The diversities of biodiversity

A monograph-length analysis of biodiversity from two senior philosophers of biology reflects two things: the problematic complexity of the concept, and the interesting theoretical and methodological issues the sciences studying and endeavouring to protect it raise. The concept’s significance is common currency within environmental ethics, but biodiversity has only recently garnered broader philosophical attention. Helping rectify this, Maclaurin and Sterelny make a novel and valuable contribution to the growing scientifically oriented philosophical literature on biodiversity. For a thin book, its scope is ambitious. While other analyses of biodiversity focus primarily on ecological diversity, eight relatively short chapters (and brief conclusion) cover: disciplinary and legal circumstances in which the concept of biodiversity emerged (Chap. 1); taxonomic methodologies and their bearing on characterizing biodiversity (Chap. 1), especially different accounts of species (Chap. 2); differences and relationships between species richness and disparity (Chap. 3); morphological, developmental, and ecological diversity (Chaps. 4–6); and the problems in measuring and valuing biodiversity in conservation biology (Chaps. 7–8). Accessible prose and a wealth of well-chosen biological details are two superlative virtues of the analysis. Almost every page teems with scientifically informed, up-to-date examples illustrating the philosophical claims made. Coined as a simple shorthand for ‘biological diversity’ in the mid-1980s, ‘biodiversity’ designates the diversity of biological systems at all organisational ‘‘levels’’, the population and community levels being the most common focus. How this diversity should be characterized depends upon how these systems are