This powerful book provides the first comprehensive overview of the intellectual roots of the worldwide environmental movement - from ancient religions and philosophies to modern science and ethics - and synthesizes them into a new philosophy of nature in which to ground our moral values and social action. It traces the origins and evolution of the dominant worldview that has built our industrial, technocratic, man-centered civilization, and brought us to the current ecological crisis. At the same time, it uncovers an alternative cultural tradition in the world's different religions and philosophies and describes how these ideas are now surfacing and coalescing to form an ecological sensibility and a new vision of nature which recognizes the inter-relatedness of all living things. Finally, this book integrates these varied traditions with modern physics and the science of ecology into a larger philosophical whole that provides the environmental movement with a comprehensive vision of an organic and sustainable society in harmony with nature. As ecological disasters continue to threaten our planet, becoming worse with every passing moment of indifference, it has become clear that we must take action. We must change our relationship with nature, and return to the days when our lives were intimately connected to and dependent upon the natural world. Nature's Web lays the foundations for that change by explaining where our complex ideas about nature come from, why they are wrong, and what we can do to change them.

Providing an overview of the intellectual roots of the worldwide environmental movement - from ancient religions and philosophies to modern science and ethics - this book synthesises them into a new philosophy of nature in which to ground our moral values and social action.

This book places the contemporary debate over green issues in its historical context and illuminates what is loosely called 'earth wisdom'. The book traces the development of ecological thought from its origins in ancient religions, and philosophies to modern science and ethics, covering the Taoists, the Egyptians, the Greeks, the Celts and North American indians, as well as alchemy, the Enlightenment, Romantics, Darwinism and Gaia. - blurb.

Jonathan Silvertown is professor of ecology at the Open University, Milton Keynes, and the author of An Orchard Invisible and Demons in Eden and editor of 99% Ape, all published by the University of Chicago Press. --Book Jacket.

The first comprehensive history of the nature study movement and its significance to American environmental thought and politics. Argues that nature study advocates, through their systematic program or educating children about nature, formed a critical foundation for the launching of the conservation movement.