Holmes Rolston and Douglas Yeager

00:01 I'm Doug Yeager age 78 and today's date is December 11th 2011 in Fort Collins, Colorado. The person I'm interviewing today homes. Ralston is a person I admire and I'm a friend of the family.

00:27 And I am home Charleston 79. I'm one up on you. I guess again. It's November 11th.

00:41 I mean December 11th, and I'm in Fort Collins, Colorado talking to a friend of several years.

00:58 I'm Doug Yeager, and I'm here in Fort Collins Colorado with dr. Holmes Ralston the third professor emeritus at Colorado State University Department of philosophy.

01:12 He is widely recognized as the father of environmental ethics as a modern academic discipline.

01:18 Among other honors doctor Ralston won the 2003 Templeton prize awarded by Prince Philip in Buckingham Palace

01:26 He gave the Gifford lectures at the University of Edinboro and 1997-98.

01:33 Dr. Ross to begin his career as a third generation Presbyterian minister with the ology degrees from the union Theological Seminary and the University of Edinburgh where he earned a Ph.D.

01:47 He also received a BS in physics and Mathematics from Davidson College and the ma in the philosophy of science from the University of Pittsburgh.

01:58 He served on the faculty of Colorado State University from 1968 until his retirement in 2008.

02:06 He is widely published in the field of environmental ethics philosophy of science and religion more generally.

02:15 And he has lectured by invitation on all 7 continents.

02:21 Good morning. Dr. Austin. It is a real pleasure to be here with you today.

02:27 I'd like to start out with a kind of broad question.

02:31 Many of us find a definite calling in life, but the path to discover. It isn't always that clear nor that simple.

02:40 How did you find your way?

02:46 Thanks, and I appreciate your interest in interviewing me.

02:55 How did I find my way?

02:59 I think it has it helps to have good ancestors.

03:05 I was born Scots Presbyterian in the Valley of Virginia and

03:15 Those people they said like the Scots before them and the old country those people sort of love to gospel and Landscape.

03:26 They couldn't always figure out which one has priority.

03:31 So I grew up in a beautiful part of the world is Shenandoah Valley of Virginia with that kind of background and Heritage.

03:43 Though there's wandering around those of people who love gospel in landscape do used to also say when I look back over life. God writes straight with crooked lines. I can see a lot of that in my career sort of wandering around.

04:10 Knowing I love the natural world having religious surroundings, but trying to figure out.

04:26 What I was going to do, and there's wandering around I switched I majored in as you said and math and physics. I went to Theological Seminary. I went to graduate school in theology, but I went back to school and philosophy of science. I ended up teaching.

04:57 In our philosophy Department with a kind of concentration in biological sciences. So if you like, I think it's been a lifetime of crooked lines and yet there's a certain continuing straight line interest in the conservation preservation interpretation of the natural world.

05:28 What do you think of yourself as a pioneer?

05:32 How does a true pioneer?

05:36 Developed a new area of study and how does he get started doing that?

05:44 Well, as you said

05:48 In your introduction. I've been called the father of environmental ethics you a bit outdated the most people nice calling me that grandfather of environmental ethics, but I'll accept that maybe that means I did.

06:10 Originate a sort of New Field within philosophy environmental ethics

06:21 If you like, I might not want to call myself and Pioneer of it so much as an Explorer. I've been looking around thinking about new directions.

06:36 In the interpretation of the natural world

06:41 You know when I was back in, Virginia.

06:45 I went to a nearby Van East Tennessee State University. Learn how to key the plants the botanist help me there and I bring in a plan every now and then and it wouldn't quite fit the key and the old botanist are said, well Ralston, you know, the plants have always read the books.

07:12 I think my experience was such that got to looking around among the plants among the animals the wildlife the natural world. I didn't think the world I was experiencing was the world. I was Finding in the books about it and I began to think further if you like and I think that led to If You Like Pina nearing a new area of study

07:52 But when you get out front like that, especially a bit front of your colleagues, how do you go about persuading others to follow?

