White is credited with reintroducing evolution in a way that had a profound impact on our understanding of the relationship between technology, ecology, and culture in the development of civilizations. A materialist, he was particularly concerned with societies ability to harness energy as an indicator of progress, and his empirical analysis of this equation covers a vast historical span.
Check out Chapters: 13-17
In ancient Greece and Rome, an ambiguous relationship developed between man and nature, and this decisively determined the manner in which they treated the environment. On the one hand, nature was conceived as a space characterized and inhabited by divine powers, which deserved appropriate respect. On the other, a rationalist view emerged, according to which humans were to subdue nature using their technologies and to dispose of its resources. This book systematically describes the ways in which the Greeks and Romans intervened in the environment and thus traces the history of the tension between the exploitation of resources and the protection of nature, from early Greece to the period of late antiquity. At the same time, it analyses the comprehensive opening up of the Mediterranean and the northern frontier regions, both for settlement and for economic activity.