NATURE, MEDIA, AND KNOWLEDGE: A TRANSDISCIPLINARY STUDY OF THE NATURE AND IMPACT OF ECOLOGICAL RESEARCH IN SCIENCE, CULTURE, AND

PHILOSOPHY

by Adam Robbert

A Thesis Submitted to the Faculty of the California Institute of Integral Studies in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for a Master of Arts Degree in Philosophy With a Concentration on Philosophy, Cosmology, and ConsciousnessIntegral Ecology Track

California Institute of Integral Studies

San Francisco, CA 2011

CERTIFICATE OF APPROVAL I certify that I have read NATURE, MEDIA, AND KNOWLEDGE: A TRANSDISCIPLINARY STUDY OF THE NATURE AND IMPACT OF ECOLOGICAL RESEARCH IN SCIENCE, CULTURE, AND PHILOSOPHY, and that in my opinion this work meets the criteria for approving a thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Master of Arts Degree in Philosophy, with a Concentration on Philosophy, Cosmology, and Consciousness, Integral Ecology Track, at the California Institute of Integral Studies.

___________________________________________________ Brian Swimme, Ph.D., Chair

___________________________________________________ Sean Kelly, [Professor / Program Director / Faculty], Philosophy, Cosmology, and consciousness

___________________________________________________ [committee members name, committee members academic degree] [Professor / Program Director / Faculty] [CIIS program name]

 Adam Robbert 2011

iv Adam Robbert California Institute of Integral Studies, 2011 Brian Swimme, Ph.D., Committee Chair NATURE, MEDIA, AND KNOWLEDGE: A TRANSDISCIPLINARY STUDY ON THE NATURE AND IMPACT OF ECOLOGICAL RESEARCH IN SCIENCE, CULTURE, AND PHILOSOPHY ABSTRACT Ecology is typically defined as the study of the relationship between organisms and environments. Although this definition is true as far as it goes, the organism-environment relationship remains inadequately understood when approached only from a singular, disciplinary specialization. Contemporary approaches to ecology tend to emphasize either a holistic, systems-oriented approach to ecology, or a reductionist, evolutionary paradigm of ecological inquiry. Historically, both have failed to address the role of human agency in the field of ecology as a whole. By this I mean that human scientists, in an attempt to maintain scientific objectivity, have failed to consider that their own worldviews, as well as their political and technical practices, inevitably affect the ecological perspectives they develop. Human beings participate in the ongoing evolution of ecological communities on planet Earth; in many respects we are a major transformative element within those ecological communities. Because human beings are always in relation toand transformthe ecologies they study, an integral and transdisciplinary method of practicing ecology that takes this fact into account must be articulated. In this thesis I argue that such an approach entails introducing a threefold, interdependent system of

v ecological study: a natural ecology, a media ecology, and a knowledge ecology. The following pages explicate the reasoning for this threefold delineation, as well as its necessity within current practices of ecological research that, as will be demonstrated, have significant implications for other fields of inquiry spanning the natural sciences, cultural theory, and philosophy.

vi TABLE OF CONTENTS

ABSTRACT.........................................................................................................iv INTRODUCTION ................................................................................................ 1 Outline .............................................................................................................. 8 Chapter 1............................................................................................................. 11 tyThe Threefold Structure................................................................................... 11 Chapter 2............................................................................................................. 18 The Ecology of Paradigms.................................................................................. 18 Chapter 3............................................................................................................. 29 Politics and Paradigms in the History of Ecology .............................................. 29 History of Evolution ....................................................................................... 29 History of Ecology.......................................................................................... 45 Evolution and System Towards an Integrative Natural Ecology.................... 56 Chapter 4............................................................................................................. 62 Dialectical Biology, Autopoiesis, and Niche construction Theory .................... 62 Evolution as Dialectical Biology .................................................................... 64 Evolution as Autopoiesis ................................................................................ 70 Evolution as Niche Construction .................................................................... 79 NCT in Search of a Human Ecology .............................................................. 83 Chapter 5............................................................................................................. 91 Actor-Networks and Media Ecologies: Stabilizing Situated Objectivity ........... 91 Actor-Network Theory ................................................................................... 91 Media Ecology................................................................................................ 95 Chapter 6........................................................................................................... 100 Conclusion ........................................................................................................ 100 Ecologies of Knowledge: Patience and Risk in Staying With the World..... 100 References......................................................................................................... 110

1 INTRODUCTION Nature, culture, and knowledge are collectively assembled elements of a complex and shifting mosaic. Intrinsically relative, these three elements, I argue, are mutually enacting and inseparable. The concept of Nature is inevitably an abstract construction, a horizon upon which cultural-scientific modes of knowledge organize highly specific elements of a more complex reality. Nature is organizationally open in an observerdependent way. Likewise, culture and science do not simply construct a vision of Nature that is absent of historical and ecological contingencies. The nave empiricism of the positivist philosopheralongside the equally impoverished idea of the social construction of Natureis, in the context of a twenty-first century ecological science, inadequate. In the domain of contemporary ecological science, I argue, a new and more integrative framework that coimplicates nature, culture, and knowledge into a complex and interdependent whole is emerging. The field of ecology, since the term was coined by Ernst Haeckel in 1866, has transitioned into a new phase of its paradigmatic development. Those concerned with this emergent phase must study not only the relationships between organisms and environments, but also the complex interconnections between socioeconomic, cultural, and paradigmatic dimensions that inhere in ecological sciences. In this new understanding, the science of ecology is a collectively enacted system of study that draws in biological and ecological components, alongside sociopolitical systems of knowledge production, technological artifacts that allow scientific research to take place, and the paradigmatic or epistemological dimensions of ecological research. I maintain that this complex, recursively dynamic

2 approach to ecology is transdisciplinary and requires scientific, cultural, and philosophical disciplinary methods. The reification of boundaries in the academy through the intensification of disciplinary specialization has impeded the ability of researchers to account for the degrees of subjectivity present when studying ecosystem functioning and behavior. In the complex approach to ecology argued herein, the role of the researcher is cast not as that of an independent observer, but as an interactive element within the ecology of research being performed. The role of the observer as an interactive producer of knowledge generates new possibilities in the enaction of new sets of relations based on the subjectivity of the research worker. Knowledge, like organisms, is context dependent. Complex approaches to ecology are sensitive to the observer-produced, and paradigmatically maintained, boundaries of research that delineate sectors of research into the shifting boundaries between nature, culture, and knowledge. Drawing on the literature from the philosophy of sciencein particular Thomas Kuhns epochal The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1996)I approach the history of ecological thinking as more than simply the ever-increasing accumulation of knowledge that reveals the true nature of independently existing ecosystems. Rather, I approach the history and development of ecology as a mode of scientific inquiry as the history of mutually enfolded paradigms in reciprocal exchange with the systems that they study. The paradigm-system relationship is complex in that each enfolds the other, as will be demonstrated. The ecology of the ecosystem meets the conceptual ecology of the research worker, both implicated in and transforming the other. The nature of the relationship between researcher and ecosystem is complex, but not indescribable. This

3 view asserts that paradigms and their objects of researchin this case living ecological communitiesare entangled with one another in uncertain and important ways. Following Kuhns (1996) assessment of normal science as the practice of scientists engaged in a process of puzzle solving using established paradigmatic protocols, I argue that a form of postnormal science must be encouraged in the future development of ecological knowledge (Ravetz 2004). The problems facing the scientific establishment, and the global polity at large todaysuch as the mass extinction of species, peak oil, asymmetries in world power, global climate change, the renewed threat of disease pandemics, the disjuncture between global economic systems, and global ecological systems to name but a fewall point to the need for a transition within the scientific community. The period marked postnormal represents the need for a shift in scientific practices that recognizes that: We can no longer separate nature, science, and society (Ravetz 2004, 1). Such monikers, long held as distinct categories by philosophers and scientists alike, are no longer adequate indicators that correspond to real ecological problems. Ecological problems of the type mentioned above make no distinctions between nature or culture, or between organic and technological domains of the environment. The impact of human civilization, and of the industrialized world in particular, is leading the charge in multiple social and environmental crises. In this sense, Nothing can be managed in a convenient isolation; issues are mutually implicated; problems extend across many scale levels of space and time; and uncertainties and value-loadings