08:09 Well, you do what you can where you can as you can.

08:18 As I said, I was interpreting the natural world.

08:25 Anna animal is a philosopher so I have been taught logic.

08:32 I don't back to school to do philosophy of science. I knew that.

08:38 But I said I was learning how to key the plants and watching the birds until 4, so I knew a natural history.

08:49 And in a way

08:53 People could see one of this Ralston.

08:57 Might be onto something at least.

09:01 He sees things in the natural world that we don't see you when we go out there.

09:11 And then I began to think about this and say well could I offer an experimental class in my department chair said I could love a glass filled up immediately had the two or three times as many students as want to take it. So, you know, it helps to have a bunch of students who are interested in what you're doing your college look around and saying when it's interesting you must be doing something, right?

09:42 I began to publish and the Articles published were reprinted. Well that wakes people up what's going on. Now. Here's his Pelican on the periphery of philosophy, but his articles are being reprinted and then I guess I could say it helps to have a

10:08 Start a Personal Agenda interpreting in the natural world which turns out to be a national crisis or World crisis. So I was interested in nature thinking about nature enjoying nature and suddenly I found myself surrounded by an environmental crisis environment even on the world genda and that persuades others at least as well. We better pay a little attention to what's being said your lips looks like this might be important.

10:52 As you started publishing. Did you find it difficult to have some of these new ideas accepted into academic Publications?

11:04 And if so, how do you overcome that?

11:14 Well, yeah when you are moving in New Directions of people.

11:19 And I say well that's a peripheral in its on the edges its way out or it's

11:30 It's not mainstream in a certain sense and you got to work against that.

11:38 One of my early articles was called that is there an ecological ethic and

11:46 I had had to publish things in peripheral journals. I think they were pretty good. Some of them later got reprinted in the mainstream, but there were

12:00 Peripheral and marginal and I thought well and send that article better send it to one of these peripheral sort of journals that they'll probably take it if I send it to the mainstream hardcore philosophy journals, they'll take 6 months to think it over and rejected but then I thought well, you know, why not nothing ventured nothing gained. So I sent it to ethics which is the main journal and ethics in philosophical circles.

12:41 And to my great surprise, they took it I had structured the article so that the beginning of it sort of looks like analytic philosophy which was in Vogue, then it was analytic philosophy. But the second half of the article I could begin to say the kind of things. I want to say and make my kind of argument. So it appeared in ethics, which is a very prestigious Journal has been for a century and

13:18 I guess I was overcoming us certain hurdle there.

13:26 One of my books in science and religion the field in which I have symmetric. Tickly biology in religion.

13:36 It's called G's Genesis and God we might.

13:42 Come back to that in a few minutes, but but I sent that off in a preliminary manuscript to about maybe a half-dozen Publishers and they all rejected. It didn't readers didn't like it and then I thought well, I'll send it to a good breast with these others. We're decent prices, you know, why not try Oxford University press and I did and the editors liked it and they said okay we're going to take it but we have to clear it with the Advisory Board.

14:26 And I thought well I will be sort of automatic but it wasn't there was a biologist on The Advisory board that didn't like it and he vetoed the book. So the book look like was going to get published.

14:45 But Then There came the invitation to give the Gifford lectures and so I kind of had this manuscript that have been rejected six or eight times and I thought well if I'm given the Gifford lectures and well-known lecture series, maybe I can revise it some I had had criticisms from some of these groups that had rejected it and then maybe I can get the darn thing and print after all and it worked out that way I did get it Brandon

15:23 Oh just this year I published an article called Celestial Aesthetics. It had to do with the static experience of well, whatever you see when you look up and that's a nice guy, but it's clouds in the daytime Sky. It's a maybe storm clouds may be a fair-weather clouds. Just what is our aesthetic experience when we look up.

15:57 And I thought I'd done a pretty good job of that but that got rejected when I sent it to the mainstream.

