Historical Actors/ Philosophers Flashcards

Question

**Becher**

Answer 1

*Early Modern* ## Footnote Cameralist - two rules of the state: * Promote populous livelihood. * Promote inward migration of aliens.

Answer 2

*Early Modern* ## Footnote Defines Cameralism in terms of the revenues of the state. But he does so at a time when the state (as he understood it) was undergoing a process of expansion and concentration.

Answer 3

* Early Modern* * Formed the Royal Society - proponent of conservation in England in 17th century. Published Sylva (1664) which compained of prodigious havoc against trees from industry.

Answer 4

*Early Modern* Chemist, identified chemical properties in soil and plants. Liebig noted that political economy remained largely uninterested in the details of tillage, and indeed that Adam Smith’s engagement had been rather incidental. Liebig saw soil exhaustion as more profound - stating that future dependency rests on solving the issue of flushing waste into the sea.

Answer 5

*Early Modern* ## Footnote Fascinated by quantification, political arithmetic. Believed a large population was integral for a large army and navy. Tried to define how Netherlands could be rich without fertile soil - concluded trade was critical. Long before Malthus, he noticed the potential of human population to increase. But he also saw no reason why such a society should not be prosperous.

Answer 6

*Early Modern* * 1760s. Concerned with soil erosion. Linked the process of deforestation to descication. Moving trees led to deserts. From exposure to Mauritis in 1763. (Pointed out by Richard Grove) * No evidence to suggest this was influential.

Answer 7

*Early Modern* 18th-19th century. ‘men in every climate prepare at once two calamities for future generations – the want of fuel and the scarcity of water.’ Prussian polymath and world traveller, noted and sought to measure “terraforming” caused by human action: processes such as deforestation, desiccation, and local climate change.

Answer 8

*Early Modern* * Countered Lamarck's suggestion of transmutation in a lifetime with evolution. * He used Malthus to explain natural selection - the competitive mechanism to compete for limited resources to determine whether you will survive.

Answer 9

*Early Modern* Late 19th century. Survival of the fittest, social Darwinism. Uses term 'environment' - suggesting env was an external circumstance acting on the mind.

Answer 10

*Early Modern* ## Footnote 17th/18th century. Land and labour as the progenitors of wealth. Defined the unit of labour to be the amount the labourer produced in an hour, and the amount of land required to feed the labour - found that labourer's food needs were culturally dependent.

Answer 11

*Early Modern* ## Footnote Chair of moral philosophy. Saw nature as thought nature was wise, just and benevolent. the best policy was to dismantle human designs and allow the “natural progress of opulence”. "Did not worry about limits." Labour was the essential source of wealth. Original value might be in foodstuffs, but the division of labour incentivises improvment in agriculture. Desire for food is limited by stomach. Desire for goods is unlimited. People with surplus food will exchange surplus for durables.

Answer 12

*Early Modern* Rate of population growth always outstripped resource growth - Malthus felt this was already in this system - oscillation between subsistence and wealth - cyclical process. NOT about limits, but differential. ‘No limits whatever are placed to the productions of the earth’ Population checks would begin ‘very far short of what the earth is capable of producing’

Answer 13

*Early Modern Americans* * mid 19th century. American protectionist. Saw trade as exploitative and commerce as benign. Wanted a closer relationship between producer and consumer. Believed Britain was extracting the wealth of raw goods from America. * Carey insisted that progress in technology and social organization (i.e., association) could overcome scarcity. * 'Value . . . is simply our estimate of the resistance to be overcome, before we can enter upon the possession of the thing desired.'

Answer 14

* Early Modern Americans* * 19th century. Anticipated the methods and ﬁndings of ecology and environmental history, two sources of modern day environmentalism. Conceived of the environment in philospohical, sentimental terms.

Answer 15

*Modern Americans* * creator of paleotechnic and neotechnic models. Believed in the power of Giant Power to liberate the people of America. * One of the convenors of the 'Man's Role in Changing the Face of the Earth' 1953 Conference.

Answer 16

*Early Modern Americans* ## Footnote 19th century. Nature educated its students in the “doctrine of Use, namely that a thing is good only so far as it serves’. Emerson 'reconciled nature with the busy, manipulative world of American capitalism.' 'Art was nature passed through the alembic of man'

Answer 17

*Early Modern Americans* * Influential commentator on soil exhaustion in US. * Read a lot about desiccation in Algeria. Book - Man and Nature - bought into stadial theory. Blamed the degradation of the Med on Catholics. 1864 - George Perkins Marsh - “The vast extension of railroads, of manufactures, and the mechanical arts, of military armaments, and especially of the commercial fleets and navies of Christendom within the present century, has greatly augmented the demand for wood”

Answer 18

*Early Modern Americans* ## Footnote 1893 - American frontier historian - western frontier had provided an environmental safety valve that kept egalitarian enterprise alive, and the closing of the frontier around 1890 warned of social consequences.

Answer 19

*Early Modern Americans* ## Footnote Time is Money. Productivity is raised through the division of labour.

