Thinking Like a Planet: The Land Ethic and the Earth Ethic
J. Baird Callicott
Abstract
Aldo Leopold’s land ethic is located in an evolutionary-ecological worldview: Homo sapiens is “kin” to all other “fellow voyagers in the odyssey of evolution” and is a “plain member and citizen” of a “biotic community.” Part I traces the conceptual foundations of the land ethic to Darwin’s account of the origin and evolution of ethics in The Descent of Man and Hume’s moral philosophy in the second Enquiry. Evolutionary biology and ecology have undergone paradigm shifts since Leopold conceived the land ethic in 1949. Part I indicates how the land ethic can remain theoretically viable and practi ... More
Aldo Leopold’s land ethic is located in an evolutionary-ecological worldview: Homo sapiens is “kin” to all other “fellow voyagers in the odyssey of evolution” and is a “plain member and citizen” of a “biotic community.” Part I traces the conceptual foundations of the land ethic to Darwin’s account of the origin and evolution of ethics in The Descent of Man and Hume’s moral philosophy in the second Enquiry. Evolutionary biology and ecology have undergone paradigm shifts since Leopold conceived the land ethic in 1949. Part I indicates how the land ethic can remain theoretically viable and practically applicable if revised to accommodate changes in its scientific foundations. The circumscribed spatial and temporal scales (ecosystems and their dynamics) of the land ethic are disproportionate to the planetary spatial and centennial temporal scales of global climate change, the overarching environmental concern of the 21st century. In 1923, Leopold faintly sketched an Earth ethic at biogeophysical scales. He envisioned the Earth as “a living thing” and each part thereof “as organs . . . with a definite function”—in effect anticipating the Gaia Hypothesis. Leopold hints at several theoretical foundations of an Earth ethic: non-anthropocentric “respect” for a living planet; personal, professional, and societal virtue; and anthropocentric responsibility to future generations, both “immediate posterity” and the “Unknown Future.” Part II enhances Leopold’s faint sketch of an Earth ethic, explores its scientific metaphysical foundations, critically elaborates the several theories on which Leopold suggests an Earth ethic might be grounded, and theoretically integrates the land and Earth ethics.
Keywords:
ecology,
ethics,
evolution,
group selection,
biogeochemistry,
Gaia Hypothesis,
Hume,
Darwin,
Leopold,
Vernadsky
Bibliographic Information
| Print publication date: 2014 |
Print ISBN-13: 9780199324880 |
| Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: January 2014 |
DOI:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199324880.001.0001 |
