> Good morning everybody,
>
> Ted wrote:
> >Hey, -- what could possibly be ethically wrong with humanity being absent from
> >major parts of this planet's Nature? That is the way it has been for 3.5
> >billion years, and it was good.
>
> Ted, I'm curious about your claim here, "and it was good." Is that a
> scientific, philosophical, or theological assertion? just wondering how
> you see it.
> Jim T.
>
Maria-Stella here:
(I answer because i was thinking about the same):
According to Budiansky, (first part of the book), scientifically speaking,
this is irrelevnant and down to human values. According to his thought,
there is no reason for believing that something is good or bad.
But in the last half book (about), this is reversed, and people are
NECESSRY for the ecosystem if we want to sustain what we have (again human
values). That's what has not been explained in his thinking.
If nature is ruled by chaos and randomness, if determinism is just a
stupid construction (which may well be), why then so much hussle to start
burning the few forests left in order to manage them (why= ethically i
mean, not scientifically). There is absolutely no reason to do prescribed
burning on ethical grounds.
I agree with Ted, and to rephrase his quick note and avoid
misunderstandings, i believe that with 'good' he meant GOOD for the
organisms that survived and lived. There is no evidence that if humans had
been invented earlier the world would be 'better' today. Is your question
to Ted meant to imply that without humans life on earth was worse? I don't
think so. Then what is the question leading to?
By the way Jim, thanks for the Pollan extracts, it was very interesting.
Maria-Stella
>
>
> That very condition (i.e. human absence)
> >precisely has been responsible for humanity evolving in the fist place. So,
> >just *why* would any person object to the notion that preservationism
> >might mean
> >the absence of humans from parts of the Earth? Tens of thousands of species
> >have limited geographical distributions; it's the norm. So, your
> >objection is
> >not logical since a strong ecologically based case can be made for leaving
> >huge
> >regions of the Earth free from Human impact, for reasons I present in this
> >email
> >and in my previous post. Humans are here because of the generative/symbiotic
> >norms of this planet, and not because of anything that you think today, or
> >that
> >any human thought about since we emerged. -- so it seems logical that people
> >should demonstrate respect/reverence/homage to things far more important than
> >humans. It is illogical not to do so (i.e. rail and rail against
> >preservationists and, by implication, the preservationist/Earth-saving ethic).
> >You say that "some" (no names given) of you [environmentalists] use the term
> >..."reserve strategy?" Sounds like you are manufacturing another scary
> >anti-environmentalist conspiracy theory. Again, I don't see a definition in
> >what you wrote above.
>
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