Wikipedia talk:Education program archive/Bucknell University/History of Ecology (Spring 2014)/Course description

This course covers the history of ecology as a discipline—from its roots in eighteenth-century natural history traditions to the development of population, ecosystem, and resilience ecology in the late twentieth century.

The goal of this course is to situate the science of ecology in time. We will see that ecology is far from set of essential, unchanging truths about the natural world. Rather, it is a human practice that shaped and was shaped by cultures, places, and politics. We will trace connections between ecology and a number of other phenomena: political theories, ideas about society, efforts to extract natural resources, and environmental conservation programs. Several questions will allow us to make these linkages among science, society, and history. How have scientists, citizens, and activists made use of ecological ideas? How has ecology influenced the way these people think about the human place in nature? How have the places in which ecologists have performed their work shaped their ideas?

By the end of the semester, students will be able to identify the ways ecological thought has figured in a number of historical and social processes. These include the expansion of colonial and imperial empires; the relationship between science and state and corporate power, and the major conservation and environmental movements.

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