Describe the evolution of an idea of a ‘balance of nature’.

With ecology becoming a major concern for mankind since approximately 40 years, a old idea has acquired a new topically, especially in the ‘deep’ trend of ecology: the idea of a ‘balance of nature’. Ecology often offers the image of a man polluting earth, a man as a parasite, without which nature would be in a state of peace, harmony, and innocence. The man is deregulating the earth, which supposes that it was regulated, maintaining an equilibrium.
This idea of ‘balance of nature’ is not neutral, and relies on a few assumptions and notions. The probably most important one is order, or cosmos: nature is perceived as ordered, organized, in itself. Two others notions are related: necessity (what is, in nature, is what it has to be), and providence (presence of a foresightful and caring god or process). We should keep in mind the contrary of each notion, respectively chaos, chance, and inertia, in order to study the idea of a ‘balance of nature’.
Indeed, as Frank N. Egerton notices, ‘balance of nature’ is not a concept until Linnaeus, but rather an unchallenged ‘background assumption’ accompanying philosophy and science.
How has this background assumption influenced the western thought upon nature throughout history?
Three periods can be distinguished, each corresponding to a particular view of nature : a greek view (I) , a Renaissance view (II), and a Modern view of nature (III).

The Greek view is often limited to Plato and Aristotle, and yet, it is way larger, considering the Presocratics and their various trends.
The atomists have developed, early in European thought, an idea of nature as unbalanced. Democritus, Epicurus and Lucretius, major thinkers of this trend, conceived nature as constituted by atoms, indivisible particles of matter, and void, in which atoms move and gather. They require no God for their explanations of the world: there is no necessity, no order, and above all, no