Environmental Science and Politics: On Ethics, Values, and the Authority of Science

Last week and this week in my Environmental Science and Politics course (ERST-POST 2100H), I looked in some detail at the relations between science and values.  I discussed a variety of issues that have been of interest to scholars over the last few decades (and that I thought my environmental students should think about):
- whether modern Western science embodies an ethic of domination over nature (as Carolyn Merchant and others have suggested)
- whether ecological science constitutes an alternative, or even a "subversive" view of environmental values
- what does this mean for the social responsibility for scientists -- should they speak out about their results when they have political implications, or should they stay focused on their research?
- and what happens when we realize that the ethical implications of science can actually be quite ambiguous, with scientific knowledge (such as the theory of evolution, or restoration ecology, or ecosystem ecology [invoking my experience studying at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory]) being used to justify contradictory ethical imperatives.

I also discussed Aldo Leopold and Rachel Carson -- both represented on anyone's short list of authors of environmental classics.  The take I took on both was to consider how their ethical values were grounded in observations of nature, and also in how they presented (in the Sand County Almanac, and Silent Spring), particularly persuasive views of nature and politics that combined science with an environmental ethic.

Something else I emphasized was that the notion itself of science as a uniquely authoritative source of knowledge about the environment is itself an historical thing.  Why are, say, poets, not taken as our chief source of guidance on how we should live in nature?  William Wordsworth, and his critique of he who "murders to dissect" made an appearance here.  (For my discussion of the authority of science I drew mainly from my Nature's Experts book, where I devoted a chapter to this topic.)

It was also interesting (to me) during these lectures how my ideas about what I was talking about evolved during the course of the classes themselves, particularly in response to some really interesting comments from students.  Their reactions made me think harder about the relation between the authority of science, and how scientists present (concealing, or displaying) the relations between knowledge and values.  Among other things, it changed how I talked about Leopold and Carson -- illustrating, I suppose, how, even after teaching this course for 22 years, I keep learning stuff from my students.