Nature's Economy: A History of Ecological Ideas

by Donald Worster

• ISBN13: 9780521468343
• ISBN10: 0521468345
• eBook ISBN(s): 9781107266285
• Edition: 2nd
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1994-06-24
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

Nature's Economy is a wide-ranging investigation of ecology's past. It traces the origins of the concept, discusses the thinkers who have shaped it, and shows how it in turn has shaped the modern perception of our place in nature. The book includes portraits of Linnaeus, Gilbert White, Darwin, Thoreau, and such key twentieth-century ecologists as Rachel Carson, Frederic Clements, Aldo Leopold, James Lovelock, and Eugene Odum. It concludes with a new Part VI, which looks at the directions ecology has taken most recently.

Table of Contents

Preface

Part I. Two Road Diverged: Ecology in the Eighteenth Century: 1. Science in Arcadia

2. The empire of reason

Part II. The Subversive Science: Thoreau's Romantic Ecology: 3. A naturalist in concord

4. Nature looking into nature

5. Roots and branches

Part III. The Dismal Science: Darwinian Ecology: 6. A fallen world

7. The education

8. Scrambling for place

9. The ascent of man

Part IV. O Pioneers: Ecology on the Frontier: 10. Words on a map

11. Clements and the climax community

12. Dust follows the plow

Part V. The Morals of a Science: Ethics, Economics, and Ecology: 13. The value of a varmint

14. Producers and consumers

15. Declarations of interdependence

Part VI. The Age of Ecology: Science and the Fate of the Earth: 16. Healing the planet

17. Disturbing nature

Notes

Glossary of terms

Selected Bibliography

Index.