History of Science & Knowledge

The Empire of Climate: A History of an Idea

新书 | 《气候帝国：一部观念史》（The Empire of Climate: A History of an Idea）

普林斯顿大学出版社在4月出版的《气候帝国：一部观念史》（The Empire of Climate: A History of an Idea）^[4]深入探讨了气候如何塑造历史与现代心理。从希波克拉底时代到今天全球变暖的持续危机，本书揭示了气候如何在帝国控制的政治、种族关系中发挥关键作用；如何用来解释工业发展、市场表现和经济衰退；以及如何成为国家性格和文化衰落的预兆。利文斯通还研究了气候如何被用来解释战争和内部冲突，以及它如何被认为是身体疾病和急性精神病的一个关键因素。

作者大卫·N·利文斯通（David N. Livingstone）是贝尔法斯特女王大学地理学与智识史的荣誉教授，英国学院院士，爱尔兰皇家学会成员。他曾出版多本书籍，包括《把科学放在它的位置：科学知识的地理学》、《应对达尔文：宗教对进化的地方政治和修辞反应》以及《亚当的祖先：种族、宗教与人类起源的政治》。

David N. Livingstone

How the specter of climate has been used to explain history since antiquity

Hardcover

Price:$38.00/£32.00

ISBN:9780691236704

Published (US):Apr 16, 2024

Published (UK):Jun 11, 2024

Copyright:2024

Pages:552

Size:6.13 x 9.25 in.

Illus:16 b/w illus.

Overview

Scientists, journalists, and politicians increasingly tell us that human impacts on climate constitute the single greatest threat facing our planet and may even bring about the extinction of our species. Yet behind these anxieties lies an older, much deeper fear about the power that climate exerts over us. The Empire of Climate traces the history of this idea and its pervasive influence over how we interpret world events and make sense of the human condition, from the rise and fall of ancient civilizations to the afflictions of the modern psyche.

Taking readers from the time of Hippocrates to the unfolding crisis of global warming today, David Livingstone reveals how climate has been critically implicated in the politics of imperial control and race relations; been used to explain industrial development, market performance, and economic breakdown; and served as a bellwether for national character and cultural collapse. He examines how climate has been put forward as an explanation for warfare and civil conflict, and how it has been identified as a critical factor in bodily disorders and acute psychosis.

A panoramic work of scholarship, The Empire of Climate maps the tangled histories of an idea that has haunted our collective imagination for centuries, shedding critical light on the notion that everything from the wealth of nations to the human mind itself is subject to climate’s imperial rule.

Author(s)

David N. Livingstone is professor emeritus of geography and intellectual history at Queen’s University Belfast. He is a fellow of the British Academy and a member of the Royal Irish Academy. His many books include Putting Science in Its Place: Geographies of Scientific Knowledge; Dealing with Darwin: Place, Politics, and Rhetoric in Religious Engagements with Evolution; and Adam’s Ancestors: Race, Religion, and the Politics of Human Origins.

Praise

“This brilliant, insightful, and important book reveals the deep-seated links between climate, capitalism, and civilization. Livingstone is on top of his game as he moves from early ideas about the climatic determinants of health and wealth to the politics of imperial control, representations of national character, modern economic development, and the pursuit of war, to end with our own horrified recognition of likely global collapse. There could be no better scholarly guide to thinking about the cultural meanings of climate and its history.”—Janet Browne, author of Charles Darwin: Voyaging and Charles Darwin: The Power of Place

“This book represents a most important benchmark publication. Livingstone brilliantly embraces both depth and breadth of subject matter with a clever and insightful scholarly interrogation of the ways in which climate as an idea has been adopted, adapted, and appropriated.”—Georgina Endfield, University of Liverpool

“There are two serious mistakes that can be made when judging the influence of climate on human affairs. One is to ignore it completely; the other to grant climate excessive explanatory power over our minds, health, wealth, and misfortunes. In The Empire of Climate, Livingstone shows with erudition and clarity how, in our current climate-obsessed condition, we are failing to learn from our past about the grave cultural, political, and ethical dangers that follow from this latter mistake.”—Mike Hulme, University of Cambridge

“This is the magnum opus of one of the world’s leading historians of environmental ideas and the distillation of decades of research. Spanning antiquity to the Anthropocene, Livingstone offers compelling genealogies of how Western thinkers have conceptualized the linkage between the physical environment and climate on the one hand and human beings on the other. The Empire of Climate is both historically rich and pointedly pertinent as we map humanity’s relationship with the planet now and into the future.”—Robert J. Mayhew, editor of Debating Malthus: A Documentary Reader on Population, Resources, and the Environment

“A masterful and exemplary overview of the impact of thought about climate on our sociopolitical life.”—Nicolaas A. Rupke, author of Alexander von Humboldt: A Metabiography

https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691236704/the-empire-of-climate

本文转载自“绿色公众史学”公众平台，如有侵权请后台联系小编，我们会在第一时间处理或撤销，谢谢。