Reconsidering Extinction in Terms of the History of Global Bioethics

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.

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