2005-06: "Nature in the Scientific and Moral Imagination"

The IU faculty who participated in the Center's third annual Interdisciplinary Poynter Faculty Fellowship, focusing in 2005-06 on the theme, "Nature in the Scientific and Moral Imagination." were:

• Robert Fischman, Professor of Law
• Heather Reynolds, Assistant Professor of Biology
• Scott Sanders, Distinguished Professor of English
• Russell Skiba, Professor in Counseling and Educational Psychology
• Aaron Stalnaker, Assistant Professor of Religious Studies
• Betsy Stirratt, Director of the School of Fine Arts Gallery

Left to right: Richard Miller, Mark Wilson, Scott Sanders, Heather Reynolds, Rob Fischman, Betsy Stirratt, Aaron Stalnaker, Melissa Seymour, Russ Skiba, Byron Bangert, Robert Crouch

Below is a biographical sketch of each participant and the research project selected.

Robert Fischman is Professor of Law and a scholar of environmental law and policy. Before joining the Indiana faculty in 1992, he taught at the University of Wyoming College of Law and served as Natural Resources Program Director and Staff Attorney at the Environmental Law Institute in Washington, D.C. Fischman will be studying primary sources of the law (i.e. statutes, regulatory materials, resource management plans, judicial opinions, executive orders) as a window into social constructs of nature.

Heather L. Reynolds is Assistant Professor in Biology. As a plant community ecologist, her research in temperate grassland and forest plant communities focuses on plant-soil-microbe interactions and the role of environmental heterogeneity. She has a special interest in service learning, a form of active learning involving partnerships between students and community groups, and has developed service-learning courses for both undergraduate and graduate students. She is also a leader in an interdisciplinary initiative to promote environmental literacy at IUB. Professor Reynolds will be studying "Ecosystem services: the other infrastructure."

After completing his Ph.D. in literature at Cambridge University in 1971, Scott Sanders joined the faculty of Indiana University, where he is now Distinguished Professor of English. He is the author of eighteen books of fiction and personal nonfiction, including Staying Put, Hunting for Hope, The Force of Spirit, and A Private History of Awe. In his books and teaching, he is concerned with our place in nature, the work of social justice, the practice of community, and the search for a spiritual path. Sanders will be examining the view of nature as a "commons" on which we depend for our sustenance and well-being.

Russell Skiba is Professor in Counseling and Educational Psychology at Indiana University. He has worked with schools in the areas of the management of disruptive behavior, school discipline, and school violence, and he has published extensively in the areas of school violence, zero tolerance, and cultural diversity. Skiba's project, "Nature, Nurture, & Prejudice: When is Scientific Discourse Racist?," will be to review the history of scientific racism, with a particular focus on the field of eugenics in the early 20th century, in an attempt to clarify whether and when scientific discourse can be termed racist.

Aaron Stalnaker is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Religious Studies. He writes and teaches courses on comparative religious ethics, Christian thought, and early Chinese thought. Stalnaker's project "The Nature of Authority: Dependence, Human Nature, and the Justice of Hierarchical Relations," will be to develop a nuanced account of the scope and character of just hierarchy in human relations that avoids both a romantic rejection of hierarchy and unjustified, anti-liberal authoritarianism.

Betsy Stirratt has been the Director of the School of Fine Arts Gallery at Indiana University since 1987. As director, she has curated numerous exhibitions of contemporary art and published several exhibit catalogs and books. Stirratt will be investigating the perception of the idea of "humanity" and "nature" as communicated by visual artists. She will be using certain contemporary works of art to illustrate and address themes related to the body, nature and natural living organisms and their use for artistic purposes.

The Interdisciplinary Poynter Faculty Fellowship generates interdisciplinary inquiry from full-time faculty in IUB's College of Arts and Sciences and professional schools by bringing together fellows each year for ten seminar meetings on a focal theme that has theoretical and practical dimensions. Each year's theme is selected with an eye to coordinating interdisciplinary study around a topic of public interest. Two visiting lecturers will present public lectures on the topic as well. Fellows will produce a publishable article or chapter that draws on their seminar discussions and research.

Nature in the Scientific and Moral Imagination, October 21, 2006
Six IU faculty who were Poynter Center Fellows in 2005-06 reported on their research on the topic of "Nature in the Scientific and Moral Imagination" on Saturday, October 21, 2006.

