Helen Anne Curry, Department of History & Philosophy of Science, Univ. of Cambridge and Paul White, Darwin Correspondence Project, Univ. of Cambridge

Time: 24-25 March 2017
Venue: Univ. of Cambridge, Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences, and Humanities, UK
Proposals by: 1 September 2016

The concept of ‘biodiversity’ has become one of the most crucial and complex terms in the environmental sciences. Central to the disciplines of conservation biology and environmental ethics, biodiversity operates as both fact and value in wider public debates about the preservation of species and habitats from human influence, exploitation, and destruction. Although the origins of the concept and its recent history are relatively well known, its relationship to earlier traditions and discourses is less well charted. We seek to understand how aesthetic, economic, and moral value came to be attached to the diversity of life on earth.

The conference will bring together scholars and researchers in ecology, biology, geography, anthropology, cultural history, and history and philosophy of science. We will draw on what is already a rich body of historical research on hybridity and exchange, habitat and distribution, civilization and extinction from the eighteenth century onwards, and will seek to broaden and deepen this genealogy. Read more and source … (Web)