Values and Vision:
A Profile of Stephen R. Kellert

From my innocent perch of the time, I was primarily concerned with the problem of how the effective management of wildlife often seemed less a problem of manipulating animals and their habitats than managing our own species’ often callous and destructive disregard for much of the natural world. — Stephen R. Kellert (The Value of Life 3)

How we behave in relation to natural populations [. . .] is a human affair tightly interwoven with the needs, competitions, and frivolities of humans—and with the social institutions they build . . . In large part, it seems to me, we talk about managing animals and their environment because it is the easy thing to do. Dealing with our fellow humans and our institutions, on the other hand, can stir up immediate responses, often not very peaceful.
— Kenneth Norris (qtd. in Kellert, Phase I: Public Attitudes toward Critical Wildlife and Natural Habitat Issues 137)

Back in the mid-1970s, two extraordinary minds were at work developing, independently, the conceptual seeds for what would converge in the early 1990s as one of the most profound hypotheses to illuminate human relationship with the natural world. In 1975, Edward O. Wilson, a Harvard University entomologist, had just published the then highly controversial Sociobiology: The New Synthesis. In the two years, respectively, prior to and following the publication of Wilson’s Sociobiology, and unrelated at that time, Stephen R. Kellert, a Yale University social ecologist, had begun to present results from his ongoing research in forums such as From Kinship to Mastery (U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, 1974) and “Perceptions of Animals in American Society” (41st North American Wildlife Conference, 1976). Kellert’s studies “determined the existence of a typology of basic attitudes” (Phase III 129) from which “people’s basic values and perceptions of animals” could be identified. He noted that the essential attitude types “reflect patterned feelings, ideas and beliefs and, in most cases, considerably influence [human] action and activities” (41). Subsequently, in 1981, “Contemporary Values of Wildlife in American Society” was published (41, 162). These early landmark endeavors of both Wilson and Kellert would yield, respectively, the concept and the supporting taxonomic framework for the now well-known Biophilia Hypothesis.

Biophilia, in which Wilson “combined [his] two intellectual passions, sociobiology and the study of biodiversity,” first appeared in 1984 (“Sociobiology at a Century’s End” viii). In this book, he “reviewed information then newly provided by Gordon Orians that points to innately preferred habitation [. . .] and other mental predispositions likely to have been adaptive during the evolution of the human brain” (viii). Wilson was the first to introduce the term biophilia used within a sociobiological context. Two of his now classic, often quoted definitions of the notion are “the innate tendency to focus on life and lifelike processes” and the “urge to affiliate with other forms of life” (Biophilia 1, 85). Wilson elaborates as follows: “The biophilic tendency [. . .] unfolds in the predictable fantasies and responses of individuals from early childhood onward. It cascades into repetitive patterns of culture across most or all societies, a consistency often noted in the literature of anthropology. These processes appear to be part of the programs of the brain” (85).

Independently, and almost as if intuitively, paralleling Wilson’s emerging concept of biophilia, Kellert continued to evolve his values typology, to which he refers as a “heuristic device for describing the importance of nature in human evolution and development” (Introduction, The Biophilia Hypothesis 22). Also like Wilson, Kellert was keenly aware of human dependence on biodiversity and had become a strong advocate on behalf of environmental conservation, stating, “The emergence of an environmental ethic could lead to the realization that efforts on behalf of respecting and sustaining nature are really creative ventures on behalf of ourselves” (Bormann and Kellert 210). Of his values typology, he informs that “the ubiquitous expression of the values suggested they might constitute basic tendencies—tendencies rooted in the biological character of the human species despite the molding and shaping influence of learning and experience” (The Value of Life 6).

When Kellert encountered Wilson’s writings, he noticed some of the particularly compatible and complementary aspects of both their respective research studies and assertions. Consequently, Kellert and Wilson initiated a forum for scientific discussion and theoretical exploration of the biophilia hypothesis. In August 1992, invited scholars from a variety of disciplines presented papers on the subject at a meeting held at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute in Massachusetts. Drafts of these papers would become The Biophilia Hypothesis (published by Island Press in 1993), a provocative and still highly popular book to this day.
In regard to his own contribution to the biophilia hypothesis, Kellert offers the following:

    What began as merely the objective of describing variations in people’s perceptions of animals gradually emerged as the possibility of universal expressions of basic human affinities for the natural world. The typology [. . .] in a wide variety of taxonomic, behavioral, demographic, historic, and cultural contexts suggests the distinct possibility that these categories might very well be reflections of universal and functional expressions of our species’ dependence on the natural world.

    [The] nine hypothesized dimensions of the biophilia tendency—the utilitarian, naturalistic, ecologistic-scientific [referred to in his more recent works as the scientific value], aesthetic, symbolic, humanistic, moralistic, dominionistic, and negativistic [. . .] may constitute the basis for a meaningful and fulfilling human existence, that is [. . .] may constitute the most compelling argument for a powerful conservation ethic. (“The Biological Basis for Human Values of Nature” 44)

In his book, The Value of Life, Kellert first elaborates extensively on the most current version of his evolving values typology, which describes in detail the complex of innate human propensities to affiliate with nature and connects these biologically based responses to respective adaptive advantages that have functional significance for members of our species today. He also began to extend the values (again, reflective of weak, innate tendencies) within a context of “learning levels” or modes: affective, cognitive, and evaluative—which he would further develop and incorporate in regard to his values typology in later books.

