Nature Is Not Hidden but Perverse

Abstract

In the introduction I said that the goal of this work is to foster a democracy (of) thought among the disparate fields of philosophy, theology, and ecology. This democracy (of) thought is not an end unto itself, but is necessary in order to denude these discourses of any pretense to a hierarchical posture over the others. This in turn will allow us to treat material within these discourses as just that—simple material that can be distributed and organized in a different ecosystem (of) thought. This chapter serves to survey these fields as they are currently organized in relation to one another. In terms that will be discussed at length in part III, we will examine the ecotones or the limits of their identity as they come up against one another as already constituted, though unconsciously, as ecosystems (of) thought (an ecotone is a transition zone between two different ecosystems, often there will be a blending of elements from two different ecosystems and species will be present in the ecotone that are not present in either of the two bordering ecosystems). I will trace their limits and the spaces at their limits where they blend (ecotone) and in these limit-ecotone spaces we will find what remains unthought within their strict borders, what remains presented as if unecological in being thus thought, and we will then begin to identify the perversity of nature foreclosed to thought. As we will come to see, it is this blindness of these discourses to the perversity of nature foreclosed to thought, their refusal or inability to allow scientific ecology to infect and mutate their own thinking about their own thinking, that lies behind their remaining unecological in thinking nature.