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Dear Nisa.
I think I read the book in a different way than you. I agree with the message of the book and then for me allot is forgiven. At the same time I also had some issues about the line from Plato to today. I think Worthy takes a big leap and stretches the reach and impact of Plato’s ideas about rationality and division between things and as you mentioned much (with emphasis on much) have happened since ancient Greece in the worlds of ideas. I don´t think you have to worry about our fellow students though. I don´t think anyone will judge philosophy only in regard to what we have read about Descartes and Plato.
I think ideas and world views have impact on the material world in an interactional way. What you think affects how you act and how you act shapes the world. At the same time how you act and how the world is shaped makes impact on how you think. This is applicable on an individual- as well as a societal scale, I think. The intensified industrialization in China, with its environmental impact, proves that long heritage of thought doesn´t necessarily come in to play at the present on every scale. Hence worlds of ideas doesn´t need to affect all of your actions. Worthy argued on Marias question that this is a western heritage at play in China right now, and not the eastern philosophy, I don´t know what to say about that. Does it mean where ever this negative pattern of compressing “nature” occurs, it is a western heritage?
Of course this “short” book is a generalization of many things, such as the history of ideas, but I think it’s is a good book for its purposes. For what “Invisible nature” is I think the book has great qualities if not for a broader public of non-expertise and maybe even more in an American context?
All the best,
Ellen
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