The morning session included:

• Defending the Common Wealth, Scott Sanders, Distinguished Professor of English
• Coming to Terms with our Place in the “Web”: Ecosystem Services and the Development of a Modern Day Land Ethic, Heather Reynolds, Assistant Professor of Biology
• The Social Construction of Nature in American Law, Rob Fischman, Professor of Law

The afternoon session included:

• Natural and Unnatural Hierarchies, Aaron Stalnaker, Assistant Professor of Religious Studies
• Nature, Nurture, & Prejudice: History and Current Status of Racial Research, Russell Skiba, Professor in Counseling and Educational Psychology
• Nature, Bioart and Creative Autonomy, Betsy Stirratt, Director of the Fine Arts Gallery

Guest Lecturers on Nature and the Scientific and Moral Imagination

Professor J. Baird Callicott from the Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies from the University of North Texas spoke Oct. 27 on "Naturalizing the Boundary between Humanity and Nature."

Callicott is a pioneer in teaching environmental ethics and is the author of numerous books on the subject, including American Indian Environmental Philosophy: An Ojibwa Case Study (with Michael Nelson), Beyond the Land Ethic: More Essays in Environmental Philosophy, In Defense of the Land Ethic: Essays in Environmental Philosophy, and Earth's Insights: A Survey of Ecological Ethics from the Mediterranean Basin to the Australian Outback. His work includes research and publishing in the areas of environmental philosophy and ethics, the history of ideas in ecology, the philosophy of ecology, and conservation biology.

Professor Paul Lauritzen spoke March 23 on the topic of "Piercing the Veil of the Familiar: 'Nature,' the new Grotesque, and the Bioethical Imagination." Lauritzen spoke about using art to think about the implications of changing nature in fundamental ways. The quote is from Robert Penn Warren: "The grotesque is one of the most obvious forms art may take to pierce the veil of familiarity. . . ."

Lauritzen, from the Religious Studies Department at John Carroll University has published numerous books, including editing Cloning and the Future of Human Embryo Research.

Paul Lauritzen responds to a question as Aaron Stalnaker listens.

Announcement of the Poynter Center Topic for 2005-06

"Nature in the Scientific and Moral Imagination"

The Poynter Center for the Study of Ethics and American Institutions announces its third annual Interdisciplinary Poynter Faculty Fellowship, focusing in 2005-06 on the theme, "Nature in the Scientific and Moral Imagination."

The IPFF hopes to generate interdisciplinary inquiry from full-time faculty in IUB's College of Arts and Sciences and professional schools by bringing together at least five fellows each year for 10 seminar meetings on a focal theme that has theoretical and practical dimensions. Each year's theme is selected with an eye to coordinating interdisciplinary study around a topic of public interest.

This year's topic will examine assumptions about "nature," "human nature," or natural exigencies that guide scientific and humanistic inquiry and artistic creativity. Specific areas this year might include (a) assumptions that lie behind "correcting" or "enhancing" natural traits (b) the natural and its "others" (the conventional, artificial, abnormal, unnatural, preternatural, supernatural); (c) cultural representations of the natural (e.g., in the arts, popular media, literature, philosophical or religious texts); (d) nature, the law, and/or environmental rights; (e) policing and/or politicizing "the natural"; (f) gendered, ethnic, or racial constructions of human nature (g) moral valences of nature (brutal, pure, wild, savage, primitive, untouched, etc.).

Proposals are welcome that draw from scientific, humanistic, and artistic approaches to these or related topics, or that address recent practical and policy developments surrounding the exploration and/or use of the body, ideals of health and well-being, protecting the environment, etc. The year's initial selection of readings will be set by the Center's director, who will serve as seminar leader; subsequent readings will be determined by the seminar fellows. Interdisciplinary Poynter Faculty Fellows will be expected to attend the 1-2 campus events that the Center plans to arrange around the year's theme. Fellows will also be expected to produce a publishable article or chapter that draws on their seminar discussions and research by September 1, 2006, and to present their work in fall 2006. Each fellow will be awarded $7000, one-seventh of which will be allocated upon the submission of the fellow's chapter/article.

