Eric Stowe Higgs (born February 7, 1958) is professor in the School of Environmental Studies at the University of Victoria. Trained in ecology, philosophy, and environmental planning, his work concerns ecological restoration, historical ecology, intervention ecology, and the changing character of life in technological society.
Biography and Training Eric Higgs was born in Brantford, Ontario, to David P.J. Higgs and Barbara Isabel Stowe. His pre-school years were in North Delta, British Columbia (near Vancouver). He attended public school in Thornhill, Ontario (near Toronto), and secondary school (Brantford Collegiate and Pauline Johnston Secondary School) in Brantford. In 1976 he turned away from what had been a strong early passion for physics and engineering, and attend the Integrated Studies Program at the University of Waterloo. The Integrated Studies Program was student-driven and required self-motivation to complete an open curriculum in a subjects of the student's choosing. He completed an undergraduate thesis, "A theory for the interaction of ecology and the social order," that blended history of ecology with social philosophy and environmental ethics. Immediately upon graduation with a Bachelor of Independent Studies (B.I.S.) in 1979, he took up an internship at the Hastings Centre (Institute for the Study of Ethics, Society and the Life Sciences) in Hastings-on-Hudson, where he completed a project on environmental and ecological ethics. He completed a Master's degree in philosophy of science at the University of Western Ontario (1980-81), and at the same time undertook ecological consulting work in Southern Ontario. He returned to the University of Waterloo to a new interdisciplinary doctoral program, in which he combined studies in the Department of Philosophy and the School of Urban and Regional Planning. Working with co-supervisors, Lawrence Haworth, a social and moral philosopher, and Robert Dorney, an ecologist and environmental planner, Higgs completed his dissertation, "Planning, Technology and Community Autonomy," in 1988.
In 2000 he published a volume of essays discussing the work of Albert Borgmann which was described by Paul Durbin as one of the first volumes that explicitly strives to establish the philosophy of technology as an academic subdiscipline with canonical texts [1].