Ecologism

Origins and development
* The term ecology was coined bu the German zoologst Ernst Haeckel in 1866.
* Meaning household or habitat, he used it to refer to “the investigation of the totalrelations of the animal both to its organic and its inorganic enviroment.”
* The growth of ecologism since the last twentieth centuy has been provoked by the further and more intense advance ofindustrialization and urbanization.
* At the same time, a new generation of activist pressure groups have developed ( Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth) which highlight enviromental issues such as thedangers of nuclear power, pollution and the dwindling reserves of fossil fuels.

The central themes of ecologismo are the following:

Ecology:
* Means the study of organismo “at home” or “intheir habitants,” and developed as a distinct branch of biology out of growing recognition that plants and animals are sustained by self – regulating natural Systems – ecosystems – composed of bothliving and non – living elements.
* The natural World is therefore made up of complex web of ecosystems, the largest of which is the global ecosistema, Commonly called the “ecosphere” or “biosphere .“
* Ecology conflicts quite dramatically with the notion of humankind as “the master” of nature, and instead suggest that a delicate network of interrelationships that had hitherto been ignoredsustains each human community.
* Ecologism provides a radically different visiono f nature and the place of human begin within in, one that is “ecocentric” or nature- centred rather thananthropocentric.

Holism
* The term “ holism “ was coined in 1962 by Jan Smuts, a Boer general and prime minister of South Africa.
* He describes the idea that the natural world could Only beunderstood as a whole and not through its individual parts.
* Reductionism: it reduces everything is Studies to separate parts and tries to understand each part itself.
* Based upon the belief...