Theory of Knowledge - Course Companion for Students Marija Uzunova Dang Arvin Singh Uzunov Dang

David Thoreau was a naturalist, writer
Henry
leading figure in the Transcendentalism
and
movement. His famous 1854 work,
religious
included the phrases “in wildness is
Walden,
preservation of the world” and “Heaven
the
under our feet as well as over our heads”,
is
his belief that nature was a source
asserting
spiritual truth. Thoreau was influential in
of
for a spiritual basis for conservation and
calling
establishing national forest preserves
advocated
would eventually become the world’s
that
National Parks. He was a big influence on
first
Muir, a naturalist, author, environmental
John
and pioneering advocate for the
philosopher
of the wilderness. Muir was one
preservation
the first Europeans to explore Yosemite
of
the wider Sierra Nevada Mountains, and
and
to have found a sacred place where
claimed
could hear the “divine music” of nature.
he
Anderson described Muir as “the
William
of our oneness with the earth”
archetype
Biographer Steven J. Holmes described
(1990).
as “one of the patron saints of twentiethcentury
him
American environmental activity”,
“profoundly shaped the very categories
who
which Americans understand and
through
their relationships with the natural
envision
(1999). Another biographer, Donald
world”
said Muir believed his mission was
Worster,
the Americansoul from total surrender
“saving
in the Wilderness marked a period in the United States of increasing interest in nature untouched by humankind, and the link between
Twilight
purity of nature and spirituality. One contemporary critic described the painting as “Nature with folded hands, kneeling at her evening
this
6III. Methods and tools
For discussion
Environmental issues
To what extent have ecosystems shaped
1.
knowledge, and vice versa?
religious
Under what circumstances might
2.
movements be considered
environmental
religious?
How might religious doomsday
3.
and scientific environmental
prophecies
predictions influence each
catastrophe
other?
to materialism” (2008).
Figure 6.5 Twilight in the Wilderness by Frederick Edwin Church (1860). Painted six years after Thoreau’s Walden was published (1854),
prayer” (Longfellow quoted in Sweeney 1989). Religious symbols include: a tree stump (bottom left) as a “wilderness altar” with a cross of
branches and the outline of an angel; three trees (right) symbolizing the three crosses at Calvary. Others interpret the scene apocalyptically,
as a metaphor for environmental abuse and forthcoming civil war.
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