In this second volume of the “Altering Nature” project, we situate specific religious and policy discussions of four broad areas of biotechnology within the context of our interdisciplinary research on concepts of nature and the natural in the first volume (Altering Nature, Concepts of Nature and the Natural in Biotechnology Debates). In the first volume, we invited five groups of scholars to explore the diverse conceptions of nature and the natural that shape moral judgments about human alterations of nature, as especially exemplified by recent developments in biotechnology. A careful reading of such developments reveals that assessments of them—whether positive or negative—are often informed by different conceptual interpretations of nature and the natural, with differing implications for judgments about the appropriateness of particular alterations of nature. These varying interpretations of nature and the natural often result from the distinctive perspectives that characterize various scholarly disciplines. Therefore, in an effort to explore the variety of meanings that attend discussions of the concepts of nature and the natural, the contributors to the first volume of Altering Nature addressed those concepts from five different disciplinary vantages.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2008 Springer Science + Business Media B.V
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Lustig, B.A., Brody, B.A., McKenny, G.P. (2008). Introduction. In: Lustig, B.A., Brody, B.A., McKenny, G.P. (eds) Altering Nature. Philosophy and Medicine, vol 98. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4020-6923-9_1
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4020-6923-9_1
Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht
Print ISBN: 978-1-4020-6922-2
Online ISBN: 978-1-4020-6923-9
eBook Packages: Humanities, Social Sciences and LawPhilosophy and Religion (R0)