Origins of the Organic Agriculture Debate takes an historical look at two contrasting streams of ideas:

1. the flow of ideas in chemistry and biology that have created the conditions for modern medicine, modern food production and the biotechnological revolution
2. the "vitalist" reaction to the rise of modern science and the resulting rejection of modern agriculture

Features of Origins of the Organic Agriculture Debate:

• Begins with an exploration of the factors involved in our modern fear of technology, a fear which forms the foundation for anti-technology beliefs and practices
• Argues that vitalism is at the core of an array of contemporary anti-science and anti-technology movements
• Helps readers fully understand the ferocity with which certain beliefs about homeopathic medicine and the "organic" are held against all evidence to the contrary
• Explains the history of nitrogen in life and in agriculture, countering myths of scarce resources and beliefs about the sufficiency of organic nitrogen to feed the world’s population
• Purports that technology creates resources, debunking the idea that resources are natural, fixed and finite

Contents

1. Science,Technology and the Critics of Modernity
2. Science, Integrated Inquiry and Verification
3. Reductionism: Sin, Salvation or Neither?
4. On the Trail of DNA: Genes and Heredity
5. Vitalism and Homeopathy
6. Disenchantment and the Cost of Rejected Knowledge
7. Rejected Knowledge, Nature and the Occult
8. Vitalism, Luddism and the "Organic"
9. Feeding Six Billion People
10. Romantics and Reactionaries
11. Risk, Fallibility and Change

Epilogue: Science, Technology and Humanity

Index

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