HARMONISING SCIENTISM AND ECONOMISM: ECOTHEOLOGY IN THE AGE OF ENVIRONMENTAL CRISIS

We live in an era where knowledge is not the monopoly of a single discipline called science. The religious epigraph about resurrection prefixed here is meant to illustrate ecopoiesis — life-replenishing processes in ecosystems, where each organism has a niche. That "Christ has been raised from the dead" is a science-laden truth, the art of clothing the bones with blood and filling the vessels with blood and water, restoring all bodily biological systems. Despite its religious foregrounding, this epigraph carries a truth promulgated in a discipline other than science. That one seemingly dead grain planted produces tenfold more grains epitomises resurrection. Death is a quintessential separation of body and soul; resurrection reunites the two, a manifestation of life renewal. This means that the humanities and social sciences are loaded with scientific overtones — an insight this article unpacks using ecotheology and intertextuality, drawing from death and the insects that are always with us.

STEM and HUMSS Categorisation

In the current classification of university courses into STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) and HUMSS (Humanities and Social Sciences), and in realising how multifaceted intelligence is, STEM students enjoy more scholarships than HUMSS. This trend has given rise to scientism — the belief that only science, its methods, and its enquiries can lead us to the truth about natural phenomena. For someone spellbound by scientism, the humanities are far from conceptualising any truth that science can nod its head to.

Economism, on the other hand, is characterised by insatiable capitalist growth which exploits natural resources to saturate the market with production. While scientism and economism could be environmentally deleterious, the humanities — grounded in ecologically friendly ethics — are harmonising, as John 12:24 indicates: "Very truly, I tell you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit." Ng?g? wa Thiong'o's novel A Grain of Wheat (1967) is premised on this biblical verse about death as a sacrifice for the benefit of others. Leo Tolstoy's Resurrection (1900) depicts Prince Dmitri Nekhlyudov, who seduces and abandons a woman, Katrina Maslova, and is overwhelmed by guilt — believing that life can be meaningful only by abiding by divine commandments. In a novel in which nature is ubiquitous, this philanthropic attitude is vital not only to humans but to non-humans as well. While scientism and economism have contributed to the environmental crisis, ecotheology provides an alternative, ecocentric environmental ethic.

Panegyrics from Insects and Birds, the Pangs of Science

Insects serve as warning signals for human behaviour and its consequences. The Bible and the Qur'an are replete with evidence of insects punishing people for their transgression. The Bible hints at this: "And they shall go out and look at the dead bodies of the people who rebelled against me; for their worm shall not die…" (Isaiah 66:24). Similarly, a worm revealed Solomon's death: "Then, when We decreed Solomon's death, nothing showed them his death except a little worm of the earth…" (Qur'an 34:14). Insects are also extolled for their wisdom: "Go to the ant, you lazybones; consider its ways, and be wise" (Proverbs 6:6). Insects are the epitome of hard work, unity, diligence, teamwork, and foresight.

They play vital roles in environmental regeneration. Rachel Carson's Silent Spring (1962) bemoans the effects of dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane (DDT), a product of science — a pesticide that not only killed many insects in the 1970s but also birds, jeopardising human lives and producing the mute spring of the book's title, a world without environmental acoustics. Thus, oscillating human existence between the environment, the language of nature, and spirituality is key for survival. Our education system should not sideline students pursuing HUMSS programmes, since no academic discipline is devoid of science.

Lessons from Literary Entomology

Humanity's nobility or ignobility after death is dependent on their deeds and conduct in life. A dead body begins to decay through autolysis after rigor mortis. As necrophagy sets in, insects colonise the dead body — maggots, eggs, flies. As in Shakespeare's Hamlet, the skulls of Yorick and a lawyer, alongside references to Alexander the Great and Julius Caesar turning to dust, are symbolic of mortality and the inevitability of death:

"That skull had a tongue in it, and it could sing once." (5.i.74)

"Alas, poor Yorick. I knew him, Horatio, a fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy… Here hung those lips…" (5.i.178–9, 82)

"Alexander died, Alexander was buried, Alexander returneth to dust, the dust is earth, we make loam, and why of that loam whereto he was converted might they not stop a beer-barrel?" (5.i.201–205)

"Imperious Caesar, dead and turn'd to clay / Might stop a hole to keep the wind away." (5.i.206–207)

These passages from Hamlet explain the precariousness of human existence interpreted through the perspectives of literature, science, and religion. In death, the body decomposes; the soul moves heavenward, as Sir Philip Sidney captures in Astrophil and Stella: "True, that on earth we are but pilgrims made, / And should in soul up to our country move." The various professions — jesters, lawyers, emperors, kings, oppressors and oppressed alike — will vanish from the earth. Before the dead body turns to clay, as Hamlet imagines, blow flies, house flies, flesh flies, eggs, maggots, moths, and beetles have had their feast on the corpse. A dead body does not, in reality, turn into clay, but rather a clay-like substance known as waxy adipocere.

Conclusion

The foregoing pages endeavour to show that thinking in scientific terms is not the exclusive domain of a single discipline. Our conceptualisation of the divine oscillates between our own precarious existence and the environment we inhabit. The resurrection of Jesus Christ can be thought of in terms of both divine science and spirituality. Religious and literary texts can be analysed by applying scientific concepts and intertextuality, as observed here. Our ecocentric ethic begins with the realisation that, as sojourners on earth, we need to bequeath the environment to the next generation.