Evolutionary biology, ecology and ethics: at first glance, three different objects of research, three different worldviews and three different scientific communities. In reality, there are both structural and historical links between these disciplines. First, some topics are obviously common across the board. Second, the emerging need for environmental policy management has gradually but radically changed the relationship between these disciplines. Over the last decades in particular, there has emerged a need for an interconnecting meta-paradigm that integrates more strictly evolutionary studies, biodiversity studies and the ethical frameworks that are most appropriate for allowing a lasting co-evolution between natural and social systems. Today such a need is more than a mere luxury, it is an epistemological and practical necessity. In short, the authors of this volume address some of the foundational themes that interconnect evolutionary studies, ecology and ethics. Here they have chosen to analyze a topic using one of these specific disciplines as a kind of epistemological platform with specific links to topics from one or both of the remaining disciplines.

Inhalt

List of Figures.- List of Contributors.- Acknowledgements.- 1 Ecology, Evolution, Ethics: In Search of a Meta-Paradigm - An Introduction; Donato Bergandi.- 2 Evolution Versus Creation: A Sibling Rivalry?; Michael Ruse.- 3 Evolution and Chance; Jean Gayon.- 4 Some Conceptions of Time in Ecology; Jean-Marc Drouin.- 5 Facts, Values, and Analogies: A Darwinian Approach to Environmental Choice; Bryan G. Norton.- 6 Towards EcoEvoEthics; Patrick Blandin.- 7 Ecology and Moral Ontology; John Baird Callicott.- 8 Animal Rights and Environmental Ethics; Tom Regan.- 9 Reconciling Individualist and Deeper Environmentalist Theories? An Exploration; Robin Attfield.- 10 Two Philosophies of the Environmental Crisis; Catherine Larrère 11 Epilogue : The Epistemic and Practical Circle in an Evolutionary, Ecologically Sustainable Society; Donato Bergandi.- Index.