How the Nature of Nature and the Nature of Science Affects the Nature of Environmental Stewardship

For all the enriching dialogue regarding the imperative of environmental care over the last several decades, relatively little work has been done regarding understanding how to determine the content of such care. In The Nature of Environmental Stewardship (Pickwick Publications, 2016, see also http://nature.johnny-lin.com), I formulate a taxonomy for analyzing the content of environmental stewardship that covers worldviews, ethical theories, science epistemology, science-policy studies, politics, and economics. In this paper, I focus on two of the major parts of that taxonomy—worldviews and science epistemology—and describe how our understanding of what nature is and how science knows strongly determines what science can say about nature and how that determination affects which science-policy models we use to translate science into policy.