Published one year after The Value of Life, Kellert’s Kinship to Mastery: Biophilia in Human Evolution and Development incorporates, in addition to his scholarly approach to the subject, accessible narratives to help readers understand the evolutionarily derived values at a less abstract level. Nonetheless, Kellert is still the scholar and uses his expertise to advantage when he informs of the biophilic tendency:

This tendency is no trivial matter. [. . .] the satisfactory realization of diverse expressions of biophilia is an essential condition for the effective unfolding of our individual and collective humanity. Over the millennia, humanity’s affiliation with life and natural process conferred distinctive advantages in the human struggle to persist, adapt, and thrive as a species. During the long course of human evolution, we valued nature and living diversity because of the adaptive benefits it offered us physically, emotionally, and intellectually. And people continue to need rich and textured relationships with natural diversity in order to achieve lives replete with meaning and value. My argument, therefore, is essentially simple: our inclination for affiliating with life functions today as it has in the past as a basis for healthy human maturation and development. (Kinship to Mastery 3)

Biophilia represents a spectrum of inherent inclinations; however, in The Good in Nature and Humanity, Kellert notes, “But biophilia, while rooted in biology, relies—like so much of what it means to be human—on experience, learning, and social support for its functional expression” (“Values, Ethics, and Spiritual and Scientific Relations to Nature” 62). He asserts, “Ethical respect, moral regard, and spiritual reverence for nature thus depend less on compassion and pity for the weak and downtrodden than on a profound realization of self-interest that recognizes how the natural world shapes our bodies, minds, and souls” (62). A more critical but qualified assertion related to this statement can be found in an earlier essay that appears in The Biophilia Hypothesis:

Any presumption of the relative unimportance of the biophilia tendency among persons of lower socioeconomic status or urban residence may, in itself, be an elitist and arrogant characterization. Nature’s potential for providing a more satisfying existence may be less obvious . . . but this deprivation represents more a challenge of design and opportunity than any fundamental irrelevance of the natural world for a class of people. (“The Biological Basis for Human Values of Nature” 62)

When we think of developing sustainable communities, thoughts of the future generations of our species—who will inherit our place on this Earth—cannot be dismissed. Their existence and well-being will continue to depend, as does ours, on the continuing natural matrix within which evolved our extended family of ancestral siblings throughout the most recent fraction of geologic time. What we implement now in regard to healthy practices toward the natural world has the potential to either frustrate or, conversely and preferably, encourage our species’ genetically derived propensities to affiliate with nature, as Kellert suggests. Assuming that we take the latter option to be our responsibility, one might wonder how we accommodate this when the relatively recent activities within human culture seem to confirm that which Tartu University biologist Kalevi Kull asserts is also a phenomenon of human nature—like many other organisms, the way in which humans perceive, categorize, and recognize the external nature that embraces them automatically influences their compulsion to change it (347, 352-354). This phenomenon is not new to Kellert, whose career as a social ecologist has allowed literally decades of ample opportunity to study human sociocultural interactions within the context of supporting natural environments.

While organisms altering their natural environment is not unnatural, the extent to which the human species has and is continuing to manipulate the natural world is worthy of close scrutiny and evaluation. In addition to his acute observation of human-nature relationships, Kellert has always advocated for an ethical stance of taking responsibility, as suggested by these remarks written much earlier in his career:

Modern society has left few landscapes unscathed and many needing remedial attention. Yet the idea of managing nature can carry with it the seeds of its own defeat if not reluctantly and humbly applied. A tradition of condescension in human manipulation of nature frequently leads to grotesque mistakes. Environmental intervention is unavoidable today, but not in the grand Western tradition of assuming the capacity to remake an imperfect world. (Bormann and Kellert 210)

Furthermore, Kellert offers a positive approach which allows for “harmonizing the human-built and natural environments.” What direction is the profoundly influential work of this scholar taking today? In Children and Nature, after a discussion concerned with the healthy development of children depending on direct (as well as indirect and vicarious) experience with the natural world, Kellert concludes, “We require a radical shift in the ways we design and construct our homes, schools, recreational facilities, open spaces, and communities that deliberately seeks to incorporate all values of nature as an essential core of children’s lives” (“Experiencing Nature” 146).

Kellert and others refer to this specific form of planning and development as “biophilic design.” How is this different from merely “low impact” design, in which measures are taken to either minimize or mitigate the negative impacts? If you were to ask him, this might be his response:

The goal of positive impact [ital. added] or biophilic design seeks to achieve positive and beneficial relationship between people and the natural world in the human-built environment. Is this an important objective? Isn’t the primary challenge of sustainable design and development to lessen the damaging and destructive environmental effects of modern construction, all else being of limited and even trivial significance by comparison? I would contend otherwise. (“Architecture and a New Paradigm of Restorative Environmental Design” 7)

As his new book-in-process will provide a comprehensive and practical prescription for this type of truly sustainable design, we look forward to its release by Island Press next year.

Currently the Tweedy Ordway Professor of Social Ecology at the Yale University School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, Dr. Kellert is recognized by the Edge Foundation as “the world’s foremost authority on human relationships to animals” and by Rocky Mountain Institute as “a leading authority on biophilia.” He has been the recipient of many honors, including the National Conservation Achievement Award (NWF), Distinguished Individual Achievement Award (Society for Conservation Biology), and a Fulbright Research Fellowship, to name a few. He has authored numerous publications, some of which have been referenced within the context of this article.

Sources Honored