This wide-ranging investigation of ecology's past traces the origins of the concept, discusses the thinkers who have shaped it, and shows how it in turn has shaped the modern perception of our place in nature. Donald Worster focuses on the dramatic shifts in man's view of the living world that have occurred since the eighteenth century, looking closely at the contributions of such figures as Linnaeus, Gilbert White, Darwin, and Thoreau, as well as those of the twentieth-century ecologists Frederic Clements, Aldo Leopold, and Eugene Odum. The author has written a new preface for this work, which was first published by Sierra Club Books in 1977.