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Publicado: 27 de noviembre de 2012
ECOLOGY
2008
CUIDA TU AMBIENTE S.C.
OFFICE
25/10/2008
ECOLOGY
Environmentalists and other conservationists have used ecology and other sciences (e.g., climatology) to support their advocacypositions. Environmentalist views are often controversial for political or economic reasons. As a result, some scientific work in ecology directly influences policy and political debate; these inturn often direct ecological research.
The history of ecology, however, should not be conflated with that of environmental thought. Ecology as a modern science traces only from Darwin’s publication ofOrigin of Species and Haeckel’s subsequent naming of the science needed to study Darwin’s theory. Awareness of humankind’s effect on its environment has been traced to Gilbert White in 18th-centurySelborne, England. Awareness of nature and its interactions can be traced back even farther in time. Ecology before Darwin, however, is analogous to medicine prior to Pasteur’s discovery of theinfectious nature of disease. The history is there, but it is not particularly relevant.
Neither Darwin nor Haeckel, it is true, did self-avowed ecological studies. The same can be said for researchers ina number of fields who contributed to ecological thought well into the 1940s without avowedly being ecologists. Raymond Pearl’s population studies are a case in point. Ecology in subject matter andtechniques grew out of studies by botanists and plant geographers in the late 19th and early 20th centuries that paradoxically lacked Darwinian evolutionary perspectives. Until Mendel’s studies withpeas were rediscovered and melded into the Modern Synthesis , Darwinism suffered in credibility. Many early plant ecologists had a Lamarkian view of inheritance, as did Darwin, at times. Ecologicalstudies of animals and plants, preferably live and in the field, continued apace however.
A new name for a old problem
While Darwin focused exclusively on competition as a selective force, Eugen...
2008
CUIDA TU AMBIENTE S.C.
OFFICE
25/10/2008
ECOLOGY
Environmentalists and other conservationists have used ecology and other sciences (e.g., climatology) to support their advocacypositions. Environmentalist views are often controversial for political or economic reasons. As a result, some scientific work in ecology directly influences policy and political debate; these inturn often direct ecological research.
The history of ecology, however, should not be conflated with that of environmental thought. Ecology as a modern science traces only from Darwin’s publication ofOrigin of Species and Haeckel’s subsequent naming of the science needed to study Darwin’s theory. Awareness of humankind’s effect on its environment has been traced to Gilbert White in 18th-centurySelborne, England. Awareness of nature and its interactions can be traced back even farther in time. Ecology before Darwin, however, is analogous to medicine prior to Pasteur’s discovery of theinfectious nature of disease. The history is there, but it is not particularly relevant.
Neither Darwin nor Haeckel, it is true, did self-avowed ecological studies. The same can be said for researchers ina number of fields who contributed to ecological thought well into the 1940s without avowedly being ecologists. Raymond Pearl’s population studies are a case in point. Ecology in subject matter andtechniques grew out of studies by botanists and plant geographers in the late 19th and early 20th centuries that paradoxically lacked Darwinian evolutionary perspectives. Until Mendel’s studies withpeas were rediscovered and melded into the Modern Synthesis , Darwinism suffered in credibility. Many early plant ecologists had a Lamarkian view of inheritance, as did Darwin, at times. Ecologicalstudies of animals and plants, preferably live and in the field, continued apace however.
A new name for a old problem
While Darwin focused exclusively on competition as a selective force, Eugen...
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