There are three words we have heard very often in the 20th century, which are all derived from a common Greek root oikos, meaning household, dwelling, home.

During this century we have become concerned with each one of these, and roughly in that order.

In the first half of this century the word "Ecumenical" became important to refer to the attempt to regain the essential unity of the whole Christian world. In the last few decades "economics" has asserted its importance as the art of managing the material affairs first of our national household and, more recently, of our global household, as in macroeconomics. The ecumenical Christianity of the first part of this century has been partly replaced by the emergence of a common economic concern. Leading church spokespeople have found themselves in a collision course with current political ideology which promises free competition, individualism and user-pays but ignores social justice and communal responsibility both nationally and internationally.

Now we are being challenged to catch up with an even wider horizon, one which particularly concerns our responsibilities to the whole planet. "Ecology", by its title, means the study of our planetary home. The word ecology was invented as recently as 1873 to refer to the study of the mutual relations which exist between all living organisms and their environment. It has led us to awareness of at least three things of vital importance.

The first is that the destiny of any living species is completely dependent on the particular environment in which it has evolved. Take away that environment, and the species dies immediately. A species and its environment have to be viewed as a living whole, a symbiotic life- field. If the environment changes too radically the species declines and becomes extinct. We humans are rapidly destroying the environment on which many forms of animal and bird life depend, and many species are already extinct.

The same ecological principle applies to the human species itself. We too can live and thrive only in an environment of a particular kind, the kind which has enabled us to evolve both biologically and culturally to be what we are. Even though the human species may possess greater powers of adaptability than many other species, our destiny still depends on a lifesupportive environment. If we change our environment too radically, we too go the way of the other already extinct species.

The second important aspect of ecology is an extension of the first. Just as a species and its environment must be treated as a whole, a life-field as it were, so all life-fields are inextricably joined to one another by a complex set of mutual interrelationships. All forms of life from the virus to the human species, including the fish of the sea, the birds of the air and everything which moves on the earth, form a living whole. The biosphere, or thin layer of life enveloping the globe, is a unity. We are part of it. It is at our peril that we interfere with it in any drastic way. The nature and destiny of the human species must be seen in relation to the ecology of all life on the planet.

All this implies, thirdly, that to understand the nature and destiny of the human species we must see it in full relation with a living whole and not as something apart from it. Since the nature and destiny of the human species is what all religious traditions are concerned with, then no religious tradition remains adequate any more which does not embrace ecological concerns.

The more we understand the implications of ecology the more it becomes clear that we have entered a radically new age both for humankind and for all life on this planet. It has been called the ecological age, or even better the Ecozoic Age.

The predicament addressed by Ecohumanism is aptly summarized in  a short phrase by Thomas Jefferson characterizing the perennial dilemma of man's place in the larger world, simply:

Thereafter, this interplay of man and nature, and man's "head" and "heart", clearly defines ecohumanism as a movement to address the failures in society, which are not the fault of our knowledge, our ethics or even our politics, but failures of presence, of personal connection with the all planetary systems.

The labels 'ecologist' and 'humanist' each represent a series of unique attributes brought to bear on the integrity of the human scientific enterprise itself,  Knowledge of the human condition is a keystone of humanism therefore it is important for humanists to understand the larger system in which we exist, regarding interdisciplinary issues, such as population growth, globalization, sociobiology, the distinction between preservation and conservation, global warming, and complex political, cultural and intergenerational issues.

The modern environmental movement has a short history, but one where the tension between various strategies, goals, and tactics has delayed coherency and coordinate action. This highlights the question what humanism is and, therefore, what "ecohumanism" is.  It is obvious that humanists are not of one mind about either the problems or the solutions. Humanism maintains that all our values including environmental ones come from human needs and concerns and this warns us that we are always biased toward self- interest in the humanist approach to environmentalism.

Process humanism corrects this bias by taking a cosmic view of human evolution in the context of the development of the universe.  It locates the basis for life's intrinsic value not in its fragility, but in its beauty  In a manner consistent with traditional philosophy's identifying beauty as one of the so- called 'transcendentals' (along with being, unity and truth), we may see the beauty of nature as intrinsically valuable, and therefore as an end in itself.

Process humanism states that  role of humans in the universe is to participate with all of their moral and political energy in the maximization of the evolution toward wider cosmic beauty. Indeed the meaning of our lives, both individually and collectively, is to participate and promote the cosmic adventure toward beauty. We do so proximately, of course, through our cultural and political activities. But a cosmic process perspective encourages us not to lose sight of the fact that these activities are ultimately not just phenomena that take place on the face of the earth, but happenings that the earth and the cosmos are now seeking to accomplish through us.

Consequently, we may say that what gives our earth's ecology its inherent value is neither its precariousness, nor simply our own human valuations (though these too belong to the cosmic process). Rather, it is the objective fact that our eco-systems are unique and unrepeatable instances of intensely ordered novelty, or of delicately harmonized diversity, that is, of beauty. Certainly eco-systems are always in great danger of disintegrating, but it is not this instability that renders them inherently precious. For, like all instances of beauty, living beings and eco-systems are comprised of an exquisite balance of order and novelty, harmony and contrast, pattern and nuance. Whenever we encounter such syntheses we are intuitively appreciative of the fact that the novelty, complexity and nuance could easily have overwhelmed the order, harmony and pattern, and thus reduced them to the ugliness of chaos. And, at the same time, we sense how easily the order, harmony and unity may have flattened out all the nuance and subtlety, reducing things to the banality of homogeneity. There is always a degree of tension in any concrete instance of beauty, and it is this aesthetic tension that gives to our ecosystems the inevitable delicacy that renders them forever subject to disintegration. But, once again, it is not their precariousness as such that grounds the value we see in them. The precariousness is a derivative of the beauty. Thus, our ecological concern can best be situated within an aesthetic rather than a pessimistic vision of the universe as meaningless.