4 of all sorts and all degrees of severity affect data and theories alike (Funtowicz and Ravetz 2010, para. 1). The following pages map out the possibility and validity of this idea: that there is an ecology of knowledge, concepts, and paradigms that are mediated through, and reciprocally infolded with, specific political and technological practices. I believe this theoretical contribution is important because ecological sciences, at the beginning of the twenty-first century, provide research institutions with a guiding platform to ensure the stability of future generations in an era plagued by social inequity, war, the overconsumption of resources, and an exponential dismantling of the biosphere. I argue that nature, science, and society cannot be viewed apart from the systems they study or the subjects studying the systems. As Donna Haraway suggests, we live in a thick present, one comprised of heterogeneous elements that are variously natural, technological, and semiotic (2003). Rather than employing the rigid categories nature or culture to bifurcate and simplify components of a more complex ecology, Haraway (2003), following Latour (2004), suggests the term naturecultures to describe those ecologies that are composed of natural, technological, and semiotic elements. To substantiate the claim that ecology is moving towards a complex integration of culture and knowledge, I draw evidence from several disciplines. The first are scientific in their commitments, calling upon the history of biology, current debates surrounding evolutionary theory, and investigations into the nature and functioning of ecosystems from the perspective of current science researchers. By articulating the situated practice of constructing evolutionary knowledge, it becomes evident that the history of the idea of evolution is infolded within not only the scientific study of plants and biomes, but also

5 within philosophical assumptions and paradigmatic constructs, as well as political and historical factors. It is these complex interdependencies that must be viewed in their full entanglement through an integral approach to ecology such that biophysical knowledge can be obtained, without losing sight of the multiple contingencies involved in the production of scientific knowledge. I discuss, for example, whether or not Haeckels (Bramwell 1989) pantheistic monism provided him with a metaphysical grounding to first consider the concept of ecology, or whether Darwins (Bowler 2009) allegiance to eighteenth century economic theory and commitments to Victorian-era cultural norms impacted his understanding of evolutionary mechanisms. Furthermore, speaking with specific reference to scientific knowledge, it is important to note that a paradigm must be in place in order to articulate or describe any phenomenon scientifically. This is to say that subjects of inquirywhether genomes or supernovas, indigenous cultures in the Amazon, or economic measures of GDPrequire a descriptive language supplied by a greater paradigmatic environment that groups of researchers are informed by and are conversant in. Knowledge ecologies imply the enaction, to use Francisco Varela and Evan Thompsons (1983) term, of specific worlds, or better, the enaction of specific characteristics of specific worlds. In this sense, paradigms themselves are crucial subjects of study in understanding evolutionary theory. Taken in conjunction with their subjects of study (such as specific ecosystems or species in this case), and the technological and political conditions of the time, paradigmatic influences can arguably be seen as participants in the enactment of their objects of study. Paradigms, and by extension the metaphors scientists use to express the findings of their research, form an interactive ecology in their own right. For

6 example, when Eugene Odum and Todd Odum (Kingsland 2005) set out to articulate their paradigm for ecosystems ecology in the midtwentieth century, it is nontrivial to note the differences in their use of metaphors. Organismic metaphors dominated Eugenes explanatory landscape, while Todds insights into cybernetic theory and technology inspired him to use the image of the self-regulating machine to describe ecosystem functions. Other sources of evidence are more philosophical in tone and investigate the history, philosophy, and functioning of science from the perspective of related concepts: the paradigm of complexity, situated knowledges, the actor-network, and media ecology. Though diverse in character, function, and discipline, these concepts share the common assumption that knowledge, in order to be comprehensible to someone or to some culture, must correspond to a network or ecology within which that item of knowledge can be comprehended and cultivated. In this sense an ecology of knowledge or of culture is similar to a natural ecology in that, just as organisms require access to specific ecological environments to develop and thrive, so does knowledge require certain prereflective, cognitive environments that support the development of certain kinds of ideas. Reiterating the importance of context and contingency is central. Again, ecology is not here described as a system of scientific practice that occurs in a pure space of objective knowledge production. Rather, scientific knowledge in this context is viewed as an entangled structure tied to deeper, generally unconscious motifs operating in certain historical periods. Thus for Carl Linnaeus, William Paley, or Charles Lyell, for example, science was coupled to a practice of natural theology, a belief that a deepened scientific study of nature would reveal the inner workings of the mind of God (Bowler 2009).

7 Conversely, at the end of the twentieth century and at the start of the new millennium, science and evolution are at the forefront of an ideological project that denies Gods existence or participation in the world. Noting deeper metaphysical commitments is essential to understanding how scientific knowledge, in a particular time and place, acts. Rather than simply study knowledge in terms of a true/false binary, a complex approach to ecology emphasizes the effects or ecological impact of knowledge as expressed through history and mediated by cultural and technological practices. Similarly, political and economic regimes are productive of the technologies that are indispensible to scientific practice. This media ecology, or the study of communicative and technological artifacts as environments, is essential in articulating the type of knowledge that it is possible to produce at any given time. The science of genomics, for example, involves the coordination of distributed networks of high-speed computing technologies, biotech funding, a sophisticated knowledge of evolutionary dynamics, and hundreds of educated research teams. Each of these components is essential in the production of genetic knowledge. In the absence of any of these componentswhich are variously natural (the organism of study), cultural (the technologies and economies), and knowledge-based (the training, education, and paradigmatic infrastructure)no knowledge of genetics is possible. My argument is that, alongside the natural ecology, there is also a media ecology and a knowledge ecology. Each of these three ecologies can be viewed as subsets of a more complex and integrative ecology. These three ecologies, I argue, are essential for the emergence of advanced scientific, ecological knowledge.

8 By bringing these two larger domains into conversationthe history of science as a practice of problem solving and the study of the paradigmatic and ideological traces that inform scientific practicean adequate method is available to explore this terrain. Because such a research project is necessarily dense and transdisciplinary, a brief outline of the project will help orient the reader toward what is to come. Outline Chapter 1 briefly describes theorists who have also employed a threefold approach to the study of ecology. I highlight the work of Alf Hornborg (2001), Felix Guatarri (2008), and Edgar Morin (2008) because each has made significant contributions to the understanding of ecology from an integral or transdisciplinary perspective. The work of each is briefly explored in order to situate this work within a larger theoretical frame. Chapter 2 provides a basic introduction to the implications of Thomas Kuhns history of scientific revolutions (1996). The role of paradigms in relation to worldview is of specific interest, as this complex relationship sets up the discussion of the historical background that follows in Chapter 3. An understanding of Kuhns analysis of paradigms in relation to their subjects of studyas well as the overall gestalt image implied by specific paradigmatic structuresis considered alongside a philosophical history that adds support to Kuhns overall assessment of scientific revolutions. Chapter 3 explores the history of evolution and ecology, drawing out the mutually implicated character of scientific practice and theory making. Science, from a historical perspective, is the struggle towards certain kinds of knowledge, articulated within the

