (or at any rate most of them) for food and other accessories of life, such as clothing & various tools…since nature makes nothing purposeless or in vain, it is undeniably true that she has made all animals for the sake of man.” - Aristotle

B. “We are the absolute masters of what the earth produces.  We enjoy the mountains and the plains.  The rivers are ours.  We sow the seeds and plant the trees.  We fertilize the earth.  We stop, direct and turn the rivers; in short, by our hands and various operations in this world we endeavor to make it, as it were, another nature.” - Cicero

C. “The soul is the same in all living creatures although the body of each is different.” - Hippocrates

D. “To arrive at knowledge is highly useful in life, and thus render ourselves the lords and possessors of nature.” - Rene Descartes

E. “Animals experience neither pleasure nor pain, nor anything else.  Although they may squeal when cut with a knife or writhe in their efforts to escape contact with a hot iron, this does not mean that they feel pain in these situations.  They are governed by the same principles as a clock, and if their actions are more complex than those of a clock, it is because the clock is a machine made by humans, while animals are infinitely more complex machines, made by God.” - Descartes

F. “It was Washoe [the chimpanzee] who taught me that ‘human’ is only an adjective that describes ‘being’, and that the essence of who I am is not in my humanness but in my ‘beingness’.” - Roger Fouts