Man and the Natural World
Man and the Natural World. Changing Attitudes in England 1500–1800 by historian Keith Thomas was published in Great Britain by Allen Lane in 1983. Anthropocentric worldview; the first chapter introduces us to the extreme human-centred view of the natural world in early modern England. This chapter is educational because the extreme anthropocentric view of that period is far removed from our modern worldview; this anthropocentric view had theological foundations and roots in Greek philosophers such as Aristotle. All things were created for the pleasure of man. Wild animals and fish are God's gift to all men. Plants were created by God for the sake of animals for the sake of men. Humans are carnivorous. Animals might be lawfully killed. Cattle and sheep had only been given life in the first place to keep their meat fresh till we shall have need to eat them. Furthermore, they were better off in man's care. Suffering of animals was denied. If not for food, animals were created for aesthetic purposes; the louse was created to provide a powerful incentive to habits of cleanliness.
Weeds exercised the industry of man to weed them out. The purpose of singing-birds was to entertain mankind. No animal or plant existed for itself; this worldview was unquestioned at the time. Only after travellers came back with stories about the respectful treatment of animals by Buddhists and Hindus, an alternative worldview was possible in theory, but the general reaction was of baffled contempt. Humans are superior, animals are inferior. Human uniqueness. One of the pillars of the anthropocentric world view was the biblical view of human uniqueness. Humans are superior. There is an fixed barrier between humans and animals; this doctrine was reinforced by the philosophy of René Descartes: animals are machines and cannot feel pain. Influence of botanists and zoologists; the rise of natural history helped to undermine this anthropocentric view. Anthropocentric classifications such as edible-inedible, useful-useless animals were being replaced by more objective classifications based on neutral observational criteria.
That was real progress because old classifications were arbitrary and had harmful effects on wild animals. Gamekeepers slaughtered innocent woodpeckers. Gardeners destroyed worms; the wren and the squirrel were ritually hunted at Christmas. On the other hand, in some parts of England the robin and swallow were more or less sacred and treated with respect; the naturalists of the 17th century were beginning to study plants and animals for their own sake, independent of their utility or meaning for man. Pets narrowing the gap. In the 16th and 17th centuries pets had established themselves in the English households for company in towns. Not only dogs and cats, but pet monkeys, otters, rabbits and songbirds such as canaries, goldfinches, linnets, parrots and jackdaws. In the 18th century pets were given human names, were never eaten. Observation of pets provided support for the view that pets could be intelligent, sensitive and every other human quality. All this helped to break down the absolute gap between humans.
Cruelty to animals. Cruelty to animals was universal in England before 1700. However, attitudes to cruelty were changing. Theologian John Calvin, still within the anthropocentric tradition, remembered that animals, like men, were part of God's creation, were created for Man's sake, but we should handle them gently. From the 1740s onwards, there was a growing stream of writings by philosophers and poets attacking cruelty, culminating in the foundation of the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals in 1824. Man was entitled to domesticate animals and to kill them for food and clothing, but to cause unnecessary suffering was morally wrong; this was a significant change. However, the question remained: Which animals? What is'unnecessary' suffering? Quakers forbid hunting for sport altogether. Philosopher Jeremy Bentham wrote in 1789: the question is not'Can they reason?' nor'Can they talk?' but'Can they suffer?'. Influence of astronomers and geologists. Unexpectedly and geologists too had a profound effect on changing attitudes, just like botanists and zoologists did earlier.
As astronomers revealed that the earth was not the centre of the universe, it became hard to maintain that the universe was created for humans. Geologists discovered that the earth must have existed'some 70.000 years' before the appearance of man. So, what was the point of an Earth without Man? If the universe and the earth were not specially created for humans, why would animals and plants be specially created for man? Attitudes to trees and flowers; the forest had been seen as wild and hostile, providing shelter for dangerous wild beasts and a refuge for outlaws. It was believed that the first human beings were'woodland men', homines sylvestres; the progress of mankind was from the forest to the field. This resulted in large-scale forest clearance. Woodlands became a resource for shipbuilding. Between 1500 and 1700 the number of trees was reduced. Forests became'romantic', they added beauty and dignity to the scene. Private landowners planted some 50,000,000 timber trees between 1760 and 1835. New exotic species were imported.
