Topics in Environmental History: John Muir, Aldo Leopold, and the Advent of Biocentrism
Abstract
I enter this project with a belief that ideas have the power to
engender action. While it is conceivable that some historical events
have occurred spontaneously, the vast majority were rooted in
various beliefs, attitudes, agendas, and paradigms. The ideas of
individuals such as Augustine of Hippo, Martin Luther, Francis Bacon,
Isaac Newton, Charles Darwin, and Martin Luther King Jr. among
others, have significantly altered the way much of the world thinks
and acts. While it is important, as Donald Worster believes, for
environmental history "to discover how a whole culture, rather than
exceptional individuals in it, perceived and valued nature," I
maintain that it is also important to study particular figures who
have helped shape powerful minority views about nature today.