Long before the Romantics embraced nature, people in the West saw the human and nonhuman worlds as both intimately interdependent and violently antagonistic. With its peerless selection of ...ninety-eight original sources concerned with the natural world and humankind's place within it, The Marvels of the World offers a corrective to the still-prevalent tendency to dismiss premodern attitudes toward nature as simple or univocal.Gathering together medical texts, herbals, and how-to books, as well as scientific, religious, philosophical, and poetic works dating from antiquity to the dawn of the Enlightenment, the anthology explores both mainstream and unconventional thinking about the natural world. Its seven parts focus on philosophy and science; plants; animals; weather and climate; ways of inhabiting the land; gardens and gardening; and European encounters with the wider world. Each section and each of the book's selections is prefaced with a helpful introduction by volume editor Rebecca Bushnell that weaves connections among these compelling pieces of the past. The early writers collected here wrote with extraordinary openness about ways of coexisting with the nonhuman forces that shaped them, Bushnell demonstrates, even as they sought to control and exploit their environment. Taken as a whole, The Marvels of the World reveals how many of these early writers cared as much about the natural world as we do today.
Urbanization and urban lifestyle are progressively diminishing individuals' opportunity (e.g., nature exposure) to experience and orientation (affinity) towards nature, ultimately reducing people's ...experiences of nature. This process has been described as the ‘extinction of experience’ (EoE), and it was suggested that it can alter the way people benefit from, interact with, learn about, emotionally connect with and commit to protect the natural world. The EoE is underpinned by interconnected relations between the drivers, nature experiences and outcomes, yet to date most research have focused on bilateral relations (e.g. between opportunity and well-being). Here we adopt a holistic approach to jointly explore the network of relationships suggested by the EoE theory. We conducted a survey of 523 inhabitants of a large metropolis, Tel Aviv, Israel, living in neighborhoods varying in nature intensity levels, and explored their orientation, health, well-being, environmental attitudes and conservation behaviors. Using a structural equation model, we empirically demonstrated the validity of the theoretical model of the EoE, but also showed more complex relationships. For instance, opportunity to experience urban nature was only related to health and well-being benefits, while orientation towards nature was related to well-being, conservation attitudes and behaviors in different contexts. Thus, providing opportunities to experience nature seems to be less sufficient than strengthening people's orientation to avert the EoE, as the latter can simultaneously enhance nature experiences, conservation behaviors and provide social benefits. This knowledge is pivotal if we are to promote policies that achieve the behavioral changes needed to mitigate the biodiversity crisis.
•We empirically tested the validity of the extinction of experience framework.•We provided support for the framework but also showed complex relationships.•Providing more opportunities can help maintain health and well-being in cities.•Connecting people with nature can benefit both people and, indirectly, biodiversity.•Enhancing the quality of nature interactions can help increase nature affinity.
In this innovative and deeply felt work, Bron Taylor examines the evolution of “green religions” in North America and beyond: spiritual practices that hold nature as sacred and have in many cases ...replaced traditional religions. Tracing a wide range of groups—radical environmental activists, lifestyle-focused bioregionalists, surfers, new-agers involved in “ecopsychology,” and groups that hold scientific narratives as sacred—Taylor addresses a central theoretical question: How can environmentally oriented, spiritually motivated individuals and movements be understood as religious when many of them reject religious and supernatural worldviews? The “dark” of the title further expands this idea by emphasizing the depth of believers' passion and also suggesting a potential shadow side: besides uplifting and inspiring, such religion might mislead, deceive, or in some cases precipitate violence. This book provides a fascinating global tour of the green religious phenomenon, enabling readers to evaluate its worldwide emergence and to assess its role in a critically important religious revolution.
This book explores the links among ecology, disease, and international politics in the context of the Greater Caribbean - the landscapes lying between Surinam and the Chesapeake - in the seventeenth ...through early twentieth centuries. Ecological changes made these landscapes especially suitable for the vector mosquitoes of yellow fever and malaria, and these diseases wrought systematic havoc among armies and would-be settlers. Because yellow fever confers immunity on survivors of the disease, and because malaria confers resistance, these diseases played partisan roles in the struggles for empire and revolution, attacking some populations more severely than others. In particular, yellow fever and malaria attacked newcomers to the region, which helped keep the Spanish Empire Spanish in the face of predatory rivals in the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. In the late eighteenth and through the nineteenth century, these diseases helped revolutions to succeed by decimating forces sent out from Europe to prevent them.
