Deep Ecology

Deep ecology is one of the principal schools in contemporary environmental philosophy. The term was first used by the Norwegian philosopher Arne Naess in 1972 in his paper "The Shallow and the Deep, Long-Range Ecology Movement."

The term was intended to call for a fundamental rethinking of environmental thought that would go far beyond anthropocentric (human-centered) and reform environmentalism that sought merely to adjust environmental policy.

Instead of limiting itself to the mitigation of environmental degradation and sustainability in the use of natural resources, deep ecology is self-consciously a radical philosophy that seeks to create profound changes in the way we conceive of and relate to nature - eoearth.org .

Deep Ecology argues that the natural world is a subtle balance of complex inter-relationships in which the existence of organisms is dependent on the existence of others within ecosystems - Wikipedia .

His worries about science carry over to what hecalls "deep ecology". The deep greens, he claims, accept the old separation of facts and values, pleading for us to take nature as our guide to value. By contrast, a properly political ecology unsettles the division by showing how unsmooth the objects of study in biology, ecology and public health are. CFCs, asbestos, prions have all proved unruly things, linking up with us and other things in quite unexpected ways that threaten our health and flourishing.

The notion that the sciences investigate a world of smooth, bounded, well-defined objects, is simply an illusion. Instead, Latour claims, the supposed realm of "facts" is actually a space of exploration, experimentation, postulation, revision, trial and error - academia.edu .