16:07 Publications, they just kind of thought well, this is not in the sort of classical stylized format of Esthetics. So there I had to send it just got a decent Journal Theology and science it appears in there. And also I still struggle to keep trying to get some of my ideas into print where they don't work where I seem to be sort of thinking outside the box

16:45 Well, there are clearly hazards to working across disciplinary boundaries. But the can you think of some advantages that come from that kind of work that you've done over your career?

17:09 Rent-A-Center already, a lot of people think it's peripheral when you are crossing boundaries, I might think peripheral mean that the edges and it's important to be at the edges or I might think when you're crossing boundaries, you're discovering new territories venturing into new territories, and that's important.

17:39 So there's some positives as well as some negatives to it.

17:46 Maybe I was able to do this. I was thinking about ethics philosophy.

17:55 If you like, but but I was able to introduce a lot of evidence from science and Science and ethics have a tricky relationship. But I knew the Natural Sciences, I had studied physics and math kept up some with a physics in school. I had such gotten to be reasonably good feel naturalist. I regularly sat in on biology classes sometimes psychology class at the University. So I thought I had at hand what's some of the biologists were saying or thinking as they were decoding DNA or if they were doing their Neuroscience or they were thinking about ecosystems?

18:53 And I could bring that in.

18:57 Bring those disciplines end of the conversation that philosophers are interested and generally that the floss was then got sort of impressed when you could bring in thoughts from Natural Sciences or discoveries of the natural scientist have any other way around I found at the scientist were

19:26 They knew their signs pretty well, but they got to stuttering when they thought about values and they were hungry for somebody who'd helped them think about values. The floss was were impressed by somebody who knew the Natural Science better than they did and that work to my advantage. I really think philosophy in the best sense needs to be philosophy of business law work environment or medicine or something philosophers ought always to be looking over the shoulders of other people and thinking what they're doing is a philosophical interest. I think theologians ought to do that to that I think about theology, but they need

20:26 Because think about Theology of medicine Norah Los 04 Xtreme Hardcore philosophy journals not published an article in the Journal of Forestry right far as she's not philosophy. But anyway, I'm just pleased to have done that as to have gotten an article in the mainstream philosophy Journal you please this is loss was we want to come and and accept an article where I was dealing with the values of in Forrest. So there's some very positive things that can be said about working across interdisciplinary lines.

21:20 When you made that for your change and moved from theology into philosophy, I noted that you earned a master's in philosophy a science. Why didn't you go on to pursue a doctorate in philosophy at that point where there's some people that you would have liked to work within that area and in pursuing that degree?

21:52 Well, I did have a

21:55 I had a PhD from University of Edinburgh. That's one of the main British schools that impresses people when you say that but I did go back to school University of Pittsburgh after 10 years 10 years later after I had a PhD I went back and got a master's in philosophy of science.

22:21 Which I didn't overwhelm.

22:25 And I kind of set foot on campus at Pittsburgh for I did this degree in philosophy of science. And you know, I walked in and said, well I want to think about philosophy of science. I'd like to do philosophy of biology and those guys just kind of cocktail head one way or another and they said, oh wait a minute you started physics and math. Didn't you? You must mean you want to do a working philosophy of physics. That's what most philosophers of science thought philosophy of science with all of all about in those days are flights being physics. And I said what I do want to learn philosophy of physics, I think that's an important done.

23:21 But no, I I think we need to think about philosophy of biology. You got to get your mind back half a century. It really wasn't any philosophy of biology in those days. So there wasn't anybody around Pittsburgh who knew any philosophy of biology. They didn't even think that was a worthwhile subject matter in those days now since then I've lost evologie has developed dramatically in in very different ways from philosophy of physics. So I kind of got my background I wanted and philosophy of science, but there wasn't any real way to do a PhD in philosophy of biology.

24:19 In those days we're talkin to the late 1960s.

24:29 You talked about the Gifford lectures in a few minutes ago when you were selected for that series. What went through your mind and how did you decide then what you were going to do with those lectures?

