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Notes
1. Aristotle, “Physics,” in The Basic Works of Aristotle, edited by Richard McKenon (New York: Random House, 1941), 194b30.
2. The Dalai Lama, The Universe in a Single Atom: The Convergence of Science and Spirituality (New York: Morgan Road Books, 2005), 46.
3. Bateson notes that, through the “ecology of ideas,” ideas may survive beyond the death of their originator(s): “The very meaning of ‘survival’ becomes different when we stop talking about the survival of something bounded by the skin and start to think of the survival of the system of ideas…. The contents of the skin are randomized at death…. But the ideas, under further transformation, may go on out in the world in books or works of art. Socrates as a bioenergetic individual is dead. But much of him still lives as a component in the contemporary ecology of ideas.” Gregory Bateson, Steps to an Ecology of Mind (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000), 467.
4. In referring to “mythologies” I employ the word in its sense as story (the Greek root mythos can refer to anything delivered by word of mouth or speech, or to any story or narrative), rather than pejoratively as narratives that are considered false or fanciful.
5. German philosopher Martin Heidegger (1889-1976) used the German In-der-Welt-sein (“being-in-the-world”) and da-sein (“being there”) to attempt to dislodge the Cartesian subject/object dualism prevalent in the Western philosophical tradition and to posit instead that the surrounding world is co-constitutive of human “being” and not simply a world of objects that exist “over there,” discrete from the perceiving human subject. Martin Heidegger, Being and Time (1927; rpt., Albany: State University of New York Press, 1996), esp. 7-9.
6. Wendell Berry, Sex, Economy, Freedom, and Community (New York: Pantheon Books, 1994), 95-96.
7. Lynn White, (1907-87), “The Historical Roots of Our Ecological Crisis,” Science, March 10, 1967, 1203-7, is the most widely known of this strain of thought. White blames much of the modern environmental destruction on the Judeo-Christian tradition. He argues that “pagan” views of nature were characterized by a certain animism that allegedly fostered respect for spirits immanent in nature itself; this attitude thereby kept ancient peoples from perpetrating significant environmental harm. In contrast, Judeo-Christian monotheism maintained a sense of the divine as distinct from nature and had the goal of transcending the dross of the surrounding world. From this root attitude, White argued, sprang modern environmentally destructive attitudes and practice.
8. Berry, Sex, Economy, Freedom, and Community, 96.
9. Bateson, Steps to an Ecology of Mind, 509.
10. A child, for example, when learning to walk dedicates much mental energy to coordinating muscle movements and carefully maintaining balance, yet upon mastering the skill of walking, the child gives little attention to such basic mechanics and his or her mind is therefore free to concentrate on other things. According to Bateson, “trusted ideas” become habit and form the foundation of the way in which individuals (and societies) think and perceive the world. They become automatic, “available for immediate use without thoughtful inspection, while the more flexible parts of the mind can be saved for use on newer matters.” Ibid., 509-10.
11. In discussing ideas that have become engrained simply through tradition, but that may, over the long run, prove destructive, Bateson states that, while “hard-programmed ideas become nuclear or nodal within constellations of other ideas… frequency of validation of an idea within a given segment of time is not the same as proof that the idea is either true or pragmatically useful over long time. We are discovering today that several of the premises which are deeply engrained in our way of life are simply untrue and become pathogenic when implemented with modern technology.” Ibid., 510.
12. Bateson’s sense of flexibility operates within certain tolerances, the violation of which results in “discomfort, pathology and ultimately death.” He employs the example of an acrobat on a high wire who must maintain a certain amount of rigidity as well as the flexibility “to move from one position of instability to another.” If, instead, “his arms are fixed or paralyzed … he must fall.” If a system of thought becomes so rigid that it loses the flexibility to evaluate even its unconscious assumptions or so supple that it loses all form, then it will consequently fall. Ibid., 503-6.
13. Bateson states that the ecological thinker must be adamant about maintaining flexibility. “[The ecologist] must also exert authority to preserve such flexibility as exists or can be created. At this point (as in the matter of unreplaceable natural resources), his recommendations must be tyrannical. Social flexibility is a resource as precious as oil or titanium.” Ibid., 505.
14. Joseph Smith Jr. et al., History of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, edited by B. H. Roberts, 2d ed. rev. (6 vols., 1902-12, Vol. 7, 1932; rpt., Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 1980 printing), 5:499. He delivered this sermon Sunday, July 9, 1843, at the grove near the temple.
15. Dean C. Jessee, ed., The Personal Writings of Joseph Smith (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 1984), 419.
16. Brigham Young, August 31, 1862, Journal of Discourses, 26 vols. (London and Liverpool: LDS Booksellers Depot, 1855-86), 9:369-70.
17. Fred C. Collier and William S. Harwell, eds., Kirtland Council Minute Book (Salt Lake City: Collier’s Publishing, 1996), 37.
18. Jessee, The Personal Writings of Joseph Smith, 508.
19. Richard Lyman Bushman, Joseph Smith: Rough Stone Rolling (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2005), 172.
20. Joseph Smith, January 21, 1844, History of the Church, 6:184-85.
21. Bateson, Steps to an Ecology of Mind, 509.
22. Maurice A. Finocchiaro, editor and translator, The Galileo Affair: A Documentary History (Berkley: University of California Press, 1989), 288: The panel of theologians who tried Galileo asserted that his belief that “the sun is the center of the world and motionless is a proposition which is philosophically absurd and false, and formally heretical, for being explicitly contrary to Holy Scripture; That the earth is neither the center of the world nor motionless but moves even with diurnal motion is philosophically equally absurd and false, and theologically at least erroneous in the Faith.”
23. Bateson, Steps to an Ecology of Mind, 504.
24. Henry Eyring, “A Tribute to President Joseph Fielding Smith,” Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought 7 (Spring 1972): 15-16.
25. Henry J. Eyring, Mormon Scientist: The Life and Faith of Henry Eyring (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 2008), 228. The Book of Abraham substitutes “time” for the Genesis use of “day,” implying indeterminate periods of creation, and states that, after planning the creation “the Gods watched those things which they had ordered until they obeyed” (4:18), suggesting a process rather than a one-time creative act.
26. Hugh Nibley wryly described the ongoing debate between evolution and a literal creationism as “a foolish contest between equally vain and bigoted rivals in which it is a moot question which side heaps the most contempt on God’s creatures.” Nibley, “Before Adam,” in Old Testament and Related Studies: Collected Works of Hugh Nibley, Vol. 1, edited by John W. Welch, Gary P. Gillum, and Don E. Norton (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book/Provo, Utah: Foundation for Ancient Research and Mormon Studies, 1986), 50.
27. Joseph Smith, “To the Honorable Men of the World,” Evening and the Morning Star 1, no. 3 (August 1832), 22, http://www.centerplace.org/history/ems/v1n03.htm (accessed February 15, 2011).
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2011