''I think The Social Creation of Nature stands Evernden in relation to the present generation roughly as Thoreau stood in relation to New England Transcendentalism.''--Max Oelschlaeger, author of The Idea of Wilderness.''A thoughtful and illuminating book . . . For Evernden, `wildness' is what should be defended and preserved.''--New Scientist.One reason for our failure to ''save the earth,'' argues Neil Evernden, is our disagreement about what ''nature'' really is--how it works, what constitutes a risk to it, and even whether we ourselves are part of it. Nature is as much a social entity as a physical one. In addition to the physical resources to be harnessed and transformed, it consists of a domain of norms that may be called upon in defense of certain social ideals. In exploring the consequences of conventional understandings of nature, The Social Creation of Nature also seeks a way around the limitations of a socially created nature in order to defend what is actually imperiled--''wildness,'' in which, Thoreau wrote, lies hope for ''the preservation of the world.''
