"The Evolutionary Cosmic Humanism is the outcome of my existential truth sadhana, I learned as the student of life and love from every sod and clod, every mole and mountain, every beast and bird keeping a universally benevolent eye of a keen observer without the vanity of judgement."

In Chaos and Cosmos, Heidi Scott integrates literary readings with contemporary ecological methods to investigate two essential and contrasting paradigms of nature that scientific ecology continues to debate: chaos and balance. Ecological literature of the Romantic and Victorian eras uses environmental chaos and the figure of the balanced microcosm as tropes essential to understanding natural patterns, and these eras were the first to reflect upon the ecological degradations of the Industrial Revolution. Chaos and Cosmos contends that the seed of imagination that would enable a scientist to study a lake as a microcosmic world at the formal, empirical level was sown by Romantic and Victorian poets who consciously drew a sphere around their perceptions in order to make sense of spots of time and place amid the globalizing modern world. This study’s interest goes beyond likening literary tropes to scientific aesthetics; it aims to theorize the interdisciplinary history of the concepts that underlie our scientific understanding of modern nature. Paradigmatic ecological ideas such as ecosystems, succession dynamics, punctuated equilibrium, and climate change are shown to have a literary foundation that preceded their status as theories in science. This book represents an elevation of the prospects of ecocriticism toward fully developed interdisciplinary potentials of literary ecology.

Explores the philosophy, science, and spirituality of nature mysticism and its Green calling • Offers a solid bridge between spiritual practice and environmental activism • Reveals how we can heal the environment by renewing our connection to it • Shows how spiritual encounters in nature are healing the Nature Deficit Disorder of our psyches and bodies Many have been struck by a majestic moment in nature--a sole illuminated flower in a shady grove, an owl swooping silently across a wooded path, or an infinitely starry sky--and found themselves in a state of expanded awareness so profound they can feel the interconnectedness of all life. These trance-like moments of clarity, unity, and wonder often incite a call to protect and preserve the earth--to support Nature as she supports us. Termed “nature mysticism,” people from all cultures have described such experiences. However, the ever-increasing urbanization of the world’s population is threatening this ancient connection as well as the earth itself. In Ecomysticism, Carl von Essen explores nature mysticism through the recorded experiences of outdoor enthusiasts as well as scientific studies in biology, psychology, and neuroscience. Citing consciousness scholar William James and a variety of well-known nature lovers such as Ansel Adams, Henry David Thoreau, and Ralph Waldo Emerson, von Essen shows how the spiritual transcendence from an encounter in nature--like other mystical experiences--is healing the Nature Deficit Disorder of our psyches and bodies, leading to an expansion of our worldview and a clearer understanding of our self and of our natural world. Offering a solid bridge between spiritual practice and environmental activism, von Essen’s spiritual ecology reveals how only through a renewal of humanity’s spiritual connection to nature can we effect true environmental healing.

Causing a considerable stir when it was first published in Germany in 1965, "Theology of Hope" represents a comprehensive statement of the importance for theology of eschatology - and of an eschatological theology which emphasizes the revolutionary effect of Christian hope upon the thought, institutions and conditions of life in the here and now. Jürgen Moltmann understands Christian faith essentially as hope for the future of humankind and creation as this has been promised by the God of the exodus and the resurrection of the crucified Jesus. God's promise is the compulsory force of history, awakening hope which keeps human beings unreconciled to present experience, sets them in contradistinction to prevailing natural and social powers, and makes the church the source of continual new impulses towards, in Moltmann's own words, "the realization of righteousness, freedom and humanity in the light of the promised future that is to come". This new expanded edition of a theological classic includes his 2020 Charles Gore lecture ‘A Theology of Hope for the 21st Century’, in which he offers a powerful reflection on the nature of hope in our current times.

A multidisciplinary index covering the journal literature of the arts and humanities. It fully covers 1,144 of the world's leading arts and humanities journals, and it indexes individually selected, relevant items from over 6,800 major science and social science journals.

This volume critically investigates current topics and disciplines that are affected, enriched or put into dispute by the burgeoning scholarship on Animal Studies.

This book brings together the study of modern fiction, tragedy, chance, and the natural world. It will appeal to graduate students and researchers interested in British and European modernism, philosophy, science and literature, and classical reception studies. It will also interest scholars studying the novel or tragedy more generally.

Tracing the continuities and trends in the complex relationship between literature and science in the long nineteenth century, this companion provides scholars with a comprehensive, authoritative and up-to-date foundation for research in this field. In intellectual, material and social terms, the transformation undergone by Western culture over the period was unprecedented. Many of these changes were grounded in the growth of science. Yet science was not a cultural monolith then any more than it is now, and its development was shaped by competing world views. To cover the full range of literary engagements with science in the nineteenth century, this companion consists of twenty-seven chapters by experts in the field, which explore crucial social and intellectual contexts for the interactions between literature and science, how science affected different genres of writing, and the importance of individual scientific disciplines and concepts within literary culture. Each chapter has its own extensive bibliography. The volume as a whole is rounded out with a synoptic introduction by the editors and an afterword by the eminent historian of nineteenth-century science Bernard Lightman.