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Donald Worster
(14 Nov 1941 - )
American environmentalist, writer and historian who has written articles and books on environmental history, including The Wealth of Nature: Environmental History and the Ecological Imagination (1994) and Nature’s Economy: A History of Ecological Ideas (1977).
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Science Quotes by Donald Worster (2 quotes)
In recent years it has become impossible to talk about man’s relation to nature without referring to “ecology” … such leading scientists in this area as Rachel Carson, Barry Commoner, Eugene Odum, Paul Ehrlich and others, have become our new delphic voices … so influential has their branch of science become that our time might well be called the “Age of Ecology”.
— Donald Worster
In opening paragraph of Preface, Nature’s Economy: A History of Ecological Ideas (1994), 14.
Whatever terrain the environmental historian chooses to investigate, he has to address the age-old predicament of how humankind can feed itself without degrading the primal source of life. Today as ever, that problem is the fundamental challenge in human ecology, and meeting it will require knowing the earth well—knowing its history and knowing its limits.
— Donald Worster
In 'Transformations of the Earth: toward an Agroecological Perspective in History', Journal of American History (Mar 1990), 76, No. 4, 1106.
In science it often happens that scientists say, 'You know that's a really good argument; my position is mistaken,' and then they would actually change their minds and you never hear that old view from them again. They really do it. It doesn't happen as often as it should, because scientists are human and change is sometimes painful. But it happens every day. I cannot recall the last time something like that happened in politics or religion.
(1987) -- 
