The New Ecology emphasizes change and dynamism in ecological systems, claiming that ecology has under-emphasized these features of natural systems and their organizational structures. This emphasis reminds me of a discussion that occurred on the first day of one of my courses in Environmental Ethics. The course mainly covers modern philosophies and attitudes, but I usually spend the first day talking about the ancient background of our modern ideas. I had just spoken of the emphasis in the Hebrew tradition on the eternal nature of Jahweh, and had gone on to expound on the fascination of early Greek philosophers with change and permanence. I noted that the precocious Heraclitus had proclaimed, “All is in flux,” but that Parmenides, who denied even the possibility of change, was more representative of Greek thought. I explained how Plato had declared the changing world of the senses illusory because this world lacked the stable and unchanging status of “Ideas” or “Forms.” For Plato, only the constant and unchanging could be real. Then, a student asked perhaps the best question I have encountered in over twenty years of teaching: Why do the Judaeo-Christian tradition and the Greek tradition share the same reverence for the fixed and unchanging?

Philosophy, at its best, identifies and questions our deepest assumptions. The student had noticed that both the Hebrews and the Greeks, so different in other respects, apparently gravitated toward static, everlasting, ultimate explanations of the confusing and highly changeable world they encountered experientially.