Readings for 2005-06

Readings for the Poynter Center Fellows

Week 1 Investigating Nature - Looking Outward

a. Stephen Jay Gould, Leonardo's Mountain of Clams and the Diet of Worms (New York: Harmony Books, 1998), Chapter Three: "Seeing Eye to Eye, Through a Glass Clearly," pp. 57-73.

b. Bill McKibben, The End of Nature (New York: Anchor Books, 1990), Chapter Two: "The End of Nature," pp. 47-91.

c. Nicholas Rescher, "Perspectives on Nature in American Thought," from Nature in American Philosophy, ed. Jean De Groot. (Washington DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 2004), pp. 157-180.

Week 2 Investigating Nature - Looking Inward

a. Jonathan Marks, What it Means to Be 98% Chimpanzee (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002), Chapter Seven: "Human Nature," pp. 159-179.

b. Mary Midgley, Beast and Man: The Roots of Human Nature (London: Routledge Press, 1995), Chapter Twelve: "Why We Need Culture," pp. 285-306.

c. Reinhold Niebuhr, The Nature and Destiny of Man (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1964), Chapter Six: "Man as Image of God and as Creature," pp. 150-177.

d. Jean-Jaques Rousseau, Discourse on the Origin and Foundations of Inequality Among Men - Part One, ed. & trans. Donald A. Cress. (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 1983), pp. 117 - 140.

Week 3 Prescribing Nature: The Natural as Normative

a. Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics - Book I. Translated by T. Irwin. 2nd ed. (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 1999), pp. 1-18.

b. Michael S. Kimmel, The Gendered Society (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), Chapter 2: "Ordained by Nature: Biology Constructs the Sexes," pp. 21-46.

c. Amartya Sen, "Capability and Well-Being," from The Quality of Life, ed. Martha Nussbaum & Amartya Sen (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993), pp. 30-53.

d. Andrew Sullivan, "Unnatural Law," New Repulic (Mar. 24, 2003), vol. 228 is. 11, p. 18.

Recommended:

T. H. Irwin, "The Metaphysical and Psychological Basis of Aristotle's Ethics," from Essays on Aristotle's Ethics, ed. Amelie Rorty. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980), pp. 35-53.

Week 4 Manipulating Nature: Correcting, Controlling, Improving

a. Suzanne Anker, The Molecular Gaze: Art in the Genetic Age (Cold Spring Harbor: Cold Spring Harbor Press, 2004), Chapter Three: "Mutation, Manipulation, and Monsters: The New Grotesque in Art," pp. 47-79.

b. Carl Elliot, "American Bioscience Meets the American Dream," The American Prospect, vol. 14 no. 6, June 1, 2003.

c. Eric T. Juengst, "What Does Enhancement Mean?" from Enhancing Human Traits: Ethical and Social Implications, ed. Eric Parens (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 1998), pp. 29-47.

d. William R. Newman, Promethean Ambitions: Alchemy and the Quest to Perfect Nature (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004), Introduction: "From Alchemical Gold to Synthetic Humans: The Problem of the Artificial and the Natural," and Chapter One: "Imitating, Challenging, and Perfecting Nature: The Arts and Alchemy in European Antiquity," pp. 1-33.

Recommended:

Michael J. Sandel, "The Case Against Perfection: What's wrong with designer children, bionic athletes, and genetic engineering," The Atlantic Monthly (April 2004), pp. 51-62.

Week 5 Science, Culture, and a Politics of Nature and the Natural

a. Suzanne Anker, The Molecular Gaze: Art in the Genetic Age (Cold Spring Harbor: Cold Spring Harbor Press, 2004), Chapter Six: "Commodification: Genes for Sale," pp. 153-184.

b. William Cronon, "The Trouble with Wilderness: Or, Getting Back to the Wrong Nature," from Out of the Woods: Essays in Environmental History, ed. Char Miller & Hal Rothman (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1997), pp. 28-50.

c. Robert Elliot, "Faking Nature," Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy and the Social Sciences (Mar. 1982), vol. 25 no. 1, pp. 81-93.

d. Mark Sagoff, "Genetic Engineering and the Concept of the Natural," from Genetic Prospects: Essays on Biotechnology, Ethics, and Public Policy, ed. Verna V. Gehring (Lanham: Rowan & Littlefield, 2003), pp. 11-25.

e. Neil Smith, "The Production of Nature," from FuturNatural: Nature, science, culture, ed. George Robertson, Melinda Mash, Lisa Tickner, Jon Bird, Barry Curtis, and Tim Putnam (London: Routledge, 1996), pp.35-54.

