What is the Source of Nature‘s Moral Authority?
Ludwik Fleck Lecture 2018 by Lorraine Daston

Lecture by

Lorraine Daston
Director (em.) at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, Berlin, DE

Details

Abstract

In many cultures and epochs, natural orders have been invoked by revolutionaries and reactionaries alike as support for various political, social, and moral order: the stately movements of the stars served the ancient Stoics as the model of the good life; revolutionaries in Enlightenment America and France appealed to nature’s universal laws to justify rebellion; homosexuality has been condemned as “against nature”; recent floods and storms prompt headlines about the “revenge of nature” taken upon human greed and thoughtlessness. Yet for centuries philosophers such as Hume, Kant, and John Stuart Mill have argued that nature has no moral authority; nature simply is, and it is an error of logic to infer an “ought” from an “is”. These calls to drive a wedge between natural and moral orders has gone largely unheeded, as current debates about genetically modified organisms, new reproductive technologies, and homosexual marriage testify. Why do we continue to seek moral authority in nature, despite learned advice to the contrary?