La naturaleza como problema histórico. El medio, la cultura y la expansión de Europa (Seccion De Obras De Ciencia Y Tecnologia) (Spanish Edition)

Puede la naturaleza ser un tema para la historia? Arnold analiza esta pregunta y nos hace ver como, desde las antiguas visiones geograficas hasta el mundo globalizado, la naturaleza incide e influye en la escritura de la historia, redactada por historiadores, filosofos, biologos y geografos que saben de la intima relacion entre la naturaleza y la cultura, desde la Grecia antigua a la India contemporanea. This Book Considers How Nature - In Both Its Biological And Environmental Manifestations - Has Been Invoked As A Dynamic Force In Human History. It Shows How Historians, Philosophers, Geographers, Anthropologists And Scientists Have Used Ideas Of Nature To Explain The Evolution Of Cultures, To Understand Cultural Difference, And To Justify Or Condemn Colonization, Slavery And Racial Superiority. It Examines The Central Part That Ideas Of Environmental And Biological Determinism Have Played In Theory, And Describes How These Ideas Have Served In Different Ways At Different Times As Instruments Of Authority, Identity And Defiance. The Book Shows How Powerful And Problematic The Invocation Of Nature Can Be. 1. Introduction -- 2. The Place Of Nature -- 3. Reappraising Nature -- 4. Environment As Catastrophe -- 5. Crossing Biological Boundaries -- 6. The Ecological Frontier -- 7. The Environmental Revolution -- 8. Inventing Tropicality -- 9. Colonizing Nature. David Arnold. Includes Bibliographical References And Index. This work shows how historians, geographers and philosophers have invoked nature in its various manifestations - climate, topography, vegetation, wildlife and disease - as a dynamic force in human history. It covers a whole cycle of environmental history and its interpretation