The state of nature
Subtitle: ecology, community, and American social thought, 1900-1950
By: Gregg Mitman.
Series: Science and its conceptual foundations
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Published: 1992
Place of publication: Chicago
Language: eng
Number of pages: 290
Subjects: Ecology -- Study and teaching -- United States -- History -- 20th century; Science -- United States -- Methodology -- History -- 20th century; Science -- Social aspects -- United States -- History -- 20th century
Description: "Although science may claim to be "objective," scientists cannot avoid the influence of their own values on their research. In The State of Nature, Gregg Mitman examines the relationship between issues in early twentieth-century American society and the sciences of evolution and ecology to reveal how explicit social and political concerns influenced the scientific agenda of biologists at the University of Chicago and throughout the United States during the first half of this century. Reacting against the view of nature "red in tooth and claw," ecologists and behavioral biologists such as Warder Clyde Allee, Alfred Emerson, and their colleagues developed research programs they hoped would validate and promote an image of human society as essentially cooperative rather than competitive. Mitman argues that Allee's religious training and pacifist convictions shaped his pioneering studies of animal communities in a way that could be generalized to denounce the view that war is in our genes."
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. 247-279) and index.