Ide an ethos, a framework for moral orientation. These normative dimensions, while typically remaining `hidden’ and inarticulate, influence the way in which biologists conduct their analysis and practice their profession. On particular buy Ogerin occasions, nonetheless, normative elements PubMed ID:http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21310658 might all of a sudden rise towards the surface, notably when moral clashes take place and biologists are confronted with conflicting pictures of nature (cf. Merchant 1989, 4). As environmental philosopher Martin Drenthen argues: We’re faced having a plethora of moral views of nature, all of that are deeply contingent. Our concepts and photos of nature would be the result of processes of interpretation, in which all sorts of cultural and historical influences play a aspect. It truly is only when our fundamental beliefs about nature are challenged by `moral strangers’ that we develop into conscious in the particularity or possibly even idiosyncrasy of our views (Drenthen 2005, 318).a I’ll discover the normative dimensions of biology by implies of a case study from the Dutch ecogenomics field. Ecogenomics short for `ecological genomics’ is definitely an area of study which seeks to incorporate approaches and approaches originating from genomics in an ecological context. As ecological research and laboratory-based, molecular investigations traditionally occupied unique areas inside the biological sciences, this merging of ecology and genomics promises to “revolutionize our understanding of a broad array of biological phenomena” (Ungerer et al. 2008, 178). In the course of a memorable analysis meeting in February 2008, aimed at discussing the present state of Dutch ecogenomics investigation, a clash amongst `moral strangers’ took place. The participants inside the meeting constituted a mixed audience: ecologists who took a more or less holistic stance to the study of ecological systems, molecular biologists with a preference “to perform in controlled environments and with homogeneous well-defined genetic material” (Ouborg and Vriezen 2007, 13), industrial biotechnology professionals looking for new market opportunities, and representatives of several intermediate positions. Bram Brouwer, director of one of many most important Dutch ecogenomics centres,Van der Hout Life Sciences, Society and Policy 2014, 10:ten http:www.lsspjournal.comcontent101Page three ofbut also CEO of a private organization operating within the fields of biotechnology and diagnostics, gave a presentation in which he introduced the term `nature mining’. Brouwer explained that the Earth’s ecosystems contain a massive variety of important assets that happen to be as but unknown to us, for example antibiotics and enzymes. The emerging field of ecogenomics provides us the chance to `mine’ nature for these hidden goods (cf. Brouwer 2008). The term `nature mining’ instantly threw the audience into disorder; portion in the audience instantaneously embraced the term, whereas other folks had important reservations. The Dutch ecogenomics neighborhood has been a theatre of tensions for a number of years at this point. In line with Roy Kloet and colleagues, they resulted from a disagreement concerning the future direction of your field: resulting from new funding schemes, a shift from fundamental investigation to investigation more thinking about `valorisation’ i.e. the course of action in which scientific know-how is produced profitable for 
society had been initiated. Whereas the industrial partners welcomed the prospect of applications, many of the academic partners “fundamentally disagreed having a concentrate on financial valorization” (Kloet et al. 2013, 21314). In this paper, I’ll argue that we can’t f.