ABSTRACT

Reconsidering Extinction in Terms of the History of Global Bioethics continues the Routledge Advances in the History of Bioethics series by exploring approaches to the bioethics of extinction from disparate disciplines, from literature, to social sciences, to history, to sustainability studies, to linguistics. Van Rensselaer Potter coined the phrase “Global Bioethics” to define human relationships with their contexts. This and subsequent volumes return to Potter’s founding vision from historical perspectives, and asks, how did we get here from then? Extinction can be understood in terms of an everlasting termination of shape, form, and function; however, until now life has gone on. Where would we humans be if the dinosaurs had not become extinct? And we still manage to communicate, only not in proto-Indo-European, but in a myriad of languages, some more common than others. The answer is simple, after extinction events, evolution continues. But will it always be so? Has the human race set planet earth on a collision course with nothingness? This volume explores areas of bioethical interpretation in relation to the complex concept of extinction.

chapter |8 pages

Introduction

Is Extinction a Thing of the Past?

part I|86 pages

Delineating Contexts—Extinction

chapter 101|26 pages

“Enough to Change a Planet”

Feeling Extinction in Contemporary Literature

chapter 2|13 pages

This Selfish Ape

chapter 3|18 pages

The Extinction of Intellectual Disability

An Enlightenment Project from Locke to Freud

chapter 4|27 pages

“Civilizing the ‘Redman’…”

John Locke, Adam Smith, and Social Darwinist Perceptions of Religion, Land-Use, and Progress as Policy to Make Extinct the Traditional Lifeways of North American Indian Peoples

part II|60 pages

Applying Contexts—Extinction Does Not Lead to an “End”

chapter 965|15 pages

“Strong in Zeal but Impotent in Head”

British Responses to the Cattle Plagues of the Eighteenth Century

chapter 6|24 pages

“They Are All Dead, Except a Few”

Social Complications and Royal Reactions to Death in England, 1348–1350

chapter 7|19 pages

The Right to a Cure

The Bioethics of Variolation

part III|83 pages

Creating “New” Contexts—Evolution

chapter 1568|27 pages

Tinkering with Eden

The Lure and Myth of Free-Willed Nature

chapter 9|21 pages

Whose Utopia?

The Complexity of Incorporating Diverse Ethical Views Within Nature Governance Frameworks

chapter 10|17 pages

For An Actional Ethics

Making Better Sense of Science

chapter 11|16 pages

The Descent of Language

Biology, Linguistic Evolution, and Language Extinction