The interchange of energy, materials, and information among living and non-living beings in the natural environment. The extraction, processing, and exchange of nature's parts as resources, whether as gifts in traditional economies, as bartered goods and services in subsistence economies, or as commodities in market economies. The biological and social processes through which humans are born, nurtured, socialized, and governed. The way in which the world is perceived, understood, and interpreted at any given time by a society or social group. Individual consciousness is the totality of one's thoughts, feelings, and impressions, the awareness of one's acts and volitions.
Group consciousness is a collective awareness by an aggregate of individuals.
All four historians call for the study of environmental history as an interaction between and among the human and nonhuman components of the natural world. Crosby focuses on biological and colonial invasions from outside the New World ecosystem. While introducing biological actors such as pathogens, weeds, and varmints, his approach could be interpreted as biological determinism and as failing to recognize the role of market extractions in transforming local ecosystems. Crosby and Merchant, along with Worster, might be viewed by Cronon as imposing both narrative trajectory and environmental prophecy on environmental history. Discussion Questions 1.