• Home
• Study
• Study Information
• Modules
• Module Information

An Introduction to Histories of Science and the Environment

Module description

This module introduces you to the history of scientific and other systematic approaches to non-human nature in different parts of the globe from 1500 to the present day.  You will develop a broad knowledge and critical understanding of the way historians, sociologists and other scholars have studied the complex and changing relationship between humans and the non-human environment.  These will enrich your ability to understand how interdisciplinary approaches within the humanities and social sciences can yield powerful insights into the roots of our environmental crises and dilemmas.

Module aims - intentions of the module

This module aims to give you a broad understanding of the ways in which human cultures have interpreted and exploited their non-natural environments from 1500 to the present. These include Western scientific, non-Western and indigenous processes for making and applying knowledges. You will acquire a broad understanding of connections between, on the one hand, beliefs and practices concerning 'nature' and sustainability, and on the other. the wider contexts of politics, economics, imperialism, industrialisation, gender, race, conflict, religion and spirituality. The module will give you the ability to challenge assumptions made about such fundamental concepts as nature, environment, science and knowledge.  It aims to enrich your ability to apply interdisciplinary approaches to critically understand a range of environmental issues that have become global crises.

Intended Learning Outcomes (ILOs)

ILO: Module-specific skills

On successfully completing the module you will be able to...

• 1. Demonstrate a broad and critical understanding of the global history of science and the environment since 1500
• 2. Engage critically with a range of historical and sociological approaches to science and the environment
• 3. Compare and contrast approaches to making and applying knowledge of the environment across different historical periods and global regions

ILO: Discipline-specific skills

On successfully completing the module you will be able to...

• 4. Critically engage with a variety of source materials and disciplinary approaches
• 5. Construct clear, concise and convincing historical arguments

ILO: Personal and key skills

On successfully completing the module you will be able to...

• 6. Persuasive communication and group-working skills
• 7. Effective research skills and the ability to articulate module themes and issues
• 8. Competent time-management and independent critical thinking

Syllabus plan

Whilst the module’s precise content may vary from year to year, it is envisaged that the syllabus will cover some or all of the following topics:

• Global histories of science and environmental history
• Decolonising histories of the sciences and the environment
• Nature as a social construction or material agent
• Religious roots of the ecological crisis
• The Scientific Revolution and ‘death’ of nature
• European imperialism and commodifying nature
• Indigenous peoples, colonial science and environmentalism
• Materialism and nature
• The invention of ecology
• The Cold War and origin of environmental sciences
• Placing sciences of the environment
• Speaking for nature

Learning activities and teaching methods (given in hours of study time)

Details of learning activities and teaching methods

Formative assessment

Summative assessment (% of credit)

Details of summative assessment

Details of re-assessment (where required by referral or deferral)

Re-assessment notes

Deferral – if you miss an assessment for certificated reasons judged acceptable by the Mitigation Committee, you will normally be either deferred in the assessment or an extension may be granted. The mark given for a re-assessment taken as a result of deferral will not be capped and will be treated as it would be if it were your first attempt at the assessment.

Referral – if you have failed the module overall (i.e. a final overall module mark of less than 40%) you will be required to re-submit an essay from the same list of questions set during term-time as necessary. The mark given for a re-assessment taken as a result of referral will be capped at 40%.

Indicative learning resources - Basic reading

• Anker, Peder. Imperial Ecology: Environmental Order in the British Empire, 1895-1945. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001
• Bowler, Peter J. The Fontana History of the Environmental Sciences. London: Fontana, 1992
• Drayton, Richard, Nature’s Government: Science, Imperial Britain and the ‘Improvement’ of the World.  New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000
• Egerton, Frank N.  The Roots of Ecology: Antiquity to Haeckel.  Berkeley: University of California Press, 2012
• Grove, Richard. Green Imperialism: Colonial Expansion, Tropical Island Edens and the Origins of Environmentalism, 1600-1860. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995
• Jørgensen, Dolly, Finn Arne Jørgensen and Sara B. Pritchard (eds.), New Natures: Joining Environmental History with Science and Technology Studies.  Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2013
• Hughes, J. Donald, What is Environmental History?.  Cambridge: Polity, 2016
• Isenberg, Andrew C. (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Environmental History.  Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017
• LeVasseur, Todd and Anna Petersen (eds), Religion and Ecological Crisis: The Lynn White Thesis at Fifty.  London: Routledge, 2016
• Lightman, Bernard V. (ed.), A Companion to the History of Science.  New York: Wiley-Blackwell, 2016
• Livingstone, David N.  Putting Science in its Place: Geographies of Scientific Knowledge.  Chicago: Chicago University Press, 2003
• Malm, Andreas, The Progress of the Storm.  London: Verso, 2018
• McNeill, John Robert and Erin Stewart Mauldin (eds), A Companion to Global Environmental History.  New York: Wiley-Blackwell, 2012
• Merchant, Carolyn, The Death of Nature: Women, Ecology and the Scientific Revolution.  New York: Harper and Row, 1980
• Nash, Linda L. Inescapable Ecologies: A History of Environment, Disease, and Knowledge. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006
• Selcer, Perrin. The Postwar Origins of the Global Environment: How the United Nations Built Spaceship Earth. New York: Columbia University Press, 2018
• Selin, Helaine (ed.), Nature Across Cultures: Views of Nature in Non-Western Cultures.  Berlin: Springer, 2003
• Warde, Paul, Libby Robin, and Sverker Sörlin. The Environment: A History of the Idea. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2018

Key words search

History, science, knowledge, environment, globalisation, sustainability, decolonization, economics, politics, imperialism, indigenous peoples