9 gestalt motifs of a particular paradigmatic frame. The history of science, in the Kuhnian sense, is equally about paradigmatic revolutions and the infoldment of paradigmatic values within the political and social imaginaries of the time, as much as it is about the application of hypotheses, theory testing, and problem solving. This chapter also introduces several ideas that are relevant to the understanding of current debates in evolution and ecology, both of which are essential to understanding Chapter 5. This history also provides a background for current debates in ecological science, centered on the tension arising from two main schools of thought: evolutionary ecology and ecosystems ecology. This tension will serve to demonstrate that ecological communities are multitiered and can be described in numerous ways depending upon the operative paradigm employed. The aim here is to demonstrate that evolutionary and ecosystems ecology have recently reached a synthesis that, while not complete, lends itself to a more thorough description of ecological communities. A transdisciplinary perspective on ecological sciences further complexifies the need to rethink ecology in terms of its relation to a matrix of diverse actors. These actors are complexly natural, cultural, and technological. Chapter 4 examines different emerging paradigms of scientific research that are in various ways analogous to the synthesis achieved in ecological thinking. Three paradigms in particular are examined: dialectical biology, niche construction theory (NCT), and autopoiesis. The aim here will be to describe the major tenets of each at some length, differentiate them from other theories of evolution, and to apply them in specific empirical scenarios. The implications of these paradigms extend beyond simply the practices of evolutionary sciences, and imply a shift in the demarcation between the

10 natural, cultural, and paradigmatic spheres. These shifts have real consequences for the relationship between evolution and cultural theory. Niche construction theory is especially highlighted because of the implications of this paradigm for human cultural theory. Here, the insights of NCT are thought in terms specific to human communities. NCT encourages a dynamic view of evolution and ecology that has implications for cultural theory, and the relation between natural ecologies and human cultural systems. NCT, along with other conceptions of human ecology, highlight the problems of disciplinary specializations in terms of their adequacy to studying ecology. This section also marks the transition from the scientifically situated problems of contemporary evolution and ecology, moving towards the philosophical considerations that become necessary to explore the relationship between ecology, culture, and knowledge. Chapter 5 moves the reader into philosophical discourses that connect the insights of media ecology, actor-network theory (ANT), and epistemological debates that highlight the role of conceptual structures in effecting perception in research. It is argued that these complex systems of discourse form an ecology in their own right, ecologies that are always coupled to, and recursively transformative of, the systems that they study. Chapter 6 offers concluding remarks and affirms the original thesis that ecology is entering a paradigmatic phase of its development which has implications not only for science, but for politics, cultural theory, and philosophy as well. I discuss the implications for approaching ecology in a complex and integral way and point to the future development of integral ecological paradigms.

11 CHAPTER 1 TYTHE THREEFOLD STRUCTURE Swedish environmental scientist, economic theorist, and anthropologist Alf Hornborg comments on the threefold distinction between ecology, culture, and knowledge, arguing that such a three-part formula can be found in a variety of approaches to environmental history (2001). Hornborg writes: The recurrent, triadic scheme is not arbitrary but reflects the complementarity of perspectives on humanenvironment relations deriving, respectively, from the natural sciences, the social sciences, and the humanities (2001, 192). In Hornborgs work this triad is broken into environment, society, and person. For Hornborg, the only entity where consciousness, cognition, and meaning are united through agency is the person. Even though other categories such as culture, symbolism, or ideology may precede or transcend an individuals behavior, and in this way play a role in constituting it, Hornborg argues, it is through concrete persons that such abstract phenomena intervene in the world (2001, 192). In other words, even though symbolic systems of exchange and cultural environments have real impacts on the constitution of the world, it is, for Hornborg, only the person that can engage in practices of cultural and symbolic production, and that, without the volition of such persons, symbolic or cultural systems cannot impact the world. The environment-society-person triad suggested by Hornborg requires a transdisciplinary methodological approach that unites ecological, sociological, and 1. Hornborg comments that Merchant, McEvoy, and Worster also use a threefold model of production, ecology, and a third element that varies amongst the three: forms of consciousness (Merchant), cognition (McEvoy), and structures of meaning (Worster).
1

12 existential phenomena. Because of this, Hornborg draws not only on a broad span of disciplinary specialties, but also calls into question the line drawn between objective and subjective phenomena that often separates the sciences and humanities in the academy. Modern environmental problems Hornborg writes, have a subjective dimension that has to do with the constitution of the modern person, as well as an objective dimension that has to do with the organization of the market economy, but the triangle suggests that these two dimensions are ultimately aspects of a single phenomenon of modernity (2001, 194). In arguing for a complex, relational epistemology, Hornborg acknowledges that human cognition, or knowledge, whatever its form, is always a mutually constellating act that designates simultaneously the knower, as a subject, and the known, as an object of knowledge. Emphasizing this relationship, Hornborg explores the recursivity of the subject-object split and notes that such a relational epistemology is foundational to the work of biological scientists Humberto Maturana and Francisco Varela as well as anthropologist Gregory Batesons ecology of mind (Hornborg 2001). Hornborgs relationist epistemology argues that a simplistic, constructivist notion of Nature must be transcended, just as an essentialist one must be abandoned. By this Hornborg means that notions of Naturewhen interpreted as culturally constructed projections of a historically embedded society, though crucial to critical approaches to humanenvironment relations, and, while not being ignoredare themselves not sufficient in understanding contemporary ecological problems, nor are they accurately descriptive of ontological spaces designated as Nature. Likewise, essentialist views that depict Nature as existing out there in a pure state separate from human activity, also points to an

13 insufficient understanding of ecological processes. If natural landscapes virtually everywhere carry traces of human activity Hornborg suggests, then the conclusion must be that nature is imbued with human culture and that language intervenes in ecological processes (192). Thus, for Hornborg, human linguistic and cultural practices directly impact the surrounding ecologies within an environmental-social-person world space. Furthermore It can also be argued, conversely, that ecological relationships have always been communicative phenomena, and that human symbolism and language are only the latest additions to the semiotics of ecosystems (192). Hornborgs semiotic approach to ecology that links the environment-society-person triad into an integrative paradigm is indicative of a shift in methodological practices towards an integral approach to ecology. Leaving Hornborgs approach, the following threefold approaches to ecology emerge in the thought of French theorists Felix Guattaris three ecologies (2008) and Edgar Morins paradigm of complexity (2008) based in part on his concept of selfeco-organization. It is worth noting, as political scientist Kerry Whiteside (2002) has done, that French approaches to ecological thought tend to differ from their AngloAmerican counterparts. French theorists are apt to emphasize a noncentered approach to ecology, whereas the Anglo-American traditions prefer a centered paradigm of ecological research. For the Anglo-Americans, ecological debates (particularly in the area of environmental ethics) focus on disagreements between anthropocentric or ecocentric systems of value (Whiteside 2002). Either ecological communities are essentially valuable because they are useful to humans as a resource, either for aesthetic or utilitarian reasons (anthropocentric), or ecological communities are seen as inherently 2. For more on semiotic approaches to biology and ecology, see Jesper Hoffmeyers Signs of Meaning in the Universe (1996).
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14 valuable (ecocentric). The point is that the locus of value is centered either on the side of human beings, or on the ecological community as a whole. Conversely, Whiteside (2002) argues, French ecological thinkers do not recognize a stable boundary between humans and nature. Rather: [French ecologists] maintain that what nature is shifts in relation to epistemological, social and political-ethical changes. Noncentered ecologists see nature as multiform and as inextricably confounded with humanitys projects and self-understandings. They are attentive to how the very meaning of being human is tied up with our constructions of nature (3). For French theorists such as Morin (2008) and Guattari (2008), it makes little sense to assume value between two separate domains (humans or nature) when those separate domains are, in fact and experience, not separate at all, but are always mutually constellating! With Whitesides distinctions in mind, I offer brief descriptions to the approaches of both Morin and Guattari. Felix Guattari argues that, because of humanitys integration into what he calls integrated world capitalism (or IWC for short), a global economic system without a geographic center of power, that, in the words of Guattaris translator a new type of individual is being shaped and moulded by the unseen pressures of market forces (2008, 4). Guattari suggests that human subjectivity is caught within a mass media environment that impacts ways of being human and manipulates ones sense of taste, need, and belonging. In response to this, Guattari suggests three ecologies are necessary: the environmental, the social, and the mental. Just as the environment requires defense against the damaging effects of industrialization, so do the social ecology and mental

