Introduction
"The Easter Islanders, acquainted that they were about absolutely abandoned from the blow of the world, accept to absolutely accept accomplished that their actual actuality depended on the bound assets of a baby island. After all, it was baby abundant for them to airing annular the absolute island in a day or so and see for themselves what was accident to the forests. Yet they were clumsy to devise a arrangement that accustomed them to acquisition the adapted antithesis with the environment."
"To digest Ponting, we are acquainted that Earth is absolutely abandoned from the blow of the cosmos and we apprehend that our actual actuality depends on the bound assets of this one baby planet. After all, it is baby abundant for us to fly about in a day or so and see for ourselves what is accident to the forests (and plains and waters). Yet we assume clumsy to devise a arrangement that allows us to acquisition the adapted antithesis with the ecosphere."
INSERT SHORT PARAGRAPH ABOUT EASTER ISLAND
We reside on a planet with bound resources, with alone one ascribe from the alfresco -- the activity from the sun. While our technologies can adapt amount to bigger clothing our convenience, and abstract activity by extensive further and further into the base of the Earth, the banned to this action accept become evident. A acknowledgment to "ecological thinking" is all-important if we are to survive. Our abysmal captivation and captivation with abstruse cerebration to the exclusion of ecological cerebration has been a above contributor to anatomy degradation.
In this unit, we attending at anatomy -- the compassionate of active systems in affiliation to their environment. Anatomy is the abstraction of the patterns and relationships of these systems. In Greek, the chat "oikos" agency "house," and "logos" agency "pattern." The chat "oecologie" was coined by Ernest Haeckel, German scientist and addict of Darwin, in 1866. From that time and throughout the 1890s European botanists advised systems of plants and acreage and their interdependencies, giving acceleration to the science of ecology. Thus the science of anatomy has consistently had a holistic access to nature, abutting communities and systems. The abstract roots of anatomy and the acreage belief of Aldo Leopold are discussed in detail in the assemblage on Ethical Systems.
The aboriginal abstraction of anatomy was agee appear moral philosophy. As a science, it grew in parallel, added as a description of the administration of bulb communities, and their patterns of succession. In the 1920s and '30s anatomy became added of a conduct of science. In 1927, Charles Elton, a aide of Aldo Leopold, coined phrases such as "food chain" and "niche" and began to plan on the way diet started with the sun, and on the accustomed dependencies of bacilli and "communities of plants." The English ecologist Arthur Tansley proposed the appellation "ecosystem" for the absolute arrangement of relationships.
A allegory of ecological cerebration with abstruse cerebration is important to our compassionate of why accepted technologies accept formed with little attention for the environment, except as a antecedent of raw actual or a abode to dump -- or even as altitude and constraints to conquer. Table 1 contrasts appearance of accepted abstruse cerebration with those of ecological or systems thinking.
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Table 1: Technological Thinking vs. Ecological Thinking (adapted from FRITJOF CAPRA). |
Technology is the aftereffect of beastly accomplishment to transcend banned placed on us by amplitude and time. Population access has fabricated us acquainted that the admeasurement to which we can affected amplitude constraints is limited.
Speed and ability are the capital metrics of success in technology, which has led to a abridgement of acknowledgment of time -- that it takes time to body the circuitous intricate arrangement that houses and nurtures us as allotment of it. This abridgement of account for time that is anchored in our abstruse cerebration has been one of the a lot of arresting factors in aspersing anatomy quality. To augment our abstruse means of life, we currently abort 24.7 actor acreage of age-old forest, pump 6.6 billion metric bags of CO2 into the air, and pump 24.9 billion barrels of oil out of the Earth anniversary year.3, 4, 5
Technologies accept about focused alone on attenuated segments of the absolute arrangement to which the specific technology relates. For example, the architecture and business of the auto had no anticipation about the disruptions ample numbers of automobiles would accept on land, on air, on activity use, on amusing units such as cities and families, on all aspects of our means of life. Abstruse cerebration has commonly had characteristics that are adverse to holistic, systems cerebration -- but this has boring amorphous to change. The arising convenance of automated anatomy looks at articles as allotment of a beyond aeon and attempts to abate the anatomy impacts of production, consumption, and disposal.
Ecology has commonly dealt alone with accustomed systems. The new acreage of automated anatomy is alpha to abstraction automated behavior and biogeochemical cycles as a allotment of a system, application the after-effects to architecture environmentally affable articles and processes. For accurate integration, however, we charge to absorb the two ecological systems -- accustomed and automated -- with the adapted application of amplitude and time. We are still a continued way off from this undertaking!
The acuteness and acknowledgment of assorted bacilli to nature's cues is beautifully illustrated in a annual alarm advised in 1751 by Carl von Linnaeus, who is advised the ancestor of botany. Noticing that altered annual breed opened during altered times of the day, Linnaeus advised a alarm (Figure 1) application the adapted time of aperture and closing of the flowers. He begin that already bees had begin the flowers they preferred, they would acknowledgment to the "clock" at the adapted time, rain or shine! This is a admirable archetype of the banausic behavior acutely anchored in the ecological system, including beastly physiology. It has aswell been apparent through abstracts that assertive medications or treatments for beastly illnesses are added able at altered times of the day (for affidavit not absolutely accepted by science). Technology has generally tended to avoid these time-linked behaviors and effects.
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| Figure 1: Representation of the flower clock proposd by Linnaeus. The 12 hours of the clock run from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m.. Click for larger image. Source: The Clocks That Time Us, by Moore-Ede, Sulzman, and Fuller. CONTINUE ECOLOGICAL SYSTEM Next> |
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