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Republican Animals: Politics, Science and the Birth of Ecology
Author(s) -
MESSER PETER C.
Publication year - 2010
Publication title -
journal for eighteenth‐century studies
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.129
H-Index - 11
eISSN - 1754-0208
pISSN - 1754-0194
DOI - 10.1111/j.1754-0208.2010.00325.x
Subject(s) - ideology , politics , environmental ethics , independence (probability theory) , nationalism , ecology , natural (archaeology) , sociology , political science , history , law , biology , archaeology , philosophy , statistics , mathematics
This article argues that in the years following American independence the combination of republican ideology and a nationalist vision of science created a new, ecological way of thinking about the relationship between humans and animals. The political imperative of promoting republican virtues overlapped with the scientific defence of the flora and fauna of North America from their European detractors, and produced a way of thinking about humans and animals that placed both within a complicated natural system, a way of thinking that laid the foundations for modern ecological thought.