Between Nature and Culture : The Integrated Ecology of Renaissance Climate Theories

Abstract

‘Climate theories’ are often explained away in scholarship as pseudosciences irrelevant to the modern world, or as morally problematic forms of geographic determinism. This chapter instead argues that such theories still offer a valuable lens not only for understanding how early modern people conceptualized the relationship between human culture and nonhuman nature, but also for resituating ourselves with respect to this very same issue. Are we humans above and outside nature, or are we an integral part of it, caught in its dynamics and affected by its internal changes—including those resulting from our own agency? Three sixteenth-century authors (Le Roy, Bodin, La Framboisière) are here brought into dialogue with contemporary thinkers (Descola, Latour) to reappraise the ‘integrated ecology’ of nature and culture proposed by early modern climate theorists.

Climate’s Empire in Comparative Law

“…113 Louis Kotzé and others make the case for an "earth system law". 116 Courtois and Larrère offer similar assessments of the 18 th century. 117 Courtois, in particular, shows how Montesquieu argued for neither climate determinism nor climate independence but a correlation or conjunction between climate, society, and laws.…”