The Invention Of Nature By Andrea Wulf

Prior to diving into the many new insights that can be comprehended while viewing history through a natural lense, it is important to define nature in this context. While man is technically a creation of nature, and therefore nature himself, he shall be excluded from this brief definition of what composes nature. Here, nature will be considered everything living or otherwise on this earth that is not a creation or product of humanity. All other creatures and parts of the environment are to be considered nature.

In both Kate Chopin’s The Awakening and Jon Krakauer’s Into the Wild, nature is paradoxically symbolized as both a liberator and a destroyer- intellectual maturation and hubris- through the “awakenings” of Edna Pontellier and Chris McCandless.

Throughout the non-fictional novel Into the Wild, the author Jon Krakauer catches the reader’s interest early on in the book. Krakauer takes us on a journey, telling the story of young Chris McCandless’ adventures after abandoning everything he owned. Krakauer fully emerged himself into the study of McCandless’ life’s adventures and soon developed a deep understanding of who he was and how he impacted to world. Krakauer connected with McCandless in an unexplainable way. Because of Krakauer’s past endeavors, he was able to capture the mentality of McCandless’ choices and write about them in a speaker and subject dynamic. As the novel progresses, the reader gets the sense of a unique brotherhood between the two, although they had never actually encountered one another. As Krakauer and McCandless’ “friendship” progresses, the reader will gain affection towards McCandless.

This book has been molded to be a breakdown of how various fields in science have progressed over centuries as mankind has advanced. The book starts off introducing the idea that the telling of natural history has changed numerous times as humans have evolved. We also learn to agree that our knowledge has been shaped by the tools available and the perceptions of its users. In the earliest stages of life, Muehlbauer states “…observers of the natural world had only their senses to work with, and were limited to visual, auditory, tactile, and olfactory descriptions perceived by the unaided

In the book The Sixth Extinction written by Elizabeth Kolbert there are a lot of examples that are going on in the world today and also examples of things that started when the first human being was around. This book talks about how we are in the sixth mass extinction, and that is caused by humans. Overall the book goes chapter by chapter and talks about the different mass extinctions there have been, and how they were caused, but also the book talks about different species that have gone extinct and the reasons why. For example the book talks about golden frogs that are located in Panama and how they were seen everywhere located in El Valle de Anton, but they suddenly started disappearing. They were disappearing because of a chytrid fungis cause by humans, when humans travel they were bring this fungis to different places, this ended up killing the frogs (Chapter 1, Kolbert). That is just one example, but throughout the book Kolbert talks about different extinctions like this and what caused them.

One of the first topics that environmental historians sought to examine was the relationship between nature and military strategy. The bulk of these initial studies analyze the how both Union and Confederate forces focused their strategies around the acquisition of natural resources such as food and horses in order to gain an advantage on the battlefield. Ted Steinberg was one of the first to adapt this approach to his research in his book Down to Earth: Nature’s Role in History. In his chapter on the Civil War, Steinberg argues that the conflict was essentially a “great food fight” and proceeds to detail how generals on both sides of the conflict had to accommodate their military strategies around the procurement of food. While Steinberg notes

In Jenny Allen's essay "The Trouble With Nature" humor is utilized in order to entertain the reader and inform them, and let them know that in nature no matter what you try to dodge and ignore there is always going to be something else. This is because nature goes as it pleases and there really is no boudaries or rules that it has to go by.

The works of Carolyn Merchant and Keith Thomas pertain to the same subject matter and even to the same time period. Nevertheless, in comparing their interpretations of the evidence and the presentation of their arguments concerning the history of mankind’s relationship with nature in Tudor and Stuart England through the Scientific and Industrial Revolutions, we find that they are quite different. Merchant presents us with a rather one-sided, retrospective attack on science as the root of all environmental evil, while Thomas offers a relatively neutral, prospective look at how the people of this time reacted to the changing views of nature and what, exactly,

Humans are going to die soon. So now just ask yourself this question is the value of environment change? Will yes the value and environment is changing over time.

