American Landscape and Social Attitudes and Values

The relationship between American society and its natural environment has not only been one of rapid social change, it has also been subjected to radical and complex changes in attitudes towards nature. The extent of the this evolutionary change emanates from an earlier view of nature as a Garden of Eden to the contemporary view of nature as a servant of human technological growth

In the comparatively short span of our civilization the cycle of primitivism to industrialism has been compressed and laid bare for study. Less than a century divides the era when America was looked upon as a Garden of Eden or savage wilderness and the time when it took first place as the world's industrial giant. Probably no people have ever so quickly subdued their natural environment. www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=77844365" (Ekirch 6)

American attitudes towards nature have undergone a complex change in...
[ View Full Essay]