The Illusory Boundary: Environment and Technology in History
About this ebook
This compelling new book challenges the view that a clear and unwavering boundary exists between nature and technology. Rejecting this dichotomy, the contributors show how the history of each can be united in a constantly shifting panorama where definitions of "nature" and "technology" alter and overlap.
In addition to recognizing the artificial divide between these two concepts, the essays in this book demonstrate how such thinking may affect societies’ ability to survive and prosper. The answers and ideas are as numerous as the landscapes they consider, for there is no single path toward a more harmonious vision of technology and nature. Technologies that work in one place may not in another. Nature that is preserved in one community might become the raw material of technological progress somewhere else. Add to this the fact that the natural world and technology are not passive players, but are profoundly involved in cultural construction. Understanding such dynamics not only reveals a new historical complexity; it prepares us for coping with many of the most difficult and pressing social issues facing us today.
Contributors
Peter Coates * Craig E. Colten * Stephen H. Cutcliffe * Hugh S. Gorman * Betsy Mendelsohn * Joy Parr * Peter C. Perdue * Sara B. Pritchard * Martin Reuss * William D. Rowley * Edmund Russell * Joel A. Tarr * Ann Vileisis * James C. Williams * Thomas Zeller
About the author
Martin Reuss served as Senior Historian, Water Resources, in the Office of History of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers for nearly twenty-five years. He is the author of Designing the Bayous: The Control of Water in the Atchafalaya Basin, 1800–1995. Stephen H. Cutcliffe is Chair of the Department of History at Lehigh University and the author of Ideas, Machines, and Values: An Introduction to Science, Technology, and Society Studies.