Flowers were grown not because they were medicinally useful or symbolically meaningful, but because they were aesthetically pleasing. Flowers were imported from all over the world. Attitudes to n
George Bernard Shaw
George Bernard Shaw, known at his insistence as Bernard Shaw, was an Irish playwright, critic and political activist. His influence on Western theatre and politics extended from the 1880s to his death and beyond, he wrote more than sixty plays, including major works such as Man and Superman and Saint Joan. With a range incorporating both contemporary satire and historical allegory, Shaw became the leading dramatist of his generation, in 1925 was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. Born in Dublin, Shaw moved to London in 1876, where he struggled to establish himself as a writer and novelist, embarked on a rigorous process of self-education. By the mid-1880s he had become a respected music critic. Following a political awakening, he joined the gradualist Fabian Society and became its most prominent pamphleteer. Shaw had been writing plays for years before his first public success and the Man in 1894. Influenced by Henrik Ibsen, he sought to introduce a new realism into English-language drama, using his plays as vehicles to disseminate his political and religious ideas.
By the early twentieth century his reputation as a dramatist was secured with a series of critical and popular successes that included Major Barbara, The Doctor's Dilemma and Caesar and Cleopatra. Shaw's expressed views were contentious, he courted unpopularity by denouncing both sides in the First World War as culpable, although not a republican, castigated British policy on Ireland in the postwar period. These stances had no lasting effect on his productivity as a dramatist. In 1938 he provided the screenplay for a filmed version of Pygmalion for which he received an Academy Award, his appetite for politics and controversy remained undiminished. In the final decade of his life he made fewer public statements, but continued to write prolifically until shortly before his death, aged ninety-four, having refused all state honours, including the Order of Merit in 1946. Since Shaw's death scholarly and critical opinion has varied about his works, but he has been rated as second only to Shakespeare among British dramatists.
The word Shavian has entered the language as encapsulating Shaw's ideas and his means of expressing them. Shaw was born at 3 Upper Synge Street in a lower-middle-class part of Dublin, he was the youngest child and only son of Lucinda Elizabeth Shaw. His elder siblings were Elinor Agnes; the Shaw family was of English descent and belonged to the dominant Protestant Ascendancy in Ireland. His relatives secured him a sinecure in the civil service, from which he was pensioned off in the early 1850s. In 1852 he married Bessie Gurly. If, as Holroyd and others surmise, George's motives were mercenary he was disappointed, as Bessie brought him little of her family's money, she came to despise her ineffectual and drunken husband, with whom she shared what their son described as a life of "shabby-genteel poverty". By the time of Shaw's birth, his mother had become close to George John Lee, a flamboyant figure well known in Dublin's musical circles. Shaw retained a lifelong obsession; the young Shaw suffered no harshness from his mother, but he recalled that her indifference and lack of affection hurt him deeply.
He found solace in the music. Lee was a teacher of singing; the Shaws' house was filled with music, with frequent gatherings of singers and players. In 1862, Lee and the Shaws agreed to share a house, No. 1 Hatch Street, in an affluent part of Dublin, a country cottage on Dalkey Hill, overlooking Killiney Bay. Shaw, a sensitive boy, found the less salubrious parts of Dublin shocking and distressing, was happier at the cottage. Lee's students gave him books, which the young Shaw read avidly. Between 1865 and 1871, Shaw attended four schools, his experiences as a schoolboy left him disillusioned with formal education: "Schools and schoolmasters", he wrote, were "prisons and turnkeys in which children are kept to prevent them disturbing and chaperoning their parents." In October 1871 he left school to become a junior clerk in a Dublin firm of land agents, where he worked hard, rose to become head cashier. During this period, Shaw was known as "George Shaw". In June 1873, Lee left Dublin for London and never returned.
