href="#u9d300a92-7dcd-5b2a-a7cf-3afef86070e5">Chapter 2). Readers wishing to study these movements are recommended to consult Coates (1998). Likewise, more detail is to be found about American environmentalists of the nineteenth century in the books of Nash (2014 [1967]; 1989) than in this one, although Chapter 4 presents the developing ideas both of the American Transcendentalists (including Marsh) and of the controversy about preservation between John Muir and Gifford Pinchot. There again, there is ampler detail to be found in Worster (1985 [1977]) about the origins and rise of ecological science, topics which the fifth chapter of this book re-examines with the aid of more contemporary sources.
Darwin and Darwinism are discussed in Chapter 3, with emphasis on Darwin’s own understanding of the ecological implications of his theory. Chapter 4 considers ‘The American Debate’, focusing on the writings and influence of Marsh and of John Muir, and the controversies about National Parks. Chapter 5 concerns the origins and development of the science of ecology on both sides of the Atlantic.
In Chapter 6, further sources of conservation are studied, including the poet Gerard Manley Hopkins, the forester and ecologist Aldo Leopold and the biologist Rachel Carson, whose Silent Spring (published 1962) ignited the ecological movement. Chapter 7 introduces a range of contributions to early environmentalism movements, from Blueprint for Survival (1972) to Our Common Future (1987). In Chapter 8, we encounter the pioneers and main schools of environmental philosophy; this discussion is continued in Chapter 9, where further schools are introduced, together with ecological issues and movements, including the Green movement. Chapter 10 presents the global environmental crisis of the twenty-first century, and the Conclusion brings together historical strands that have contributed to contemporary environmental thought and allow the crisis to be addressed.
The above-mentioned debate about the influence of beliefs and ideas can be illustrated by the discourse surrounding the thesis put forward by Lynn White Jr. in an article in Science in 1967. White maintained that the roots of our ecological (his word was ‘ecologic’) crisis lie in Judaeo-Christian theology, which makes Christianity, particularly in its Western version, ‘the most anthropocentric religion the world has seen’. White’s specialism was medieval technology, and he regarded the distinctive technological advances of Western Christendom during the Middle Ages as manifesting an aggressive form of belief in the human domination of nature. His thesis will be discussed more than once (in Chapters 1, 8 and 9), because of its interpretation of Christianity, as well as of the Middle Ages, and detailed discussion can be left for the relevant sections. However, it is worth remarking that among the many criticisms to which his stance has been subjected, no fewer than two forms of misguided determinism have been ascribed to him.
For example, in a review in Past and Present, R. H. Hilton and P. H. Sawyer (1963: 97) accused him of ‘technological determinism’, the suggestion that the shape of history and the structure of society were determined by technological innovations such as the new form of heavy ploughing of the early Middle Ages (on which White made human attitudes and behaviour towards nature turn), or later innovations such as clockwork and gunpowder. This approach clearly has its limits, since technology is itself heavily influenced both by economic factors and trends and sometimes by cultural factors (and even possibly ideas). There is a case for ascribing the intensity of some modern ecological problems to contemporary technology (carbon-based energy generation and the manufacture of plastics being leading examples), but once again the forces that drive this technology must also be taken into account.
However, this criticism of White is not consistent with another form of determinism often ascribed to him, the view that the roots of our problems lie in religious beliefs, and that their solution correspondingly lies in a change of religious beliefs, such as either the adoption of Zen Buddhism or reversion to the kind of Christianity advanced by St Francis of Assisi. Certainly, the suggestion that religious beliefs drive history to such a profound extent is implausible, particularly if the claim is that the conversion of the West (of Northern Europe) to Christianity in the centuries around 700 CE is what drove the industrial revolution of over a millennium later, or the subsequent industrial revolutions of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Critics have rightly commented that religious beliefs have often formed a rationalization of trends that were taking place already, themselves to be otherwise explained. Thus, even if White’s theory is held in a nondeterministic form, it can be criticized for exaggerating the formative influence of religious beliefs.
Yet the possibility remains that such beliefs are capable of making a difference, alongside many other factors. And this makes it important to consider whether, as many others have claimed, White mischaracterizes both Christianity and also characteristic medieval attitudes to nature. It also makes it important to consider religious stances like the stewardship approach, as identified by Passmore, since approaches of this kind may also make a difference, this time in the direction of motivating environmental concern. While there are undoubtedly other sources of environmental concern, such as recognition of the full implications of Darwinism, and of the ordered but vulnerable character of global ecological systems, attitudes such as these remain significant sources of potential motivation.
But so does simple love of nature and natural beauty. This can be acquired from direct experience (for example, through hiking, boating and field-trips), from films and television programmes, through appreciation of art, and by retrieving the love of nature and landscape found in ancient thinkers such as Virgil and the author of the Song of Solomon, in patristic writers such as Basil the Great, in early modern poets such as Thomas Traherne and in modern thinkers such as Rachel Carson. Historical environmental thought, then, can influence contemporary agents not only through its teachings about ethical responsibilities, but also through renewing the jaded vision of the dwellers of modern cities, and opening or reopening our eyes and ears to the colours, sounds and variety of the world around us.
I would like to express thanks to my Cardiff colleague, Dr Hefin Jones, for checking an early draft of part of Chapter 5, to two anonymous referees for looking over Chapters 3 and 5 respectively, and to two others for reviewing a draft of all ten chapters. I am grateful to my colleagues at the Cardiff University Institute for Sustainable Places for inviting me to give a presentation there on ‘Myths about Darwin and Marsh’ (based on relevant sections of Chapters 3 and 4) and for their participation in that seminar, and to Steven Goundrey for much-needed technical assistance. Thanks are also due to Pascal Porcheron and Ellen MacDonald-Kramer of Polity Press for their longsuffering and constant helpfulness. Above all, I am particularly grateful to my wife, Leela Dutt Attfield, for encouragement, love and support throughout, and also for daily companionship as we shared together the COVID-19 lockdown during which the later stages of this book were completed. Without her, this book would not even be a dead letter; it would not exist.
Recommended reading
Carson, Rachel (1962). Silent Spring. London: Hamish Hamilton.
