Ecology and Conservation Biology

This is an important book by Dermot A. Lane, widely known as one of the leading theologians in Ireland with a notable international profile; recognized for his work in re-positioning Catholic theology through dialogue with other disciplines, worldviews, and insistent social, cultural and political problems. In this his latest work he explores new roads opened up by Laudato Si’ for contemporary theology; and shows how ecological questions should permeate the whole of theology and Christian faith.

European Journal of Philosophy, EarlyView.

La naturaleza - La vida - El hombre - Homo Sapiens - Homo Sapiens : lo bello, el sexo y el amor - La sociedad : ética y política - Los dioses.

Ecology has been used frequently by social scientists as a source of theoretical models, and biological ecologists have often applied their theory to human populations. Several problems have attended these cross-disciplinary enterprises, including inappropriate uses of teleological models and a failure by both biologists and social scientists to understand the theoretical implications of culture and technology for ecological models. Attention to these problems will increase the applicability of ecological theories in the social sciences.

Drawing on reflections from a collaborative autoethnography, this article argues that ultramarathon running is defied by a 'dark' ecological sensibility (Morton 2007, 2010, 2016), characterised by moments of pain, disgust, and the macabre. In contrast to existing accounts, we problematise the notion that runners 'use' nature for escape and/or competition, while questioning the aesthetic-causal relationships often evinced within these accounts. With specific reference to the discursive, embodied, spatial and temporal aspects of the sport, we explore the way in which participants (...) begin to appreciate the immense power of nature, while being humbled by the fragile and unstable foundations of human experience. Accordingly this article contributes novel insights into the human-nature complex that seek to move beyond Romantic analyses towards a more sophisticated understanding of the relationships between (nature) sport, people and place. (shrink)

This chapter investigates the hybrid relationships between metabolism, broadly and a-historically understood as the set of processes through which alien matter is made homogeneous to that of the organism, and forms of vitalism from the eighteenth century on. While metabolic processes have long been modeled in a reductionist fashion as a straightforward function of repair and expansion of a given structure (either chemically, or mechanistically), a challenging vitalist view has characterized metabolism as a creative, organizing, vital faculty. I suggest that (...) this tension was overcome in Claude BernardBernard, Claude’s works on “indirect nutrition”, in which nutrition, rightly conceived as a general vital phenomenon common to plants and animals, was both characterized as an instance of the general physico-chemical determinism of all phenomena and as the sign and condition of the “freedom and independence” of the organism with respect to the environment. I propose that BernardBernard, Claude’s theory of indirect nutrition was central in the elaboration of his general physiology and has, at the same time, underpinned a self-centered view of biological identity in which the organism creates itself continuously at the detriment of its external milieu. I further argue that this conception of biological individuality as metabolically constructed has since, and paradoxically, supported a view in which the organism appears as an autonomous and self-creating entity. I then contrast this classical view of the metabolic autonomy of the organism with the challenges raised by microbiome studies and suggest that these emerging fields contribute to sketch an ecological conception of the organism and its metabolism through the reconceptualization of its relationship with the environment. The recent focus on a “microbiota – host metabolism” axis contributes to shift the focus away from the classical concept of organism, somehow externalizing vitalism out of the autonomous individual in favor of an ecological, collaborative, and interactionist view of the living. (shrink)

Consideration of Okri’s “Heraclitus’ Golden River” occurs here within an epistemic ecology in which Nature and the poetic consciousness conjoin as dialectically twinned tropes – beyond culture and below consciousness. Heraclitus’s “One thunderbolt strikes root through everything,” cited as the epigraph to Okri’s Wild (2012) intimates an African epistemology of cosmic holism, while his concept of the metaphysical capacity of poetry to transform the earth into mother [Gaia] sheltered by the sky and under the sun as an inscrutable god, expressed (...) in A Way of Being Free, foregrounds the relation between the fluidity of artistic creativity and an eco-phenomenological exploration of “the diminishing boundaries of a shrinking world.” This interpretation of Okri’s poem, “Heraclitus’ Golden River,” rests on his own conception of “wild” as energy meeting freedom, art meeting the elemental, chaos honed. The reading of this poem celebrates mystical unrest viewed from an ontopoietic appreciation of the sublime. The argument attempts to show that, for this Nigerian poet, “wild” is perceived in his third anthology from a heightened consciousness perspective as that which is transcendent – man’s link with the firmament. This cosmic aspect accords with what the American nature poet Robert Frost called wildness, that wild/ Arcadian place or the unconsidered land where life itself sways perilously at the confluence of opposing forces and to which the poet must go, alone and in silence, to ignite his/her creativity. (shrink)

