F interpreting the organic planet as a morally important order. This normativity usually remains hidden, but as a result of Brouwer’s presentation, and much more especially his use in the term `nature mining’, it all of a sudden came towards the surface. Inside the introduction, I explained that Leopold wrote about a `chasm’ amongst different pictures of nature as early as within the 1940s; he observed a divide which he regarded to become prevalent to numerous specialised fields, for example forestry, agriculture, and wildlife management. Every single of these fields is often divided into a group that “regards the land as soil, and its function as commodity-production,” plus a group that “regards the land as a biota, and its function as some thing broader” (Leopold 1949, 221). In all these divides, Leopold recognised the same basic `paradoxes’: man the conqueror MedChemExpress TCV-309 (chloride) versus man the biotic citizen; science the sharpener of his sword versus science the searchlight on his universe; land the slave and servant versus land the collective organism (Idem, 223). In the following sections, I will use Leopold’s `paradoxes’ as a guideline for exploring the various conceptions of nature current inside the Dutch PubMed ID:http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21307382 ecogenomics neighborhood.Industrial mining In the starting of this paper, I explained that for some members with the Dutch ecogenomics community, the term `nature mining’ invoked an image of nature as a reservoir to be exploited utilizing the latest technologies. As Joop Ouborg, co-founder of PEEG, place it: the term as such conveys a technocratic and human-centred image of nature. It echoes the query: how can we exploit nature to meet human desires (Ouborg, interview, September 2012). Within the field of environmental ethics, the interpretation of nature as a mere means to human ends is said to reveal an instrumental method to nature (e.g. Rolston 1981; Curry 2006). Such an approach is based on the assumption that nature can’t have worth independently of human requirements and desires; it is believed to possess “meaning and value only when it can be created to serve the human as a indicates to their ends” (Plumwood 2002, 109). Why will be the term `nature mining’ so strongly linked with an instrumental strategy to nature Certainly, this association largely revolves about the use of theVan der Hout Life Sciences, Society and Policy 2014, 10:10 http:www.lsspjournal.comcontent101Page 9 ofterm `mining’, i.e. the industrial procedure of extracting precious minerals or other geological materials in the earth. Mining is among the most pronounced examples of a method in which nature seems as a resource, as a slave and servant (cf. Leopold 1949, 223). By polluting “the `purest streams’ of the earth’s womb”, mining operations “have altered the earth from a bountiful mother to a passive receptor of human rape” (Merchant 1989, 389). To be able to mine, trees and vegetation generally need to be cleared. In addition, large scale mining operations depend on industrial-sized machinery to extract the metals and minerals in the soil. Severely polluting chemical substances, like cyanide and mercury, are essential to extract these precious components. Substantial amounts of waste materials are usually discharged into rivers, streams, and oceans.n The image of nature as a slave and servant became dominant throughout the Scientific Revolution as well as the rise of a market-oriented culture in early contemporary Europe. In her famous book “The Death of Nature” (1989), philosopher and historian of science Carolyn Merchant argues that in the Renaissance era, a various ima.
