Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Searching for Sustainability
- General Introduction: An Interdisciplinary Experiment
- I PRAGMATISM AS AN ENVIRONMENTAL PHILOSOPHY
- II SCIENCE, POLICY, AND POLICY SCIENCE
- 6 What Is a Conservation Biologist?
- 7 Biological Resources and Endangered Species: History, Values, and Policy
- 8 Leopold as Practical Moralist and Pragmatic Policy Analyst
- 9 Improving Ecological Communication: The Role of Ecologists in Environmental Policy Formation
- III ECONOMICS AND ENVIRONMENTAL SUSTAINABILITY
- IV SCALING SUSTAINABILITY: ECOLOGY AS IF HUMANS MATTERED
- V SOME ELEMENTS OF A PHILOSOPHY OF SUSTAINABLE LIVING
- VI VALUING SUSTAINABILITY: TOWARD A MORE COMPREHENSIVE APPROACH TO ENVIRONMENTAL EVALUATION
- Index
6 - What Is a Conservation Biologist?
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 21 January 2010
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Searching for Sustainability
- General Introduction: An Interdisciplinary Experiment
- I PRAGMATISM AS AN ENVIRONMENTAL PHILOSOPHY
- II SCIENCE, POLICY, AND POLICY SCIENCE
- 6 What Is a Conservation Biologist?
- 7 Biological Resources and Endangered Species: History, Values, and Policy
- 8 Leopold as Practical Moralist and Pragmatic Policy Analyst
- 9 Improving Ecological Communication: The Role of Ecologists in Environmental Policy Formation
- III ECONOMICS AND ENVIRONMENTAL SUSTAINABILITY
- IV SCALING SUSTAINABILITY: ECOLOGY AS IF HUMANS MATTERED
- V SOME ELEMENTS OF A PHILOSOPHY OF SUSTAINABLE LIVING
- VI VALUING SUSTAINABILITY: TOWARD A MORE COMPREHENSIVE APPROACH TO ENVIRONMENTAL EVALUATION
- Index
Summary
What is a conservation biologist? According to one view, the conservation biologist acts as a mechanic. Our society demands “healthy ecosystems”; conservation biologists “adjust” the mechanism of nature to achieve, as efficiently as possible, this social goal. On this positivist view of science, facts and values can be separated, and science can operate in a world of pure description.
This mythical world is also attractive to social scientists – especially economists. Many economists claim that their science is value free, that they merely record social preferences as they are represented in markets, actual or hypothetical. According to this positivist view of science and society, Ph.D.'s granted to budding young conservation biologists serve as union cards that permit them to work as biological mechanics in the service of social preferences.
The danger in this whole view of science becomes apparent when economists and conservation biologists accept, without protest, the positivist picture. They will come to believe that good environmental management can somehow be cranked out of a decision procedure that merely records whatever preferences are registered in markets or in social opinion polls. The result is a bureaucratic brand of science (such as that which takes place in some national parks under the watchful eye of park management). This is not only bad science; in the end it does more harm than good.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Searching for SustainabilityInterdisciplinary Essays in the Philosophy of Conservation Biology, pp. 107 - 109Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2002