24:53 Well, it came as a great surprise. I had no idea it was coming or not. I guess I went to University of Edinboro. He's got a PhD there back in the fifties. And so they send me mail all the time wanting money, right? You've had that experience alumni behind and so I usually just also sings in the wastebasket.

25:22 Well, I got this piece of mail one day and he came in this Ghana brown envelope to use in the UK are not doing well. Another solicitation. I'll toss it in the wastebasket. And so it was the latter was halfway in the wastebasket and I thought well, I don't know that looks a little different maybe I better open it up and see what it was and it was an invitation from the chancellor of the university to give the Gifford lectures and you know, you could have knocked me out of my chair. I didn't think I was in that League Anywhere But nevertheless I had the invitation and it turns out a couple of the Philosopher's at Edinboro and a couple of the theologians have been reading my material on value.

26:22 Nature and thought I might have something to say about.

26:30 That it would be worth the Gifford lectures. How do I side what I was going to do? I mentioned already I had this manuscript on call Gene's Genesis in God trying to connect up those three ideas and it's been rejected by a bunch of publishes and I thought well, okay. I'm going to get that a house and dress it up with all my mental powers and see if I can't get that thing.

27:04 Published I was interested in jeans and I'll philosophy of biology I said didn't exist but the radical difference between physics chemistry geology or whatever and biology is you've got jeans you've got genetics you got information in genes that doesn't exist in the physical world and I was trying to make it point that genes have information and that the information is a key to the creativity indigenes and you could think of the information is opening up new possibilities based.

27:55 Generating the possibility of Valium and I was going to put that all together in these lectures and I didn't I got it published by Cambridge University press so sometimes if you wander around and hang on you managed to break through a bit.

28:21 Which of your books are articles. Ralston would you think was the most important? Yeah. Do you think it was judge that way by the academic world? Did they see it the same way? You saw it?

28:42 We'll probably is a book that most Seminole is the genes Genesis and God their Gifford lectures. It's it's an effort to show that.

29:00 Well, I got a sneak around.

29:04 And get my argument in sideways and a certain sense. It's an effort to show that there are things that genetics can't explain the ball just been worth in all in the business of trying to show that everything is genetically based Ed really just sort of begun to decode decode the jeans figure out genetic coding and they were all gung-ho about this explaining all the ways we behave and so forth. So I kind of came around to the side cuz it said wait a minute can can genetics explain how you do what you do when you're a scientist.

29:55 Can genetics explain the difference between Einstein and Mother Teresa for example, or and they'd have to scratch their head and say well know we need brains to do these kinds of things but the critiquing of a theory in science whether to good theory or a bad theory that depends on arguments that aren't genetically based and then I'd go to ethics and say well, you know, is that sixth genetically-based are you sort of selfish by genetic nature and that's the end of it or if you are altruistic charitable Mother Teresa, is she simply operating out of her genetics?

30:50 And people would have say no this is more to it than that. And then I would like to say well how about being religious more lately. We've heard search for religious Jean. I think people might be in certain sense by Nature religious. But which religion you adopt? What are your Presbyterian or Not Disturb Buddhist or Hindu, you know this depends on your cultural heritage began to argue that

31:26 The darwinian and genetic explanations are incomplete and I think that's a valuable argument that it takes a while for it to go again, but it's been accepted it have to succeed. My articles have been reprinted about a hundred times and these are often articles that didn't initially get that much reception. But after a few years they get reprinted and the students read them and when they began to teach they use them and in that sense.

32:12 What I think it's important that has often been recognized eventually but to but it takes a little time.

32:24 You're known for claiming that the natural world has intrinsic value independent of the relationship to or impact on human beings.

32:37 Most people think that value deals with human desires goals choices. What is this value that is independent of humans.

