Environmental Ethics

Author(s): S M Jain
Publisher: Prakrit Bharti Academy

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participants of experiment helped each other, the stronger the flow of blood to the pathway of pleasure in brain. Evolutionary psychology, the science of how human moral sentiments and behaviour evolve over generations maintain that daily life of every human society rests on reciprocal altruism and one's happiness is designed and integrated with the happiness of others. The golden rule is that it is necessary to be nice, holding door open for those behind. Different people, animals, birds, insects, bacteria, plants have different sensory and other capabilities which are complementary, supplementary and reinforcing for mutual benefit and should be utilized e.g. sensory premonition of calamities like earthquakes by animals and birds.
Darwin's Theory:
There are arguments and counter arguments about Darwin's theory of survival for the fittest. Darwin studied, emphasised and subjected to quantitative analysis only the competitive aspects and not the cooperative aspects in nature. In spite of this he himself could not ignore these and expounded benefits of biodiversity in his monumental work "Origin of species", citing experiments that varieties of crops grown together produced greater yields. He did not name the experimenter who was later identified by researchers. The experimenter whose experiments Darwin cited was George Sinclair, head gardener for duke of Bedford. Darwin mistakenly considered the species or subspecies as unit of survival in his proposed theory of evolution. Within a century it became quite clear that it was the organism not alone but in relation with the whole environment. Any organism which thinks only in terms of its own survival will invariably destroy the environment and thus destroy itself. Darwin's theory was questioned by noted scientists James Live-stock, Ily Prigoginet, Manfued Eigen (Chemists); Paul Weiss, Lynn Margulis (microbiologists); Gregory Batson (anthropologist), Erich Jantsch, Eruin Laszlo (System theorists) and many others. It has now been established that most
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