A fortnight Bessie followed him. Shaw's explanation of why his mother followed Lee was that without the la
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, sometimes referred to as Britain, is a sovereign country located off the north-western coast of the European mainland. The United Kingdom includes the island of Great Britain, the north-eastern part of the island of Ireland, many smaller islands. Northern Ireland is the only part of the United Kingdom that shares a land border with another sovereign state, the Republic of Ireland. Apart from this land border, the United Kingdom is surrounded by the Atlantic Ocean, with the North Sea to the east, the English Channel to the south and the Celtic Sea to the south-west, giving it the 12th-longest coastline in the world; the Irish Sea lies between Great Ireland. With an area of 242,500 square kilometres, the United Kingdom is the 78th-largest sovereign state in the world, it is the 22nd-most populous country, with an estimated 66.0 million inhabitants in 2017. The UK is constitutional monarchy; the current monarch is Queen Elizabeth II, who has reigned since 1952, making her the longest-serving current head of state.
The United Kingdom's capital and largest city is London, a global city and financial centre with an urban area population of 10.3 million. Other major urban areas in the UK include Greater Manchester, the West Midlands and West Yorkshire conurbations, Greater Glasgow and the Liverpool Built-up Area; the United Kingdom consists of four constituent countries: England, Scotland and Northern Ireland. Their capitals are London, Edinburgh and Belfast, respectively. Apart from England, the countries have their own devolved governments, each with varying powers, but such power is delegated by the Parliament of the United Kingdom, which may enact laws unilaterally altering or abolishing devolution; the nearby Isle of Man, Bailiwick of Guernsey and Bailiwick of Jersey are not part of the UK, being Crown dependencies with the British Government responsible for defence and international representation. The medieval conquest and subsequent annexation of Wales by the Kingdom of England, followed by the union between England and Scotland in 1707 to form the Kingdom of Great Britain, the union in 1801 of Great Britain with the Kingdom of Ireland created the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland.
Five-sixths of Ireland seceded from the UK in 1922, leaving the present formulation of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. There are fourteen British Overseas Territories, the remnants of the British Empire which, at its height in the 1920s, encompassed a quarter of the world's land mass and was the largest empire in history. British influence can be observed in the language and political systems of many of its former colonies; the United Kingdom is a developed country and has the world's fifth-largest economy by nominal GDP and ninth-largest economy by purchasing power parity. It has a high-income economy and has a high Human Development Index rating, ranking 14th in the world, it was the world's first industrialised country and the world's foremost power during the 19th and early 20th centuries. The UK remains a great power, with considerable economic, military and political influence internationally, it is sixth in military expenditure in the world. It has been a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council since its first session in 1946.
It has been a leading member state of the European Union and its predecessor, the European Economic Community, since 1973. The United Kingdom is a member of the Commonwealth of Nations, the Council of Europe, the G7, the G20, NATO, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development and the World Trade Organization; the 1707 Acts of Union declared that the kingdoms of England and Scotland were "United into One Kingdom by the Name of Great Britain". The term "United Kingdom" has been used as a description for the former kingdom of Great Britain, although its official name from 1707 to 1800 was "Great Britain"; the Acts of Union 1800 united the kingdom of Great Britain and the kingdom of Ireland in 1801, forming the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. Following the partition of Ireland and the independence of the Irish Free State in 1922, which left Northern Ireland as the only part of the island of Ireland within the United Kingdom, the name was changed to the "United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland".
Although the United Kingdom is a sovereign country, Scotland and Northern Ireland are widely referred to as countries. The UK Prime Minister's website has used the phrase "countries within a country" to describe the United Kingdom; some statistical summaries, such as those for the twelve NUTS 1 regions of the United Kingdom refer to Scotland and Northern Ireland as "regions". Northern Ireland is referred to as a "province". With regard to Northern Ireland, the descriptive name used "can be controversial, with the choice revealing one's political preferences"; the term "Great Britain" conventionally refers to the island of Great Britain, or politically to England and Wales in combination. However, it is sometimes used as a loose synonym for the United Kingdom as a whole; the term "Britain" is used both as a synonym for Great Britain, as a synonym for the United Kingdom. Usage is mixed, with the BBC preferring to use Britain as shorthand only for Great Britain and the UK Government, while accepting that both terms refer to the United K
Henry Stephens Salt
Henry Stephens Salt was an English writer and campaigner for social reform in the fields of prisons, economic institutions, the treatment of animals. He was a noted ethical vegetarian, anti-vivisectionist and pacifist, was well known as a literary critic, classical scholar and naturalist, it was Salt who first introduced Mohandas Gandhi to the influential works of Henry David Thoreau, influenced Gandhi's study of vegetarianism. Salt is credited with being the first writer to argue explicitly in favour of animal rights, in his Animals' Rights: Considered in Relation to Social Progress, rather than focusing on improvements to animal welfare, he wrote: "If we are going to do justice to the lower races, we must get rid of the antiquated notion of a'great gulf' fixed between them and mankind, must recognize the common bond of humanity that unites all living beings in one universal brotherhood." The son of a British army colonel, Salt was born in Naini Tal in India in 1851, but returned with his family to England in 1852 while still an infant.