Recommended:

Michael Pollan, "Naturally," The New York Times Magazine, (May 13, 2001).

Week 6 Valuing Nature's Services, Recovering the Commons

a. Wendell Berry, "Back to the Land," The Amicus Journal (Winter 1999), pp. 47-40.

b. Gretchen C. Daily and Katherine Ellison, The New Economy of Nature (Washington, D.C.: Island Press, 2002), "Prologue: The Wealth of Nature," pp. 1-17.

c. Herman Daly and John B. Cobb, Jr., For the Common Good (Boston: Beacon, 1994), Chapter Five, "Misplaces Concreteness: Land," pp. 95-117, and Chapter Ten, "From Matter and Rent to Energy and Biosphere," pp. 190-206.

d. Jeff Gersh, "Bigger, Badder - But Not Better," The Amicus Journal (Winter 1999), pp. 32-36.

e. Garrett Hardin, "The Tragedy of the Commons," Science, 162 (Dec 1968), pp. 1243-1248.

f. Aldo Leopold, A Sand County Almanac and Sketches Here and There (New York: Oxford, 1949), "The Land Ethic," pp. 201-226.

g. Wallace Stegner, The Sound of Mountain Water (New York: Doubleday, 1969), "Coda: Wilderness Letter," pp. 145-153.

Recommended:

Lawrence H. Goulder and Donald Kennedy, "Valuing Ecosystem Services: Philosophical Bases and Empirical Methods," Gretchen C. Daily, ed., Nature's Services (Washington, D.C., 1997), pp. 23-44.

Week 7: Nature, Bioart and Creative Autonomy

a. Holiday Dmitri, "Bioart Engagement: Weird Science," Velocity Magazine 6.1. http://www.holidaydmitri.com/bioart.html

b. Isabelle Graw, "Andrea Fraser: Hamburger Kunstverien," Artforum International (Dec. 1, 2003) vol. 42 is. 4, pp. 140.

c. Randy Kennedy, "The Artists in Hazmat Suits," New York Times, July 3, 2005.

d. Friedrich Petzel Gallery, "Andrea Fraser June 10-July 9, 2004: Untitled" (Press Release, June 2004). http://www.petzel.com/index_fraser.html

e. Jeremy Rifkin, The Biotech Century (New York: Tarcheri/Putnam, 1998), Chapter Two: "Patenting Life," pp. 37-66.

f. Guy Trebay, "Sex, Art, and Videotape," New York Times Magazine, June 13, 2004.

g. Gunther von Hagens, Body Worlds: The Anatomical Exhibition of Real Human Bodies (Arts and Sciences, 2005), "On Gruesome Corpses, Gestalt Plastinates and Mandatory Interment," pp. 260-282.

h. Ionat Zurr and Oron Catts, "The Ethical Claims of Bio Art: Killing the Other or Self-cannibalism?" Australian and New Zealand Journal of Art: Art & Ethics, vol. 4 num. 2, 2003, and vol. 5 num. 1, 2004, pp.167 - 188. http://www.tca.uwa.edu.au/atGlance/pubMainFrames.html

i. Ionat Zurr and Oron Catts, "Big Pigs, Small Wings: On Genohype and Artistic Autonomy," Culture Machine (electronic journal) (2005). http://culturemachine.tees.ac.uk/frm_f1.htm

j. "The Mysteries of a Mutant Art," RTDinfo: Magazine on European Research (March, 2004). http://europa.eu.int/comm/research/rtdinfo/special_as/article_814_en.html

Recommended:

Bill McKibben, Enough (New York: Henry Holt, 2003), Chapter One: "Too Much," pp. 1-65.

Week 8: Nature, Science, Race, and Racism

a. Stephen J. Gould, The Mismeasure of Man (New York: W.W. Norton, 1996) Epilogue, pp. 401-424.

b. James W. Ceaser, "Natural Rights and Scientific Racism," from Thomas Jefferson and the Politics of Nature, ed. T.S. Engeman. (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2000), pp. 165-189.

c. Allyson D. Polsky, "Blood, Race, and the National Identity: Scientific and Popular Discourses," Journal of Medical Humanities (Winter 2002) vol. 23 nos. 3/4, pp. 171-186.

d. American Anthropological Association, "American Anthropological Association Statement on "Race"," (May 7, 1998). (Downloaded from http://www.aaanet.org/stmts/racepp.htm.)

e. Pilar Ossorio and Troy Duster. "Race and Genetics: Controversies in Biomedical, Behavioral, and Forensic Sciences," American Psychologist (Jan. 2005) vol. 60 no. 1, pp. 115-128.

f. Barbara Trepagnier, "Deconstructing Categories: The Exposure of Silent Racism," Symbolic Interaction (2001) vol. 24 no. 2, pp. 141-163.

