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28 2 What Is nature? and nature that demands a separated approach to all human matters, natural- ism claims that such a gap does not actually exist and stresses the need for a biologically-based analysis of human beings. The ensuing conflict among these approaches, as well as within them, revolves mainly around the degree of auton- omy to be granted to human behaviour and its collective expressions, namely, cul- ture and society. In recent decades, a handful of scientific disciplines united by a common interest in brain processes—such as neuroscience, cognitive science and social psychology—are contesting the received notion that everything is socially constructed and amenable to social solutions, claiming instead that a more dense notion of an innate human nature should be incorporated into the framework of social sciences. Sociobiology would be at one end of this spectrum, claiming that human behaviour and organization can be explained in purely evolutionary terms (see Wilson 1975), whereas the opposite side would correspond to radical forms of constructivism for which everything is constructed and thus amenable to change in purely social terms. Middle grounds, of course, abound. Scientific explorations of nature are also increasingly reliant on genetics and microbiology, thus reaching deeper layers of organic life and achieving a better understanding of natural processes and systems. None of this could have happened without the deceptively simple insights provided by Darwin. Yet this is far from being a finished task. There remains deep mysteries in nature, among them a more precise understanding of the inner life of animals or a better knowledge of genes functioning. We stand still on the threshold and a time of further discoveries awaits ahead. An important part of them will concern the intimate, complicated relation- ship between humans and nature. In this regard, when Darwin published his revolutionary work in 1859, the Industrial Revolution was already under way. As it is now more evident than ever, the industrial transformation of society brought about the most significant change in the relations between society and nature. Mechanization, rationalization, crea- tion of social time, gradual dismantling of traditional communities, intense use of natural resources, population growth, intensive use of the soil, fast urbaniza- tion, globalization of trade, waves of migration, relocation of species, adoption of foreign seeds and recipes—features of a multifarious process that creates the foundation for the current state of socionatural relations. To many environmental historians, this enormous shift in the practical relations between human beings and nature culminates the former's alienation from the latter. The nature of this process is revealed in the long run as much as in minor details: bread ceases to be done at home, to be produced in factories, soon without being touched by human hands, thus depriving people from any contact with the organic world (Mazlish 1995: 63). In the course of the twentieth century, the human colonization of nature esca- lates, in a process of such magnitude that geologists have suggested that we have entered into a new epoch, the Anthropocene—to be examined in detail later. Some basic data will now suffice to give an impression of the substantial change that has taken place during this process—data that also makes apparent how little do Darwinian ideas altered basic human practices vis-á-vis the natural environ- ment. From 1890 to 1960, human population grew from 1.57 to 3.02 billion; in