Light’s contribution on restoration ecology rounds off this part of the book. Restoration
ecology is the science that is aimed at re-creating ecosystems that have been damaged or
destroyed due to anthropogenic or nonanthropogenic causes. Philosophical critics of res-
toration have argued that restored environments are not natural objects but rather artifacts
due to their anthropogenic origins. Underlying such claims is the assumption that while
few things in the world are solely natural objects or artifacts, natural objects are those
things that are “relatively free of human infl uence.” If the distinction between natural and
artifi cial objects is supplemented with the normative claim that natural objects have intrin-
sic values over and beyond the instrumental value they may have for humans, then the
conclusion may be drawn, as indeed critics of ecological restoration have done, that such
restorations can never duplicate the value of original nature because they are not natural
things. Light proposes a defi nition of restoration ecology that is intended to avoid con-
founding the natural-artifi cial distinction with normative issues. He accepts that restored
environments are artifacts with specifi c functions and argues that they may have values
on account of these functions.
Functions and Normativity 91