Conservation Biology and the Philosophy of Nature
“Wave Foam, Indiana Sand Dunes” by Terry Evans
The conservation of nature, and biological and cultural diversity in particular, are becoming a paramount moral imperative for many individuals and organizations, including the World Conservation Union (IUCN) and the Society for Conservation Biology. Yet conservation biology is a complex, many pronged effort, calling upon a significant array of disciplines from the natural sciences (especially biology), the social sciences, and the humanities, including history. There is a wide-spread conviction among its practitioners that conservation biology presently lacks a time focus and comprehensive vision to guide its practical activities. There is intellectual, philosophic, and ethical work to be done.
On another front, Ernst Mayr, the late dean of evolutionary biology, pointed out an analogous and related challenge. Darwinism is a major revolution in Western thought not only in science, but also in philosophic and moral worldview. Yet despite Aldo Leopold and others, we have yet culturally and practically to catch up with Darwinian thinking. Part of the problem is conceptual and philosophic. As a culture, we still run along old and outmoded paths of thought. Mayr in his last year specifically claimed that the philosophy of science—and by implication, the philosophy of nature—is in particular need of reformation if these philosophic disciplines are to include the methods and substantive discoveries of evolutionary biology and ecology.
For conservation biology to find its conceptual and moral grounding, there may be no better place to start than with a critical reconsideration of the philosophy of science and nature, Mayr’s last challenge. A naturalist ethics and worldview need philosophic justification and reasons for their arguments. Given our mission, a multidisciplinary research project on Conservation Biology and the Philosophy of Nature would be a natural for the Center for Humans and Nature.