15 ecology require cultivation, defense, and maintenance. In this regard, Guattari, like Hornborg, is also inspired by Batesons (2000) concept of the ecology of mind. Natural environments are devastated by industrial exploitation, just as social relations are disaggregated when international market interests intervene on the stability of local communities. Likewise the mental ecology calls one to a practice of subjectivity that affirms Guattaris belief, stated in his own words, that: We must ward off, by every means possible, the entropic rise of a dominant subjectivity. Rather than remaining subject, in perpetuity, to the seductive efficiency of economic competition, we must reappropriate Universes of value so that processes of singularization can rediscover their consistency (2008, 45). In this way, ecological knowledge and practice, for Guattari, are simultaneously environmental, social and mental. Affirming Whitesides noncentered approach to ecology, Guattari argues this tri-ecological vision is necessary for environmental, social and individual well-being. Edgar Morin forwards his Paradigm of Complexity as an epistemological and ethical necessity in the construction of knowledge, which for Morin, is always subject to error and illusion (2001). Morins translator, and one of his leading interpreters in the English language, Sean Kelly, writes that Morin sought to articulate a sociology of the present, that through a fundamental anthropology brought together cultural theory and life sciences in a new wayA fundamental anthropology, Kelly writes, which respects the irreducible complexity of the human phenomenon and conceives of human evolution in terms of a dialectic among such normally exclusive terms as nature and culture, the individual, the species, and society constitute one single bio-psycho-socialcultural-system (1999, xv).

16 Morin (Morin & Kern 1999) articulates his research through what he calls the paradigm of complexity, that, as Kelly (1999) explains, is composed of three parts. First, the paradigm of complexity is dialogical, which is to say that two items of study always exist in a dynamic tension. Second, this dialogic is also always recursive, pointing to the fact that dialogical processes are circular, and feed back upon themselves. Third, is the holographic principle, that, incorporating the principles of the dialogic and recursivity, maintains that the part/whole distinction, present in every system, is such that, the part is in the whole, but the whole is, holographically, also in the part (Kelly 1999, xvi). Thus the paradigm of complexity, operating with these three principles, delineates a new program and relation to knowledge and its construction. Morin writes: Specialized knowledge is itself a particular form of abstraction. Specialization abstracts, that is, it extracts an object from a given field, rejects the links and interconnections with its environment, and inserts it in the abstract conceptual zone of the compartmentalized discipline (Morin & Kern 1999, 123). Morins (Morin and Kern 1999) meta-paradigmatic approach to knowledge and specialized scientific research follows from his concept of self-eco-organization, a threefold approach to the development of any system, be it biological, cultural, or ideological. Rather than say an organism, for example, is self-organizing, a common metaphoric description used in popular accounts of biological science, Morin highlights the role of context, or ecology, in the self-organizing dynamics of any system. Thus an organism is never merely self-organizing, but rather, builds itself up out of an already existing environment such that the term self-eco-organization is more appropriate as a descriptive term. These three elements (self, oikos, and organization), follow

17 Morins three principles of the paradigm of complexity such that each is dialogic, recursive, and holographic. In this way self-eco-organization is recursively related in that the self-organization of organisms always impacts the environment, whilst that environment is impacting the unfolding of the organism. This recursivity is dialogic in nature, implying that the self-eco relationship exists in a dynamic tension, each component driving the other. Finally, the self-eco-organization is holographic, in that, already present within the DNA of the organism is a set of adaptive traits that corresponds to a historically internalized set of environmental factors. The organism is inside the environment just as the environment is inside the organism. Alf Hornborg, Felix Guattari, and Edgar Morin all approach the sciences of ecology from a three-part structure that informs this work. Their work provides a historical background to the integral approach to ecology emerging in contemporary scientific practices. Even when not explicitly stated, their work provides a substantial background to the arguments in this paper.

18 CHAPTER 2 THE ECOLOGY OF PARADIGMS Examining the record of past research from the vantage of contemporary historiography, the historian of science may be tempted to exclaim that when paradigms change, the world itself changes with them. Led by a new paradigm, scientists adopt new instruments and look in new places. Even more important, during revolutions scientists see new and different things when looking with familiar instruments in places they have looked before . . . Insofar as their only recourse to that world is through what they see and do, we may want to say that after a revolution scientists are responding to a different world. (Kuhn 1996, 111) That scientific research takes place within the constraints of paradigms is perhaps not so surprising. A common set of principles that delineate the structure of objects to be studied, a universal language with which to describe such objects, and an established protocol for interpreting the incoming data recorded about those objects seems rudimentary and uncontroversial. Had historian of science Thomas Kuhn stopped at this point, his work would have been interesting, but not groundbreaking in the way it has been. For Kuhn, paradigms, though always connected to specific modes of scientific practice, are also related to a more general understanding of nature itself. Kuhn writes: I have so far argued only that paradigms are constitutive of science. Now I wish to display a sense in which they are constitutive of nature as well (1996, 110). What is one to make of such a statement as this? To explore the relationship between the ecology of nature and the conceptual ecology of the research worker, it is necessary to treat this question with detail and care. The following chapter explores this central issue: In what way are paradigms implicated in scientific research, and how are they connected to the larger ecology of experience of the research worker? What is the relationship of this ecology of knowledge to the ecology of nature? I draw here on Kuhns work on paradigms,

19 supported by his predecessor Michael Polanyi (2009), and the associated pragmatist philosophies that lend credibility to the perspectives of both historians of science. To begin, I quote here at some length various informative passages from Kuhns work to illustrate the point at hand. Kuhn notes: Looking at a contour map, the student sees lines on paper, the cartographer a picture of terrain. Looking at a bubble-chamber photograph, the student sees confused and broken lines, the physicist a record of familiar subnuclear events. Only after a number of such transformations of vision does the student become an inhabitant of the scientists world . . . (1996, 111) How is it that a student must undergo a process of transformation in order to inhabit the scientists world? Such a statement implies that sciencewhich on the surface seems to be a tool that the researcher can handle at will, or an object that can be picked up and applied to some external eventreveals itself rather to be an encompassing space, an environment which one must acclimate to and inhabit. Rather than the researcher possessing a tool for use in scientific study, it appears that a paradigm is more like an environment within which the researcher works. Kuhn continues: The world that the student then enters is not, however, fixed once and for all by the nature of the environment, on the one hand, and of science, on the other. Rather it is determined jointly by the environment and the particular normalscientific tradition that the student has been trained to pursue. (1996, 111-112) This point is critical; it demonstrates that, for Kuhn, it is not the case that because paradigms reorganize ones perception of the natural world that somehow each paradigm is an equal fit. Researchers are not free to construct any paradigm that suits their imaginative whims. Rather, the research paradigm and the environment being studied are in a tightly coupled relationship. To borrow biologist Francisco Varela and cognitive scientist Evan Thompsons (2007) terminology, paradigms and their fields of study can

20 be described as structurally coupled, two complex ecologies merging to produce the meaning described by a given scientific paradigm.
3

Likewise, Michael Polanyi (2009) suggests a structural kinship between the subjects and objects of study. Structural kinships are very sensitive to the performance of perception itself. For Polanyi, subjects and objects are mutually constellating and are prone to subtle, collective shifts through the act of perception. Through time, structural kinships constellate in different ways such that This capacity of a thing to reveal itself in unexpected ways in the future I [Michael Polanyi] attribute to the fact that the thing observed is an aspect of reality possessing a significance that is not exhausted by our conception of any single aspect of it (32). In the effort to produce an intelligent, adequate description of the perceptual process of interpretation, Polanyi, like Kuhn, understands the subtle shaping of experience that accompanies any pursuit of knowledge. In shaping experience through knowledge, a variety of integrative modes are possible, each one corresponding to a variety of worldviews (e.g., the world is best described as x and results primarily from the interactions of y) or disciplinary specializations (as in physics, chemistry, biology, or anthropology). I suggest that the relationships of these multiple modes, both to one another, and to the worlds they study, are best described by the term ecology of knowledge. For Polanyi, the structure of perception throws light on the entire cosmology for which that mode of perception is possible: Thus do we form, intellectually and practically, an interpreted universe populated by entities, the particulars of which we have interiorized for the sake of comprehending their meaning in the shape of coherent 3. Varela and Thompsons theory of enactivism is described in detail in Chapter 3.

