Ecology

Generalized food web of waterbirds from Chesapeake Bay.

Ecology is the scientific analysis and study of interactions among organisms and their environment, such as the interactions organisms have with each other and with their abiotic environment.

Arranged alphabetically by author or source:

A - F · G - L · M - R · S - Z · See also · External links

Quotes

Quotes are arranged alphabetically by author

A - F

• A humbling blow to our arrogant outlook, ecology reveals that humans – who conceive of themselves as the most autonomous and exalted forms of life – are entirely dependent upon the natural world, biodiversity, and in particular, the crucial role nonhuman animals play in maintaining and enriching nature. Indeed, earthworms, dung beetles, butterflies, and bees are far more important to the integrity and diversity of nature than humans are – the latter being the only species one could remove from earth ecosystems with positive effect. From an ecological perspective, humans are an overpopulated, parasitic swarm, living in total ignorance of natural "laws" they foolishly think they can master, but in truth must conform to and harmonize with if they intend to survive.
  • Steven Best, The Politics of Total Liberation: Revolution for the 21st Century (Palgrave Macmillan, 2014), pp. 119-120.

• If we recognise that every ecosystem can also be viewed as a food web, we can think of it as a circular, interlacing nexus of plant animal relationships (rather than a stratified pyramid with man at the apex)... Each species, be it a form of bacteria or deer, is knitted together in a network of interdependence, however indirect the links may be.
  • Murray Bookchin, The Ecology of Freedom (1982).

• If we have been slow to develop the general concepts of ecology and conservation, we have been even more tardy in recognizing the facts of the ecology and conservation of man himself. We may hope that this will be the next major phase in the development of biology. Here and there awareness is growing that man, far from being the overlord of all creation, is himself part of nature, subject to the same cosmic forces that control all other life. Man's future welfare and probably even his survival depend upon his learning to live in harmony, rather than in combat, with these forces.
  • Rachel Carson, "Essay on the Biological Sciences" in Good Reading (1958).

• Man has been endowed with reason, with the power to create, so that he can add to what he's been given. But up to now he hasn't been a creator, only a destroyer. Forests keep disappearing, rivers dry up, wild life's become extinct, the climate's ruined and the land grows poorer and uglier every day.
  • Anton Chekhov, Uncle Vanya, 1897

• We need to renegotiate our contract with nature. Ecology is a unifying force that can diminish intolerance and expand our empathy towards others—both human and animal.
  • Gregory Colbert, "Peace and Harmony: The Message of Our Discovery" in Photo No. 427 (March 2006)

G - L

• The study of public administration must include its ecology. "Ecology," states the Webster Dictionary, "is the mutual relations, collectively, between organisms and their environment." J. W. Bews points out that "the word itself is derived from the Greek oikos a house or home, the same root word as occurs in economy and economics. Economics is a subject with which ecology has much in common, but ecology is much wider. It deals with all the inter-relationships of living organisms and their environment." Some social scientists have been returning to the use of the term, chiefly employed by the biologist and botanist, especially under the stimulus of studies of anthropologists, sociologists, and pioneers who defy easy classification, such as the late Sir Patrick Geddes in Britain.
  • John M. Gaus, Reflections on public administration, 1947, p. 6

• The disruption of the world's ecological systems — from the rise of global warming and the consequent damage to our climate balance, to the loss of living species and the depletion of ocean fisheries and forest habitats — continues at a frightening rate. Practically every day, it becomes clearer to us that must act now to protect our Earth, while preserving and creating jobs for our people.
  • Al Gore, Address to the International Press Institute, Boston, Massachusetts (30 April 2000.

• The extinction of Partula is unfair to Partula. That is the conventional argument, and I do not challenge its primacy. But we need a humanistic ecology as well, both for the practical reason that people will always touch people more than snails do or can, and for the moral reason that humans are legitimately the measure of all ethical questions—for these are our issues, not nature's.
  • Stephen Jay Gould,"Unenchanted Evening", (1993).

