Humans have modified nature or, put more cautiously, elements of their specific environments ever since the Neolithic Revolution. This development has often been conceived of as a dichotomy between nature and science and/or technology. However, since the 1960s concepts like Boulding’s “Spaceship Earth” or more recently Crutzen’s and Stoermer’s idea of the “Anthropocene” have shifted attention towards a more complex understanding of the relationship between nature and science/technology. Setting aside the difficulties to even define such a term as “nature”, these systematic approaches have helped to find more fine-grained forms of analysis for studying the degrees of human interferences with nature. But these methods also have their shortcomings. While they are quite useful in order to describe gradual differences between similar levels of manipulation of nature, as e.g. traditional forms of plant-breeding vs. genetic modification, they do not help to explain similarities between very different types and methods of manipulation as e.g. the application of chemical knowledge to such diverse fields as plant-breeding or industrialized farming or even the recultivation of urban waste dumps and open pit mines.

The extensive use of science and technology as a means of changing nature seems to link such varied forms of manipulation as landscape designing/gardening or plant-genetics. But, though neither a genetically manipulated plant nor a beautifully designed garden is “natural”, the ways in which they have been influenced by human intervention fall into different categories. The workshop wants to encourage discussion about how we could best define and describe such categories. As a starting point we suggest to focus on the purposes that have driven humans to change their natural surroundings, laying special emphasis on the late 19th to the 20th century. How and why have nature or specific elements of nature been altered according to human needs and what levels of manipulation have been employed?

The workshop wants to address these gaps in our knowledge. It is being organized at the Interdisciplinary Centre for Science and Technology Studies (IZWT) at the Bergische Universität Wuppertal. Guests are welcome, please be so kind to register in advance if you want to participate: cirkel@uni-wuppertal.de.