21 entities (2009, 29). In this way, articles of knowledge are not merely descriptions of objects that we can claim to understand as fixed totalities with definite characteristics, but rather it is, to use Polyanis language, by a process of indwelling that we, the observers of phenomena, can interiorize and co-create, and in this way, relate to the multitudinous flux of perceptual phenomena to which we have access. This process of indwelling is the manner in which the subjects awareness of particulars is jointly constituted into a variety of cohesive entities that can be studied or understood. For Kuhn, these jointly constituted particulars, as described by Polanyi, may be thought as the shifting elements that are brought together within newly emerging paradigms. Each new paradigm incorporates elements from its historical antecedents, but also draws forth from reality unique forms of organization that structure scientific research for the subsequent generation of scientists. In the context of ecological science, then, it is not the case that a fixed environment exists waiting to be studied, nor that there exists a simple discriminating principle that delineates one program of research as more accurate than another. Rather, as one can see in both the history of biology and in the current debates circulating amongst ecologists (outlined in Chapter 3), there are multiple paradigmatic constructions possible within the context of an ecosystem that is itself multiple and complex. That paradigms are a form of structural kinship between environments and scientists needs further justification. Kuhn, drawing on psychological research on the effect of context and suggestion on perception offers: Surveying the rich experimental literature from which these examples are drawn makes one suspect that something like a paradigm is prerequisite to perception itself. What a man sees depends both upon what he looks at and also upon what his previous visual-conceptual experience has taught him to see. In the absence of

22 such training there can only be, in William James phrase, a bloomin buzzin confusion. (1996, 113) At this point, Kuhn has broken beyond the tight definition of a paradigm as a protocol for conducting normal scientific research and has entered into larger epistemological arenas concerning the relationship between paradigms, perception, and the organization of experience itself. The link here between perception and experience troubles the scientist who wishes to rest science upon the solid bedrock of objective fact. Kuhn will give no such reprieve, but acknowledges the difficulty his intuition inspires: Many readers will surely want to say that what changes with a paradigm is only the scientists interpretation of observations that themselves are fixed once and for all by the nature of the environment and of the perceptual apparatus (1996, 120). This statement indicates a bias in the scientific mode of thought, which posits that a fixed environment exists out there and is accessible to the scientist, provided that the scientist is well prepared in the scientific tradition of the moment. Kuhns invocation of William James in the above quotation is telling. The epistemological shift Kuhn implied by the lack of fixity in the environment has a long history in the Jamesian tradition of pragmatism. This point is worth dwelling on for a moment, as it adds a substantial philosophical validation of Kuhns ideas in this area. One can draw here on others in the pragmatist tradition such as Charles Sanders Pierce and John Dewey. Their contributions to philosophy are not tangential to Kuhns arguments on the relationship between paradigms and the environment of study. Pierce James, and Dewey all argue for continuity in evolutionary processes so that no clear split

23 between language and reality, or paradigm and environment can be made (Henning 2005). Brian Henning argues that Pierce, James and Dewey set out to create a new system of metaphysics that, rather than promoting a bifurcation of reality as an ontological starting point, sought to create a cosmological scheme of relationships between disparate domains (2005). Pierce, for example began with the presupposition that reality is fundamentally continuous, referring to his theory as synechism. In contrast to prevailing metaphysics, which either reduced realitythat is, materialism and idealism- or bifurcated reality into mutually exclusive parts- that is, dualism- Pierces synechism points towards an evolutionary cosmology (quoted in Pierce 2005, 22). William James, Henning argues, likewise resists the bifurcating tendency available to philosophy: According to James, most philosophers conceive of entities as selfenclosed, wholly complete by themselves . . . James believes that this view of reality is misguided because it takes our linguistic constructions as designating ontological relations . . . He continues: Existence for James cannot be compartmentalized into conceptual blocks, each of which excludes every other (2005, 23). Finally, Henning adds Deweys conception of time to the discussion when he writes: Thus, just as modern and classical notions of absolute time led to an absolute dualism between humans and nature, the notion of time as existence implies a conception of reality that calls into question the view of reality as bifurcated (2005, 25). The perspectives of Pierce, James, and Dewey closely echo ontologically what Polanyi and Kuhn suggest epistemologically. That is to say that our knowledge of the world, as it changes our perceptual capacities for experience, travels and evolves alongside the world

24 it studies. No clear delineation between the world and our knowledge or experience of it is possible; rather, the two form a complex interdependent system. This interdependence, I believe, is ecological in nature. Henning, writing on Dewey, goes on to say: Such a view affects a fundamental shift in our conception of humanitys place in the universe. According to such a view, humanity is different in degree, rather than in kind, from nature (2005, 25). The work of Pierce, James, and Dewey represents criticisms of three fundamental positions common in Western philosophy: idealismwhere ideas are primary and, matter is epiphenomenal; materialismwhere matter is primary and, ideas are epiphenomenal; and dualismwhere matter and ideas are both active, but are essentially separate and distinct substances. Kuhns commentary on the relationship between paradigm and environment are difficult and troublesome not so much because of any cognitive challenge in apprehending his point, but rather, one could argue, because his argument fails to fit into traditional philosophical categories. As opposed to compartmentalizing these aspects, Kuhns linking of paradigms to their system of study suggests a complex coupling of perception, experience, and reality, each participating in an ecological matrix of embedded experience. Uniting the paradigm and environment within a philosophical context such as pragmatism allows for a strong conceptual base. Biological science absent of such philosophical experimentation may continue to struggle with these issues. When critiquing the adaptationist paradigm for example, geneticist Richard Lewontin points to the role organisms play in constructing or transforming their environments (1991). The environment, in Lewontins sense, is not a fixed object to be

