A thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability and beauty of the biotic community. It is wrong when it tends otherwise.
Aldo Leopold, from The Land Ethic in A Sand County Almanac with other essays on conservation from Round River
According to Leopold then, our practice of natural history provides a moral grounding for being able to distinguish right from wrong.
1 comment:
Yes--note this comment,also from "The Land Ethic": "We can be ethical only in relation to something we can see, feel, understand, love, or otherwise have faith in." How do we see, feel, understand, etc? That sounds to me like the practice of natural history!
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