Multiple Faces of Science in Ethical Environmental Decision-Making

This essay concerns the multiple faces of science in ethical environmental decision-making. Environmental crises pose existential threats to human and non-human life. Science is essential to any meaningful response to these crises, but science as it is conventionally understood and practiced is not adequate to the task. Drawing on the work of Bruno Latour in his 2013 Gifford Lectures on ―Facing Gaia: Six Lectures on the Political Theology of Nature,‖1 I will critique this understanding and practice in relation to four faces of science - (i) capacity builder, (ii) informer and guide, (iii) philosophy, and (iv) institution—and propose reforms