Thinking about nature

Ecology chemistry unlike astronomy, physics or is a science with an associated political and ethical movement - the Green one. Those associated with this movement often write as if there were distinctively ecological values, ecological insights and ecological explanations. We have to be wary of ambiguity, however, in phrases like 'ecological ethic' and so on. For we may be referring to an ethic that is motivated by specifically ecological insights; or we may be talking simply about an ethic which includes among other things environmental responsibility.

Among those who find something wrong in the attitude human beings take to their environment and in their behaviour towards it, an interesting position is held by the so called 'deep' ecologist. This position claims to draw support from biological investigations of ecosystems, but is also often accompanied by appeals to holism, and by a mystical, quasi-religious conception of the terrestrial ecosystem as a superbeing of which we are all minute parts.

Andrew Brennan argues that we can reduce much of the mysticism surrounding these discussions by showing that appeals to ecology and ecological theory are still morally relevant when stripped of semi-mystical doc trines about holism or the special status of natural systems.

In such an understanding of ecology, the role of the ecologist is not to draw our atten tion to new forms of explanation, but to bring to our notice information regarding our place in extremely complex communities.

With its interdisciplinary approach, ecology can also help to reduce the tendency to approach problems in terms of separate. but incomplete, frameworks of thought. Once we take account of the fact that our interests are bound up with larger, community interests, we face the question of how we ought to behave. To answer this question we have to return to the traditional conception of human beings as possessing a nature. The possibility of our leading fulfilling and satis fying lives depends on our recognition of the potentials and limitations of beings with natures like ours. The author shows that those who believe there is something fundamentally wrong in our current behaviour towards nature can have good grounds for adopting many of the deep ecologist's prescriptions without having to adopt an idealist or pan psychist metaphysic. He argues that this ecological humanism is preferable to modern utilitarian or contractualist accounts of the ethical life.