Answer 20

*Mediaeval Europeans* ## Footnote Neo-scholastic fighting the case for Amerindians. Access to natural law through evidential signs of rationality granted them access to humanity, rather than natural slavery.

Answer 21

*Mediaeval Europeans* ## Footnote 16th century Greatness of Cities - focused on urban life and hypothesised that density of living led to poor sanitary conditions + risk of epidemic - scaled it to a global problem. Botero also hypothesised, if rather vaguely, that the world had reached some kind of population limit, that ‘the world was so full of people... such that the fruits of the earth, from which people must draw their sustenance, cannot feed a greater number’.

Answer 22

*Mediaeval Europeans* ## Footnote 16th century Made husbandry political, in that he presented his subject as being of relevance to the fortunes of the polity.

Answer 23

*Mediaeval Europeans* ## Footnote Clarence Glacken notes that medieval historians of the northern barbarian peoples, such as Cassiodorus, Paul the Deacon, Isidore of Seville, and Jordanes, tended to give overpopulation and climate as reasons for their invasions of central and southern Europe.

Answer 24

*Mediaeval Europeans* ## Footnote 16th century Believed in essential salts, which were lost with soil degregation; believed these could be restored to permit unending utilty.

Answer 25

*Mediaeval Europeans* ## Footnote 12th century - observed the changing landscape outside the monastery, as a result of monk management.

Answer 26

*Mediaeval Europeans* 18th century. Stephen Hales - influenced by Newtonians. Hales spent much time devising models of the motions of the planets, and the circulation of blood. Stephen Hale discovers the hydrological cycle and plant transpiration.

Answer 27

*Ancient* ## Footnote Chinese Philosopher, follower of Confucius - 4th Century BCE - described deforestation in his homeland, and detailed the relationship between man and nature, as well as providing land management ideas. ⁃ Quote: said, “There was a time when trees were luxuriant on Ox Mountain. As it is on the outskirts of a great metropolis, the trees are constantly lopped by axes. Is it any wonder that they are no longer fine?

Answer 28

*Ancient* Islamic Philosopher - references the environmental influence on human history. In ‘Muqaddimah’, Khaldûn attributed characteristics of various human groups to environmental influence.

Answer 29

*Ancient* Commenting on how the Persian emperor reacted to the environment. Where a landscape was well cultivated and planted with trees, he rewarded the local governor with honours and expanded territory; but where he found neglected fields and deforestation, he removed the governor from office and appointed a better administrator.

Answer 30

*Ancient* ‘Republic’ and ‘Laws’ - includes advice concerning environmental problems in his ideal states. Observed historical deforestation of the mountains of Attica in the Critias, with archaeological evidence.

Answer 31

*Ancient* father of medicine - in ‘Airs, Waters, Places’, he maintained that the health, temperament, and energy of people living in a place is governed by its position in relationship to solar exposure, prevailing winds, climate, and the quality of its water supply. (Environmental determinism)

Answer 32

*Ancient* Environmental influences - because Attica, the district around Athens, had soil that was thin, dry, and relatively infertile, he maintained that its unattractiveness to potential invaders saved it from war and consequently preserved it from depopulation. He also noted the need of the warring Greek cities for natural resources - esp. Timber for shipbuilding When the Spartans conquered Amphipolis, a northern colony of Athens, he says, “[t]he Athenians were greatly alarmed … The main reason was that the city was useful to them for procurement of timber for ship-building.”

Answer 33

*Ancient* Recorded change in natural environment through human agency. Believed massive works like bridges and canals demonstrated an overreaching human pride that might call forth punishment from the Gods. Wrote at time the Cnidians started to dig a canal for city defence. In legend, the oracle of Delphi stated “Do not fence off the isthmus; do not dig. Zeus would have made an island, had he willed it.” After Cleomenes of Sparta set fire to a sacred grove and burned 5,000 Argive soldiers to death, Herodotus reports that he was driven mad by the thought of divine punishment – for destroying a god's forest as much as for killing the men in a place of refuge – and cut himself to bits.

Answer 34

*Modern* Ellsworth Huntington 1876-1947 racist explanation of racial characteristics, Climate and Civilization (1915)

Answer 35

*Modern* Japanese psychologist and social Darwinist Okaasa Jiro warned that the effects of modern o material “progress” were destroying Japanese society “like termites eating away at a temple.”

Answer 36

*Modern* “technology is in no sense an instrument of man’s making or in his control” but is rather “centrally determining of all Western history.”

Answer 37

*Modern* Tanaka Shōzō - humans were often blind to the power of material things. Tanaka warned in his diary, the supposed “progress of material, artiﬁcial civilization casts society into darkness.” Humans may create new technologies, but Tanaka suggested they do not fully control them. “Electricity is discovered,” he wrote, “and the world is darkened.

Answer 38

*Modern* Ellen Church Semple - 1911 - Inﬂuences of Geographic Environment - Humans and their cultures could not be understood apart from their immersion in their material environment: Man is a product of the earth’s surface. ‘Man can no more be scientiﬁcally studied apart from the ground which he tills, or the lands over which he travels, or the seas over which he trades, than polar bear or desert cactus can be understood apart from its habitat.’ NOTE GENDER, TIME.

