Mary Midgley

Mary Midgley (1919–2018) was a British philosopher known for her fierce critiques of reductionism and scientism. She argued for understanding humans as animals within nature, writing influential works such as Beast and Man and Animals and Why They Matter. Midgley challenged Richard Dawkins and other popular science figures, insisting on the moral and cultural limits of scientific explanation. She also wrote in support of a moral interpretation of the Gaia hypothesis. Remembered as a combative thinker, she became one of Britain’s most visible public philosophers.

“Excerpts from a project on Trees and Beasts” Denise Hoffman Brandt© Denise Hoffman What do we actually mean when we talk about nature? As a professor in a discipline that since the early 1970s has, mostly, claimed to practice “design with nature”—referencing Ian McHarg’s book (1969) of that title—that’s a question I have often asked. […]

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