Grounding knowledge : environmental philosophy, epistemology, and place /

Preston (Univ. of South Carolina) aims to provide a correction to the main trend of postmodern epistemology by calling attention to the importance of the physical environment in structuring knowledge. He concludes with a call to preserve diversity in natural landscapes. Along the way he discusses the ideas of a large and disparate array of thinkers, including anthropologists Keith Basso and Edwin Hutchins; biologists Richard Levins and Richard Lewontin; cognitive scientists Evan Thompson and Francisco Varela; ecologist Paul Shepard; feminist theorists Lorraine Code and Donna Haraway; geographer Yi-Fu Tuan; philosophers Edward Casey, Descartes, Paul Feyerabend, Sandra Harding, Hume, Kant, Thomas Kuhn, Locke, J.S. Mill, Plato, W.V. Quine, and Mark Rowlands; psychologists James Gibson, Mark Johnson, and Jean Piaget; and sociologists Karin Knorr-Cetina, Bruno Latour, and Andrew Pickering. Modernist philosophers will note that Preston makes little or no effort to clarify the concepts he employs (for example, mind, place, thought, and knowledge) or the claims he advances, and will conclude accordingly that it is impossible to determine whether he has made his case. The volume includes notes, bibliography, and an index. It will be useful for libraries supporting programs in postmodern thought or environmental studies. ^BSumming Up: Recommended. Graduate students; faculty and researchers. H. Pospesel University of Miami