The Ecological Plot: How Stories Gave Rise to a Science (Under the Sign of Nature)

Synopsis

Unraveling the surprising history of the concept of ecologyThe Ecological Plot traces the roots of this most mainstream branch of science back to an unexpected source: narrative storytelling. Weaving together the histories of different disciplines, John MacNeill Miller shows how pioneering thinkers drew on a shared set of literary techniques to imagine how different species could work together as a single, interdependent community, redefining the way we conceptualize the natural world. Beginning with a series of revolutionary exchanges between the political economist Thomas Robert Malthus, the writer Harriet Martineau, and the naturalist Charles Darwin, The Ecological Plot identifies the foundations of modern notions of ecology, economics, and realist fiction, maps how they evolved through the works of Victorian writers such as Elizabeth Gaskell, George Eliot, and Thomas Hardy, and shows how they resurfaced in the works of Aldo Leopold and Rachel Carson a century later. Miller&’s book reveals why our most sophisticated efforts to explain humanity&’s relationship to nature have been segregated into different disciplines and makes an argument for the importance of bringing these separate ways of understanding the world back together as a crucial step toward solving the environmental, economic, and ethical problems of the present.

Copyright:

2024

Book Details

Book Quality:

Publisher Quality

ISBN-13:

9780813951799

Related ISBNs:

9780813951782, 9780813951775

Publisher:

University of Virginia Press

Date of Addition:

09/24/24

Copyrighted By:

the Rector and Visitors of the University of Virginia

Adult content:

No

Language:

English

Has Image Descriptions:

No

Categories:

History, Nonfiction, Science, Literature and Fiction, Outdoors and Nature, Language Arts, Earth Sciences

Submitted By:

Bookshare Staff

Usage Restrictions:

This is a copyrighted book.