Answer 39

*Modern* ## Footnote 1916 book ‘The Passing of the Great Race, or the Racial Basis of European History’, embraced an unapologetic biological racism. The so-called Nordic peoples, he argued, had evolved in northern environments, where the challenging climate eliminated “defectives” and favoured humans who were “naturally” civilised, noble, and generous. The material environment, Grant suggested, determined material biology, and biology in turn determined culture. By comparison, the darker hued peoples who had evolved in “Alpine” and “Mediterranean” environments were not just culturally inferior – rather, their cultural inferiority stemmed from a deeper genetically determined biological inferiority which could not be rapidly changed. Hitler admired.

Answer 40

*Modern* ## Footnote Instrumental in conservationism in the US, and founder of the Sierra Club - inspired national parks - famously pictured with Roosevelt above Yellowstone. Preserving wilderness was tied up with American progressivism.

Answer 41

*Modern* * Smuts was S. Africa, involved in war cabinets of WWI WWII * Saw races as something that should be kept independent - founded RAF * Believed all races would develop to similar level * Developed term 'holism', and created Apartheid.

Answer 42

*Modern* ## Footnote “The Tragedy of the Commons” (Hardin 1968) -\> Hardin highlighted the natural tendency of private actors to exploit the public/environmental commons to the point where it can no longer support economic activity.

Answer 43

*Modern* ## Footnote * Rise of de facto env history can be traced to the 1930s – convergence of geographers, anthropologists and archaeologists * Typified by Dudley Stamp – oil geologist in Burma, published first work in newly founded Journal of Ecology 1923. 1930 book The vegetation of Burma; from an ecological standpoint

Answer 44

*Modern* ## Footnote 1968 - Ehrlich expressed concern that the appetite of a growing population may not be met by a ﬁxed resource base in his book The Population Bomb. Julian Simon challenged Ehrlich to pick resources which would decline by end of 1980s - Ehrlich selected copper, tungsten, chromium, nickel, tin - all of which increased. Simon's victory bolstered FMC.

Answer 45

*Modern* ## Footnote The Hungry Planet in Swedish in 1953 - relentless in his pursuit of issues such as top soil erosion, waning soil quality and the loss of virgin forest. Borgström was, if possible, even more pessimistic than Vogt and Osborn. He also brought a stronger apocalyptic element to his prose, talking of sin and punishment, of a cosmic doom which would come down on humanity should it not heed the calls of the new environmental experts.

Answer 46

*Modern* ## Footnote Silent Spring, 1962. which brought environmental concerns to an unprecedented portion of the American public. Silent Spring spurred a reversal in national pesticide policy-leading to a nationwide ban on DDT and other pesticides. Popularised environmentalism.

Answer 47

* Modern* * Spaceship Earth (1966), for instance, Ward asserted that “our planet is not much more than the capsule within which we have to live as human beings…. We depend upon a little envelope of soil and a rather larger envelope of atmosphere for life itself. And both can be contaminated and destroyed." * Only One Earth (1972) - Ward wrote that the “charge of the U.N. to the [Stockholm] Conference was clearly to define what should be done to maintain the earth as a place suitable for human life not only now, but also for future generations”.

Answer 48

*Modern* ## Footnote coined the term “Anthropocene” in 2002.

Answer 49

*Modern* ## Footnote Our Common Future, 1987. “Sustainable development is development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs”

Answer 50

*Modern* ## Footnote Early C20 Paul Vidal possibilism idea that nature does not dictate but does set the limits and offers a finite number of possibilities - interested in not just what env did to humans but what they did to it – most famous work Principles of Human Geography (1921).

Answer 51

*Modern* ## Footnote Limits to Growth, 1972 - Computational models;

Answer 52

*Modern* ## Footnote Developed the term ecosystem in 1935. ⁃ Tansley understood ecosystems and their successional processes generally to include anthropogenic change. ⁃ The “ecosystem” was Tansley’s way to ensure key concepts in ecology meant the same thing on both sides of the Atlantic, and therefore for “New Ecology” throughout the world, and its use of that term “system” signalled connections with systems theory.

Answer 53

**Modern** ## Footnote Richards became the first American to apply the concept of ecology to her scientific studies of nutrition, chemistry and sanitation. Influential to home economics and the Progressive Era municipal housekeeping reforms.

Answer 54

1895 - Classical ecological text - Plantesamfund - Warming argued that no environmental disturbances would result in a balanced community - the Final Community.

Answer 55

‘If you do not interfere with the busy seasons in the fields, then there will be more grain than the people can eat; if you do not allow nets with too fine a mesh to be used in large ponds, then there will be more fish and turtles than they can eat; if hatchets and axes are permitted in the forests on the hills only in the proper seasons, then there will be more timber than they can use.’

Answer 56

“…Every wise forest directorate must therefore have the wooded areas ... assayed, without losing time, and give them the highest priority possible, while seeking to make use of them in such a way that succeeding generations will be able to glean at least as much benefit as those now alive…”