Humanities and Social Sciences

Philosophy and Religious Studies

Staff Directory

Research Interests
Philosophy of religion, the interaction between religion and science, and especially, the question of religion and ‘ecological consciousness’.
                             
Dissertation
Ecology, Modernity and the Western Tradition: An examination of views of nature in the Western Traditions

Publications

Books

• A Loose Canon.  Essays on History, Modernity and Tradition (Ballan: Connor Court Publications, 2007)

Book Chapters:

• ‘ Never Say Die’ in The Betrayal of Tradition: Essays on the Spiritual Crisis of Modernity (Bloomington: World Wisdom Books, 2004)
• ‘The Right to Personal Property’ in Life to the Full (ed.) J. Franklin (Ballan: Connor Court Publications, in press)

Essays

• Ecology and the Evils of the West.  Codex Magazine, 2001
• The Passing Bell.   Australasian Catholic Record, 2001 pp  340-349

All of the following in Quadrant Magazine:

• Reading the Odyssey.  July-August 2001
• Never Say Die: On Seeking a Cure For Death.  July-August 2002
• The Enemy of Permanent Things.   Jan-Feb.  2003
• Environmental Primitivism and the Noble Savage.  March 2003
• Laughter and Misfortune—a Paradox.  October 2003
• Is America “One Nation under God ”?  December 2003
• Ayer on a G String March 2004
• Frazer, Wittgenstein and the Savage Mind  June 2004
• Excerpts from a Cryptic Odyssey  November 2004
• The Sickness Unto Death: On Being Human in the Age of Ecology. December 2004
• The Doof-Doof Music.  2005
• The Last of His Tribe.  2005
• B.J. Mr Tung’s Fox Tenants.  2005
• La Austrialia del Espiritu Santo: Captain Quiros and the Discovery of Australia in 1606.  2006
• The Fisher King and the Siege Perilous.  2006
• The Plasticine Managers.  2006
• Petrarch and the Mountain  2006
• William Blake and the Rawleigh's Man.  2007
• The Origin of the Specious: On the Worldview of the Sociobiologists  Sept. 2007

Biography
Dr Brian Coman graduated in Agricultural Science at Melbourne University in 1967.  He was employed as a Research Scientist in the Victorian Public Service for 23 years, during which time he obtained further postgraduate qualifications including a Ph.D in veterinary parasitology. In his capacity as a researcher (mainly on pest mammals), he published many scientific papers, book chapters and a book on the history of the rabbit in Australia (Tooth and Nail, Text Publications, Melb. 2000). After early retirement, Dr. Coman again took up studies, this time in the Humanities at LTUB.  He was recently awarded a PhD for his thesis presentation on attitudes to the natural world in historical Christianity (Ecology, Modernity and the Western Tradition, 2006).  Dr Coman is now an Honorary Associate at LaTrobe University Bendigo. A prolific essayist, many of his essays have appeared in Quadrant Magazine, a prominent journal of ideas in Australia.  A compilation of some of these essays, A Loose Canon, has recently been published by Connor Court Publications (2007).