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The Social Construction of Nature: Theoretical Approaches to the History of Environmental Problems

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doi:10.2307/3984134

Authors

Elizabeth Ann R.

Reported year

1987

Reported language

en · eng

Source type

Article

First detected

2026-11-09T19:10:37.333790+00:00

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2026-11-09T19:10:37.333790+00:00

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Documentary abstract — original language

The questions that motivate this essay are common concerns among environmental historians: Where do environmental problems come from, and how can we account for their appearance in such a way as to prevent their recurrence? This paper will use perspectives outside the usual venue of environmental history-from the social studies of science and critical theories of representation-to address those questions. It also offers a theory regarding the role that the scientific enterprise plays in generating environmental problems and suggests how environmental historians might treat science in their investigations. The crux of my argument is that scientific knowledge should not be regarded as a representation of nature, but rather as a socially constructed interpretation with an already socially constructed naturaltechnical object of inquiry. Before we can draw conclusions about the origins of environmental problems, we need historical accounts of the concrete interactions between society and nature that have produced them. From those histories we can infer the modes of thought and behaviour that are more likely than others to be detrimental to the environment we want to live in. A primary element of such histories should be the social analysis of scientific knowledge construction, because many technologies that are science-based cause so many environmental problems. The conduct of the natural sciences has proceeded under the assumption that scientific knowledge is a representation of something that exists outside it. Those claims to know certain facts of nature presuppose that it is the nature wholly outside us that is capable of being known. Yet the philosophy, history, and sociology of science in the last twenty-five years have increasingly asserted and affirmed the relativism of any particular scientific claims about nature. Since the publication of Thomas Kuhn's work, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, it has become philosophically unacceptable for scientists to claim to know the Truth about nature. ' The most that they can claim to know is a relative truth about nature, one whose meaning and articulation are governed by a particular scientific paradigm. In the

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DOI

10.2307/3984134

OPENAIRE

doi_dedup___::c36a99098c8983af206721cc6cc8e5dd

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Scholarship

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Article

Entity mentions are not evidence of legal recognition. Jurisdiction studied is separate from author affiliation country.

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OpenAIRE · Record 1

• DOI · https://doi.org/10.2307/3984134

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