Thinking about and relating to the environment - what the Germans call Umwelt, i.e., the world that surrounds us - in the way that we do today has a long tradition within modern German culture. German scientists were among the many European explorers that left Europe in the late eighteenth century on voyages of discovery to then unknown parts of the world. For some explorers, discovery meant the fundamental confirmation of their own superiority vis-a-vis primitive peoples and primitive natures; for others it resulted in a shake-up of their belief in the superiority of European...