• Course Description
• Laboratory

How we treat nature is, in some measure, a function of how we conceive it.  Should we be concerned with the protection of the natural environment because we are dependent upon it for the quality of our lives?  Or, does nature merit respect and protection for its own inherent value quite apart from its utility to human beings?  Are human beings, in some relevant sense, the rightful rulers of nature and thereby entitled to use it in any manner that serves their ends? Or, is the natural environment more appropriately viewed as the property of all counterparts?  Is life limited to the individuals which constitute the organic world, the world of plants and animals?  Or, can we sensibly regard ecosystems, including the entire planet, as living entities in their own right (as in the so-called Gaia hypothesis)?  Efforts to answer these and a wide range of questions form the subject matter of this course.