Recommended:

Thomas Jefferson, Notes on the State of Virginia (Boston: Wells & Lilly, 1829), pp. 143-151.

Stefan Kühl, The Nazi Connection: Eugenics, American Racism, and German National Socialism (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994) Chapter Six: "The Influence of Different Concepts of Race on Attitudes toward Nazi Race Policies," pp. 65-76.

Naomi Zack, "Geograpny and Ideas of Race," from Science and Other Cultures, ed. R. Figuero and S. Harding. (New York: Routledge, 2003), pp. 201-220.

Week 9: Human Nature(s), Dependency, and Social Hierarchy

a. Aristotle, The Politics - Book I, 3-7 & 12-13, ed. Stephen Iverson. trans. Jonathan Barnes. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988) pp. 4-9, 17-20.

b. Philip J. Ivanhoe and Bryan W. Van Norden, eds. Readings in Classical Chinese Philosophy (New York: Seven Bridges Press, 2001) selections from Chapter Three: "Mengzi (Mencius)," pp. 111-113.

c. Alasdair MacIntyre, Dependent Rational Animals: Why Human Beings Need the Virtues (Chicago: Open Court Press, 1999) Chapter One: "Vulnerability, Dependence, Animality," and Chapter Nine: "Social Relationships, Practical Reasoning, Common Goods, and Individual Goods," pp. 1-9, 99-118.

d. Karl Marx, Selected Writings, ed. Lawerence H. Simon. trans. Loyd D. Easton. (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing, 1994) selections from "Alienated Labor" and "Communist Manifesto," pp. 58-68, 158-162.

e. Mencius, Mencius, trans. D.C. Lau. Revised Edition. (New York: Penguin, 2003) pp. 57-62.

f. Richard B. Miller, Children, Ethics, and Modern Medicine (Bloomington, Ind.: Indiana University Press, 2003) Introduction and Chapter Two: "The Duty to Care," pp. 1-6, 25-50.

Recommended:

Eva Feder Kittay, Love's Labor: Essays on Women, Equality, and Dependency (New York: Routledge, 1999) Chapter One: "Relationships of Dependency and Equality," pp. 23-48.

Alasdair MacIntyre, Dependent Rational Animals: Why Human Beings Need the Virtues (Chicago: Open Court Press, 1999) Chapter Ten: "The virtues of Acknowledged Dependence," and Chapter Eleven: "The Political and Social Structures of the Common Good," pp. 119-146.

Week 10: Conceptions of Nature in American Law

a. Babbit v. Sweet Home Chapter of Communities for a Greater Oregon (1995), (excerpts).

b. Brian Czech, "A Chronological Frame of Reference for Ecological Integrity and Natural Conditions," Natural Resources Journal (Fall 2004) 44:1113, pp. 1121-1130.

c. David Delaney, Law and Nature (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), pp. 149-161, 207-212.

d. Brian Norton, "Change, Constancy, and Creativity: The New Ecology and Some Old Problems," Duke Environmental Law & Policy Forum (Fall 1996) 7:49, pp. 49-70.

e. Carol M. Rose, "Given-ness and Gift: Property and the Quest for Environmental Ethics," Environmental Law (Winter 1994) 24:1, (excerpts).

f. Joseph L. Sax, "Property Rights and the Economy of Nature: Understanding Lucas v. South Carolina Coastal Council," Stanford Law Review (May 1993) 45:1433, (excerpts).

g. U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Policy on Maintaining the Biological Integrity, Diversity, and Environmental Health of the Natural Wildlife Refuge System, Federal Register, vol. 66, no. 10 (Jan. 16, 2001), pp. 3810-3812.

h. Charles F. Wilkinson, The Eagle Bird: Mapping a New West (New York: Pantheon Books, 1992) Chapter Two: "Language, Law, and the Eagle Bird," pp. 8-21.