Dissertation Research: The "Eco-Worldview" of Charles Birch: Biology, Environmentalism, and Liberal Christianity in the 20th Century

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This Science and Society Dissertation Improvement Grant in the History of Science is a request for money to fund travel and research expenses necessary for completing a doctoral dissertation on the life and work of L. Charles Birch, a renowned population biologist, ecologist, philosopher and religious thinker who invented the phrase (and helped spark a movement toward) ecological sustainability. The project is timely not only because it provides insight into the history of ecology and the relationship between science and religion--both topics of central importance today but also because Dr. Birch is now 89 and opportunities are dwindling for documenting his intimate experiences in these areas. The project's CO-PI is uniquely qualified for this research, having already completed a preliminary trip in June of 2006 to conduct introductory interviews with Birch and outline future research plans. He has also contacted relevant archives and obtained permission for future access to dissertation materials. The chief intellectual merits of the project are its contributions to the history of ecology, the history of evolutionary thought and the evolutionary synthesis, and the history of the relationship between science and religion during the 20th century. A major goal of this study is to explore the connections between Birch's Whiteheadian process theology, which was explicitly intended to adapt Christian faith to the findings and methods of modern science, and Birch's career in population biology and ecology. A second objective is to examine how Birch's work with other leading biologists like Sewall Wright and Theodosius Dobzhanksy in America, and C.H. Waddington in England, impacted his view on the relationship between evolution and ecology, thereby also influencing his religious philosophy. The project proposes as a working hypothesis that even though Birch often thought of his scientific and his religious philosophical pursuits as distinct, they were in fact rooted in a common worldview, guided by common moral and philosophical principles, and therefore sources of common solutions to current social problems. Birch's ecological worldview professed the existence of a dynamic interconnectedness between all living things, and called on younger generations to recognize that by adopting an ethics of ecology they could avert many problems symptomatic of an industrial, technology-driven world without falling into old traps like religious conservatism and scientific determinism (what he saw as the polar extremes). While Birch's synthesis of ideas was unique, the problems he sought to address during his life were truly universal. Society today continues to search for a healthy relationship between its scientific pursuits and ecological responsibilities, as well as between its scientific pursuits and religious foundations. This dissertation project will aid in broadening our understanding of how these relationships developed over the past century, and how they reached their present status within 21st-century society.