Proposing that ecological thinking can effect a revolution in philosophy comparable to Kant’s Copernican revolution, the introduction eschews the abstraction and reductivism of orthodox western epistemology, to relocate inquiry “down on the ground”, in everyday lives and situations. In a series of ecological cautionary tales which display the negative effects of epistemologies of mastery, the introduction argues for mining the untapped resources ecological thinking affords, while warning against ecology’s propensity to romanticize “nature” and to align women and other Others with nature thus romanticized. It indicates why this book cannot be identified as an eco-feminist text, despite productive alliances between ecological thinkers and eco-feminists.
Keywords: ecological thinking, reductivism, mastery, eco-feminism, nature