84
QERALD L. YOUNQ
(1967) who demonstrate a “holistic technique for ecological analysis”.
According to them, this type of analysis, given “sufficiently comprehensive data”, should enable a student to “reveal the relationships
among ecological variables as interrelated associational systems which,
when viewed as a whole, should approximate a model of man’s relations
with his total environment”. One might aak, of course, how close we are
to sufficiently comprehensive data? A more realistic view might be that
of Odum (1969) who contends that society “needs” and “must find as
quickly as possible, a way to deal with the landscape as a whole” (see
also Koestler, 1969).
Watts (1963) advocates a view of man (that he feels rcaccords
astonishingly well with the description of the individual . . . in ecology”)
as an “organism-environment field”, with the organism itself “a point at
which the field is focused, so that each individual is a unique expression
of the behavior of the whole field, which is ultimately the universe
itself”. Helm (1962), in anthropology, uses the word oecurnene to “speak
holistically of an ecosystem composed of the human culture-bearing
population in adaptive interrelation with the natural setting”. Her
usage hints at a combining of gestalt world view and functionalism, i.e.
that a person’s world view, the extent to which he is capable of a
holistic view, is defined in part by his experiential field and that is of
course defined at least in part by the functional extent of his interaction.
A concern with “holism” is in part a by-product of the levels-ofintegration that are of most concern to the ecologist: the community
and the ecosystem. As Van Dyne (1966) claims, “the terms system and
ecology both imply a holistic viewpoint”, and ecology is essentially “the
application of modern scientific techniques to problems involving the
operation of a system looked upon as a whole”. He contends that
elimination of such a viewpoint would result in “unsystematic or piecemeal consideration of [ecological] problems”. The Sprouts (197 1) consider “the concept of an interrelated-interdependent whole” as the “very
essence of the ecological perspective and mode of thinking”. Dubos
(1968) claims that the “most pressing problems of humanity . . . involve
relationships, communications, changes of trends-in
other words,
situations in which systems must be studied as a whole in all the
complexity of their interactions. This is particularly true of human
life. ”
There is not, of course, universal acceptance of the need or wisdom of
couching ecology in holistic terms. Steward (1968), for example,
examines “cultural variables versus holism”. It has been considered to
be prohibitive of comparison and generalizations because, being allinclusive (?), it leaves nothing to compare with or to generalize about:
such an approach is a reductio ad absurdurn.
QERALD L. YOUNQ
(1967) who demonstrate a “holistic technique for ecological analysis”.
According to them, this type of analysis, given “sufficiently comprehensive data”, should enable a student to “reveal the relationships
among ecological variables as interrelated associational systems which,
when viewed as a whole, should approximate a model of man’s relations
with his total environment”. One might aak, of course, how close we are
to sufficiently comprehensive data? A more realistic view might be that
of Odum (1969) who contends that society “needs” and “must find as
quickly as possible, a way to deal with the landscape as a whole” (see
also Koestler, 1969).
Watts (1963) advocates a view of man (that he feels rcaccords
astonishingly well with the description of the individual . . . in ecology”)
as an “organism-environment field”, with the organism itself “a point at
which the field is focused, so that each individual is a unique expression
of the behavior of the whole field, which is ultimately the universe
itself”. Helm (1962), in anthropology, uses the word oecurnene to “speak
holistically of an ecosystem composed of the human culture-bearing
population in adaptive interrelation with the natural setting”. Her
usage hints at a combining of gestalt world view and functionalism, i.e.
that a person’s world view, the extent to which he is capable of a
holistic view, is defined in part by his experiential field and that is of
course defined at least in part by the functional extent of his interaction.
A concern with “holism” is in part a by-product of the levels-ofintegration that are of most concern to the ecologist: the community
and the ecosystem. As Van Dyne (1966) claims, “the terms system and
ecology both imply a holistic viewpoint”, and ecology is essentially “the
application of modern scientific techniques to problems involving the
operation of a system looked upon as a whole”. He contends that
elimination of such a viewpoint would result in “unsystematic or piecemeal consideration of [ecological] problems”. The Sprouts (197 1) consider “the concept of an interrelated-interdependent whole” as the “very
essence of the ecological perspective and mode of thinking”. Dubos
(1968) claims that the “most pressing problems of humanity . . . involve
relationships, communications, changes of trends-in
other words,
situations in which systems must be studied as a whole in all the
complexity of their interactions. This is particularly true of human
life. ”
There is not, of course, universal acceptance of the need or wisdom of
couching ecology in holistic terms. Steward (1968), for example,
examines “cultural variables versus holism”. It has been considered to
be prohibitive of comparison and generalizations because, being allinclusive (?), it leaves nothing to compare with or to generalize about:
such an approach is a reductio ad absurdurn.