ABSTRACT
A characteristic of the science of the past century, according to environmentalist Garrett Hardin, has been the replacement of a Newtonian with a Darwinian perspective. For Newtonians, the significance of a thing in the workings of the world was a virtue of its mass, while the theme of Darwinian science is that an object’s importance is a function of its role in complicated biochemical systems. Louis Pasteur demonstrated the dependence of biochemical cycles on the activity of microbes in the early 1860s, some 25 years before that concept was used to explain self-purification or to provide the basic science for a technology of biological sewage treatment. The kinds of issues faced by nineteenth century scientists who considered matters of sewage treatment and water quality fit Weinberg’s concept of trans-science. The chapter also presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in this book.
