This wide-ranging investigation of ecology's past traces the origins of
the concept, discusses the thinkers who have shaped it, and shows how it
in turn has shaped the modern perception of our place in nature. Donald
Worster focuses on the dramatic shifts in man's view of the living world
that have occurred since the eighteenth century, looking closely at the
contributions of such figures as Linnaeus, Gilbert White, Darwin, and
Thoreau, as well as those of the twentieth-century ecologists Frederic
Clements, Aldo Leopold, and Eugene Odum. The author has written a new
preface for this work, which was first published by Sierra Club Books in
1977.