This work is a large, powerfully illustrated interdisciplinary natural sciences volume, the first of its kind to examine the critically important nature of ecological paradox, through an abundance of lenses: the biological sciences, taxonomy, archaeology, geopolitical history, comparative ethics, literature, philosophy, the history of science, human geography, population ecology, epistemology, anthropology, demographics, and futurism. 

 

The ecological paradox suggests that the human biological-and from an insular perspective, successful-struggle to exist has come at the price of isolating H. sapiens from life-sustaining ecosystem services, and far too much of the biodiversity with which we find ourselves at crisis-level odds. It is a paradox dating back thousands of years, implicating millennia of human machinations that have been utterly ruinous to biological baselines. Those metrics are examined from numerous multidisciplinary approaches in this thoroughly original work, which aids readers, particularly natural history students, who aspire to grasp the far-reaching dimensions of the Anthropocene, as it affects every facet of human experience, past, present and future, and the rest of planetary sentience.

With a Preface by Dr. Gerald Wayne Clough, former Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution and President Emeritus of the Georgia Institute of Technology. Foreword by Robert Gillespie, President of the non-profit, Population Communication.

Foreword

Preface
Part 1. Tractatus Ecologia Paradoxi
Introduction
On the Nature of Paradox
Ecological Problems and Paradigmatic Solutions
Protected Area Dilemmas
The Paradox of Protection
The Ecclesiastes Factor
Pathologies of Self-Image
Paradoxical Frontiers
The Obsolescence of Presuppositions
Ecological Contradiction, Antinomy and Counter-Intuition
Heavy and Light Contingencies of Consciousness
The Paradise Paradox
Codex Sinaiticus
Russell's Paradox as Ecological Proxy
The Evolution of Innocence and Strategy
Tatters and Poignancies
The Echoes of Malhazine
A Cave at Taranga
A Village in Prince Christian Sound
The Grampians
The Yasuní Effect
Sakteng
A River Somewhere in Georgia
Jan Van Goyen's Exquisite Obsession
Paradox of the Lamb
Botanical Equations for Paradox
Part 2. Ecological Memories and Fractions
The Metaphysics of Photography
The Consolations of a Château
Book of the Dead
Ecological Double-Binds
The Temptation of the Catastrophe: Deep Structures of Suicide
Cave Paintings of the Mind
Moral Choices in an Epoch of Angst
The Dream of Don Quixote
The Ratiocinations of Rakiura
Human Evolution at a Glance within Ryoan-ji
The Paradox of Light
The Last Numbers of Emptiness
Shelley's Ecological Exile and His Utopia of Animal Rights
The Zoosemiotic Paradox of Aesop
The Conical Temple of Konawsh
Does Natural Selection Select for Natural Selection?
The Paradox of Solace
Collodi's Garden and the Misadventures of Pinocchio
The Poetics of Biodiversity: Kazantzakis and Crete
Famine in Bangladesh
Sakya Coming Out of his Mountain Retreat
The Mind of a Chicken
The Christ Paradox
Unthinkable Nullities, Negative Proofs
Irrational Biomes
The Extinction Probability Era
Non-Linear Reciprocity
The Unfettered Gaze
No Equation for It: Numbers with No Attachment
A Situational Animal Rights Ethic
The Geography of Contradiction
Metaphysical Landscapes
Savery's Castle of Secrets
Human Cruelty and SARS-CoV-2
Part 3. A Natural History of Existentialism
Strange Connectors
The Synecological Conscience
The Ecological Summons of Jain Mathematical Calculations
Fundaments of Observation and Melancholy
The Great Divergence
Mismatches
True Narcissism
Caesuras of Certainty
The Other
Of Malignant Variables
The Concept of Zero
On the Nature of Equivalencies
Metaphorical Realities
Ecological Epistemology
The Natural Selection of Indeterminacy
Imagining Transitions
The Finely-Honed Basis of Unknowing
The Buddhist Obtuse and its Ecological Correlates
Ecological Emptiness
Temptational Obscurity That Brings Hope to Life
Biological Proxies for the Individual
Shifting Balance
Comes Crashing Down Upon It
Systems Paradox
The Final Hermitage of Ideals
The Paradox of Prayer
Forgiveness
Rebirth
The Cycle of Alterities
The Individual and the Circumference
Non-Linear Ethics
A Lost Species
Ecological Idealism
The Problem of Interdependency
A Metaphysics of Naturalism
The Phylogenetic Conundrum
The Biosphere Beyond Humanity
The Anthropic Syllogism
The Last Island
Coda: Liberation Ecosynthesis
Index.