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The Emergence of Ecology from Natural History Keith R The emergence of ecology from natural history Keith R. Benson The modern discipline of biology was formed in the 20th century from roots deep in the natural-history tradition, which dates from Aristotle. Not surprisingly, therefore, ecology can also be traced to natural history, especially its 19th-century tradition emphasizing the adaptive nature of organisms to their environment. During the 20th century, ecology has developed and matured from pioneering work on successional stages to mathematically rich work on ecosystem energetics. By the end of the century, ecology has made a return to its natural-history heritage, emphasizing the importance of the integrity of ecosystems in considering human interactions with the environment. Today, the field of biology includes a vast array of diver- like molecular biology, ecology emerged as a distinct gent and unique subdisciplines, ranging from molecular area in biology only at the turn of the century but very biology to comparative endocrinology. With very few quickly developed its own conventions of biological exceptions, most of these specialty areas were created by discourse. Unlike molecular biology and several other biologists during the 20th century, giving modern biology biological subsciplines, ecology’s roots are buried deep its distinctive and exciting character1. However, before within natural history, the descriptive and often romantic 1900, the field was much different because even the term tradition of studying the productions of nature. biology was seldom used2. Indeed, most of those who studied the plants and animals scattered over the earth’s Perspectives on the natural world before the surface referred to themselves as naturalists: students of 20th century natural history3. Aristotle, the western world’s greatest philosopher who Perhaps the most popular form of contemporary biology included the natural world in his philosophical treatments, is the subdiscipline most closely related to the natural- was the first to record observations about the natural his- history roots of biology: ecology. As with many things tory of the earth’s plants and animals4. However, his teleo- currently enjoying popularity, however, the term ‘ecology’ logical world of designed and invariable types hardly placed is often poorly understood and even more inaccurately a stress upon the reciprocal and dynamic relationships used. Considered by convention to be synonymous with that exist between the biotic world and the earth’s physi- ‘natural’, ‘environmental’ or ‘conservation’, it is frequently cal environment. Not surprisingly, given his assumption used to refer to a personal perspective on the natural of the eternal nature of species, Aristotle did not stress the world or to a political position concerning the use of adaptive character of fauna and flora, which is perhaps nature. In fact, many of those who describe themselves as ecology’s cornerstone. In fact, adaptation did not appear ecologically oriented, as having an ecological perspective as a biological notion until nature was reinterpreted as the or as being interested in ‘saving the ecology of the land’ product of a historical and developmental process at the have never bothered to take a university-level course in end of the enlightenment (18th century). Thus, for almost ecology or to have examined in any depth a classic eco- 2000 years, naturalists considered the earth to have been logical text. As a result, the exact nature and definition of created originally much as it was observed. ‘ecology’ remains obscured by its popular usage. As part of the scientific revolution capped by Isaac In part, some of the definitional misunderstanding comes Newton at the beginning of the 18th century, natural from ecology’s biological lineage. Certainly, its subject philosophers opted to examine the natural world for matter (the planet’s ecosystems) has a much greater reso- mechanical explanations of natural phenomena, often in nance with the general public than, say, the arcane and terms of mechanisms they could either observe in nature esoteric subject that is molecular biology. Nevertheless, or infer from nature. These explanations, best exem- plified by the law-like behavior of Newton’s universal Keith R. Benson gravitation, promised to provide precise and knowable information about nature, usually in mathematical form. Is currently a professor of medical history and ethics at the Uni- versity of Washington, where he serves as Director of the Program No longer bound to accept the natural world as a created in the History of Science, Technology and Medicine. He is coeditor given, the philosophes of the enlightenment soon began of two books on the history of American biology and has written numerous articles on the development of the biological sciences in to apply the Newtonian method to the biotic world. the USA. He is also a past Executive Secretary of the History of The limitations of this application became apparent Science Society. At present, he is completing a book on the history of marine biology in the USA. almost immediately. Bernard de Fontenelle expressed the [email protected] futility of the age’s mechanistic orientation when he 0160-9327/99/$ – see front matter © 2000 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved. PII: S0160-9327(00)01260-0 Endeavour Vol. 24(2) 2000 59 proclaimed that two mechanical watches will sit side by The ‘Darwin of Germany’, Ernst Haeckel, devoured On side forever without producing a third but, if two dog the Origin of Species almost as soon as it was published, ‘machines’ are placed side by side, more dogs would soon becoming an immediate convert to the theory of descent appear! Animal generation, along with a host of other by modification, as evolution theory was originally known. biotic operations, seemed to resist the simplicity of the In his influential book Generelle Morphologie8, Haeckel mathematical treatment of invariable mechanical laws5. stressed the Darwinian notion of change over time pro- Nevertheless, the mechanical philosophy opened the duced by the dynamic relationship of organisms and their door for fresh investigations of plants and animals, their natural environments. As a measure of the importance of relationships to each other, and their relationships to the this relationship, Haeckel, who was fond of neologisms, natural world. By the beginning of the 19th century, the coined the word oecologie, referring to the study of the re- notions of structural analogy (transformism) and func- lationship of organisms to their surroundings. In his popu- tional integrity (biogeographical lar 1876 English edition of his ideas, distribution) that investigators re- By the end of World War II, History of Creation, he noted that corded from their observations be- ecology had become Darwin’s doctrine of adaptation gan to lead them to examine the his- provided the law-like nature to torical record of the earth’s fauna thoroughly transformed from explain ecological relationships9. and flora6. This was particularly scientific natural history to Haeckel was not, however, the first true as naturalists observed that ecosystem ecology ecologist, nor did he immediately different landscapes of the earth’s spawn an ecological program in surface with almost identical physical conditions had Germany. Instead, he served as one of the seminal figures remarkably different resident populations of plants and in the 19th century to stress the growing appreciation that animals. This was quite a surprise because, according to the relationship of plants and animals to their natural en- the prevailing view of natural law, the same environ- vironments was historical and dynamic. Two other Euro- mental conditions should produce nearly identical pean naturalists, Oscar Drude and Eugenius Warming, who species. Yet, for example, Australia had endemic forms of were influenced by these same ideas, soon began to stress life seen nowhere else on the globe. the study of pflanzengeographie (plant geography), noting The new stress on the uniqueness of the forms of life the community structure of plant groupings that character- along with the uniqueness of the landforms served as the ized specific landforms with specific environmental con- fertile soil for what became ecological insights. But those ditions10. Remarkably, for there was not an equivalent scien- who made these observations were not, per se, ecologists. tific community in the USA to match that in Europe, these Instead, they were among the 19th century’s most accom- ideas were picked up by American naturalists at the end plished naturalists. At the beginning of the 19th century, of the 19th century: Charles E. Bessey at the University of the German adventurer Alexander von Humboldt waxed Nebraska and John Coulter at the University of Chicago. eloquent about the characteristic physiognomic features of the landscapes in South America, stressing how these Ecology’s early-20th-century roots visible features (hence his reference to physiognomy) Neither Bessey or Coulter, however, is well known as an depended in large part upon the environmental character- ecologist. Both were natural historians at their respective istics that controlled the flora. Four decades later, Joseph institutions, trained in the traditional methods of natural Dalton Hooker was to make similar observations in his history, emphasizing the naming, description and classifi- travels to the Himalayas, New Zealand, Tasmania and cation of plants and animals. However, both were also well Australia itself.
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