A Science for Survival: Values and Conservation Biology

Practice of conservation biology that does not actively and continuously question the values that shape it is self-defeating: Conservation biology is inescapably normative. Advocacy for the preservation of biodiversity is part of the scientific practice of conservation biology. If the editorial policy of or the publications in Conservation Biology direct the discipline toward an “objective, value-free” approach, then they do not educate and transform society but rather narrow the focus to the “object of knowledge” (be this species, gene pools, landscapes, or ecosystems). To pretend that the acquisition of “positive knowledge" alone will avert mass extinctions is misguided. Conservation biologists should reflect on the constitutive values (especially contextual, but also methodological and bias) underlying their research programs and policy recommendations. Such reflection is itself an inherent element of scientific objectivity and takes into account the social nature of scientific knowledge. Without openly acknowledging such a perspective, conservation biology could become merely a subdiscipline of biology, intellectually and functionally sterile and incapable of averting an anthropogenic mass extinction.

[1]  B. Walker.  Biodiversity and Ecological Redundancy , 1992 .

[2]  E. Mayr.  The Growth of Biological Thought: Diversity, Evolution, and Inheritance , 1983 .

[3]  T. Kuhn.  The Structure of Scientific Revolutions 2nd edition , 1970 .

[4]  F. Golley.  A History of the Ecosystem Concept in Ecology: More Than the Sum o f the Parts , 1993 .

[5]  H. Putnam.  Pragmatism: An Open Question , 1995 .

[6]  Kristin Shrader-Frechette,et al.  Method in Ecology: Strategies for Conservation , 1993 .

[7]  B. Willers.  Toward a Science of Letting Things Be , 1992 .

[8]  G. Meffe.  Techno‐Arrogance and Halfway Technologies: Salmon Hatcheries on the Pacific Coast of North America , 1992 .

[9]  E. Wilson.  The Diversity of Life , 1992 .

[10]  Daniel B. Botkin,et al.  Discordant Harmonies: A New Ecology for the Twenty-first Century , 1990 .

[11]  Environmentalism and the future of progressive politics , 1989 .

[12]  Peter J. Bowler,et al.  The Norton history of the environmental sciences , 1992 .

[13]  M. Mccann.  Taking Reform Seriously: Perspectives on Public Interest Liberalism , 1986 .

[14]  D. Worster,et al.  Nature's economy : the roots of ecology , 1980 .

[15]  L. N. Evernden.  The social creation of nature , 1992 .

[16]  E. McCoy.  "Amphibian Decline": A Scientific Dilemma in More Ways than One , 1994 .

[17]  Philosophy of Wolf Policies I: General Principles and Preliminary Exploration of Selected Norms , 1987 .

[18]  S. Toulmin.  The uses of argument , 1960 .

[19]  T. L. Scheid-Cook,et al.  A Sand County Almanac , 1949 .

[20]  Ecology,Economics,Ethics The Broken Circle , 1992 .

[21]  Gary S. Drew.  The Scientific Method Revisited , 1994 .

[22]  Hilary Putnam,et al.  Reason, Truth and History. , 1985 .

[23]  T. Allen,et al.  Toward a Unified Ecology. , 1994 .

[24]  Ronald D. Brunner,et al.  Science and social responsibility , 1992 .

[25]  J. Bell,et al.  Schrödinger: Are there quantum jumps? , 1987 .

[26]  T. Lovejoy.  The obligations of a biologist. , 1989, Conservation biology : the journal of the Society for Conservation Biology.

[27]  M. Oelschlaeger.  Caring for Creation: An Ecumenical Approach to the Environmental Crisis , 1994 .