Michael E. Zimmerman

Not exactly sure how you’d go about making this any better, perfectly good secondary literature on every topic listed in the title. Heidegger isn’t as original as I once thought, really rode the coat tails of reactionary modernists and post-Nietzsche figures who dug that whole Volk thing - his obsession with poetry is a little gay as well. Yeah Heidegger go on, say liberal democracies and authoritarian governments are metaphysically the same because they’re based within the technological epoch, tell me more about the idea that physis and the interplay of presence/absence has caused the clearing of the Will-to-Will infatuated Dasein to only be able to discover entities as mere standing-reserve, your little readings of Hölderlin inside your quaint little secluded cottage are definitely gonna save the day!!… (mer)

An important book , but a depressing one, since in many ways the dangers the author describes are more acute now than twenty years ago, when the book first appeared.
Unsurprisingly, since the author published this book after years of moonlighting from his academic work as a newspaper columnist, this book covers a disparate grab-bag of topics, but some of his principle targets are the imposition of creation “science” in the schools, a trend not unrelated to American children at the bottom of the league of developed nations in scientific literacy, and the irresponsible and largely unrestricted use of pesticides.
He attacks head-on the charge that environmental responsibility would be economically unfeasible, citing several instances where decisions that are environmentally-sound have proven to bring large monetary savings.
So why aren’t we taking better care of the planet we’ve been entrusted with? There are many culprits, but the author directs most of his ire to large corporations — the chemical, logging, and mining industries, for example — for their venality and short-sightedness. Coming up a close second is government, especially acquiescent legislators at local, state and federal levels. Finally, a gullible and environmentally-illiterate public.
The environmental literacy for which he pleads is not a mastery of scientific facts but a basic understanding of how science works, how sound experiments are conducted, how to reason from the results of scientific research. For the solution, to this author, is not to take decision-making away from congress and into the hands of scientists, but to make the ultimate arbiters of public policy an informed public.… (mer)