The Moral Authority of Nature
by Lorraine Daston (Editor), Fernando Vidal (Editor)
32 Members (3.50)
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Description
For thousands of years, people have used nature to justify their political, moral, and social judgments. Such appeals to the moral authority of nature are still very much with us today, as heated debates over genetically modified organisms and human cloning testify. The Moral Authority of Nature offers a wide-ranging account of how people have used nature to think about what counts as good, beautiful, just, or valuable. The eighteen essays cover a diverse array of topics, including the show more connection of cosmic and human orders in ancient Greece, medieval notions of sexual disorder, early modern contexts for categorizing individuals and judging acts as "against nature," race and the origin of humans, ecological economics, and radical feminism. The essays also range widely in time and place, from archaic Greece to early twentieth-century China, medieval Europe to contemporary America. Scholars from a wide variety of fields will welcome The Moral Authority of Nature, which provides the first sustained historical survey of its topic. Contributors: Danielle Allen, Joan Cadden, Lorraine Daston, Fa-ti Fan, Eckhardt Fuchs, Valentin Groebner, Abigail J. Lustig, Gregg Mitman, Michelle Murphy, Katharine Park, Matt Price, Robert N. Proctor, Helmut Puff, Robert J. Richards, Londa Schiebinger, Laura Slatkin, Julia Adeney Thomas, Fernando Vidal show lessTags
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Author Information
Lorraine Daston is director of the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science in Berlin and is visiting professor in the Committee on Social Thought at the University of Chicago.
Common Knowledge
- Canonical title
- The Moral Authority of Nature
Classifications
- Genres
- Nonfiction, Philosophy, Science & Nature, History
- DDC/MDS
- 113.09 — Philosophy & psychology Metaphysics (existence, purpose, and the nature of reality) Cosmology (Philosophy of nature) Biography; History By Place
- LCC
- BD581 .M78 — Philosophy, Psychology and Religion Speculative philosophy Speculative philosophy Cosmology
- BISAC
Statistics
- Members
- 32
- Popularity
- 883,437
- Rating
- (3.50)
- Languages
- English
- Media
- Paper, Ebook
- ISBNs
- 4
- ASINs
- 1
