In this paper we try to identify the roots of the persistent contemporary problems in our modernized agriculture: overproduction, loss of biodiversity and of soil fertility, the risk of large animal disease, social controversies on the lack of animal welfare and culling of animals, etc. Attention is paid to the historical development of present-day farming in Holland as an example of European agriculture. We see a blinkered quest for efficiency in the industrialization of agriculture since the Second World War. Key factor is the cultural mindset at the foundation of our modern society, originating from the ideas of the enlightenment. It makes people vulnerable to ideologies, causing them to focus on a certain goal without considering the consequences. Due to the overemphasis on efficiency, modern industrial agriculture has never been comfortably embedded in its ecological and social context, and as a result displays the characteristics of an ideology. The cause of the inability to solve today’s problems is therefore deeper than simply a failure to apply the right mix of standard remedies. Unless stakeholders in farming start to counter this very one-sided approach to efficiency, modernization will continue to cause all kinds of friction. The implications of the results for agricultural policy, farming and further research are discussed.

Technological developments in plant breeding, notably cisgenesis and gene editing, require a rethinking of biotechnology policies. In addition to legal debates about the definition of genetic modification in the Cartagena Protocol and at national and supra-national levels, and debates about the safety of the resulting products for mankind and environment, discussions are ongoing in society concerning ethical and societal questions. In this paper, we analyse the main ethical issues that need to be taken into account when evaluating contemporary plant breeding techniques. After a brief description of the state of the art in plant breeding, we discuss these main ethical issues. We take Consequentialist, Deontological and Virtue ethics as bases of our analysis. This results in a generally positive approach to gene editing, but also highlights several concerns, predominantly used by particular groups in society. This leads to a moral incentive toward transparency and options for operationalizing consumer choice.

Engaging appropriately with sustainability transformations requires adopting an integral perspective on related system dynamics. This view underpins the sustainable development goals. Informing policy and decision making from a consistently integral perspective, however, remains a key challenge. To some extent, the leverage points approach has proved useful in doing so in terms of providing an encompassing view on related options for intervening in systems. There are, however, a number of points in which it needs to be complemented by other approaches to better address the need for an integral perspective on sustainability transformations as well as to better address the need for being able to articulate normative perspectives on transformation processes and outcomes. We argue that the theory of modal aspects is a good candidate for doing so. To illustrate its potential, we explore its characteristics, we illustrate its application opportunities in the analysis of sustainability in food systems transitions, we systematically compare leverage points and modal aspects, and close with an exploration of ways in which the leverage points approach and theory of modal aspects can be considered complementary perspectives. The authors conclude that the theory of modal aspects offers opportunities for enriching both the leverage points approach and wider approaches in sustainability transformations by offering a consistently integral perspective across scale levels, and by offering a number of ways of engaging with normativity in related processes without resorting to fixed political views. This articulates its potential for playing a useful role in related multi-stakeholder processes and sustainability governance.

The rise of the mechanistic worldview in the seventeenth century had a major impact on views of biological generation. Many seventeenth century naturalists rejected the old animist thesis. However, the alternative view of gradual mechanistic formation in embryology didn’t convince either. How to articulate the peculiarity of life? Researchers in the seventeenth century proposed both “animist” and mechanistic theories of life. In the eighteenth century again a controversy in biology arose regarding the explanation of generation. Some adhered to the view that life is a physical property of matter (e.g. Buffon), others saw living entities as the result of the development of pre-existing germs (e.g. Bonnet). Naturalists, lacked a convincing account that could guide their research. In interaction with leading naturalists of his time Immanuel Kant articulated an approach to explaining generation. Kant’s account, delineated in hisKritik der Urteilskraft(Critique of the power of judgment) (1790), is a combination of Newtoniannon-reductionist mechanismin explanation, and a concept of natural end comparable to Stahl’sformal conception of organic bodies.It consists of two claims: a) in biology only mechanical explanation is explanatory, and b) living entities contain some original organisation, which is mechanically unexplainable. In the nineteenth century this approach influenced naturalists as Müller, Virchow, and Von Baer, in their physiological research. Dissatisfied with a sheer mechanistic or, on the other hand, a sheer teleological approach, they appreciated the Kantian account of mechanical explanation of natural ends. In Germany, in the second halve of the nineteenth century, Ernst Haeckel reopened the debate about abiogenesis, which still continuous.

Current practices in intensive animal production increasingly raise questions with respect to animal ethics both among the public in Europe and in political circles. This paper integrates three areas of philosophical views in order to formulate a general ethical position with respect to animal husbandry. The first area regards the question to what type of beings animals are. Secondly, an evaluative model of agrarian practices is employed in order to obtain a better perception on the place of animals in animal husbandry. In these two lines of thinking, reformational philosophy from the school of Dooyeweerd is explicitly employed. In the third view, current thinking regarding normative ethics, in general, and animal ethics, in particular, is utilized to elaborate on the ethical aspect of the practice of animal husbandry. It is argued that the major ethical principles for evaluating the manner in which animals are cared for and treated in animal husbandry are the concepts of the ‘intrinsic value’ of animals, animal welfare, and the principle of care, the latter being the core principle of the ethical aspect. On the basis of the literature, these three concepts are elaborated consistent with reformational philosophy. This leads to an integrated interpretation of an ethically correct practice of animal husbandry.

This article deals with the question of how self-organization in living organisms is realized. Self-organization may be observed in open systems that are out of equilibrium. Many disequilibria-conversion phenomena exist where free energy conversion occurs by spontaneously formed engines. However, how is self-organization realized in living entities? Living cells turn out to be self-organizing disequilibria-converting systems of a special kind. Disequilibrium conversion is realized in a typical way, through employing information specifying protein complexes acting as nano engines. The genetic code enables processing of information—derived from coding DNA—to produce these molecular machines. Hence, information is at the core of living systems. Two promising approaches to explaining living cells containing sequences carrying information are mentioned. Also discussed is the question of whether a second concept of self-organization—namely, the Kantian concept—applies.