Human Ecology

This Very Short Introduction audiobook celebrates the centrality of ecology in our lives. Jaboury Ghazoul explores how ecology has evolved rapidly from natural history to become a predictive science that explains how the natural world works and which guides environmental policy and management decisions.

A collection of transdisciplinary essays by scholars and designers which explore humanity’s relationship with the planet, its ecosystems and inhabitants, now and in the future. Global challenges like climate change and ecosystem degradation are proving that a singular disciplinary approach is inadequate to respond to issues where societal behaviours, individual choices, political decisions, economic, technological and scientific developments are so densely entangled - not least in design. But what happens when we turn things around and decentre “the human” to look at our relationship with...

This is the first book to trace the fascinating parallel history of law and science from antiquity to modern times, showing how the two disciplines have always influenced each other - until recently. In the past few years, the scientific paradigm has shifted dramatically, from seeing the natural world as a kind of cosmic machine to understanding it as a network of fluidly interacting communities. But law is stuck in a mechanistic, 17th-century view that the world is made up of discrete individual parts.

Concrete Botany is a gritty, kick-in-the-guts look at the ecological disturbance humans have caused and the resilience of the plants living amongst it. Delivered in his raw and unapologetic yet botanically accurate tone, Joey Santore—the unforgettable host of Crime Pays but Botany...

In brave and unforgettable terms, Al Gore, the passionate and lifelong defender of the environment, describes how human actions and decisions can endanger or safeguard the vulnerable ecosystem that sustains us.

Authors Paul Warde, Libby Robin, and Sverker Sörlin trace the emergence of the concept of the environment following World War II, a period characterized by both hope for a new global order and fear of humans' capacity for almost limitless destruction. It was at this moment that a new idea and a new narrative about the planet-wide impact of people's behavior emerged, closely allied to anxieties for the future. With the rise of "the environment", the authors argue, came new expertise, making certain kinds of knowledge crucial to understanding the future of our planet.

What if Bigfoot is not a zoological mystery, but an anthropological one? For more than a century, reports of large, upright, human-like figures have emerged from forests across the world. They appear briefly, avoid contact, leave little evidence, and vanish before certainty can form. Popular culture has treated these accounts as entertainment, folklore, or hoax. Science has largely dismissed them for lack of proof. The Anthropology of Bigfoot takes a different approach. Rather than asking whether Bigfoot can be proven, this book asks whether the question itself has been misunderstood.

In this brave and provocative work, former US Vice President Al Gore asserts that only a radical rethinking of our relationship with nature will save the Earth's ecology for future generations. Gore's analysis of where we've gone wrong ranges across politics, history, science, economics, psychology, and religion. He argues that only a worldwide mobilization can save us from disaster and presents a brilliant and comprehensive plan for action that encompasses not only the Earth's ecology, but also population trends, appropriate technology, and environmental education.

In this brave and provocative work, former US Vice President Al Gore asserts that only a rethinking of our relationship with nature will save the earth's ecology for future generations. Gore's analysis of where we've gone wrong ranges across politics, history, science, economics, psychology, and religion.

This book explores a new approach to understanding the evolution of mind and consciousness by examining the perceptual abilities of animals and the way they experience their world. It offers a science-based, bottom-up approach to our own conscious worldview by seeing it through the eyes of others. Human ecologist John Schooneveldt emphasizes the role of context in evolution and the way animals internalize and engage with the contextual properties of their world that are meaningful for them.