25 adapted to. The environment, for Lewontin, is an artifact in part produced by the activities of organisms, where the organism is also in part an artifact of that environment. In what sense then is this adaptationist framework repeated in an epistemological arena? As with organisms adapting to fixed environments, one is faced with paradigms adapting to fixed environments. There is a tendency to think of the environment as being fixed in a permanent way. That paradigms change based on the demands of new research is again not surprising. However, what Kuhn is suggesting is more nuanced and critical. Kuhn writes: What occurs during a scientific revolution is not fully reducible to reinterpretation of individual and stable data. In the first place, the data are not unequivocally stable . . . Rather than being an interpreter, the scientist who embraces a new paradigm is like the man wearing inverting lenses. Confronting the same constellation of objects as before and knowing that he does so, he nevertheless finds them transformed through and through in many of their details (1996, 122). In one of his many examples, Kuhn cites the Copernican revolution as an instance of scientists looking at the same objects (the stars in the night sky) using the same instruments, and then began recording innumerable new celestial events as a result of a paradigm shift to the Copernican cosmological worldview. Kuhn argues that the previous classical and medieval paradigms interpreted the night sky as an immutable heavena changeless realm distinct in nature from that of the earth, such that once this interpretation had been overcome: The very ease and rapidity with which astronomers saw new things when looking at old objects with old instruments may make us wish to say that, after Copernicus, astronomers lived in a different world. In 4. The details of Lewontins argument are explored in Chapter 3.
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26 any case, their research responded as though that were the case (1996, 117). In moments such as this, the gestalt shift of a paradigm necessarily reorients the researcher to redefine some crucial aspects of the cosmos in which they work. In other words, the facts of any scientific discipline, though real from a certain perspective, are always at risk of being reorganized into the sweep of an alternative conceptual ecology more adequate to the nature of what is being studied. This awareness is of particular relevance to ecological communities, where the associated paradigms of study organize not only inanimate objects like particles and atoms, but also are involved in the reorganization of complex systems composed of living beings. Acknowledging the influence of paradigms opens several epistemological issues that call into question labels such as raw data and immediate experience. Delving into these problems, Kuhn writes: It is, of course, by no means clear that we need be so concerned with immediate experiencethat is, with the perceptual features that a paradigm so highlights that they surrender their regularities almost upon inspection. Those features must obviously change with the scientists commitments to paradigms, but they are far from what we ordinarily have in mind when we speak of raw data or the brute experience from which scientific research is reputed to proceed. (1996, 125) This problem is not new to philosophy. Descartes formulated the initial setup to this problem by arguing for two substances: res cogitas and res extensa. That the mental substance was split from the material substance allowed the stage to be set for three centuries of epistemological debate that ran from Berkeley to Hume and reached a peak with Immanual Kant. Again, what Kuhn is suggesting does not follow this frame. The problem of representing the direct experience of a concrete environment in neutral language is itself the setup of a particularly sedimented practice of epistemology.

27 The idea of descriptive symbols falling along one side of a wall permeated only by inadequate representation, with concrete phenomena arrayed on the other, is a historical artifact. Kuhn (1996) and the pragmatists suggest otherwise, first critiquing the value of a neutrally descriptive language, and second by critiquing the stability of a given world that is present to description. Because the only worlds possible to describe are those that are already prepared for description by specific paradigmatic values, a descriptive language can be said to be continuous with, but never fully adequate to, the phenomena in question: No language thus restricted to reporting a world fully known in advance can produce mere neutral and objective reports on the given. Philosophical investigation has not yet provided even a hint of what a language able to do that would be like (1996, 127). Framing scientific practice in this way is not cause for a despairing solipsism that contradicts the objective nature of science; the failure of representation does not imply the loss of concrete worlds either in knowledge or in experience. It merely reinscribes the notion that the philosophical projects of materialism, idealism, and dualism are themselves paradigms that can no longer confront in an adequate way the knowledge provided by a historical account of scientific revolutions. However, we must push past even this sophisticated postmodern insight and insist on the relation of paradigms to each other, and to the worlds they enact. The ecology of the natural world is complex because the nature of paradigms is such that they must emphasize certain phenomena and not others (Kuhn 1996). Nevertheless, the term thermodynamics refers to the concrete world of ecosystems ecology, and evolutionary theory accounts for the real events of organic life forms in

28 their ongoing transformation and evolution. But, as is shown in Chapters 3 and 4, the ecosystem is an ecology that can be understood in multiple ways, using different descriptive languages that are active in the bringing forth of specific aspects of an ecosystem. Our original point is in this way affirmed: natural ecologies are linked to conceptual ecologies. Paradigms, and the history of scientific revolutions, represent an avenue into studying the relationship between such ecologies; both of which are complexly material (the lived experience of organic bodies) and ideological (the universal mathematical laws which govern all energy flow in an ecosystem). As is expressed by NCT, dialectical biology, and enactivism, organisms are actively engaged in the transformation of their environment, as those environments then feed back to and transform the organism. This biological interpretation of evolution which offers the continuity between disparate aspects of a system but maintains the integrity of individuals (their structurally determined autopoietic nature)offers a model by which one can understand the relationship between paradigms and the environments that they study. Again, the notion of coimplicative or mutually enfolded agencies becomes critical; the idea is inside the event as the event is inside the idea. It is in this way that one can describe an ecology of paradigms. The ecological turn suggests that paradigms are not representational structures of fixed environments that suffer or succeed in greater levels of adaptive fit. Rather, through ecologizing the paradigmatic structure it becomes possible to understand paradigms as creative and productive of new worlds of understanding. The creative potential of the paradigm thus has a concrete impact on how living systems are organized and in what manner humans relate to them.

29 CHAPTER 3 POLITICS AND PARADIGMS IN THE HISTORY OF ECOLOGY The history of ecology, because it is so heavily influenced by evolutionary theory and other branches of science, cannot be thought of as an isolated school of thought. Rather, the history of ecology can be viewed as the concrescence of several disciplines that range variously from physics, chemistry, biology, geography, anthropology, and theology. As such, the history accounted for here draws diversely from these branches and attempts to give a background for present day debates in ecological theory. This chronology builds a context with which the reader can think and understand ecology. For a full account of the history of evolution the reader is referred to Bowler (2009) and for the history of ecology to Worster (1994). The question of beginnings co-arises with any attempt to write history, and one is forced to ask: Where does the history of ecology start? Again, one can in various ways argue this point indefinitely, especially if ideological precursors are taken into account. The following list begins in the eighteenth century, but this should in no way imply to the reader that older historical currents are not present in the ideas described below.

History of Evolution Carl Linnaeus (17071778) founded the basis for modern biological classification in the mid-eighteenth century, a system of identification that would later allow the cataloguing of the individuals and populations within an ecological system. Though Linnaeus work was helpful in producing taxonomies of the natural world, his conception of the universe as a divinely ordered chain of being was decidedly different from the one

30 modern science describes. For Linnaeus the universe was ordered and created by God, and did not originally support the idea that new species emerged (though he did eventually change his position). For most of his life, Linnaeus saw a process of hybridization and recombination among already divinely created species, and never the emergence of new ones (Bowler 2009, 50-51). Linnaeus was a vitalist who envisioned a world of stable, circular flow. Though balanced and benevolent, Nature, for Linnaeus, was a fixed hierarchy, unchanging over time, that expressed itself through man in a natural theology (Bramwell 1989, 46). With an eye for biology still under the control of classical theological thinking, Linnaeus certainly contributed to biology, but his ideas could still not yet be considered as evolutionary or ecological in the contemporary sense. Jean-Baptiste Lamarck (17441829) marks the first place in history where a true sense of evolution is described, though whether or not his version of evolution can be said to be a viable precursor to modern accounts of evolutionary theory is contested. It is not debated that Lamarcks theory of acquired characteristics was the first major and comprehensive attempt to construct a theory that supported the view that all living forms emerged from primitive ancestors. However, where nineteenth century neo-Lamarckians assumed Lamarck to have been the first to propose a modern theory of evolution based on the idea of descent from a single ancestor, subsequent historians of science now argue that Lamarcks vision was based on a very different set of principles from those that now furnish the underpinnings of modern scientific ideas about evolution (Bowler 2009, 8687).

