This essay explores the Irish Literary Revival in relation to the poetry and philosophy of W. B. Yeats and science. When we examine Yeats’s view of science and his repudiation of Locke and Newton, among others, in poetry, it is easy to come to the understanding that the poet was wholly anti-materialist and anti-scientific and brought this to bear on his espousal of the Irish Revival. However, this essay argues that what Yeats does in his thinking, rather, is reverse the understanding of science as ordered. For Yeats, the self-conscious application of materialism is a fallacy and he rejects such determinism in favour of a multidimensional world view that is in accordance with the new physics of his day. In this way, the cultural revival in its appropriation of the Gaelic past becomes filled with the potency of past, present, and future as one, and this symbolic efficacy allows for an expression of nationality that is ultimately a form of consciousness, a new world view made manifest through what Schrödinger terms ‘a return to antiquity’.

The current chapter examines factors predicting engagement and disengagement with climate change. After providing a baseline overview of climate change and public opinion on the topic, we explore how psychological motives might conflict with individuals’ desire to be accurate when considering climate change information. Next, we examine how individual differences in world views affect how individuals relate to climate change, focusing specifically on moral attitudes, social dominance orientation (SDO), neoliberal ideology, and attitudes towards system change as correlates of climate beliefs and engagement.Finally, we consider how social cues from both elites (such as politicians and scientists) and peers can serve as critical sources of information guiding individuals’ beliefs about and responses to climate change.