The Study Of Capra's Ecological Philosophy

Since the 20 th century,ecological and environmental issues became the focus of people.With the advancement of technology,the modern industrialization enable human to enter a rapid development times,when humans are immersed in the great joy because of unprecedented achievements.They also face the global human survival problems of ecological imbalance,environmental degradation,resource scarcity endangers brought by industrial civilization.Serious reality awakens human's ecological awareness,which makes people aware that the nature exploitation has exceeded the limits of nature.It needs a new ecological concept that can balance the relations between human and nature on earth.This ecological concept helps people change thinking patterns to achieve harmony,coexistence and common prosperity among man,nature and society.Capra's ecological world makes profound reflection and criticism of human and nature from systematic perspective,and then he puts nature,humans and society in a unified world from the overall view to conduct analysis and interpretation in order to supply ideological basis to promote the harmony between man and nature.This paper takes the dialectical materialism and historical materialism as the basis position and the Marxist philosophy,ecology,economics,sociology as the theoretical basis and the unity of history and logic as principle.It also uses holistic thinking to further study on Capra ecological philosophy,which consists of five main parts:The first part,the paper demonstrates the Capra ecological philosophy background.Capra was born in 1938.In the 20 th century,the global economic crisis and world war brought great disasters to human beings and the prevalence of science led to the proliferation of technology exploitation and application.Technology and rapid economic development have brought severe damage to the environment whichhuman depends on.In many people's eyes,crises of modern humans was only the inevitable result of the development of modern technology in the industrialized process,ideas and cultural values are just accompaniment of the industrialization and modern technology.However,Capra's view is just opposite,who believes that the era,people living,is dominated by the world by Cartesian Paradigm and the Newtonian Mechanics Model and then it causes the deterioration of the ecological crisis.Therefore,it does lay the groundwork for systematically analyzing Capra's ecological philosophy from the specific background.The second part: the paper describes the main content of Capra's ecological philosophy from four aspects,namely,Systems Biology Theory Based On System Life,Individual Health Concept Based On The Medicine,Psychology and The Ecosystem Concept That Treats Economic System As The Scale and Harmonious Society That Treats Integral Social Harmony As The Goal.Capra thinks that thought crisis is the fundamental reason that leads to modern social ecological disorder,so he criticizes the Descartes and Newton's mechanistic worldview and inherited Prigogine's self-organizing systems theories from the research analysis of classic physics to modern physics.Capra advocates the general health views of "physical and mental harmony and unification " should be established,and then do research about "overall views" of economics and sociology and other fields.His positive initiatives:If existing crisis can be fundamentally solved,a new,holistic ecological world must be set up.The third part: the paper analyzes the essence of Capra ecological philosophy,which is a quintessential part of Capra ecological philosophy.Capra uses Thomas Kuhn's "paradigm" terminology to call the diversion as "paradigms easier." In his opinion,this kind of "paradigm shift" is to replace the old paradigm-Cartesian-Newtonian mechanistic by the systematic and ecological new paradigm.This shift from old paradigm to new paradigm reflects some new features:firstly,the overall approach of multiple opening.In the old paradigm,overall dynamics are explained as partial of nature,that is to say we can understand the whole dynamics property from some partial attributes.While in the new paradigm,therelationship between part and the entirety is reversed,the partial nature can only be understood through overall dynamics.As part cannot exist alone,it is only the part of the whole thing and is just one mode or node in an inseparable system.Secondly,the dynamically generated system demands.In the old paradigm,the process is determined by the interaction forces between the basic structures.In the new paradigm,each structure is considered to be performance of internal process.The entire network belongs to intrinsically dynamic system.Thirdly,about the interrelated function.In the old paradigm,scientific description is considered to be an objective existence which is independent of human observation and cognitive processes.Inthe new paradigm--epistemology--the understanding of the knowledge process--must be clearly included in the descriptions of natural phenomena.Cognition and reality is inseparable.Scientific theory contains epistemology,and Epistemology is an important part of scientific theory.More importantly,Capra extends "overall" worldview to the concern of human health,he thinks general health views should be established,that is to say three integration principles of compatible integration of body,and spirit,and heart,and blend integration of IQ and love quotient and heart quotient and mutual integration of natural,human and social should be set up,thus the life law summarize is interlinked with the mutual save,and symbiosis alternate and endless,which is from the East wisdom.In the fourth part,this paper makes a thorough analysis of the dialectical unity of Capra's ecological philosophy and Taoism.Capra absorbed the thought of the concept of complement,balance and circulation of yin and yang from the Chinese classic " the Book of Changes" and natural inaction concept of the Taoism,and try to build a new world culture pattern by fusing Chinese and western cultures.The guiding principle of his world cultural pattern is based on the basic philosophy of Taoism.According to his understanding,as a basic reality,"Tao" is a continuous process of motion and variation.Its basic sign is the cycle of perpetual motion.All the development of the nature are involved in the running of "Tao" which is the dynamic rule of internal generation.The basic characteristic of "Tao" is the cyclicity of moving and changing,which is throughout the course of the nature of all things and throughout all areas ofsocial life.Everything existing is following that rule,which basic structure is the ebb and flow of Yin and Yang.All the performance of "Tao" is manifestation of a continuous oscillation between the poles.There will be specific point in the process of interaction between Yin and Yang,so no one thing in the world is pure Yang or pure Yin.All the phenomenon is embodies the changing between Yin and Yang.The dynamic balance between Yin and Yang makes up the specific natural phenomenon.The West pays attention to reason.Rational thinking is linear,concentrated on analysis,which belongs to the category of intelligence and has functions of discrimination,measurement and classification.When we explain specific phenomenon,pure rational knowledge analysis can't completely generalize the outline of the nature of things,while the eastern ways of thinking can make up that lack.In eastern,they go from the non-intelligence reality experience,pay more attention to intuition.It tends to be integrated,holistic and nonlinear.Therefore,conceptual knowledge is egocentric positive activities,but negative activities are specifically embodies on intuitive wisdom.The combination of Yin and Yang has constructed the ecological thought of harmony between man and nature.The fifth part,the paper makes a summary of "One divides into two" about Capra's ecological philosophy thought,while admitting the "whole" world view to change the world,it also analyzes the limitations of his thoughts: the emphasis on the overall concept and the neglect of the cognitive structure of the part,too much emphasis on the role of the spirit of the material and ignore the basic role of material,attaching importance to the cultural determinism and ignoring the technical and social comprehensive effect of three-in-one.But one flaw cannot obscure the splendor of the jade,the analysis of Capra's "one divides into two" is to highlight the important value of thought itself.Capra's ecological philosophy thought is rich in the ecological philosophy of Marx,and it is the enrichment and promotion of ecological ethics,for the construction of ecological civilization in China today,it is conducive to the promotion of ecological moral idea,ecological moral obligation,ecological science awareness,but also it can provide reference for the scientific policy making.In a word,the harmonious relationship between man and nature is a commonproblem faced by human society,it is not only about the existence of human beings,but also is the concern and expectation of the future of human being.Since the harmony between man and nature is a common concern of human society,it is beyond the boundaries of nation and country from the essence,at the same time,it also means that it is difficult to solve the problem with a single cultural idea,therefore,it is urgent to strengthen the cultural dialogue between the countries and the nation from the realistic level,to promote the integration of cultural ideas and ideas in dialogue and communication.The historical process of the future should be drived by the harmonious development between man and nature.However,in the cooperative development between man and nature,human being cannot blindly develop or use nature resources,but people should continue to tap their own potential and external aspects.The transformation of human activities should be directed at the human themselves,which means that the great sublimation of human beings,it is a transcendence in the history of human development.