Nature In The City: American Ecology

From Austin Nature In the City –

American Ecology: Stability, Integrity, and Leopold’s Legacy

Join us for an untangling of the history of American ecology and an assessment of how the idea of the balance of nature has shaped our American ideas of nature.

How does Nature work? How do the biotic and abiotic parts of Earth interact and develop as a system that supports life over time? The word “ecology” was coined in 1866 by the German scientist Ernst Haeckel to name the science that was to answer those questions. At the core of this new science was the puzzle of how do “ecosystems” persist amidst change over time – and was change or permanence, dynamics or stability, more fundamental? Join us for an untangling of the history of American ecology and an assessment of how the idea of the balance of nature has shaped our American ideas of nature.

Can’t make it on this lecture date? There are three others at varying dates/locations around town. You can check out the complete schedule here. Or you can listen to podcast recordings of the lecture (produced in partnership between the City of Austin and the Austin EcoNetwork) here. 

The lecture will be given by Kevin Anderson, a geographer and philosopher researching the nature of, and the nature in, urban wastelands. He studied at Allegheny College in Pennsylvania [BA], Durham University, England, Ohio University [MA] where he taught philosophy and symbolic logic. He received his Ph.D. in Geography from the University of Texas at Austin with a dissertation entitled: Marginal Nature: Urban Wastelands and the Geography of Nature.