What forms did concern for the environment take before the current ecological crisis? NEWWORLD will answer this question through the first extensive investigation of early modern theories of environmental care. Environmental philosophy tends to be understood as a recent field of study, inextricably linked to our contemporary situation. Reinforcing the impression that we are dealing with new concepts for a new era is the fact that key terms nowadays used to talk about the environment are indeed of relatively recent coinage. The main term, ‘ecology’, was proposed by the German naturalist Ernst Haeckel in the 19th century; ‘sustainability’ rose to prominence when the Brundtland Commission (created in 1983) used the expression ‘sustainable development’ to define the idea of using resources in such a way as not to compromise future generations. Even ‘environment’ is, at least in English, relatively recent: the essayist Thomas Carlyle is widely credited as the first to use it in 1827.

Until now, environmental studies, whether historical, literary, philosophical in orientation, have focused mainly on the period from the end of the 18th century onwards, using the presence of terminology we recognize as part of our current vocabulary as the guarantee of conceptual continuity. This project uses the methodology of controlled anachronism in order to interrogate early-modern texts via the terminology of contemporary ethical debates. It aims to reveal the extent and complexity of early modern philosophical thought on environmental care, proposing a new paradigm for the intervention of the history of philosophy in arguably the most important issue of our time.

NEWWORLD will be the first large-scale project to write ecology’s philosophical past. With a philologically rigorous and systematic approach, the project will map a series of sources either unknown or little-known in the context of ecological debate; and it will provide materials for a sharper definition of contemporary concepts, too, constructing a fuller intellectual lineage for each of them. The project employs 3D models using techniques of deep mapping: this will help grasp the theoretical importance of easily overlooked practical details that were essential to early modern environmental. These digital elements – based on cosmological diagrams, and on maps and descriptions of ideal cities from utopian literature – will be displayed in an exhibition curated by the team.

Images from a 3D Virtual Tour of Francesco Patrizi’s La città felice (1553) (modelling: Giovanni Giuliodori and Eleonora Lanfranco)