The Truth of Ecology is a wide-ranging, polemical appraisal of contemporary environmental thought. Focusing on the new field of ecocriticism from a thoroughly interdisciplinary perspective, this book explores topics as diverse as the history of ecology in the United States; the distortions of popular environmental thought; the influence of Critical Theory on radical science studies and radical ecology; the need for greater theoretical sophistication in ecocriticism; the contradictions of contemporary American nature writing; and the possibilities for a less devotional, "wilder" approach to ecocritical and environmental thinking. Taking his cues from Thoreau, Stevens, and Ammons, from Wittgenstein, Barthes and Eco, from Bruno Latour and Michel Serres, from the philosophers Rorty, Hacking, and Dennett, and from the biologists Ernst Mayr and Stephen Jay Gould, author Dana Phillips emphasizes an eclectic but pragmatic approach to a variety of topics. His subject matter includes the doctrine of social construction; the question of what it means to be interdisciplinary; the disparity between scientific and literary versions of realism; the difficulty of resolving the tension between facts and values, or more broadly, between nature and culture; the American obsession with personal experience; and the intellectual challenges posed by natural history. Those challenges range from the near-impossibility of defining ecological concepts with precision to the complications that arise when a birder tries to identify chickadees in poor light on a winter's afternoon in the Poconos.

About the Author
Dana Phillips earned a doctorate in English at Duke University. He has published articles on American literature in Raritan, American Literature, Arizona Quarterly, Nineteenth-Century Literature and New Literary History.

Reviews
Readers concerned that the community of nature writers and ecocritics has become too chummy and self-congratulatory...need look no further than Dana Phillips's witty and provocative new book for an astringent remedy.... Reading The Truth of Ecology...will make you stronger, better able to appreciate and evaluate the literature that explores our relationship with nature. * Orion *



Book Information
ISBN 9780195137699
Author Dana Phillips
Format Paperback
Page Count 320
Imprint Oxford University Press
Publisher Oxford University Press
Weight(grams) 454g
Dimensions(mm) 240mm * 153mm * 17mm