How Amerigun idea of EXPLOITATION kills the soul of science and - TopicsExpress

How Amerigun idea of EXPLOITATION kills the soul of science and curiosity -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- When Wilson waxes poetic about “biophilia,” his sociobiological term for “the connections that human beings subconsciously seek with the rest of life” (D, 350), or when he criticizes those shortsighted souls who assume humanity should look to the stars for the next frontier and “let species die if they block progress, [since] scientific and technological genius will find another way” (D, 348), it is clear that he loves nature, that his plea to preserve it is genuine, and that his ultimate goal is laudable. But the metaphoric entailments of frontier exploration and exploitation through which his argument is framed carry a heavy burden in a postcolonial transnational context. Wilson portrays the biologist as a special sort of scientist who metaphorically explores the territory of new ideas and literally explores and exploits those spaces that have not yet been sufficiently mapped by the industrialized world. When it comes to the preservation of biological diversity, it is up to “science to blaze the path by research and development,” according to Wilson (D, 336). “Enchanted by the continuous emergence of new technologies and supported by generous funding for medical research, biologists have probed deeply along a narrow sector of the front. Now it is time to expand laterally, to get on with the Linnaean enterprise and finish mapping the biosphere” (D, 346). But since this mapping project is done in the service of opening the global commons to bioprospecting by large corporations that seek to profit by extracting the natural resources of a land that is characterized as not being profitably used by those who currently occupy it, it is neither innocent nor pure. Instead, it participates in the exploitative heritage that is the worst part of a history of Euro- American frontier exploration. Page 83, Bioprospecting on the Frontier, On the Frontier of Science: An American Rhetoric of Exploration and Exploitation by Leah Ceccarelli at Michigan State University Press • East Lansing