10
GERALD L. YOUNG
real parts of some people’s environment with real impacts on behavior
patterns. In extreme cases, e.g. where an individual or group are very
religious, such a conceptual being may dominate behavior patterns and
interaction processes, almost on every level. This is true of certain rigid
religious sects, for example.
I n the second subset of the conceptual environment, ideas become a
tool for shaping the surface of the earth. Bates (1962) describes this as
responsible for man’s shifting from “being just one more species in a
biological community into becoming a sort of geological force, altering
the whole surface of the planet”. This is the idea promulgated by
Vernadsky (1929, 1945) and Teilhard de Chardin (1956, 1969) as the
“noosphere”. Here the conceptual environment as “noosphere” becomes
something more than a mere tool, though it does imply the reshaping of
the earth’s surface. They both intend it as a human environment, a
global abstraction transcending the biosphere, a world dominated by
the human mind. This seems to Bates too simple; he prefers thinking of
the man-altered landscape as a noosystem, “an interacting complex like
ecosystem, but with a multiplying series of additional transactions
involving that curious conceptual environment of the human species”.
But again the emphasis, as opposed to biological ecology, remains on the
abstract extensions as operational factors: ideas, concepts, the impact
of the mind as an interacting, extensional factor of human ecology.
Some of the above, and other concepts peculiar to the varying approaches
to human ecology, will be discussed in more depth later in the paper
under common methods.
B. DEVELOPMENT I N THE SOCIAL SCIENCES
A n ecological approach is well developed in the more “social” of the
social sciences: sociology and anthropology. Geography can trace a
history, though erratic, almost back as far as that in sociology and, by
some arguments, even further. Psychology began to develop such an
approach in the 1940’s with the past decade marking some major
contributions. The history of the approach in economics is concurrent
with the major work of one economist, Kenneth Boulding. The rest of
the field has been slow, despite Boulding’s prestige, to adopt even
segments of the approach. Political Science has a small nucleus of
workers interested in treating politics as an ecological phenomenon.
Considered separately, there is little coherence in the adoption of the
ecological approach in the social sciences, that is apart from sociology.
Taken together, the social sciences are marked by a massive ecological
literature with some major identifiable themes and concepts (Smith,
1951).
GERALD L. YOUNG
real parts of some people’s environment with real impacts on behavior
patterns. In extreme cases, e.g. where an individual or group are very
religious, such a conceptual being may dominate behavior patterns and
interaction processes, almost on every level. This is true of certain rigid
religious sects, for example.
I n the second subset of the conceptual environment, ideas become a
tool for shaping the surface of the earth. Bates (1962) describes this as
responsible for man’s shifting from “being just one more species in a
biological community into becoming a sort of geological force, altering
the whole surface of the planet”. This is the idea promulgated by
Vernadsky (1929, 1945) and Teilhard de Chardin (1956, 1969) as the
“noosphere”. Here the conceptual environment as “noosphere” becomes
something more than a mere tool, though it does imply the reshaping of
the earth’s surface. They both intend it as a human environment, a
global abstraction transcending the biosphere, a world dominated by
the human mind. This seems to Bates too simple; he prefers thinking of
the man-altered landscape as a noosystem, “an interacting complex like
ecosystem, but with a multiplying series of additional transactions
involving that curious conceptual environment of the human species”.
But again the emphasis, as opposed to biological ecology, remains on the
abstract extensions as operational factors: ideas, concepts, the impact
of the mind as an interacting, extensional factor of human ecology.
Some of the above, and other concepts peculiar to the varying approaches
to human ecology, will be discussed in more depth later in the paper
under common methods.
B. DEVELOPMENT I N THE SOCIAL SCIENCES
A n ecological approach is well developed in the more “social” of the
social sciences: sociology and anthropology. Geography can trace a
history, though erratic, almost back as far as that in sociology and, by
some arguments, even further. Psychology began to develop such an
approach in the 1940’s with the past decade marking some major
contributions. The history of the approach in economics is concurrent
with the major work of one economist, Kenneth Boulding. The rest of
the field has been slow, despite Boulding’s prestige, to adopt even
segments of the approach. Political Science has a small nucleus of
workers interested in treating politics as an ecological phenomenon.
Considered separately, there is little coherence in the adoption of the
ecological approach in the social sciences, that is apart from sociology.
Taken together, the social sciences are marked by a massive ecological
literature with some major identifiable themes and concepts (Smith,
1951).