He studied at Eton College, graduated from the University of Cambridge in 1875. After Cambridge, Salt returned to Eton as an assistant schoolmaster to teach classics. Four years in 1879, he married the scholar Catherine Leigh Joynes, the daughter of a fellow master at Eton, he remained at Eton until 1884, inspired by classic ideals and disgusted by his fellow masters' meat-eating habits and reliance on servants, he and Kate moved to a small cottage at Tilford, Surrey where they grew their own vegetables and lived simply, sustained by a small pension Salt had built up. Salt began work on the pioneering Humanitarian League. During his lifetime Salt wrote 40 books, his first, A Plea for Vegetarianism was published by the Vegetarian Society, in 1890, he produced an acclaimed biography of philosopher Henry David Thoreau, two interests that led to a friendship with Mahatma Gandhi. He wrote, in On Cambrian and Cumbrian Hills, about the need for nature conservation to protect the natural beauty of the British countryside from commercial vandalism.
His circle of friends included many notable figures from late-19th and early-20th century literary and political life, including writers Algernon Charles Swinburne, John Galsworthy, Thomas Hardy, Rudyard Kipling, Havelock Ellis, Count Leo Tolstoy, William Morris, Peter Kropotkin, George Bernard Shaw and Robert Cunninghame-Graham, as well as Labour leader James Keir Hardie and Fabian Society co-founders Hubert Bland and Annie Besant. Salt formed the Humanitarian League in 1891, its objectives included the banning of hunting as a sport. In 1914 The League published a whole volume of essays on Killing for Sport, the preface was written by George Bernard Shaw; the book formed in summary form the Humanitarian League's arraignment of blood-sports. Keith Tester writes that, in 1894, Salt created an "epistemological break," by being the first writer to consider the issue of animal rights explicitly, as opposed to better animal welfare. In Animals' Rights: Considered in Relation to Social Progress, Salt wrote that he wanted to "set the principle of animals' rights on a consistent and intelligible footing, to show that this principle underlies the various efforts of humanitarian reformers...": Even the leading advocates of animal rights seem to have shrunk from basing their claim on the only argument which can be held to be a sufficient one—the assertion that animals, as well as men, though, of course, to a far less extent than men, are possessed of a distinctive individuality, therefore, are in justice entitled to live their lives with a due measure of that'restricted freedom' to which Herbert Spencer alludes.
He wrote that there is no point in claiming rights for animals if we subordinate their rights to human interests, he argued against the presumption that a human life has more value than a nonhuman one: notion of the life of an animal having'no moral purpose,' belongs to a class of ideas which cannot be accepted by the advanced humanitarian thought of the present day—it is a purely arbitrary assumption, at variance with our best instincts, at variance with our best science, fatal to any full realization of animals' rights. If we are going to do justice to the lower races, we must get rid of the antiquated notion of a'great gulf' fixed between them and mankind, must recognize the common bond of humanity that unites all living beings in one universal brotherhood." A Plea for Vegetarianism A Shelley Primer Flesh or Fruit? An Essay on Food Reform The Life of James Thomson Life of Henry David Thoreau Animals' Rights: Considered in Relation to Social Progress Richard Jefferies: A Study Selections from Thoreau Percy Bysshe Shelley: Poet and Pioneer The Logic of Vegetarianism: Essays and Dialogues Richard Jefferies: His Life and His Ideas The Faith of Richard Jefferies Cambrian and Cumbrian Hills: Pilgrimages to Snowdon and Scafell The Humanities of Diet Seventy Years among Savages Call of the Wildflower The Story of My Cousins Our Vanishing Wildflowers Memories of Bygone Eton The Heart of Socialism Company I Have Kept Cum Grano The Creed of Kinship Hendrick, George.
