Millstein, Roberta L. (2020) Defending a Leopoldian basis for biodiversity: a response to Newman, Varner, and Linquist. Biology & Philosophy, 35 (12). ISSN 1572-8404
|
Text
Millstein-on-Leopold-biodiversity-1-4-shareable.pdf Download (237kB) | Preview |
Abstract
In their book, Defending Biodiversity, Newman, Varner, and Linquist (NVL) cast doubt on whether Leopoldian defenses of biodiversity, in their current form, have been successful. I argue that there is a more accurate interpretation of Leopold that is not subject to the criticisms made by NVL, and that Leopold’s body of work as a whole, including but not limited to the essay “The Land Ethic” in A Sand County Almanac, provides quite a bit of useful guidance and perspective. I begin with a brief summary of some of my own recent work on Leopold. This is intended to orient the reader who is more familiar with J. Baird Callicott’s influential interpretations of Leopold. I then discuss NVL’s Chapter 10 first followed by a discussion of their Chapter 9, responding to their critiques. I then conclude. On the revised interpretation that I have given, Leopold’s land ethic is defended by the method of reflective equilibrium, showing us that the land communities that we are interdependent with have intrinsic value, necessitating preserving their (land) health, which in turn necessitates preserving biodiversity.
| Export/Citation: | EndNote | BibTeX | Dublin Core | ASCII/Text Citation (Chicago) | HTML Citation | OpenURL |
| Social Networking: |
| Item Type: | Published Article or Volume | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Creators: |
|
||||||
| Keywords: | Aldo Leopold · Biodiversity · Communities · Interdependence · Land ethic · Land health | ||||||
| Subjects: | Specific Sciences > Biology Specific Sciences > Biology > Ecology/Conservation Specific Sciences > Environmental Science |
||||||
| Depositing User: | Dr. Roberta L. Millstein | ||||||
| Date Deposited: | 13 Jan 2020 00:09 | ||||||
| Last Modified: | 13 Jan 2020 00:09 | ||||||
| Item ID: | 16810 | ||||||
| Journal or Publication Title: | Biology & Philosophy | ||||||
| Publisher: | Springer | ||||||
| Official URL: | https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10539-0... | ||||||
| DOI or Unique Handle: | https://doi.org/10.1007/s10539-019-9724-9 | ||||||
| Subjects: | Specific Sciences > Biology Specific Sciences > Biology > Ecology/Conservation Specific Sciences > Environmental Science |
||||||
| Date: | January 2020 | ||||||
| Volume: | 35 | ||||||
| Number: | 12 | ||||||
| ISSN: | 1572-8404 | ||||||
| URI: | https://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/id/eprint/16810 |
Monthly Views for the past 3 years
Monthly Downloads for the past 3 years
Plum Analytics
Altmetric.com
Actions (login required)
 |
View Item |
![[feed]](http://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/style/images/feed-icon-32x32.png){kind=icon}