Si nul ne sait ce que peut un environnement, nul ne sait sans doute davantage ce que peut être de nos jours une philosophie de l’environnement. Aussi est-il souhaitable de faire dialoguer des philosophes d’ici et d’ailleurs, d’hier et d’aujourd’hui, que nous avons tendance à tenir pour étrangers aux problèmes environnementaux parce que nous négligeons le plus souvent de les interroger sur ce chapitre où les questions et les réponses semblent connues d’avance. En tirant le portrait sur fond de crise (...) écologique de plus d’une quinzaine de penseurs différents (d’Edmund Husserl à Peter Sloterdijk, en passant par Martin Heidegger, Arne Næss et Gilles Deleuze), dont les voix et les visages parfois se mêlent, cet ouvrage voudrait modifier l’éclairage sous lequel ces penseurs sont perçus et, par là, contribuer à jeter une autre lumière sur ce que peuvent être les enjeux et les défis d’une pensée de l’environnement dont l’identité reste à construire. (shrink)

One could argue that the use, extraction, and development of natural resources for human purposes, i.e. resource exploitation, constitutes a form of instrumentalization of the ecosystems from which these resources are derived. Moreover, that such instrumentalization may be carried out in a way that has adverse social and environmental impacts. Given that a number of ecosystems are indispensable for the satisfaction of human interests and needs, their instrumentalization may nevertheless be justified. In this context, if the amount and rate of (...) instrumentalization of ecosystems leads to their depletion, people whose well-being depends on the ecosystems’ existence may be profoundly harmed. Those instrumentalization practices and actions that lead to states of depletion are generally considered as harmful, but only to those whose interests and needs are frustrated as a result of such practices and actions. In this paper, I argue that the way in which ecosystems are instrumentalized, and not just the quantity and rate, may also cause a philosophically relevant form of harm, and not necessarily to humans: A given ecosystem may be meaningfully harmed not only when it is depleted, but also when its functioning is altered in such a way that it cannot retain core capacities it had before it was instrumentalized. (shrink)

Abstract:This essay argues for the continuing import and relevance of deep ecological philosophy by reading it together with explorations of connection to nature in the social sciences. It begins by clarifying deep ecological concepts of "identification" with nature. It then argues that these conceptualizations align with notions of human-nature connectedness employed by social scientists, and that empirical research largely corroborates deep ecologists' claims about the practical significance of a sense of connection to the natural world. Finally, it reviews literature discussing (...) whether time outdoors, zoo visitation, and scientific study promote a sense of connection to nature, thus providing additional insight into the claims of deep ecologists, and offering practical guidance for conservationists and connectedness advocates. (shrink)

This article examines one of Italo Calvino’s most beloved novels, (1957), contextualizing it in its landscape and exploring the multifaceted strands of its environmental creativity. Unsuspected paths of political ecology, environmental history, and even biosemiotics and plant neurophysiology will emerge, thus showing the timeliness and clairvoyance of his books vis-à-vis our planetary crises. Written in a seminarrative form, this piece is an invitation to read literary works not only along with their landscapes, but their landscapes, and to consider the potential (...) of more-than-human stories for the shaping of our ethical-environmental imagination. (shrink)

Hannah Arendt famously argued that acts of violence are corrosive to a free and plural politics. However, the broader implications of her critique of violence are less well known. Reading her concept of violence comprehensively, with regard to (ostensibly non-political) labor and work as well as action, this article reveals its broader relevance for contemporary political thought: the political question of violence lies at the heart of our ecological crisis and is crucial for the social structure of labor domination. While (...) Arendtian politics is without normative guarantees, the conceptual distinction between instrumental violence and free politics is crucial, because it renders the political judgment of violence possible. In every realm of human activity, the refusal to acknowledge violence stunts our capacity to care for the world. (shrink)

Presenting a thorough examination of the sacred forests of Asia, this volume engages with dynamic new scholarly dialogues on the nature of sacred space, place, landscape, and ecology in the context of the sharply contested ideas of the Anthropocene. Given the vast geographic range of sacred groves in Asia, this volume discusses the diversity of associated cosmologies, ecologies, traditional local resource management practices, and environmental governance systems developed during the pre-colonial, colonial, and post-colonial periods. Adopting theoretical perspectives from political ecology, (...) the book views ecology and polity as constitutive elements interacting within local, regional, and global networks. Readers will find the very first systematic comparative analysis of sacred forests that include the karchall mabhuy of the Katu people of Central Vietnam, the leuweng kolot of the Baduy people of West Java, the fengshui forests of southern China, the groves to the goddess Sarna Mata worshiped by the Oraon people of Jharkhand India, the mauelsoop and bibosoop of Korea, and many more. Comprising in-depth, field-based case study, each chapter shows how the forest's sacrality must not be conceptually delinked from its roles in common property regimes, resource security, spiritual matters of ultimate concern, and cultural identity. This volume will be of great interest to students and scholars of indigenous studies, environmental anthropology, political ecology, geography, religion and heritage, nature conservation, environmental protection, and Asian Studies. (shrink)

This volume contributes to advancing an 'ecology of freedom,' which can critique current anthropocentric environmental destruction, as well as focusing on environmental justice and decentralized ecological governance.

