The Literary Origins of Ecology: Herder, Buffon (and Alexander von Humboldt)

Dalia Nassar (University of Sydney)

Historians of science have recently turned to examine the ways in which the human sciences influenced the natural sciences. My aim in this paper is to expand this work by focusing on the eighteenth century, and the way in which the emerging study of historical texts (i.e., hermeneutics) played a decisive role in the development of a dynamic conception of nature--a conception that is at the heart of the study of ecology.