The Only World We've Got: A Paul Shepard Reader

The philosopher and essayist Paul Shepard (1925-1996) brought to the environmental literature of the 1960s and '70s the political passion of the time, but a passion matched with a demand for scholarly precision. This anthology from his work, which Shepard himself assembled not long before his death, addresses themes he touched on in many of his books. Many of them deal in one way or another with the disastrous consequences of humankind's increasing detachment from the natural world as a by-product of "the ecological insolence of the last century." In Shepard's view, the natural world--and particularly the world of animals--is the source of human intelligence and the wellspring of the imagination. He examines, for instance, the antiquity of the human eye, an organ essential to the cognitive revolution that distinguishes us from other primates; the origins of language and of literature in the imitation of birdsong; and the lessons animals of many species can teach us about ourselves. Shepard delves into environmental psychology, anatomy, history, linguistics, and a host of other topics to make his arguments, which are strikingly original. They have also been influential in shaping modern environmental philosophy, and this useful collection shows why that should be so. --Gregory McNamee