Szerszynski Bronislaw Deane-Drummond Celia Bergmann - Technofutures, Nature and the Sacred: Transdisciplinary Perspectives

TECHNOFUTURES, NATURE AND THE SACRED

Transdisciplinary Perspectives

Edited by
CELIA DEANE-DRUMMOND
University of Notre Dame, USA
SIGURD BERGMANN
Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Trondheim, Norway
BRONISLAW SZERSZYNSKI
University of Lancaster, UK

ASHGATE

Celia Deane-Drummond, Sigurd Bergmann and Bronislaw Szerszynski 2015

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without the prior permission of the publisher.

Celia Deane-Drummond, Sigurd Bergmann and Bronislaw Szerszynski have asserted their right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the editors of this work.

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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

The Library of Congress has cataloged the printed edition as follows:

Technofutures, nature, and the sacred : transdisciplinary perspectives / edited by Celia Deane-Drummond, Sigurd Bergmann and Bronislaw Szerszynski.

pages cm

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-1-4724-4410-3 (hardcover) -- ISBN 978-1-4724-4411-0 (ebook) -- ISBN 978-1-4724-4412-7 (epub) 1. Technology--Religious aspects. 2. Nature. I. Deane-Drummond, Celia, editor.

BL265.T4T425 2015

20166--dc23

2014039117

ISBN: 9781472444103 (hbk)

ISBN: 9781472444110 (ebk-PDF)

ISBN: 9781472444127 (ebk-ePUB)

Celia Deane-Drummond, Sigurd Bergmann and Bronislaw Szerszynski

Walther Ch. Zimmerli

Maria Antonaccio

Fionn Bennett

Peter Manley Scott

Lisa H. Sideris

Francis Van den Noortgaete

Sigurd Bergmann

Celia Deane-Drummond

David Gormley-OBrien

Forrest Clingerman

Zemfira Inogamova-Hanbury

Matthew Kearnes

Bronislaw Szerszynski

Figures

Tables

Maria Antonaccio is Presidential Professor of Religion and an affiliated faculty member in Environmental Studies at Bucknell University. She is the author of Picturing the Human: The Moral Thought of Iris Murdoch and A Philosophy to Live By: Engaging Iris Murdoch, and is an Associate Editor of the forthcoming Wiley-Blackwell Companion to Religious Ethics, 2nd edition. A long-time teacher of courses on environmental ethics, the ethics of consumption and postnaturalism, her current research focuses on the cultural meanings of sustainability in the context of the Anthropocene.

Fionn Bennett is a philosopher of language at the Universit de Reims (France) specialising in intersemiocity and musica speculativa. Since defending his thesis on Martin Heideggers philosophy of language, his research has concentrated on the links between language and music. Pursuing a radically Cratylian line of thought, he is currently exploring the role music used to play in assuring that language and the natural world were in a relationship of concinnity or co-naturality. As part of the synthse he is completing for his habilitation, he will look at the way the roots of language in musical sound continues to be a part of the very substance of modern language. This study will be accompanied by the publication of a monograph entitled Thaumotropic Hierophonia: The Semantics of Mosik in Ancient Greece.

Sigurd Bergmann holds a doctorate in systematic theology from Lund University and is Professor in Religious Studies at the Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology in Trondheim. His previous studies have investigated the relationship between the image of God and views of nature in late antiquity, the methodology of contextual theology, visual arts in the indigenous Arctic and Australia, as well as visual arts, architecture and religion. He has initiated and chaired the European Forum on the Study of Religion and Environment, and ongoing projects investigate the relation of space/place and religion and religion in climatic change. His main publications are Geist, der Natur befreit (rev. ed. Creation Set Free); Geist, der lebendig macht; God in Context; Architecture, Aesth/Ethics and Religion (ed.); Theology in Built Environments (ed.); In the Beginning is the Icon; S frmmande det lika (So Strange, so Similar, on Smi visual arts, globalisation and religion); Raum und Geist: Zur Erdung und Beheimatung der Religion; and Religion, Space and the Environment. Bergmann was a co-project leader of the interdisciplinary programme Technical Spaces of Mobility (20032007) and co-edited The Ethics of Mobilities; Spaces of Mobility; Nature, Space & the Sacred; Religion, Ecology & Gender; Religion and Dangerous Environmental Change; Religion in Environmental and Climate Change. 201112 he was a visiting fellow at the Rachel Carson Center for Environment and Society in Mnchen. He is editor of the series Studies of Religion and the Environment (LIT, Berlin), board member of several international journals, and former leader of the section for philosophy, history of ideas and theology/religious studies in the Royal Norwegian Society of Sciences and Letters.

Forrest Clingerman is Associate Professor of Religion and Philosophy at Ohio Northern University, where he teaches classes in contemporary theology, ethics and the history of Christian thought. He is co-editor of Placing Nature on the Borders of Religion, Philosophy and Ethics and Interpreting Nature: The Emerging Field of Environmental Hermeneutics. In addition he has published a number of journal articles and book chapters on environmental thought. His recent publications have focused on the meaning of place in environmental philosophy and theology, the relationship between nature and the arts, and theological responses to climate change and climate engineering.

Celia Deane-Drummond is currently full Professor in Theology at the University of Notre Dame, USA. She holds degrees in natural science and theology and doctoral degrees in plant physiology and in systematic theology. She was director of the Center for Religion and the Biosciences at the University of Chester, UK, from 2001 to 2011. She is currently Chair of the European Forum for the Study of Religion and Environment. She was editor of the journal Ecotheology for six years, and is currently joint editor of Philosophy, Theology and the Biosciences. Her research interests are in the engagement of theology and natural science, including specifically ecology, evolution, animal behaviour and anthropology. She has published widely in the field. Her most recent books include Wonder and Wisdom: Conversations in Science, Spirituality and Theology; Genetics and Christian Ethics; Ecotheology; Christ and Evolution; The Wisdom of the Liminal: Evolution and Other Animals in Human Becoming.

David Gormley-OBrien graduated in 2005 with a DPhil from the University of Oxford with his thesis entitled Rich Clients and Poor Patrons: Functions of Friendship in Clement of Alexandrias Quis Dives Salvetur. He specialises in early Alexandrian Christianity and Hellenistic philosophy and explores what insights writers of this period may have to say about what it is to be human and what makes us as humans happy in light of the current environmental and economic crises. He teaches at the University of Divinity, Australia.