Nature, Technology, and Society

Traces cultural attitudes toward the environment and technology across the span of human civilizationWhile all human societies have enlisted technologies to control nature, the last hundred years have witnessed the technological exploitation and destruction of natural resources on an unprecedented scale. As environmental groups and the scientific community sound the alarm about deforestation, global warming and ozone depletion, the obvious question arises: how did we get where we are today? Victor Ferkiss here sets out to answer this central question, emphasizing that we cannot escape from our present environmental predicament unless we understand the ideas which have created it.In this extraordinary book Ferkiss asks the basic questions concerning humans and their relationship to the environment. He traces cultural attitudes towards the environment from early mankind to the present day. This fascinating book is distinctive both in its comprehensiveness, and in its attempt to place side by side influential thinkers and movements with varied views on these issues.