The nature of catastrophe and disaster

individual

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INTERPERSONAL : SCIENCES

humanistic ----------------------------------------------- mechanistic

SOCIOLOGY : POLITICAL

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group - population

"Across northern Europe the earthquake inspired a shift from a philosophical "best of all possible worlds" optimism, ruled over by a beneficent God, to a new, darker world order of rational scepticism.	"Disaster" derives from the Greek for an ill-fated, or "bad" star  - in Italian, the dis-astro. "Disaster" captures the essence of astrology. A conjunction of planets, or the passage of a comet, triggers a calamity on earth.
The contrasting old and new worlds are captured in the original meanings of the terms "disaster" and "catastrophe."	"Catastrophe" describes the final resolution of the story in a Greek drama. In a tragedy by Aeschylus or Euripides, within the "catastrophe," one or more of the characters will die. The catastrophe is the inevitable consequence. The catastrophe is the moral." p.40.

 

Robert Muir-Wood (2016) The Cure for Catastrophe: How We Can Stop Manufacturing Natural Disasters, London: OneWorld Publications. ISBN-10: 1786070057