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It seems obvious to most modern humans that it behooves our species to look after the health of our planet—our home. Despite this, our prospects for protecting Earth and her inhabitants from the grave anthropogenic threats they face appear dim. This is an instance where a bit of history might inform the way we perceive and treat the environment.
In this issue of The Scientist, historians Paul Warde, Libby Robin, and Sverker Sörlin remind us that both the concept of “the environment” and humanity’s relationship with it have undergone seismic shifts within living memory. Since Darwin’s and Wallace’s time, scientists have seen the environment as a discrete set of forces that act on individuals to drive evolution and shape the characteristics of populations in distinct scenarios. Some 70 years ago, a more pervasive and holistic idea took root, as a burgeoning human population began to see ...
