ABSTRACT
In seventeenth-century England the beginnings of empirical science and an awareness of what we now call “ecological” issues coincided with so remarkable a flowering of poetry that it is often called the golden age of English verse. At the same time, the language of natural history and philosophy began to be separated from poetry and other kinds of speech in order to banish what Francis Bacon called “The idols and false notions that are now in possession of the human understanding.”1 The resulting disciplines made possible the relief from human suffering and the prolongation of life provided by medical science, along with innumerable other benefits, and also the unrestrained technology and commerce that eventually produced the current environmental predicament.