32:51 Yeah, most people think did values or deal with humans desires of

32:58 That value has to be chosen and maintained and thought about it and so forth and that's true of certain kinds of the sky true of psychological the defended badges in human life, but I was beginning just will see I will call him on his attention to the Natural World hiking backpacking camping off now. For a week or so alone that these plants and animals that surrounded me had a good of their own know they weren't moral agents. They didn't deliberately think about and reflect on their choices, but they had lives that they were defending.

33:55 And I love the ball just all the time talk about survival value. They use that term value freely Thorns help roses to survive. Even though roses are plants and don't think about anything and everything that I would see in the wood seems to have a sort of good of its own a life that it's defending and I began to call this intrinsic value and nature that's independent of humans. I'd walk into the site and I are there squirrels were getting nuts. Right and I walked away from the sides and the squirrels were still getting the nuts seem like to me that squirrels had a good of their own and valued the nuts and I began to to argue that and have become reasonably well,

34:55 Known for celebrating this intrinsic value in nature

35:04 You're also known for your efforts to join science and religion for takeaway and thinking about how to interpret natural history and the evolution of life.

35:16 Do you think of yourself as a Pioneer there, too?

35:24 Well Pioneer again and Explorer.

35:32 Darwin was wiser than we often think you look around and Darwin you may find some of these ideas that we have rediscovered. I think now we set the individual survival of the fittest in a larger ecological context survival of the fittest really means the survival of those best able to leave survivors in the Next Generation. It's survival of the sender's of Life On to the Next Generation and I have brought out that Dimension philosophically interdependence a community generally the idea that darwinian explanation the correct is incomplete.

36:31 And there I might think of myself as something of a Pioneer again.

36:39 Genetics the genes contain information Darwin didn't know anything about genes really or about the cybernetic nature of those processes when we now come to see the importance of that and there I'm not alone but I think of myself as one of the persons thinking on the edges on the periphery, if you like new directions in interpret interpret sing the junction of Science and religion because now we find that life has this logic life has is creative capacity for Genesis and we can get to be theological about that.

37:30 We got three or four more minutes. You published a book last year called the three big bangs all of us have heard of the original Big Bang. But what are the other two?

37:44 Original Big Bang is matter energy the explosion of Once Upon a Time at the start-up of the universe the other two to my mind or life explosion of life on the on the planet. You might not think that to be thought of as an explosion Evolution can be pretty slow if you like but still we've had marvelously on Earth life of beginning. We hardly know how but certainly beginning quite simple exploding across Natural History into maybe four or five billion species, maybe 10 million, maybe a hundred million life on Earth. I think that's a kind of an explosion. The third explosion is mine. Right? It's right in your head the explosion of mental powers in humans I think is

38:44 Dramatic spectacular and in many respects different from anything of which any other species on Earth is capable.

38:59 Finally, let me ask you about the Templeton prize. This is a very big prize both send money and in Prestige. What did it mean to you and your discipline to do?

39:12 Earn this award.

39:20 In a way, I have one. So the two biggest prizes in my field the Templeton prize which is worth about a million and a half dollars in prize money and is a prestigious event and I was invited to give the Gifford lectures which about which I have spoken. So it's kind of nice to win the the saw the two biggest prizes in your field. And what about where have I done it? I've done it at CSU and I see is you is a very Colorado State University a very fine institution. But back East when they look West they just kind of thing as a cow College out west and here's a guy who's been out of this account College in the west getting these big Awards and

40:19 They they wake up about that. So it gives you a certain kind of recognition. I used the Templeton money to a dollar chair at Davidson College my alma mater North Carolina in science and religion and I think that'll help to educate young minds for centuries ahead and partly as a result of my reputation hear others are giving it's not in place yet, but it will be in a few years and then dial chair and environmental ethics here at Colorado State University. So in that sense winning these prizes giving these lectures as I think of help to establish my discipline and some ways for the foreseeable future.

41:17 Well, thank you very much. Really appreciate the opportunity to sit here and talk with you today, and you have a very interesting story to tell and a lot of value. I think that we all need to contemplate. So, thanks again.