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Biodiversity Considered Philosophically

An Introduction

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 June 2009

Edited by
Markku Oksanen  and
Juhani Pietarinen
Markku Oksanen
Affiliation:
University of Kuopio, Finland
Juhani Pietarinen
Affiliation:
University of Turku, Finland
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Summary

BIODIVERSITY IN THE HUMAN MIND

Biodiversity is peculiar in the sense of being both novel and traditional at the same time. The emergence of the term from the discipline of conservation biology is well documented in current history (see Takacs 1996). It is a neologism, dating back to 1985 when Dr. Walter G. Rosen coined it while planning a conference that aimed to bring together what was known about the state of biological diversity on Earth (Wilson 1988, vi). The conference, the National Forum on BioDiversity, was held in Washington, D.C., in September 1986 and the proceedings of this meeting were also titled Biodiversity (Wilson 1988). So, biodiversity is a contraction of biological diversity.

A rough idea of biological diversity, and thereby of biodiversity, has existed in the human mind ever since evolution endowed our hominid ancestors in the phylogenetic tree with adequate cognitive abilities, in particular that of classification. Therefore, any attempt to definitively date when humans first conceived of nature as diverse is doomed to fail: we live from and within the world of diversity and we are a part of that totality.

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Chapter
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Philosophy and Biodiversity , pp. 1 - 24
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2004

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