Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-ndmmz Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-06-01T12:08:45.660Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Nature and the Natural

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 June 2008

Evelyn Fox Keller
Evelyn Fox Keller
Affiliation:
Program in Science, Technology and Society, Building E51 Room 171, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA 02139USA E-mail: efkeller@mit.edu
Get access

Abstract

As part of my interest in the persistence of unproductive debates about the relative importance of nature and nurture, I focus here on the especially problematic relation between nature and the natural. For if the definition of nature is problematic, its semantic relation to ‘natural’ is even more so. I explore some of the problems that arise from slippage between substantive and normative conceptions of ‘natural’ (inviting collateral slippage between is and ought), from the bifurcatory structure of its negation and from changing assumptions about nature’s domain.

Keywords

Human BehaviorIsNatureNurtureOught
Type
Lecture
Information
BioSocieties , Volume 3 , Issue 2 , June 2008 , pp. 117 - 124
Copyright
Copyright © London School of Economics and Political Science 2008

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Bateson, M.C. (1995). On the naturalness of things. In Brockman, J. and Matson, K. (Eds), How things are: A science toolkit for the mind. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson. URL (consulted April 2008):www.fortunecity.com/emachines/e11/86/natural.htmlGoogle Scholar
Canguilhem, G. (1991). The normal and the pathological, trans. Fawcett, C.R. & Cohen, R.S. New York: Zone Books.Google Scholar
Darwin, C. (1874). The descent of man, 2nd edn, Chapter 4. URL (accessed April 2008): http://psychclassics.yorku.ca/Darwin/Descent/descent4.htmGoogle Scholar
Daston, L. (2002). The moral and natural orders. Tanner Lectures at Harvard University, 6 November. URL (accessed April 2008): www.tannerlectures.utah.edu/lectures/documents/volume24/daston_2002.pdfGoogle Scholar
Daston, L., & Vidal, F. (Eds) (2004). On the moral authority of nature. Chicago: U Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Dennett, D. (2002). Times Literary Supplement, 6 December.Google Scholar
Fish, S. (1989). Doing what comes naturally. Durham, NC: Duke UP.Google Scholar
Galton, F. (1874). English men of science: Their nature and nurture. London: Macmillan.Google Scholar
Keller, E.F. (2005). Innate confusions: Nature, nurture, and all of that. Dean’s Lecture Series, Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, 7 April.Google Scholar
Mill, J.S. (1863). Utilitarianism URL (accessed May 2008):www.utilitarianism.com/mill3.htmGoogle Scholar
Sagoff, M. (2001). Genetic engineering and the concept of the natural. Philosophy & Public Policy Quarterly, 21 (2/3),2–11. URL (accessed April 2008): www.puaf.umd.edu/IPPP/reports/Spring-Summer%20Vol21%202001/221056.pdfGoogle Scholar
Sagoff, M. (2005). Nature and human nature. In Ballie, H.W. & Casey, T.K. (Eds), Is human nature obsolete? Genetics, bioengineering, and the future of the human condition, 67–98. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar