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Darwinism and Environmentalism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 September 2011

Brian Garvey
Brian Garvey
Affiliation:
Lancaster University
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Extract

A number of authors have combined a commitment to Darwinian evolution as a major source of insight into human nature with a strong commitment to environmentalist concerns. The most notable of these is perhaps Edward O. Wilson, in a series of books. Yet it may appear that there is a tension between Darwinism as a world-view – or least some major aspects of it – and a concern for non-human entities as worthy of concern in their own right. In the present paper, I want to address some of the reasons for thinking there is such a tension.

Type
Papers
Information
Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplements , Volume 69 , October 2011 , pp. 67 - 82
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy and the contributors 2011

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References

1 See for example Wilson, Edward O.: The Future of Life (London: Abacus, 2002)Google Scholar; Baxter, Brian: A Darwinian Worldview: Sociobiology, Environmental Ethics and the Work of Edward O. Wilson (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007)Google Scholar.

2 See Næss, Arne: Ecology, Community and Lifestyle: Outline of an Ecosophy. Translated by Rothenberg, D. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

3 ‘The Genius of Charles Darwin’, Channel 4, November 2008.

4 For Example Midgley, Mary ‘Gene-Juggling’ Philosophy, vol. 54 (1979) 439–58Google Scholar; Margulis, Lynn and Sagan, Dorion: Acquiring Genomes: A Theory of the Origins of Species (New York: Basic Books, 2002)Google Scholar.

5 For Example Dawkins: ‘Universal Darwinism’ in Bendall, D.S., ed. Evolution from Molecules to Man (Cambridge University Press)Google Scholar. Reprinted in Hull and Ruse, ed, The Philosophy of Biology (Oxford University Press, 1998)Google Scholar.

6 Second Edition (Oxford University Press, 1989).

7 Margulis, Lynn: Symbiotic Planet: A New Look at Evolution (New York: Basic Books, 1998)Google Scholar.

8 Darwin, Charles, (1859): The Origin of Species. Reprint of the First Edition, Burrow, W.J., ed. (Harmonsworth: Penguin, 1968), 69Google Scholar.

9 Ibid., 116.

10 Margulis: Acquiring Genomes.

11 Margulis, Lynn: Symbiosis in Cell Evolution (San Francisco: W.H. Freeman, 1981)Google Scholar.

12 Lewontin, Richard: The Triple Helix: Gene, Organism and Environment (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2000), 67–8Google Scholar.

13 Ibid.

14 For an elaboration of this consequence of Lewontin's view, see Ratcliffe, Matthew: ‘An Epistemological Problem for Evolutionary Psychology’, International Studies in the Philosophy of Science 19 (1) (2005), 47–63CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

15 Wilson, Edward O.: The Diversity of Life, Second Edition (Harvard: Belknap, 1999), 347Google ScholarPubMed.

16 Ibid., 346.