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摘要
摘要
Most scientists would agree that a sixth mass extinction is on the horizon unless radical changes are made in how Western society treats nature. At the same time, another extinction crisis is unfolding: the loss of many of the world's languages. More and more work in applied biology, anthropology, linguistics, and other related fields is now driven by the assumption that we are approaching a threshold of irreversible loss, that events during the next few decades will decide whether we cross over into a fundamentally changed and significantly diminished world. This leads to a very simple question that has not, until now, been answered satisfactorily: Why should anyone care?
David Harmon takes a unique approach to answering this essential question by drawing on insights from conservation biology, evolutionary theory, linguistics, geography, psychology, philosophy, and ethics. His interconnected discussion explores the works of Voltaire, A.O. Lovejoy, Darwin, Wittgenstein, William James, Dobzhansky, and many others to explain why everyone must be concerned about the loss of diversity. When more and more elemental differences are erased from the natural world and human societies, the field of possible experience becomes more constricted and our essential humanity becomes jeopardized.
The very reason our planet can be said to be alive is because an amazing variety of organisms, streams of human thought and behavior, and geophysical features exist that provide a congenial setting for the interworkings of nature and culture. Harmon's timely, important book elucidates how as we lose diversity, we risk losing ourselves.
目录
Preface | p. ix |
Acknowledgments | p. xv |
1 Voltaire's Solution | p. 1 |
Diversity, Globalization, and the Roots of Endangerment | p. 5 |
The Great Chain of Being and the Principle of Plenitude | p. 9 |
The Romantic Transformation and Beyond | p. 14 |
The Real Discovery of Diversity | p. 17 |
2 The Converging Extinction Crises | p. 19 |
Biodiversity as Scientific Concept and Rallying Cry | p. 23 |
A Brief History of Biological Extinctions | p. 27 |
Agriculture and the Decline of Variety | p. 29 |
Extinction Rates: Measuring the Past, Predicting the Future | p. 33 |
What is Cultural Diversity? | p. 40 |
Globalization and Cultural Diversity | p. 42 |
The Value of Cultural Diversity | p. 44 |
Indicators of Cultural Diversity | p. 46 |
Language: The Best Proxy | p. 55 |
The History of Language Extinctions: Some Speculations | p. 58 |
Prospects for Languages in the Coming Century | p. 60 |
The Example of Manx | p. 70 |
The Biocultural Presence | p. 71 |
3 Species, Languages, and the Structure of Diversity | p. 74 |
Similarities Between Species and Languages | p. 79 |
Speciation and Language Genesis | p. 82 |
Endemism in Species and Languages | p. 87 |
Reasons for Decline | p. 93 |
Assessing Diversity | p. 95 |
Monothetic versus Polythetic Classification | p. 97 |
Foundations of Polythetic Classification | p. 99 |
Polythetic Classification: Recent Elaborations | p. 103 |
Polythetic Groups as "Natural Kinds" | p. 108 |
The Reality of Species and Languages | p. 117 |
4 What We Do with Difference | p. 119 |
Distilling Sameness from Difference: William James | p. 122 |
Distilling Sameness from Difference: A Model | p. 127 |
Diversity and Determinism | p. 131 |
A Polythetic Universe | p. 135 |
Loss of Diversity: Cognitive and Cultural Consequences | p. 139 |
Our Evolutionary Inheritance | p. 145 |
5 Diversity and the Human Identity | p. 147 |
Are Biological and Cultural Diversity Really Related? | p. 150 |
Avoiding the Trap of Relativism: Polythetic Morality | p. 153 |
The Coming Threshold | p. 160 |
From Uniformity to Unity | p. 163 |
Notes | p. 169 |
References | p. 203 |
Index | p. 221 |