Book ID: CBB183700932

After the Flood: Imagining the Global Environment in Early Modern Europe (2019)

unapi

Barnett, Lydia (Author)


Johns Hopkins University Press


Publication Date: 2019
Physical Details: 264 pp.
Language: English

Many centuries before the emergence of the scientific consensus on climate change, people began to imagine the existence of a global environment: a natural system capable of changing humans and of being changed by them. In After the Flood, Lydia Barnett traces the history of this idea back to the early modern period, when the Scientific Revolution, the Reformations, the Little Ice Age, and the overseas expansion of European empire, religion, and commerce gave rise to new ideas about nature and humanity, and their intersecting histories. Recovering a forgotten episode in the history of environmental thought, Barnett brings to light the crucial role of religious faith and conflict in fostering new ways of thinking about the capacity of humans and nature to change each other on a planetary scale. In the hands of Protestant and Catholic writers from across Europe and its American colonies, the biblical story of Noah's Flood became a vehicle for imagining the power of sin to wreck the world, the dangers of overpopulation, the transformative effects of shifting landforms on the course of human history, and the impact of a changing climate on human bodies, health, and lives. Following Noah's Flood as a popular topic of debate through long-distance networks of knowledge from the late sixteenth through the early eighteenth centuries, Barnett reveals how early modern earth and environmental sciences were shaped by gender, evangelism, empire, race, and nation. After the Flood illuminates the hidden role and complicated legacy of religion in the emergence of a global environmental consciousness.

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Reviewed By

Review Alexander van Dijk (2023) Review of "After the Flood: Imagining the Global Environment in Early Modern Europe". British Journal for the History of Science (pp. 121-123). unapi

Review Monica Azzolini (2020) Review of "After the Flood: Imagining the Global Environment in Early Modern Europe". Nuncius: Annali di Storia della Scienza (pp. 743-745). unapi

Review Sara Miglietti (2020) Review of "After the Flood: Imagining the Global Environment in Early Modern Europe". American Historical Review (pp. 1951-1952). unapi

Review David Sepkoski (2021) Review of "After the Flood: Imagining the Global Environment in Early Modern Europe". Isis: International Review Devoted to the History of Science and Its Cultural Influences (pp. 186-187). unapi

Citation URI
https://data.isiscb.org/isis/citation/CBB183700932/

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Authors & Contributors
Alessandra Landi
Geudens, Christoph
Cittadella, Alex
Giovanni Carrosio
Kenneth W. Noe
Salomoni, David
Concepts
Science and society
Environmentalism
Environmental sciences
Climate and climatology
Science and religion
Ecology
Time Periods
Early modern
21st century
Modern
20th century, late
Renaissance
19th century
Places
Europe
United States
Delaware (U.S.)
Italy
Sahara
Alps (Europe)
Institutions
North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO)
University of Melbourne
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