Summary
Title: The Moral Authority of Nature
Author: edited by Lorraine Daston and Fernando Vidal
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226136817
Pro:
• Bring together an impressive array of articles on various topics
• The use (and abuse) of the “authority” of nature is a topic that merits more attention
Con:
• Very dense, not for the average reader
Description:
• Analysis of how nature has been used as an authority on moral, aesthetic, and social issues
• Explains how ideas about nature are transferred to the social realm and vice-versa
• Argues that we need to better understand how nature can or should be used
Book Review
Because of the widespread assumption that nature has significant authority over the structure of human culture, Lorraine Daston and Fernando Vidal have edited together eighteen essays in a volume entitled The Moral Authority of Nature. Bringing together scholars on political science, classics, history of science, history, women’s studies, philosophy, psychology, and more, Daston and Vidal tackle and issue that is fundamental to many fields but hasn’t really been addressed in a systematic, multi-disciplinary manner.
Contributors include Danielle Allen, Joan Cadden, Eckhardt Fuchs, Abigail J. Lustig, Michelle Murphy, Katharine Park, Matt Price, Helmut Puff, Robert J. Richards, Laura Slatkin, and Julia Adeney Thomas. Editor Lorraine Daston is the director of the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science in Berlin, and Fernando Vidal is a research scholar there.
What’s so special about “nature”? The editors write:
- “Naturalization in this form assumes the existence of distinct categories of nature and society, of well-drawn boundaries between them, and of certain asymmetric advantage in dwelling in one territory over another, nature being the land of choice for immigration. Naturalization imparts universality, firmness, even necessity — in short, authority — to the social.”
And:
- “The best kind of authority works invisibly. If it must brandish weapons and admonish its subjects, it only advertises its weakness; the stablest order is unfelt and unquestioned. Values can replace law with an internalized authority, such as Adam Smith’s “man within the breast” or Kant’s “moral law within“ that rules without coercion. To recognize a value as such is ipso facto to grant it title to authority.”
The question of authority is a deep and complex one that has occupied many sociologists and philosophers over the years. People seem to have a great need for stable, reliable sources of authority and legitimacy. When social institutions are in flux or unstable, people will of course begin to search for other sources of legal authority and moral legitimacy — and the best source would appear to be nature itself.
It should be expected, then, that any attempt to combat serious social changes will include attacks on the “unnaturalness” of those changes. It’s not enough to simply assert that the new ideas go against tradition and/or custom because even in times of relative stability, tradition can be a weak basis for arguments. Nature, on the other hand, can serve as a very effective trump card because “everyone knows” that nature doesn’t change. If some new idea goes against “nature,” then that would seem to preclude the possibility of even trying to have an effective argument defending it.
