Birkbeck Climate Festival 2025: Humans' Relationship with Nature in Early Greek Thought
When:
—
Venue:
Online
This session will present early philosophical ideas about the relationship between human beings and the natural world, focusing in particular on cultivation and farming. The earliest natural scientists, Aristotle (Politics, The Physics, Historia Animalium) and Theophrastus (The Causes of Plants), recognised wild nature as distinction from cultivated nature and assigned it goals of its own. In contrast, they described certain agricultural techniques as ways in which human beings can imitate or complete natural processes. The pseudo-Aristotelian treatise on household management (The Economics) elaborates on our correct behaviours in relation to farming, presenting ‘the virtues of farming.’
Dr Sophia Connell (Birkbeck, University of London)
Professor Thornton Lockwood (Quinnipiac University, Connecticut, USA)
Contact name:
Stephen Willey