There are currently serious concerns that published scientific findings often fail to be reproducible, and that some solutions may be gleaned by attending the several methodological and sociological recommendations that could be found in the literature. However, researchers would also arrive at some answers by considering the advice of the philosophy of science, particularly semantics, about theses on truth related to scientific realism. Sometimes scientists understand the correspondence thesis of truth as asserting that the next unique empirical confirmation of a (...) hypothesis suffices to attribute truth to it provisionally. Such empiricist bias is not necessarily at the core of CTT, but Mario Bunge proposed the synthetic thesis of truth, based on CTT, to explicitly avoid the bias. STT requires considering a hypothesis corroborated, both by purely empirical confirmation and external consistency or compatibility with the bulk of existing background knowledge. While a capricious understanding of CTT could be rigged to recommend the “one shot game” in hypothesis testing, STT clearly demands the use of multiple approaches, empirical as well as theoretical, and it asserts that a scientific test is effective to the extent to which it is neither purely empirical, nor viewed in isolation. Pattern consistency together with an understanding of causal relations make confirmed hypotheses robust and more reliable. The militancy of the double mechanism of hypothesis control of STT can help mitigate the reproducibility crisis. Earl Werner’s research program in community ecology is an example of the use of STT criteria, which leads to the development of reliable, cross-checked, ecological results, with high predictive capacity. (shrink)

Climate change continues to have recognizable impacts across the globe, as weather patterns shift and impacts accumulate and intensify. In this wider context, urban areas face significant challenges as they attempt to mitigate dynamic changes at the local level — changes such as those caused by intensifying weather events, the disruption of critical supplies, and the deterioration of local ecosystems. One field that could help urban areas address these challenges is conservation biology. However, this paper presents the argument that work (...) in urban contexts may be especially difficult for conservation biologists. In light of current climate change predictions, conservation biology may need to abandon some of its core values in favor of commitments guiding urban ecology. More broadly, this essay aims to reconcile the goals of restoration and conservation, by reconceptualizing what an ecosystem is, in the context of a world threatened by global climate change. (shrink)

From 1908 to 1922, William Beebe, the curator of birds at the Bronx Zoo, tried unsuccessfully to bring tropical birds known as hoatzin to the zoological park in the Bronx run by the New York Zoological Society. Beebe was committed to bringing hoatzin to the zoo because he thought they could reveal scientific truths about ecology and evolution to him and the visiting public. While contemporary scholarship about zoo science in the United States has focused on how environmental conservation shaped (...) the scientific practices of zoos at the turn to the 20th century, Beebe's efforts to bring hoatzin to the Bronx shows that evolutionary theory and ecology were central issues at the institution. Beebe wanted to use zoo displays to conduct research into the relationships between organisms and environments in order to investigate how certain animal behaviors, such as flight, developed. Beebe's employers, Madison Grant and Henry Osborn, were less interested in Beebe's experimentation with zoo exhibits, and more invested in using the zoo as a place to disseminate evolutionary ideas they already understood as scientific truths about heredity, racial hierarchies, and eugenics. Whereas Beebe saw his scientific practice as dependent on ecological connections, Grant and Osborn stressed a narrative of purity and separation (of species and race) that governed the conservation projects and scientific focus of the Zoological Society, as well as the presentation of animals on zoo grounds. Ultimately, Grant and Osborn's evolutionary concerns and their vision of a hierarchical natural world dictated the scientific direction of the Bronx Zoo in a way that prevented the institution from becoming a site for ecological research. (shrink)

We are currently in the middle of the transformation from Martin Heidegger’s modern society to a society based on digital technology. In the developing digital society, humans in their current state of ‘Being’ are increasingly surrounded by systems that are networked and run based on algorithms, software, and data. These interconnected systems function, communicate, and interact in networks and driven by these algorithms, software, and data, which give them the ability to connect, calculate, and reveal. Jointly, these systems thus create (...) a new and actual reality based on their mathematical and scientific background. In the present-day digital society, humans’ actual ‘state of Being’ is increasingly framed by what the digital technology reveals to us and enables. The transition to this new digital reality conjures up more and more questions as to whether we as humans sufficiently understand the essence of digital technology and whether we as humanity have sufficient knowledge and insight to be able to analyze and fathom the essence of the new digital ecology around us. In this article, I will use Heideggerian phenomenology as a philosophy to create a framework that will allow us to, based on phenomenological research into our current ‘Dasein’ or ‘being there’, gain deeper insight into the ‘Being’ of digital technology and the ensuing development of a digital reality for humanity as a whole. (shrink)