Eighteenth-century naturalists credited a designing creator for ecological balance

Evidence

The cause of this adaptation and ecological balance in nature was the great artist who had created the existing frame of the earth by design and conserved and maintained its present constant state. — Carolyn Merchant, The Death of Nature, 927

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Eighteenth-century naturalists laid groundwork for scientific racism as ideology justifying slavery; The plant species one notices reveals that person’s ecological education — Aldo Leopold, A Sand County Almanac: With Other…, 165; Ecology’s holistic presuppositions long predate the modern science of ecology — Carolyn Merchant, The Death of Nature: Women, Ecology,…, 1078 (+3 more)

Broader Connections

• Eighteenth-century naturalists laid groundwork for scientific racism as ideology justifying slavery #complicates (0.85)
• Ecology’s holistic presuppositions long predate the modern science of ecology #expands (0.80) — Carolyn Merchant, The Death of Nature, 1078
• Premodern Europeans personified nature as a female being of many guises #corroborates (0.75) — Carolyn Merchant, The Death of Nature, 70
• Animist vitalism functioned as an ethic restraining exploitation of nature #complicates (0.75) — Carolyn Merchant, The Death of Nature, 158
• The plant species one notices reveals that person’s ecological education #expands (0.72) — Aldo Leopold, A Sand County Almanac, 165
• Traditional ecological knowledge arises from systematic observation, the intellectual twin to science. #expands (0.72) — Robin Wall Kimmerer, Gathering Moss, 413