Henry Salt: Humanitarian Reformer and Man of Letters Hendrick and Hendrick, Willene Hendrick. The Savour of Salt: A Henry Salt Anthology. Centaur Press
Animal product
An animal product is any material derived from the body of an animal. Examples are fat, blood, milk and lesser known products, such as isinglass and rennet. Animal by-products, as defined by the USDA, are products harvested or manufactured from livestock other than muscle meat. In the EU, animal by-products are defined somewhat more broadly, as materials from animals that people do not consume. Thus, chicken eggs for human consumption are considered by-products in the US but not France; this does not in itself reflect on safety, or "wholesomeness" of the product. Animal by-products are carcasses and parts of carcasses from slaughterhouses, animal shelters and veterinarians, products of animal origin not intended for human consumption, including catering waste; these products may go through a process known as "rendering" to be made into human and non-human foodstuffs and other material that can be sold to make commercial products such as cosmetics, cleaners, glue and ink. The sale of animal by-products allows the meat industry to compete economically with industries selling sources of vegetable protein.
The word animals includes all species in the biological kingdom Animalia. For example, insects and oysters are animals. Products made from fossilized or decomposed animals, such as petroleum formed from the ancient remains of marine animals, are not considered animal products. Crops grown in soil fertilized with animal remains are characterized as animal products. Several diets prohibit the inclusion of some animal products, including vegetarian and halal. Other diets, such as veganism and the raw vegan diet, exclude any material of animal origin. In international trade legislation, the terminology products of animal origin is used. Slaughterhouse waste is defined as animal body parts cut off in the preparation of carcasses for use as food; this waste can come from several sources, including slaughterhouses, restaurants and farms. In the UK, slaughterhouse waste is classed as category 3 risk waste in the Animal By-Products Regulations, with the exception of condemned meat, classed as category 2 risk.
The leftover pieces that comes from the process of stripping meat from animals tends to get used for different purposes. One of them is to put these parts into pet food. Many large, well-known pet food brands use animal by-products as protein sources in their recipes; this can include animal feet, lungs, spleens, etc. Vegan Society - Criteria For Vegan Food Extensive list identifying animal-derived and vegan ingredients FDA Consumer Magazine: The Lowdown on Labels Heinz, G. & Hautzinger, P. "Meat Processing Technology", Food and Agriculture Organization, 2007, accessed March 30, 2012. Leoci, R. Animal by-products: origins and European regulations, Mantova: Universitas Studiorum, 2014. ISBN 978-88-97683-47-6 Mian N Riaz, Riaz N Riaz, Muhammad M Chaudry. Halal Food Production, CRC Press, 2004. ISBN 1-58716-029-3 Tsai, Michelle. "What's in a can of dog food?, March 19, 2007. Earthly Origin of Materials, is a material animal, vegetable, or mineral
Ovo-lacto vegetarianism
An ovo-lacto vegetarian or lacto-ovo vegetarian is a vegetarian who consumes some animal products, such as eggs and dairy. Unlike pescatarians, they do not consume other seafood. A typical ovo-lacto vegetarian diet may include fruits, grains, seeds, roots, milk, yogurt and eggs; the terminology stems from the Latin lac meaning "milk", ovum meaning "egg", the English term vegetarian, so as giving the definition of a vegetarian diet containing milk and eggs. In the Western world, ovo-lacto vegetarians are the most common type of vegetarian. Speaking, when one uses the term vegetarian, an ovo-lacto vegetarian is assumed. Ovo-lacto vegetarians are well-catered to in restaurants and shops in some parts of Europe and metropolitan cities in North America. Jainism prohibits causing harm to anything with potential life. Traditionally this includes eggs and certain kinds of vegetables, as well as animals, but dairy products are permitted. Jains are therefore lacto vegetarians, not ovo-lacto vegetarians. In Hinduism, many individuals are either raised as ovo-lacto vegetarians or lacto vegetarians.
