April 21, 2021
About this seminar
This lecture will cover a wide field to integrate agriculture and philosophy. If philosophy informs wellbeing and contentment amidst the vagaries of existence and the primary concern of humans has been security of food, then agricultural including livestock science has been a major means of philosophical advance today. As a natural philosophy, agricultural science continues to be human’s most widespread interaction within nature. Agricultural surpluses provided the basis for civilization and soon after that writing codified past knowledge from various forms of myths to traditions, some of which used became known as scriptures that relied on agriculture for their metaphors. And as civilization become more sophisticated and urban worldviews became more separated from nature, ignorance of food production became ever more pervasive. By linking agricultural science and philosophy, the lecture will suggest that a technological agricultural perspective is compromised when it neglects the wider philosophical context in which a subject is studied and innovations are applied. The argument will be demonstrated by some current examples in international livestock development that are directly relevant to applied philosophy.
About the Speaker
