Carrie L. Hull discusses debates taking place among environmental scientists, providing a brief overview of the history of the formalist tendency in philosophy, and an illustration of the ways in which advocates of a strict laboratory methodology implicitly rely on this foundation.

Andrew Jamison and Erik Baark attempt to indicate how national cultural differences affect the ways in which science and technology policies in the environmental field are formulated and implemented.

Kay Milton shows that the idea that humans see nature as sacred, and the acknowledgment that humanity is a part of nature rather than separate from it are two concepts that are incompatible in the context of western culture.

Joachim Schuetz argues that sustainability should be interpreted as a quest for conscious adoption of a global systems identity.