100 books like The Great Work

Astronomer Carl Sagan can be said to have launched the ecospiritual/religious naturalist trajectory with this book, upon which the TV series was based, later writing: “A religion that stressed the magnificence of the universe as revealed by modern science, might be able to draw forth reserves of reverence and awe hardly tapped by the conventional faiths. Sooner or later such a religion will emerge.”

Two seminal quotes: “The nitrogen in our DNA, the calcium in our teeth, the iron in our blood, the carbon in our apple pies were made in the interiors of collapsing stars. We are made of starstuff.” “We are a way for the cosmos to know itself.”

Annie Dillard joins Aldo Leopold and Rachel Carson as my favorite “nature writers.” Annie is pithy, often wry, insisting that we notice and guiding us with her own noticing.

A classic quote: “In nature, improbabilities are the one stock in trade. The whole creation is one lunatic fringe. If creation had been left up to me, I’m sure I wouldn’t have had the imagination or courage to do more than shape a single, reasonably sized atom, smooth as a snowball, and let it go at that… No claims of any and all revelations could be so far-fetched as a single giraffe.”

One of the very important agricultural issues is treatment of animals especially those grown in confined animal feeding operations (CAFOs).

Singer was among the very first who wrote about how animals are treated by the agricultural enterprise and by people. He was among the first to tell us that animals can suffer and therefore we must consider our moral obligation to any creature that can suffer.

Animal science has made more progress than most other agricultural disciplines in changing the way animals are treated. There is still a long way to go.

Wendell Berry is a Kentucky farmer, a prolific author, an environmental activist, cultural critic, and poet.

In this book, one of his many, he raises important questions about the practice of agriculture in the United States and some of the consequences including loss of small farms and communities, the ecological effects, energy use, and agriculture's externalities.

His work has been largely ignored by the agricultural community including most faculty in colleges of agriculture. He writes eloquently about his concern that man was not made to rule the world and his claim that to rule the world we must conquer it.

Humans and agriculture have conquered and ignored and externalized the cultural, environmental, and human costs, which Berry explores in detail. His work has not been ignored by the environmental community.

Paul Thompson is Professor of philosophy and holds the Kellogg chair in agricultural ethics at Michigan State University.

He was the first philosopher to explore the ethics of agriculture. It might be more correct to say he was the first to explore the lack of a specific ethical foundation for agriculture. He is a prolific writer and has published several books and numerous papers on agricultural ethics.

I have met him, read his work, and have benefited from his knowledge.

When I began my career as a professor at Colorado State University I knew my responsibility was to study the kinetics of herbicide degradation and soil and develop systems for weed control in agronomic crops.

During my academic career at Cornell University and Oregon State University no one ever suggested I should take class in philosophy or that agriculture had moral problems. I knew and my professors emphasized agriculture was a worthy and essential human endeavor.

When I first became acquainted with William Aiken and he introduced me to his book my view of agriculture began to change. I realized the value and essential role of moral philosophy to agriculture. I know I was viewed as a traitor to my discipline, but Aiken's book convinced me there was something wrong.

As a professor and educator I had a responsibility to begin to study and write about agricultural ethics.

Philosopher Loyal Rue, an important mentor of mine, coined and developed the concept that our science-based understandings of cosmic, planetary, and biological evolution represent Everybody’s Story, a notion he first proposed in Amythia: Crisis in the Natural History of Western Culture. He writes with lucidity, grace, and deep wisdom, and is frequently quoted in my book.

Astronomer Chet Raymo wrote a weekly column for the Boston Globe called Science Musings, and is a masterful storyteller and delightful human being.

Here are some quotes about the nature of scientific inquiry. “Delight in the unexpected is part of the lifeblood of science. Almost alone among belief systems, science welcomes the disturbingly new.” “Science is a spider’s web. Confidence in any one strand of the web is maintained by the tension and resiliency of the entire web.” “Science, like the play of children, satisfies a deep-seated need for escape from the boredom of fixity and the trauma of chaos.”

In college during the 1960s I studied Eastern and indigenous world religions with Thomas Berry which informed my approach to art healing. Only recently I discovered how he evolved to become a leading figure in the ecological community, calling for a new depth of psychology of nature. His vision of how each person and all of nature participate in an inclusive creative force is for me the way forward with art healing. Among his books, including The Great Work and the new biography published by Columbia University Press, I recommend The Dream of the Earth as a starting point. We participate in a creative process that is within ourselves and larger than us, a convincing paradigm embracing the sacred dimensions of art healing as affirmed by my colleagues Bruce Moon and Pat Allen. 

The best available summary of Deep Ecology. An anthology of seminal essays inspired by Norwegian philosopher and activist Arne Naess, who sought to create an ecological paradigm shift in society – his work influenced the Greenpeace founders. This collection includes essays by Naess, Chellis Glendinning, Gary Snyder, Dolores LaChapelle, Paul Shepard, and others, who examine the ecological tradition from Spinoza and Thoreau to Santayana and ecofeminism.