How can the fundamental yet often ambivalent elements of modernity - capitalism, science and technology - be reconsidered from a philosophical perspective? Linking contemporary environmental debates with the philosophy of modernity and deep historical perspectives from anthropology, V. P. J. Arponen presents a wide-ranging discussion of the past, present, and future of the human relationship to nature in a changing world. His guiding thread is the possibility of a value orientation that charts a course between the excesses of reductive economic materialism and constructivist culturalism, recentring on the human capability to live active, meaningful lives.