31 Lamarck occupies a place in the history of evolution that stands between the ideals of the Romantic worldview that emphasized an organismic, interdependent holism, but also drew heavily from the insights of Enlightenment materialism, which favored a universal, mechanistic interpretation of the universe (Bowler 2009, 87). In Lamarcks understanding, the mechanism of evolution was twofold. First, an organism develops capacities throughout its lifetime based on the frequent and continuous usage of specific aspects of its morphology. Thus, what is used more often is strengthened and improved; that which is not used deteriorates. The strengths of an organism depend then upon the way that organism behaves through time. These traits, accumulated over a single life span, would then be passed on to the next generation through heredity. Secondly, the environment largely determines the use of certain traits over others; those aspects or traits an organism modifies through use are selected by the demands of external conditions (Bowler 2009, 92). The latter of Lamarcks two postulates, the environmental selection of acquired characteristics within a species, would remain scientifically viable up through the Darwinian revolution. However, Lamarck was said to have placed greater emphasis on the initial behavioral modification than on the effects of the environment (Bowler 2009, 93). For some, modern genetic research seems to have invalidated Lamarcks claims of acquired characteristics (Bowler 2009). Others, such as Margulis (1998) and Margulis and Sagan (1997) have argued that variants of Lamarcks theory of adaptation by acquired characteristics are features of symbiogenesis, defined as evolutionary change by the inheritance of acquired gene sets (Margulis 1998, 9). Gunter (2008) argues that

32 Lamarckianism is again being seen as a viable evolutionary mechanism, arguing for two kinds of acquired characteristics: temporary and permanent. Citing multiple studies on emus, water fleas, and radishes, Gunter finds evidence for Lamarckian inheritance. In these cases, the question is not if, but how, this process of acquired inheritance functions. Gunter also recognizes the insights of Margulis symbiogenesis theory, but differentiates this form of inheritance from his own arguments on neo-Lamarckianism. Lamarcks contributions to evolutionary thinking for these reasons, remain controversial. From a different perspective, Gould (1981) argues that though biological evolution does not appear to operate via Lamarckian mechanisms, cultural evolution, in fact, does. Cultural evolution, as opposed to biological evolution, can operate in a Lamarckian mode because, whatever one individual or generation learns in its lifetime, can be passed to the next by writing, instruction, inculcation, ritual, tradition, and a host of methods that humans have developed to assure continuity in culture (Gould 1981, 325). Taking these multiple perspectives on the legacy of Lamarck prohibits one from adamantly proposing that Lamarckianism has been left to history. Though his legacy is unclear, and his proposed mechanisms of evolution are still contested and argued over, Lamarck remains a pivotal, though controversial figure, in the history of evolutionary thought.
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5. Margulis: Symbiosis is a kind, but not the notorious kind, of Lamarckianism. Lamarckianism, named for Jean Baptiste Lamarck, who the French claim was the first evolutionist, is often dismissed as inheritance of acquired characteristics. In simple Lamarckianism, organisms inherit traits induced in their parents environmental conditions, whereas through symbiogenesis, organisms acquire not traits but entire other organisms, and of course, their entire sets of genes! (1998, 8).

33 Lamarck was followed by Georges Cuvier (17691832), a biologist who strongly opposed Lamarcks theories and developed new techniques in comparative taxonomy such that For Cuvier, the relationships between species were based on similarities in their internal structure, not on an ordered ranking of their external characters (Bowler 2009, 94). Cuviers comparative anatomy, juxtaposed to the Linnaean divinely ordered taxonomy (which rested on the idea of a great chain of being spanning from the simplest life on earth, peaking with man and driving straight towards God), marks another paradigm shift in thought that indicates a broader turn away from divinely ordered explanatory principles, even if Cuvier and the French scientific community he was well regarded within (itself a part of a conservative aristocracy), remained for the most part theistic (Bowler 2009). Charles Lyell (17971875) has been described as the founder of modern geology (Bowler 2009). His work Principles of Geology proposed the method of uniformitarianism: the rate of all changes is presumed to be absolutely uniform through time. Only observable causes acting at observable intensities can be used to explain past events (130-131). Lyell believed, according to Bowler, that: The chief obstacle to scientific progress have been the willingness to speculate about unknown causes in the past, and the refusal to contemplate a massive extension of the history of the earth (Bowler 2009, 131). Lyells view of the earth was tied deeply to science, but also to prevailing intuitions concerning Gods nature. For Lyell, evidence of Gods participation in the structure and order of the world could be directly evidenced by the observable fact that the earth had apparently maintained a perfect and self-regulatory system for the

34 entire period to which human inquiry had access. God then, was a perfect workman, with creation held in an eternal balance (Bowler 2009, 132). Lyells commitments to both a classical theism and scientific advances through the study of geology had mixed effects. On the one hand, he argued for an extension of geological timelines in an age when the clergy still tried to maintain a literal interpretation of the Genesis story. On the other hand, because he was still committed to a classical theology, his expansion of earths timeline also coevolved with a sense that the earth had changed little since its creation, that animals did not, on the whole, go extinct, and furthermore, that the appearance of human beings in the midst of other life forms on earth was a special case of divine intervention. Morality, intelligence, and spirituality, for Lyell, were not the product of a gradual evolution of an earth that primarily existed in a steady state, but were rather imported by God into creation (Bowler 2009). Though Lamarcks theories are credited as being the first truly evolutionary paradigm, it is Charles Darwins 1859 publication of his On the Origin of Species that systematically lays out the principle mechanism of evolution that history has carried forth to the present day: evolution by natural selection. Applying Lyells extended timeline and gradualist perspective of geological change to the natural world, Darwin (18091882) interpreted evolution as the adaptation of organisms to their surrounding environments over long time scales. Any theory or doctrine, be it scientific, religious, or political, that has had as much cultural impact as Darwins theory of evolution is necessarily complex and contestable from a variety of directions. 6. Larson affirms this point: Lyells uniformitarianism . . . did not challenge the doctrine of special creation in biology, however. If anything it expanded the Creators role by requiring ongoing or recurrent creation events (2006, 90).
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35 Bowler (2009) suggests that there are two main approaches to Darwins theory: an internal approach that sees Darwin as a scientist working in his field trying to solve the specific scientific problems of his day, and an external approach which suggests that Darwins emphasis on competition and struggle were projections of his embeddedness in nineteenth century economic and political ideologies. The externalist enthralls in the study of science in terms of its cultural impact and embeddedness. Focusing on the historicity of the scientific endeavor, the externalist sidelines important scientific issues. The internalist, on the other hand, proceeds via an ahistorical understanding of scientific practice, centralizing only the relevant scientific problems at the expense of sociohistorical issues. Thus, The one reduces Darwin to a puppet controlled by ideological forces, mechanically translating his social prejudices into an equivalent view of nature. The other views him as the discoverer of a self-evident model of nature who merely saw what was there (Bowler 2009, 143-144). For the externalist, Darwins theory is viewed with skepticism because of the way natural selection lined up with the political ideologies of the time. For Darwin, natural selection was the struggle for survival in the context of a finite environment composed of resources that must be competitively obtained; what was success for one was a loss for the other. Darwins thinking in this area was heavily inspired by Thomas Malthus 1798 work Essay on the Principle of Population (1983). The Malthusian struggle for existence was based on the observation that population grows geometrically, whilst the ability to increase food supplies grew only arithmetically. Bowler describes Malthus as a clergyman who believed God had created such an apparently harsh situation for

36 humankind for a moral purpose (Bowler 2009 104). The fact that Malthus was also a supporter of the prevailing economic regimes, also added support to the externalist position that Darwin was simply reading into nature the political views of his time: Malthus was certainly an exponent of laissez-faire: he believed that state relief for the poor merely encouraged them to breed more rapidly. There is no doubt that the principles of utilitarianism and individualism form the common context within which both social and biological theories were debated (Bowler 2009, 105). The work of Thomas Malthus and others such as Adam Smiths The Wealth of Nations (published in 1776), had already created an environment that envisioned the competitive individual, acting in a free market, as the primary (and healthiest) motive force in society. That Darwin would similarly argue for the role of competition seemed to naturalize the political thinking of the time, in ways that would anticipate but not fully articulate, the social Darwinian paradigms that would emerge in the twentieth century. Though Darwins natural selection was An ecology based on struggle (Bowler 2009, 152) that fit in with the dominant political and economic regimes of the late nineteenth century, it did finally appear that a mechanism adequate to explaining evolution had been found, at least within the scientific understanding of the time.
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8. In contemporary evolutionary thought, though smaller in number, several scientists, many cited in this work, maintain that natural selection via adaptation is still an inadequate mechanism to explain the complexity and diversity of evolution. Gunter (2008), Lewontin (1991), Levins and Lewontin (1985), Lewontin and Levins (2007), Margulis (1998), Margulis and Sagan (1997), Varela, Thompson, and Rosch (1983), Thompson (2007), Odling-Smee, Laland, and Feldman (2003), Maturana and Varela (1998), and Ayala (2008) do not deny the role of natural selection but maintain, in various ways, that this account of evolution remains incomplete.

