The phenomenon of species extinction raises more and more concern among ecologists facing the actual crisis of biodiversity. Scientific investigations of the causes and effects of extinction must be completed by a philosophical analysis of the concept of extinction that aims to clarify the meanings of the term ‘extinction’ and to analyse modalities, criteria and degrees of extinction. We will focus our attention on the apparent paradox of the possible ‘resurrection’ of species in the near future with the help of (...) genetic biotechnology and cloning techniques. The ontological background of the extinction concept is analysed in relation to the idea of species as classes. We will also show that there is no simple analogy between death and species extinction, and develop a conceptualist and dualistic system of supra-individual entities , supported by an instrumentalist approach to genetic manipulations which transform species into interactive kinds, which can go extinct and be recreated. (shrink)

As the debate about holism and reductionism in ecology has ebbed in the last twenty years, this article aims to reassess the traditional opposition between holistic and reductionist epistemologies during the development of population biology. The history of the notion of carrying capacity, the upper demographic limit of a viable population, will be analyzed as a paradigmatic case of the progressive imposition of reductionist strategies, from both an epistemological and a semantic point of view, since the middle of the twentieth (...) century. Then, Richard Looijen’s reduction of the carrying capacity concept to the niche partitioning theory will be assessed and rebuked for both empirical and logical reasons. Eventually, some recent “weak” and “hard” emergent conceptualizations of the notion of carrying capacity, in logistic map models or in coupled niche-population systems, will be presented in order to show how they call into question the nature and the use of the notion of carrying capacity as a predefined ecological limit. (shrink)

La philosophie de l’environnement a bouleversé la conception moderne de de l’homme en reconnaissant la part des relations écologiques et des limites environnementales qui le façonnent. Le paysage, à la fois produit des interactions écologiques et espace soumis au jugement esthétique, ne pouvait rester indifférent aux innovations conceptuelles de la pensée environnementale. En ce sens, l’idée de « tiers-paysage » défendue par le paysagiste Gilles Clément a introduit une rupture avec le dogme idéaliste de la philosophie classique du paysage, dont (...) les jugements esthétiques étaient informés par les canons de l’art pictural. Nous nous proposons de prolonger le geste de Clément et de mener à son terme la déconstruction du paysage classique en proposant une appréhension naturaliste du paysage dont le paradigme central serait le tiers-paysage et son fondement sauvage. De ce choix découle une argumentation en faveur d’une esthétique objectiviste du paysage inspirée des théories d’Allen Carlson à laquelle nous adjoignons une dimension évolutionniste qui traduit l’unité originelle et l’interdépendance des relations esthétiques qui englobent toutes les formes de vie dans leur dynamique « paysageante ». (shrink)