Jane Benyus’s discussion on the ways nature can serve as a model for forming advanced technologies amazed me. Originally, I thought scientific and technological advances would not formed without tapping into “book knowledge.” However, Benyus’s discussion has proved me wrong because she explains many instances in which nature has facilitated as the inspiration for advances and inventions. For example, companies such as AQUAporin and Sharklet Technologies use natural occurring patterns and mechanisms to make products that surpass already existing ones. My notion of drawing inspiration from nature has changed after this TED talk because I did not realize of all the scientific knowledge in nature. Likewise, just like the Romantics, Benyus is keen

“During the time men live without a common power to keep them all in awe, they are in that condition which is called war; and such a war as is of every man against every man.”1 Here Thomas Hobbes portrays the state of nature; in which life is solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.2 He then proposes a social contract where people of the state enter into a commonwealth governed by an absolute power. Through this social contract, the people give up their right to “everything” to the sovereign in exchange for security, thereby, giving the sovereign absolute authority over the entire commonwealth. However, Hobbes’s theory presents an exception to this “unlimited power.” He states that Leviathan, the sovereign, does no wrong unless he violates a subject’s right to self-preservation.3 In other words, a subject of the sovereign is not obligated to obey that sovereign if that sovereign threatens the life or person of the subject. But isn’t this retained right of self-defense incompatible with the absolute sovereignty that Hobbes claims for the commonwealth? Susanne Sreedhar argues that with the help of varying interpretations of Hobbes’s theory, in addition to the Razian model, she can find a solution to this puzzle. By treating the sovereign’s commands as “exclusionary reasons,”4 Sreedhar maintains that instances of disobedience can be justified in cases where subjects have nonexcludable first-order reasons for an action.5 However, her Razian model is in some measure too

During the nineteenth century, Humboldt was one of the few travelers that discovered the world and recorded different physical landscapes, climates, and oceans. A few decades later, Humboldt’s discovery of the world motivated Darwin to make further observations of the world specimens and the new theory of “Survival of the Fittest.” This new knowledge brought Marsh (1864) to understand that humans are the destructive power, and that they had destroyed the Earth’s ecosystem for thousands of years. According to Marsh (1864), This new knowledge brought Marsh (1864) to understand that humans are the destructive power, and that they had destroyed the Earth’s ecosystem for thousands of years. According to Marsh (1864), This new knowledge brought Marsh (1864) to understand that humans are the destructive power, and that they had destroyed the Earth’s ecosystem for thousands of years. According to Marsh (1864), people destroyed mountain reservoirs, fertilized land, killed many animals, cut many trees, and overused the natural resources of the

In the book, The Control of Nature by John McPhee, one can see humans in a multitude of locations attempting to control the various aspects of their natural environment. Furthermore, it is clear that the three enduring understandings of Earth Science are present throughout the book as an ongoing theme. The first, the idea that energy, from the Sun and from Earth’s interior, drives all of Earth’s cycles and processes, can be interpreted in many different ways. However, in the different sections of the book, one sees that the Sun can cause weather patterns and can lead to different outcomes. Additionally, the energy, or power, resulting from the intense heat and pressure from the Earth’s interior, can cause volcanic eruptions. As for the idea that matter moves through Earth’s spheres in cyclical processes, over varying periods of time, and at different scales, one can see that water, land, plant matter, and even molten rock come and go in a definite period, whether it is thirty years, or even centuries. In regards to the third idea, that Earth’s surfaces and processes are altered by human engineering, one can see a plethora of examples in the book. The energy from the Sun and from Earth’s interior and the events that are caused from that energy can cause humans to alter the surfaces and processes of Earth by building everything from levees to basins and can even cause humans to make an attempt at cooling flowing

In American Literature many authors write about nature and how nature affects man's lives. In life, nature is an important part of people. Many people live, work, or partake in revelry in nature. Nature has received attention from authors spanning several centuries. Their attitudes vary over time and also reflect the different outlooks of the authors who chose to discuss this important historical movement. A further examination of this movement, reveals prevalence of nature's influence on man and how it affects their lives.

Starting over 500 years ago with Nicolaus Copernicus, Galileo Galilei, Francis Bacon, and Isaac Newton paving the way for the possibility of new scientific exploration into studies such as “stratigraphy, the study of the rock and soil layers of the earth” by Robert Hooke and Carolus Linnaeus’ study of taxonomy, “the system of naming and classifying organisms” based on morphological similarities and differences, humanity would begin to uncrack the code of where life came from in a nonbiblical sense. (Fuentes, 26) Further studies by George-Louis Leclerc – Comte du Buffon, Erasmus Darwin (Charles’ grandfather), Georges Cuvier, James Hutton and Charles Lyell as well as Jean Baptiste Pierre Antoine de Monet – Chevalier de Lamarck’s studies in which he “correctly identified the environment as a challenge to organisms and adaptation as the result of changing to meet environmental challenges” helped prompt the formulation of the current understanding of evolution by Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace each in their own special way.