Peter Coates 
Nature [PDF ebook] 
Western Attitudes Since Ancient Times

‘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.

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