1. The Making of the Modern World
Nature in the Age of Industry
Dr James Poskett

2. “The moral justification of capitalism does not lie in the altruist claim that it represents the best way to achieve “the common good.” … The moral justification of capitalism lies in the fact that it is the only system consonant with man’s rational nature.”
Ayn Rand, Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal (1966)

3. Manchester from Kersal Moor (1852) by William Wyld

4. Argument
Nature as the foundation of economic and political systems.
Nature as something that underwent radical change, even progress.
Nature as something to be exploited for human gain.

5. “When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.”
Declaration of Independence (1776)

6. Notes on the State of Virginia (1785)
Thomas Jefferson ( )
Notes on the State of Virginia (1785)

7. Histoire naturelle (1749-1804)
Comte de Buffon ( )
Histoire naturelle ( )

8. Megalonyx jeffersonii in American Museum of Natural History, New York City, NY, USA

9. “The political machine never rights itself except through violent convulsions, like the air is purified by the storm.”
Jean-Paul Marat ( )
“Man has conquered lighting and diverted lighting from heaven… Everything has changed in the physical order; everything should change in the moral and political order.”
Maximilien Robespierre ( )

10. “THIS division of labour, from which so many advantages are derived, is not originally the effect of any human wisdom, which foresees and intends that general opulence to which it gives occasion. It is the necessary, though very slow and gradual consequence of a certain propensity in human nature.”
Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations (1776)

11. William Paley ( )
Natural Theology (1802)

12. Charles Darwin ( )

13. Jean-Baptiste Lamarck (1744-1829)

14. Great Chain of Being, from Didacus Valades, Rhetorica Christiana (1579)

15. Classification system of Carl Linnaeus from Systema Naturae (1735)

16. Lamarck, Philosophie zoologique (1809)
Darwin, Origin of Species (1859)

17. Erasmus Darwin ( )
Zoonomia (1794)

18. “In October 1838, fifteen months after I had begun my systematic inquiry, I happened to read for amusement Malthus on Population, and being prepared to appreciate the struggle for existence which everywhere goes on, from long-continued observation of the habits of animals and plants, it at once struck me that under these circumstances favourable variations would tend to be preserved, and unfavourable ones to be destroyed. The result would be the formation of a new species.”
Charles Darwin, Autobiography (1887)

20. Alexander von Humboldt (1769-1859)

21. Calcutta Botanical Gardens f.1786

22. Science, Technology and Society, 1400 to Present (HI2D5)
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Science, Technology and Society, 1400 to Present (HI2D5)

23. Questions and Contact
Dr James Poskett
If you have any questions about this topic, please either me or your seminar tutor.