Wilson argued for the need to quantify existing biological species for three different reasons: to discover the impact of human habitat destruction, to understand our ‘place in the order of things’ and, more practically, to determine the economic benefit that might be obtained from underexploited species. We consider implications of this understanding of neurodiversity for autism research, and propose that we unpick the analogy between neurodiversity and biodiversity.īack in the 1980s, the biologist E.O.

This requires reconsidering what it means to be human in the light of contemporary ecological understandings that recognise interdependence rather than the hierarchical divisions of eugenics. Therefore, rather than assume that neurodiversity exists according to the existing clinical categories of autism and related conditions that are discovered by impartial observers, we leave open the possibility that what counts as significant difference between brains should be reconsidered. In our understanding, this means that it responds to culture and society as well as potentially infinite neurological differences between humans. The problem with this is that it both draws on the ideas of contemporary psychological science without critiquing their conceptual connotations whereby ‘cognitive differences’ are only understood in relation to falling short of an ideal cognitive type, and therefore it does not recognise difference as positive akin to the ecological ideal of biodiversity.Īs Robert Chapman has pointed out in our edited book, Neurodiversity Studies: A New Critical Paradigm (Bertilsdotter Rosqvist, Chown, and Stenning Citation2020), it is possible to understand the neurodevelopmental classifications and the collective idea of neurodivergence as a ‘moving target’ (Chapma). Like biodiversity, the term neurodiversity has come to be used for different purposes, but most often with an assumption that what is natural is always beneficial, which is at odds with the purpose of clinical research that seeks to alleviate suffering.

It is assumed that these brains – labelled as impaired and autistic, ADHD, dyslexic or Tourette’s by psychologists and as ‘neurodivergent’ by activists – conform to categories that reflect the underlying structure of reality as ‘natural kinds’, which will eventually be confirmed by neuroscientists. In its most common usage, neurodiversity is used to refer to a supposedly natural variation in the ‘kinds’ of brains in developmental terms akin to biological diversity, which is used to describe the variety of living (nonhuman) creatures (Wilson Citation1985). Neurodiversity is an idea that is much talked about and it has several meanings.

Judy singer autism