• All life is impermanent. We are all children of the Earth, and, at some time, she will take us back to herself again. We are continually arising from Mother Earth, being nurtured by her, and then returning to her. Like us, plants are born, live for a period of time, and then return to the Earth. When they decompose, they fertilize our gardens. Living vegetables and decomposing vegetables are part of the same reality. Without one, the other cannot be. After six months, compost becomes fresh vegetables again. Plants and the Earth rely on each other. Whether the Earth is fresh, beautiful, and green, or arid and parched depends on the plants. It also depends on us.
  • Thích Nhất Hạnh The World We Have: A Buddhist Approach to Peace and Ecology (2008), Ch. 1 : The Bells of Mindfulness, p. 3

• Our way of walking on the Earth has a great influence on animals and plants. We have killed so many animals and plants and destroyed their environments. Many are now extinct. In turn, our environment is now harming us. We are like sleepwalkers, not knowing what we are doing or where we are heading. Whether we can wake up or not depends on whether we can walk mindfully on our Mother Earth. The future of all life, including our own, depends on our mindful steps.
  • Thích Nhất Hạnh The World We Have: A Buddhist Approach to Peace and Ecology (2008), Ch. 1 : The Bells of Mindfulness, p. 3

• The thing the ecologically illiterate don't realize about an ecosystem is that it's a system. A system! A system maintains a certain fluid stability that can be destroyed by a misstep in just one niche. A system has order, a flowing from point to point. If something dams the flow, order collapses. The untrained miss the collapse until too late. That's why the highest function of ecology is the understanding of consequences.
  • Frank Herbert, in Dune ("Appendix I: The Ecology of Dune")

• Ecology is a dirty seven-letter word to many people. They are like heavy sleepers refusing to be aroused. "Leave me alone! It's not time to get up yet!"
  • Frank Herbert, "Introduction" to New World or No World (1970), an anthology of writing on environmentalism.

• I will clarify a distinction that I consider fundamental to political ecology. I shall distinguish the environment as commons from the environment as resource. On our ability to make this particular distinction depends not only the construction of a sound theoretical ecology, but also — and more importantly — effective ecological jurisprudence.
  • Ivan Illich, Silence is a Commons (1982).

• That land is a community is the basic concept of ecology, but that land is to be loved and respected is an extension of ethics.
  • Aldo Leopold, A Sand County Almanac, 1949.

M - R

• If there are favourable habitats and favorable forms of association for animals and plants, as ecology demonstrates, why not for men? If each particular natural environment has has its own balance; is there not perhaps an equivalent of this in culture?
  • Lewis Mumford, The Culture of Cities, Secker & Warburg, 1938.

• Even when the pioneer didn't rape Nature, he divorced her a little too easily: he missed the great lesson that both ecology and medicine teach - that Man's great mission is not to conquer nature by main force but to cooperate with her intelligently but lovingly for his own purposes.
  • Lewis Mumford, "California and the Human Prospect", Sierra Club Bulletin, vol. 47, no. 9, 1962, pp. 45-6.

S - Z

• A Healthy Ecology is the Basis for a Healthy Economy
  • Claudine Schneider, U.S. Representative in The Green Lifestyle Handbook.

• Many people are under the illusion that before the meddling of humans, the populations of different types of plants and animals tended to be pretty much constant. This isn’t really the way things work, however, in a finite world. Instead, the populations of many species cycle up and down, depending on particular conditions such as the population of animals that prey on them, the availability of food, the prevalence of disease, and the weather conditions.
  Even forests exhibit surprising variability. Many undergo regular cycles of burning. In fact, some species of trees, such as the giant sequoias in Yosemite, require fire in order to reproduce. These cycles are simply part of the natural order of self-organizing ecosystems in a finite world.
  • Gail Tverberg, "Humans Left Sustainability Behind as Hunter-Gatherers" (December 2, 2020)

• The biological world is constantly faced with the problem of too many animals (for example, wolves and deer) wanting to occupy a given space with specific resources, such as water, sunlight, and smaller plants and animals to eat.
  • Gail Tverberg, "The advanced economies are headed for a downfall" (June 22, 2024)

• To halt the decline of an ecosystem, it is necessary to think like an ecosystem.
  • Douglas P. Wheeler, EPA Journal, September-October 1990

• In recent years it has become impossible to talk about man's relation to nature without referring to "ecology"...such leading scientists in this area as Rachel Carson, Barry Commoner, Eugene Odum, Paul Ehrlich and others, have become our new delphic voices...so influential has their branch of science become that our time might well be called the "Age of Ecology".
  • Donald Worster, Nature's Economy, Cambridge University Press, 1994.

• For some years now the activity of the artist in our society has been trending more toward the function of the ecologist: one who deals with environmental relationships. Ecology is defined as the totality or pattern of relations between organisms and their environment. Thus the act of creation for the new artist is not so much the invention of new objects as the revelation of previously unrecognized relation- ships between existing phenomena, both physical and metaphysical. So we find that ecology is art in the most fundamental and pragmatic sense, expanding our apprehension of reality.
  • Gene Youngblood, Expanded Cinema, 1970 p. 346; The Artist as Ecologist

See also

• Conservation
• Environment