The World Within

Internalizing the environment might be the next step in humans’ relationship with our planet.

Written byBob Grant

| 3 min read

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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 ...

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Meet the Author

Bob Grant
From 2017 to 2022, Bob Grant was Editor in Chief of The Scientist, where he started in 2007 as a Staff Writer. Before joining the team, he worked as a reporter at Audubon and earned a master’s degree in science journalism from New York University. In his previous life, he pursued a career in science, getting a bachelor’s degree in wildlife biology from Montana State University and a master’s degree in marine biology from the College of Charleston in South Carolina. Bob edited Reading Frames and other sections of the magazine.
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