ABSTRACT
The first, and oldest, belongs in what we might call the natural science paradigm. As recently as thirty years ago, scientific research was practically the only kind of research there was on the environment. Originally, indeed, there was no environmental "subject" as such at all - simply aspects of biology, geology, physical geography and so on. More recently, new holistic sciences have emerged - ecology, oceanography, climatology; many universities offer more or less integrated courses in "environmental sciences". Nevertheless all these disciplines essentially treat the environment in the same way. It is a given physical thing, made up of living and non-living objects which exist in nature and whose interactions - with each other and with humankind - can be observed by the application of a positive scientific method. Increasingly, such research has led scientists to advocate specific environmental policies, drawing on more or less explicit assumptions about the desirability of different "natural" states.
