[學術演講]The Problem of Progress in Environmental Philosophy

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主講人：Dr. Shawn Simpson

Postdoctoral Research Fellow,

North-West University, South Africa

主  題：The Problem of Progress in Environmental Philosophy

時  間：115年6月8日（週一）

      下午15:30-17:30

地  點：人文館345室（台北市羅斯福路四段1號）

歡迎參加討論，謝謝！

Seminar

Speaker: Dr. Shawn Simpson

Postdoctoral Research Fellow, North-West University, South Africa

Title: The Problem of Progress in Environmental Philosophy

Date: 15:30 – 17:30 pm, Monday,    June 8, 2026

Venue: Room 345, Humanities Hall (No. 1, Section 4, Roosevelt Road, Taipei)

Abstract：

This paper examines the concept of "progress" as a critical term in environmental philosophy, focusing on its use in the work of Aldo Leopold and Edward Abbey. Drawing on A Sand County Almanac and Desert Solitaire, I identify a recurrent pattern - the progress trap - in which a well-intentioned intervention produces unforeseen costs, destroying the very conditions the intervention was designed to protect. I argue, first, that Leopold's essays establish this template; second, that Abbey consciously extended it to new technological and cultural forms; and third, that the same pattern applies to new forms of progress neither author could have anticipated. Contemporary instances examined include social media and GPS technologies that expose formerly remote wilderness areas to mass visitation, satellite constellations that colonize the night sky in the name of connectivity, and mobile communications that network the backcountry in the name of safety. In each case the underlying logic is the same: an improvement that destroys what it was meant to improve by making it more available to the forces it was protected from. The paper concludes that the progress trap is not merely a historical observation but a critical tool for recognizing self-defeating interventions before they are implemented, and that each generation of environmental thinkers inherits both the template and the obligation to apply it to the new forms of progress emerging in their own time.