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OP, you asked about whether environmentalism is an objective scientific field or a subjective philosophical field, but I would say there's no reason it can't be both, and many reasons why it MUST be both. It's pretty hard to argue that wilderness has nothing to teach scientists; even elementary school kids understand that nature inspires inventions and scientific discoveries. And it's also hard to argue that wilderness has nothing to offer us in the way of spiritual enlightenment or, at the very least, psychological relief; there are endless accounts in literature and art, philosophy, religion and just plain old contemporary recollection to support this idea. My point is that both kinds of environmentalism are very well documented, and a given person may take more from one column than the other, but that doesn't change the fact that both are useful and important. I'm not an expert or a park ranger or nothing, but I can speak from personal experience that having access to local national forests and parks (Roosevelt and Rocky Mountain, respectfully) has been important to my health and my prosperity. Hiking with friends on a nice weekend away from the loud and dirty city where I work is medicine as far as I'm concerned. Whether that medicine directly affects my body chemistry through reactions in my skin/lungs/guts or reactions in my brain kinda seems irrelevant; either way it has definitely helped me as a citizen to have shared, protected spaces to recreate in, and that in turn has helped me contribute more to society. Now, the bigger questions of "should the individual's good health be an important priority of the state?", "how does the citizenry's health affect economies?", and "how far does the state's responsibility to maintain health standards go?", these are the subjects of debates we in the US have endlessly. In this respect wilderness preservation for the purpose of objective scientific inquiry is certainly an easier thing to sell people on: the next big tech wave might be based fundamentally on phenomena or trends observed in a wilderness area, that's a perfectly believable scenario we've seen play out innumerable times already. But that doesn't mean the subjective kind is invalid, it just means our culture doesn't recognize it formally yet.
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Jun 8, 2017 19:07
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| # ¿ May 21, 2024 01:36 |
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