Jean-Jacques Rousseau
the philosopher (1712-1778) believed that children are born in a mythical state of nature, good, innocent and free; but later men are corrupted by society, science and art.So he invites people to return to the original state, living in harmony with nature.
Ecology
Today, the expression 'back to nature' is used in a more restricted sense to designate the trend towards a more natural way of consuming and eating.Many shops that sell 'biological products' use this slogan.
Here are just a few examples:
Statistics
To measure the popularity of ecology, I compared, for two opposite expressions, the number of hits found by a search-engine (hotbot) on 30.3.2001:| Expression | Hits |
| back to nature | 9.726.800 |
| use genetic engineering | 161.700 |