Nature (eBook)

Western Attitudes Since Ancient Times

Peter Coates (Autor)

eBook Download: PDF

2013 | 1. Auflage
256 Seiten
John Wiley & Sons (Verlag)
978-0-7456-7689-0 (ISBN)

Infos

'Nature' is a deceptively simple and ahistorical term, suggesting
intrinsic, unchanging reality. Yet nature has a history too, both
in terms of human attitudes and human impacts. Coates outlines the
major understandings of 'nature' in the western world since
classical times, from nature as higher authority to its more recent
meaning of threatened physical space and life forms.

Unlike many others, this book places the history of attitudes to
nature within the story of human-induced changes in the material
environment. And few others take a supranational perspective, or
cross the divides between historical eras.

A distinctive unifying theme is Coates's interest in how 'green'
writers over the last thirty years have interpreted our past
dealings with nature, specifically their efforts to diagnose the
roots of contemporary ecological problems and their search for
ancestors. He concludes with a discussion of the future of nature
in the context of developments such as the 'new' ecology, global
warming, advances in genetic engineering and research on animal
behaviour.

Assuming no previous knowledge, Nature provides the reader
with an accessible synthesis and introduction to some of
environmental history's central features and debates, confirming
its status as one of the most enthralling current pursuits within
historical studies.

This will be essential reading for second-year undergraduates and
above in cultural history and environmental history, as well as to
the general reader interested in environmental issues.

Autor

Peter Coates is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Historical Studies at the University of Bristol.

Inhalt

Preface.

1. The Natures of Nature.

2. Ancient Greece and Rome.

3. The Middle Ages.

4. The Advent of Modernity.

5. The World Beyond Europe.

6. Nature as Landscape.

7. Reassessments of Nature: Romantic and Ecological.

8. The Disunited Colours of Nature.

9. The Future of Nature.

Notes.

Index.

Rezensionen

"Common green wisdom attributes modern treatment of the environment
to all sorts of legacies from history, usually Western,
Judaeo-Christian and capitalist. Peter Coates examines all the
usual suspects, from the Ancient Greeks, to Renaissance man and the
thinkers of the Enlightenment, and no less critically the usual
eco-heroes, from St Francis and the Zen Buddhists to the American
Indians. He places shifting ideas and attitudes in the full and
proper context of their time, and rightly condemns the tendency to
raid the past for handy quotations to legitimize the campaigns of
the present. He shows us how landscapes in England and elsewhere
are related to these ideas, particularly show pieces like National
Trust properties and American National Parks, but they are often
landscapes of dispossession as well as landscapes of conservation.
He takes us into the immediate antecedents of modern
environmentalism and shows us a green side to Engels and
(alarmingly) to Himmler as well as to Wordsworth and William
Morris. Always judicious, Peter Coates's book will prove the best
possible guide to the history of environmental ideas. Anyone who
seriously wants to find a way through the maze of the past and to
judge how we have arrived at the present and who prizes scholarship
above polemics, will need to read this book." Professor T. C.
Smout, Institute for Environmental History, University of St
Andrews

"For some years it has struck me as intriguing that there is no
good recent history of nature - though in a sense hardly surprising
since one could not imagine a more daunting subject for a historian
to tackle.... I am delighted to say that Peter Coates's text fills
the bill particularly well: it is clear, cogent, comprehensive, and
well organized.... This is a stunning book." Roy Porter,
Wellcome Institute for the History of Medicine

"I am very impressed with this book. It offers much more depth
on most of the historical periods than any other book I've read....
and I couldn't stop reading it." Michael Barbour, University of
California,

"Peter Coates's Nature is an engaging book, written in a
lucid and accessible style and enlivened by the author's wry
humour." Professor Peter Burke, Emmanuel College,
Cambridge

"Coates' prose is lively and his critical perspactive
engaging...students and general readers will find this an enjoyable
and thought-provoking introduction to some of the key ideas and
debates within environmental history." Andrea Gaynor, University of
Western Australia

'Peter Coates's book is a welcome, updated introduction to
environmental history. Presuming no prior knowledge of the field on
the part of his readers, Coates confirms the discipline's "status
as one of the most enthralling...pursuits within historical
studies" (p.viii). Though faced with a monumental task of synthesis
- even within a considerably narrowed scope - Coates succeeds
admirably.' Journal of the History of the Behavioural
Sciences

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 25.4.2013
• Reihe/Serie: Themes in History
• Reihe/Serie: Themes in History
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Sachbuch/Ratgeber ► Natur / Technik ► Natur / Ökologie
• Themenwelt: Geisteswissenschaften ► Geschichte ► Allgemeines / Lexika
• Themenwelt: Naturwissenschaften ► Biologie ► Ökologie / Naturschutz
• Themenwelt: Sozialwissenschaften
• Schlagworte: Geschichte • Geschichtswissenschaft • History
• ISBN-10: 0-7456-7689-8 / 0745676898
• ISBN-13: 978-0-7456-7689-0 / 9780745676890