1 See, for example, the following three books for claims similar or identical to those I have listed here: Leiss, William, The Domination of Nature (New York: George Braziller, 1972)Google Scholar; Merchant, Carolyn, The Death of Nature: Women, Ecology and the Scientific Revolution (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1983)Google Scholar; and Young, Dudley, Origins of the Sacred (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1992)Google Scholar.

2 Bloch, Marc, The Historian's Craft, translated by Putnam, Peter (New York: Vintage, 1953), p. 29.Google Scholar

3 See Grove, Richard, “The Origins of Environmentalism,” Nature, 345 (May 1990): 11–14, for a discussion not only of earlier environmental problems but also of earlier anxieties over the environment.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

4 Landes, David S., The Unbound Prometheus: Technological Change and Industrial Development in Western Europe from 1750 to the Present (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1969), p. 97.Google Scholar

5 In North America this would have meant the further exploitation of forests until an equilibrium was reached. Political activity to save wilderness areas may well have occurred, as it is occurring today.

6 Malthus, , Principles of Political Economy, quoted in E. A. Wrigley, Continuity, Chance and Change: The Character of the Industrial Revolution in England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), p. 52Google Scholar. I am indebted to Wrigley for many of the ideas expressed in this paragraph. The contrast between what was expected by economists of the late eighteenth century and what actually occurred in the nineteenth century is interestingly discussed in Wrigley's book. Wrigley is also one of the historians attempting to understand the demographic picture.

7 Smith, Adam, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, edited by Cannan, E. (Chicago, 1976), pp. 430–31Google Scholar, quoted in Wrigley, Continuity, Chance and Change, p. 46. Wrigley discusses Smith's views of the Modern economy at some length.

8 Changing American attitudes to the wilderness, from fear and hostility to reverence and rapture, were well discussed many years ago in a book now in its third edition. See Nash, Roderick, Wilderness and the American Mind, 3rd ed. (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1982)Google Scholar. There seems little doubt that Oelschlaeger has been much influenced by this book, though some of his conclusions are different. Another major influence is Glacken, Clarence, Traces on the Rhodian Shore: Nature and Culture in Western Thought from Ancient Times to the End of the Eighteenth Century (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1967)Google Scholar. Oelschlaeger's book carries a dedication to Glacken.

9 See, for example, Sessions, George and Devall, Bill, Deep Ecology: Living as if Nature Mattered (Salt Lake City: Peregrine Smith, 1985)Google Scholar; Sessions, George, “The Deep Ecology Movement: A Review,” Environmental Review (Summer 1987)Google Scholar; and Rolston, Holmes III, Philosophy Gone Wild: Essays in Environmental Ethics (Buffalo, NY: Prometheus Books, 1986).Google Scholar

10 Worster, Donald, Nature's Economy: The Roots of Ecology (San Francisco: Sierra Club, 1977), p. 208. This book remains, in my view, the best concise history of environmental/ecological ideas.Google Scholar

11 Quoted by Oelschlaeger (p. 255), from Robinson Jeffers, The Double Axe.

12 Passmore, John, in his Man's Responsibility for Nature: Ecological Problems and Western Traditions (New York: Charles Scribners Sons, 1974)Google Scholar, argued that a strictly biocentric point of view was not tenable but a quotation from Passmore, cited in Devall and Sessions's Deep Ecology (p. 52), seems to imply that he has had a change of heart and is seeking a plausible biocentric philosophy. See also Livingston, John A., The Fallacy of Wildlife Conservation (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1981)Google Scholar, for arguments against the viability of a biocentric position by someone who quite obviously wishes it were viable.

13 These are obviously complicated questions. I am inclined to agree with Michel Foucault when he argues that while the natural sciences have become (to use his terminology) an independent discourse, one in which logic and reason are the dominant values, the same cannot be said of the human or social sciences. These he argues are genealogically bound to practices of power. See, for example, Foucault, Michel, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, translated by Sheridan, Alan (New York: Pantheon Books, 1977), pp. 225–28.Google Scholar

14 I had not intended a major excursus on thermodynamics but in light of some remarks by my anonymous referee I would like to add the following. The referee implied that I should be more sympathetic to those biocentric ethicists who are attracted to the idea of equilibrium and its relation to biological and ecological systems. That stability somehow entails a negentropic role for life processes. But the fact of the matter is that we live next to a star that will provide us with energy for the foreseeable future. Thus, from a global point of view, thermodynamic considerations are not important, though local ones might be. We may well face shortages of the kinds of energy we are accustomed to. Further, there is nothing negentropic about life. Living things consume energy in order to create order and are net entropy producers. Biocentric ethics would do well to look somewhere other than thermodynamics for its justification. What should be of concern to us is the ever-increasing global rate of energy consumption. Given the Second Law, we may well heat up the planet such that it becomes uninhabitable. But we cannot look to other living things to help us out here; we must simply consume less and curb population growth.

15 See, for example, Gasman, Daniel, The Scientific Origins of National Socialism: Social Darwinism in Ernst Haeckel and the German Monist League (London: Macdonald, 1971)Google Scholar; and Proctor, Robert, Racial Hygiene: Medicine under the Nazis (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1988).Google Scholar

16 Oelschlaeger covers many contemporary environmental philosophies and their proponents: resourcism, preservationism, biocentrism and ecocentrism, Deep Ecology and Eco-Feminism. He sees strengths especially in the latter two.

17 Spinoza claimed that direct intuitive knowledge of nature exists. This aspect of Spinoza's thought is discussed by Oelschlaeger, pp. 121–27 and 342–44. However, if people are to accept the claim of a special relationship with the wilderness most will need to do so second-hand. This is because if we all try to experience the wilderness first-hand, there will not be any of it left to experience.

18 See, for example, Perkins, Robert, Into the Solitude: An Arctic Journey (Toronto: Fitzhenry and Whiteside, 1991).Google Scholar

19 David Suzuki, in the foreword to a book published by the Canadian Nature Federation, The Last Wilderness: Images of the Canadian Wild (1991), states that he believes there is a genetic record linking us to the wilderness from which we sprang. It is not exactly clear what he means but if we do carry some genetic memory it might explain the common experience of “oneness with nature” and might also account for the vestige of what Oelschlaeger calls the “paleolithic mind.”

20 See, for example, Gadon, Elinor W., The Once and Future Goddess: A Symbol for Our Time (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1989)Google Scholar. This book has been favourably reviewed by Max Oelschlaeger in Environmental Ethics, 13 (Fall 1991): 275–80.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

21 Presumably, at some level, we must control nature or perish.

22 See, for example, Healing our Wounds: The Power of Ecological Feminism, edited by Plant, Judith (Boston: New Society Publishers, 1987)Google Scholar; and Warren, Karen, “Feminism and the Environment: An Overview of the Issues,” Newsletters On, 90, 3 (1991)Google Scholar. Note also that Deep Ecologists focus more on the ills of anthropocentrism, Eco-Feminists on those of androcentrism. This is discussed by Sessions, Robert, “Deep Ecology versus Ecofeminism: Healthy Differences or Incompatible Philosophies,” Hypatia, 6, 1 (1991).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

23 Richard Rorty, Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature, quoted on p. 227.

24 Eden was not a wilderness paradise; it was a garden that needed tending. See Genesis 2:15.