The Bible Christian Church was a Christian vegetarian sect founded by William Cowherd in 1809. Cowherd was one of the philosophical forerunners of the Vegetarian Society founded in 1847; the Bible Christian Church promoted the use of eggs and honey as God's given food per "the promised land flowing with milk and honey". Many Seventh-day Adventist followers are lacto-ovo vegetarians. For over 130 years, Seventh-day Adventists have recommended a vegetarian diet which may include milk products and eggs. In India, eggs are not universally considered vegetarian. To accommodate this, products containing eggs are specially marked to differentiate them from otherwise vegetarian food products; some manufacturers advise that their products contain eggs but not meat or animal products to avoid diminishing interest among those who practice ovo-vegetarianism
The New Church (Swedenborgian)
The New Church is the name for several related Christian denominations which developed as a new religious movement, influenced by the writings of scientist and Swedish Lutheran theologian Emanuel Swedenborg. According to Swedenborg, he received a new revelation from Jesus Christ in visions he experienced over a period of at least twenty-five years, he predicted in his writings that God would replace the traditional Christian Church, establishing a New Church which would worship God as Jesus Christ. According to New Church doctrine, each person must cooperate in repentance and regeneration; the movement was founded on the belief that God explained the spiritual meaning of the Bible to Swedenborg to reveal the truth of the Second Coming of Jesus Christ. Swedenborg cited divine revelation for his writings, his followers believe that he witnessed the Last Judgment in the spiritual world with the inauguration of the New Church; the church is seen by its members as what Jesus is establishing with those who believe that he is the one God of heaven and Earth, with obedience to Jesus' commandments necessary for salvation.
It is thought. New Church organizations acknowledge what they believe to be the universal nature of Jesus' church: all who do good in accordance with the truth of their religion will be accepted by Jesus into heaven, doing good joins one with God. Adherents believe that New Church doctrine is derived from the Bible and provides enlightenment of the truth. Other names for the movement include Swedenborgian, New Christians, Neo-Christians, Church of the New Jerusalem, The Lord's New Church. Although those outside the church may refer to the movement as Swedenborgianism, some adherents distance themselves from this title. Swedenborg published some of his theological works anonymously. Although Swedenborg spoke in his works about a "New Church" which would be based on theology, he never tried to establish such an organization. In 1768, a heresy trial began in two men who promoted them. A royal ordinance in 1770 declared that his writings were "clearly mistaken" and should not be taught, but his theology was never examined.
Swedenborg's clerical supporters were ordered to stop using his teachings, customs officials were directed to impound his books and stop their circulation in any district unless the nearest consistory granted permission. Swedenborg begged the king for protection in a letter from Amsterdam. At the time of Swedenborg's death, few efforts had been made to establish an organized church. On May 7, 1787, the New Church movement was founded in England – where Swedenborg had visited, where he died. A number of churches had sprung up around England by 1789, in April of that year the first General Conference of the New Church was held in Great Eastcheap, London. New Church ideas were brought to United States by missionaries. Early missionaries traveled to parts of Africa. Swedenborg believed that the "African race" was "in greater enlightenment than others on this earth, since they are such that they think more'interiorly', so receive truths and acknowledge them." African enlightenment was considered a liberal concept at the time, Swedenborgians accepted freed African converts in their homes as early as 1790.
Several Swedenborgians were abolitionists. Occultism became popular during the 19th century, some followers blended Swedenborg's writings with theosophy and divination. Swedenborg's mystical side fascinated them. In structure, it was related to Dante's Divine Comedy; the US church was organized in 1817 with the founding of the General Convention of the New Church, now known as the Swedenborgian Church of North America. The movement in the United States strengthened until the late 19th century, there was a New-Church Theology School in Cambridge. Controversies about doctrine and the authority of Swedenborg's writings caused a faction to split off and form the Academy of the New Church, it became known as the General Church of the New Jerusalem – sometimes called the General Church – with its headquarters in Bryn Athyn, Pennsylvania. Other congregations felt doctrinally compelled to join the General Church at its inception. Two Convention congregations in Canada and two congregations from the British Conference – Michael Church in London and Colchester New Church – joined the General Church.
In 2000, the most recent membership figures for the four church organizations were: General Conference of the New Church: 1,314 Swedenborgian Church of North America known as the General Convention: 2,029 General Church of the New Jerusalem: 5,563 The Lord's New Church Which Is Nova Hierosolyma: 1,000Membership in the New Church has always been small, the organizations have been involved in publishing. A doctrinal similarit
