Part One: Interdependency

Ecology as a model of human knowledge. What is 'ecology'? Consider the following definitions:

(a) Ecology as a branch of biological science

“The scientific study of the processes influencing the distribution and abundance of organisms, the interactions among organisms, and the interactions between organisms and the transformation and flux of energy and matter.” Beginning as the study of relationships between organisms, the concept has grown to mean the study of ecosystems: holistic webs of interdependency that link biotic communities to abotic flows of nutrients, energy and geological history. (Institute of Ecosystem Studies)

(b) Life is a property of planets rather than of individual organisms.

“Sustained life is a property of an ecological system rather than a single organism or species. Traditional biology has tended to concentrate on individual organisms rather than on the biological continuum. The origin of life is thus looked for as a unique event in which an organism arises from the surrounding milieu. A more ecologically balanced point of view would examine the proto-ecological cycles and subsequent chemical systems that must have developed and flourished while objects resembling organisms appeared.” (Harold Morowitz, Beginnings of Cellular Life (Yale University Press, 1992), 54.)

(c) Ecology as the economy of nature

‘Who were the early ecologists?’ asked Armbruster.

‘Botanists who became interested in plant communities – groups of plant species who interdependence seemed so similar to economic relationships that the naturalists coined a new word for natural communities of organisms and based it directly on the word economy. That was late in the nineteenth century.’

‘Wait!’ said Armbruster, darting to his unabridged dictionary. ‘Aha, economy is derived from two Greek roots – oiko, meaning ‘house,’ and nomy, meaning ‘management’: house management. Ecology comes from the same root for ‘house’, plus the root logy for ‘logic’ or ‘knowledge.’ So ecology literally means ‘house knowledge.’ Now, that’s strange, isn’t it? Bio, meaning ‘life,’ and nomy, ‘management’ – bionomy, ‘life management,’ would have been more to the point. Victorian scholars were well grounded in Greek. Odd that they embraced jargon as imprecise as ecology.’

‘Not odd when you realize they thought of ecology as ‘the economy of nature,’ said Hiram, ‘a definition still in currency. The very sound of the word tagged it as a twin of economy. That was their point, regardless of literal meaning. They were studying the economy of nature.’ (Jane Jacobs, The Nature of Economies (Vintage Books, 2000), 10.)

(d) Ecology is not merely science but everyday awareness of place.

“Indigenous peoples know their region. They must know where the food is, where water is available, where firewood is found, where the medicinal plants are, where the trees grow that furnish the poles for their tents or the wood for their fires. Our studies in what we call ecology must lead to such intimacy with our natural surroundings. Only intimacy can save us from our present commitment to a plundering industrial economy.” (Thomas Berry, The Great Work (Bell Tower, 1999), 99.)


Reading for Part One:
1. Handout out on definitions of ecology

Recommended:
1. Millenium Ecosystem Assessment
2. What is deep ecology?