Skeptical Environmentalism: The Limits of Philosophy and Science

Two: Organism and Mechanism

Given the shortcomings of speculation, it is no surprise that many environmental philosophers turn to the natural sciences to bolster claims on behalf of relatedness. It is also no surprise that ecology is the most common source of inspiration, although evolutionary biology and quantum mechanics have both served this function as well. Insofar as it concerns the interactions among organisms, many argue, ecology tends to break down the barriers between what have traditionally been regarded as independent entities. Bill Devall and George Sessions have claimed that ecology has “provided a view of Nature that was lacking in the discrete, reductionist approach to Nature of the other sciences,” and so it has helped bring about the “rediscovery within the modern scienti¤c context that everything is connected to everything else.” Likewise, J. Baird Callicott, one of the foremost interpreters of the [ 2 ] Organism and Mechanism implications of the sciences for environmental ethics, has claimed that recent developments in both ecology and physics make it “impossible to conceive of organisms . . . apart from the ¤eld, the matrix of which they are modes.” The matrix to which he refers is a system of internal relations that constitutes a “structured, differentiated whole.”1 It is not dif¤cult to understand the appeal of ecological concepts. Consider one possible line of argument. Some ecologists have come to believe that ecosystems— not organisms—are the basic units of nature. Suppose they were to demonstrate that ecosystems are nevertheless similar to organisms, at least in some respects: they maintain homeostasis, for example. Suppose further that an environmental philosopher were to pick up on this similarity and draw from it the implication that ecosystems are like organisms in morally signi¤cant respects: they have an interest in maintaining homeostasis, which implies that they can be harmed. If they can be harmed, then it might follow that humans have an obligation to prevent harm to ecosystems or even to repair any such harm once it has been done. The argument of this hypothetical philosopher has much in common with the sort of speculative organicism I discussed in the last chapter, especially in the claim that ecosystems exhibit traits associated with internality or subjectivity. The difference is that ecological theory— with its rather narrow and cautious organicism—serves as a vital link in this chain of reasoning. As scienti¤c inquiry has effectively become the ¤nal arbiter of knowledge concerning the natural world, many would regard support from ecology as decisive. A consistent skeptic, however, would not take the authority of the natural sciences at face value, especially when that authority is bor50 Knowledge rowed by non-scientists for political purposes. In this case, the key question is this: May environmental philosophers legitimately use the ¤ndings of ecologists to inform much broader claims on behalf of organicism? While there is widespread agreement among environmental philosophers that ecology can support an organic interpretation of nature, there is actually quite a lot of disagreement among them about the details of that interpretation . Callicott, for example, claims that deep ecologists are mistaken in their belief that the “organic wholeness ” with which humans are to identify is a homogenous whole, one without internal ontological distinctions. The science of ecology, he argues, supports instead a picture of the world as a differentiated whole in which the individual is not entirely swallowed up by the network of which it is a part. Callicott regards his own ecocentric ethic as being more adequate precisely because it is more “ecological.”2 Karen Warren and Jim Cheney, in their ecofeminist critique of Callicott’s metaphysics, reject even this more sophisticated understanding of wholeness. Instead, they draw on their own understanding of hierarchy theory. A recent development in ecosystem ecology, hierarchy theory, is based on the insight that ecological systems can be studied at a number of different levels, each of which is relatively independent of the others, and each of which calls for its own methods and theories. So the relation of a given species to its environment will be studied in one way, while the more encompassing systems of global ecology will be studied in quite another, and each kind of research is valid in its own domain. Hierarchy theory yields the further insight that these various levels of organization may be arranged hierarchically, where each is nested within but relatively independent of the more encompassOrganism and Mechanism 51 ing levels. This leads Warren and Cheney to...