The Moral Authority of NatureLorraine Daston, Fernando Vidal 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 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 |
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Acheulean American ancient animals ants argued Auguste Forel authority bees behavior Bildung biology body Bonnet Cambridge Chicago child China Chinese complexion concept context culture discourse early modern ecological economics economic eighteenth century Enlightenment essay Ethics European evolutionary example experience female feminist Forel gender Goethe guocui hay fever Hesiod hominid human nature Ibid idea individual insects intellectual Japanese Johann Kang Youwei labor Londa Schiebinger Lorraine Daston Mandeville Maruyama Maruyama Masao masturbation medicine medieval menstrual extraction moral natural history natural law naturalists nature’s norms observations Onanism Pädagogik Paris pedagogical naturalism personification philosophical physical physicians plants poem political pollen race racial radical ragweed Réaumur Renaissance reproduction scientific sexual social society sodomy species term texts theory tion Tissot tradition trans ture University Press virtue Wasmann weed Western Wheeler William Morton Wheeler women York Zhang Binglin