Reconsidering Extinction in Terms of the History of Global Bioethics Routledge Advances in the History of Bioethics Series

Reconsidering Extinction in Terms of the History of Global Bioethics continues the Routledge Advances in the History of Bioethics series by exploring approaches to the bioethics of extinction from disparate disciplines, from literature, to social sciences, to history, to sustainability studies, to linguistics. Van Rensselaer Potter coined the phrase ?Global Bioethics? to define human relationships with their contexts. This and subsequent volumes return to Potter?s founding vision from historical perspectives, and asks, how did we get here from then? Extinction can be understood in terms of an everlasting termination of shape, form, and function; however, until now life has gone on. Where would we humans be if the dinosaurs had not become extinct? And we still manage to communicate, only not in proto-Indo-European, but in a myriad of languages, some more common than others. The answer is simple, after extinction events, evolution continues. But will it always be so? Has the human race set planet earth on a collision course with nothingness? This volume explores areas of bioethical interpretation in relation to the complex concept of extinction.

Introduction: Is Extinction a Thing of the Past? 1

STAN BOOTH

PART I

Delineating Contexts—Extinction 9

1 “Enough to Change a Planet”: Feeling Extinction in Contemporary Literature 11

HEATHER J. HICKS

2 This Selfish Ape 37

NICHOLAS P. MONEY

3 The Extinction of Intellectual Disability: An Enlightenment Project from Locke to Freud 50

SIMON JARRETT

4 “Civilizing the ‘Redman’…”: John Locke, Adam Smith, and Social Darwinist Perceptions of Religion, Land-Use, and Progress as Policy to Make Extinct the Traditional Lifeways of North American Indian Peoples 68

CHRISTINA WELCH

PART II

Applying Contexts—Extinction Does Not Lead to an “End” 95

5 “Strong in Zeal but Impotent in Head”: British Responses to the Cattle Plagues of the Eighteenth Century 97

CHRIS MOUNSEY

6 “They Are All Dead, Except a Few”: Social Complications and Royal Reactions to Death in England, 1348–1350 112

WENDY J. TURNER

7 The Right to a Cure: The Bioethics of Variolation 136

STAN BOOTH

PART III

Creating “New” Contexts—Evolution 155

8 Tinkering with Eden: The Lure and Myth of Free-Willed Nature 157

IAN D. ROTHERHAM

9 Whose Utopia?: The Complexity of Incorporating Diverse Ethical Views Within Nature Governance Frameworks 184

JOANNA MILLER SMALLWOOD

10 For An Actional Ethics: Making Better Sense of Science 205

STEPHEN J. COWLEY

11 The Descent of Language: Biology, Linguistic Evolution, and Language Extinction 222

ERIC LACEY

Stan Booth is an Associate Lecturer at the University of Winchester.

Chris Mounsey is Professor of Eighteenth-Century Cultural Studies at the University of Winchester.