Over the past 20 years dramatic declines have taken place in UK insect populations. Eventually, such declines must have knock-on effects for other animals, especially high profile groups such as ...birds and mammals. This authoritative, yet accessible account details the current state of the wildlife in Britain and Ireland and offers an insight into the outlook for the future. Written by a team of the country's leading experts, it appraises the changes that have occurred in a wide range of wildlife species and their habitats and outlines urgent priorities for conservation. It includes chapters on each of the vertebrate and major invertebrate groups, with the insects covered in particular depth. Also considered are the factors that drive environmental change and the contribution at local and government level to national and international wildlife conservation. Essential reading for anyone who is interested in, and concerned about, UK wildlife.
In the dramatic narratives that comprise The Republic of Nature, Mark Fiege reframes the canonical account of American history based on the simple but radical premise that nothing in the nation's ...past can be considered apart from the natural circumstances in which it occurred. Revisiting historical icons so familiar that schoolchildren learn to take them for granted, he makes surprising connections that enable readers to see old stories in a new light.
Among the historical moments revisited here, a revolutionary nation arises from its environment and struggles to reconcile the diversity of its people with the claim that nature is the source of liberty. Abraham Lincoln, an unlettered citizen from the countryside, steers the Union through a moment of extreme peril, guided by his clear-eyed vision of nature's capacity for improvement. In Topeka, Kansas, transformations of land and life prompt a lawsuit that culminates in the momentous civil rights case of Brown v. Board of Education.
By focusing on materials and processes intrinsic to all things and by highlighting the nature of the United States, Fiege recovers the forgotten and overlooked ground on which so much history has unfolded. In these pages, the nation's birth and development, pain and sorrow, ideals and enduring promise come to life as never before, making a once-familiar past seem new. The Republic of Nature points to a startlingly different version of history that calls on readers to reconnect with fundamental forces that shaped the American experience.
For more information, visit the author's website: http://republicofnature.com/
Bayesian Data Analysis in Ecology Using Linear Models with R, BUGS, and STAN examines the Bayesian and frequentist methods of conducting data analyses. The book provides the theoretical background in ...an easy-to-understand approach, encouraging readers to examine the processes that generated their data. Including discussions of model selection, model checking, and multi-model inference, the book also uses effect plots that allow a natural interpretation of data. Bayesian Data Analysis in Ecology Using Linear Models with R, BUGS, and STAN introduces Bayesian software, using R for the simple modes, and flexible Bayesian software (BUGS and Stan) for the more complicated ones. Guiding the ready from easy toward more complex (real) data analyses ina step-by-step manner, the book presents problems and solutions-including all R codes-that are most often applicable to other data and questions, making it an invaluable resource for analyzing a variety of data types.
Each spring, formations of sandhill cranes crisscross the skies along Nebraska's Platte River in one of the last great migratory spectacles on the North American continent. From across the globe, ...tens of thousands of visitors gather to witness a land transformed, "wild with birds." But the central Platte River system is witness to even more than this wondrous annual event. It is also an abiding source of natural, agricultural, and economic life in three states as an icon of western history and as a place of wonder. In This River Beneath the Sky, Doreen Pfost seamlessly blends memoir and nature writing, tracking the Platte River valley for one calendar year, ushering readers through its diverse and changing landscape and the plants, animals, and humans that call the ecosystem home.From serving as a tour guide for visitors who come to see the sandhill crane migration to monitoring the population count on a bluebird trail, from exploring the human settlements surrounding the Platte River to wading the river with biologists, Pfost immerses herself in the rhythm and life of the area. Along with Pfost's personal experiences of the river, she explores the river's history, the land- and water-use choices that were made decades ago and their repercussions that must now be mitigated if cranes-and other species-are to survive and flourish, and the legislative and scientific efforts to preserve the diverse species and their essential habitat.
