the late environmentalist, author, & philosopher
The science of Ecology has been taken over by the cult of scientific reductionism and has become a weapon in the war on the living world being waged by industrial man. This article of July 2002 is a greatly extended and updated version of the article “Whatever happened to ecology?” first published in The Ecologist [...]
“It should be obvious to most people, though it is rarely stated, especially in academic circles, that the environment most friendly to the needs of living things, that within which their behaviour is most fulfilling and adaptive, can only be that to which they have been adapted by their evolution and upbringing … There is no reason for supposing that man is in any way exempt from the operation of this fundamental principle. But what is man’s natural environment?”
Following the articles in The Ecologist of April 2000 examining the independence of the scientific world, developmental biologist Professor Lewis Wolpert of University College London debates the neutrality of science with environmentalist and Ecologist founder Edward Goldsmith. Published in The Ecologist Vol. 30 No. 3, May 2000. Dear Professor Wolpert, One thing that modern science [...]
A leading article for The Ecologist Vol. 28 No. 3, May 1998. Revised in January & February 2000, and republished in The Doomsday Funbook (Jon Carpenter Books, February 2006). See ordering information for the Funbook. In the modern world, all benefits are seen as man-made – the product of economic development. Thus health is seen [...]
A leading article for The Ecologist Vol. 28 No. 3, May–June 1998. Republished in The Doomsday Funbook (Jon Carpenter Books, February 2006). See ordering information for the Funbook. Underlying the worldview of the secular Religion of Progress is the fundamental assumption that the world is badly designed. God did a bad job, and it is [...]
The cult of randomness and the taboo on teleology This article is an extended version of a combination of three chapters, 5, 26, and 27, of The Way: An ecological world view by Edward Goldsmith. It was first published in this form in The Ecologist Vol. 27 No. 5, 1997, under the title “Scientific Superstitions”. [...]
Edward Goldsmith speaks at the Friends Of The Centre Annual Conference, 31 October 1992. The conference was organised by REEP in conjunction with Quaker group, Friends of the Centre. My talk is going to be more in the nature of a chat than a formal talk, so I apologise to my audience, especially after they [...]
Neo-Darwinism does not provide a satisfactory explanation for evolution and however resilient it may prove to criticism, it must eventually give way to a more realistic theory. This can only occur if we abandon the reductionistic and mechanistic ‘paradigm of science’, which neo-Darwinism so faithfully reflects. Published in The Ecologist Vol. 20 No. 2, March–April [...]