37 In Darwins understanding, evolution by natural selection meant that organisms with certain traits adapted more or less successfully to fixed environments. The organisms better suited to the environment would have a reproductive advantage and so would leave more offspring, offspring which through processes of heredity would possess similar traits as their parents. In this way, the environment, without predetermination, selects amongst the traits in a population; this is the long sought after mechanism by which species transform over time. Darwin remains the central figure in historical texts, scientific thinking and in social imaginaries when it comes to the topic of evolution. Gregor Mendel (18221884) founded the basis for modern genetics in the 1850s and 1860s. Mendels work along with Darwins theory of natural selection became known in the 20th century as the modern synthesis, which combined the insights of both theories to articulate the currently dominate mode of understanding in both ecology and evolution. Gregor Mendel, a monk from Brno, Czechoslovakia, was able to show with certainty that specific heritable traits, without exhibiting any change, could be transmitted between parents and offspring. The changes in populations as a result of natural selection, which Darwinian evolution emphasized, showed that changes in inherited characteristics effected the differential survival and reproduction of organisms (Margulis & Sagan 1997, 270). Ayala (2008) notes that the interest in genetics emerged following Theodosius Dobzhanskys 1937 paper Genetics and the Origin of Species. Ayala also comments that the use of the terms neo-Darwinism and the modern synthesis are most commonly used in historical or philosophical contexts, suggesting that biologists refer to

38 their theories more straightforwardly as just evolution, indicating the extent to which the modern synthesis has been accepted by the scientific community (Alaya 2008). In 1975 E. O. Wilson published his highly controversial book Sociobiology: The New Synthesis, defining sociobiology as the systemic study of the biological basis of all social behavior (2000, 4). From Wilsons perspective, the neo-Darwinian impact on evolutionary theory (expressed in the modern synthesis) has reshaped every mode of human inquiry with implications even for social sciences and the humanities (including philosophy, poetry, and the fine arts). For Wilson, each discipline now awaits integration as the last branches of biology waiting to be included in the modern synthesis (4). Sociobiologys purpose is to enact this transition of the social sciences and humanities into alignment with a neo-Darwinian paradigm that explains all human endeavors in terms of their adaptive significance within the context of population genetics (4). In this manner, Wilsons sociobiological paradigm ventured, as the name implies, to account for elements of human cultural and sociological behavior in ways that could be explained by Darwins mechanism of natural selection, combined with twentieth century insights into genetics. Wilsons aim was to produce a science of measured predictability that could demonstrate that cultural behaviors could be explained as accurately as the phenomena studied in other sciences such as physics and chemistry. This approach has been criticized numerous times since Wilson first suggested it in the nineteen seventies (see below), and as such has reformulated itself in response to these criticisms, renaming itself generally as the field now known as evolutionary psychology. Nevertheless, as recently as 1998, Wilson has continued with his program to

39 explain and reformulate the social sciences and the humanities in terms of biophysical principles in his book Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge. Following the trend of genetic reductionism, Richard Dawkins published The Selfish Gene in 1976, arguing that humans are merely sophisticated machines used by genes for their own survival and reproduction. The Selfish Gene was both widely read and highly controversial, with much of the debate surrounding Dawkins definition of genes, and the role of human beings in their reproduction. Dawkins writes: Now they [the genes] swarm in huge colonies, safe inside gigantic lumbering robots, sealed off from the outside world, communicating with it by torturous indirect routes, manipulating it by remote control. They are in you and in me; they created us body and mind; and their preservation is the ultimate rationale for our existence. They have come along way, those replicators. Now they go by the name of genes, and we are their survival machines. (1976, 19-20) For Dawkins, the gene is the central unit of natural selection. Gene reproduction is the sole basis of life, and all varieties of species from bacteria to complex vertebrates with nervous systems are simply means by which genes replicate; individuals are epiphenomenal in this sense. Genes and their reproduction are what counts. The emphasis on the selfish nature of genetic reproduction has caused some to criticize Dawkins of pursuing an immoral line of inquiry. In his defense, Dawkins states in the introduction to The Selfish Gene: This brings me to the first point I want to make about what this book is not. I am not advocating a morality based on evolution. I am saying how things have evolved. I am not saying how we humans morally ought to behave (1976, 2-3). Similarly, in the endnotes to his text, Dawkins notes the tenacious 9. Dawkins himself admits that the title of his book The Selfish Gene could have just as accurately been titled The Co-operative Gene, citing that selfishness and cooperation are equally valid methods of promoting gene reproduction, though the latter can only be thought of as a strategy from promoting the genes own selfish welfare (2004, 187).
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40 links between his views on evolution and those of contemporary political ideologies: Now that Britain has a government of the new right, which has elevated meanness and selfishness to the status of ideology, my words seem to have acquired a kind of nastiness by association, which I regret (1976, 268). Dawkins and Wilson are both noteworthy in that they also evidence a break from the previous entanglement of theism with biological and evolutionary thought. Contra Linnaeus, Lyell, and even Darwin, Dawkins (2008) and Wilson (2006) are both firm atheists; the natural theology previously wed to biological science did not influence the work of either men, except as a source of criticism. According to Larson (2006), Stephen Jay Gould and Richard Lewontin criticized the approach forwarded by Wilson and Dawkins, not for religious reasons, but by arguing that the exclusive emphasis on the natural selection of genes was insufficient in accounting for the adaptation of organisms. Gould, arguing against variants of biological determinism such as sociobiology, writes: The classical arguments of biological determinism fail because the features they invoke to make distinctions among groups are usually the products of cultural evolution (1981, 325). And that We now believe that different attitudes and styles of thought among human groups are usually the nongenetic products of cultural evolution. In short the biological basis of human uniqueness leads us to reject biological determinism (325). Gould, for biological reasons based on the nongenetic basis of cultural evolution and change, suggests that the case for biological determinism is lacking. Gould specifically attacks sociobiology by arguing that the field employs the modern interpretation of natural selection (differential reproductive success of

41 individuals) in its theory of culture. Gould held that sociobiologists utilize the Darwinian paradigm to organize individuals around the idea that individuals themselves are only gene carriers that attempt to maximize the distribution of their genes to subsequent generations. Sociobiology is thus a projection of the Darwinian paradigm of natural selection that overlay biological change onto cultural behaviors. For Gould, sociobiology presents an unwarranted description of culture based on an already present narrative of natural selection that offers little in the way of empirical evidence. For sociobiologists, Gould claims, the inference of adaptation is marshaled as a sufficient explanatory principle but is not backed up by hard data (1981, 326). With both Lewontin and Dawkins still publishing books that are widely read in both popular and scientific circles, the relationship between biological determinism and cultural evolution remains strongly contested. What is clear, however, is that each paradigm reorganizes the logic driving human behavior. Whereas one biologist sees clear evidence for the genetic determinism of culture, the other does not. In either case the paradigm of research can be seen to reorganize the nature and identity of human thought in ways that impact the rationale of cultural and ecological practice. In 1988, E. O. Wilson would again make important contributions to the history of ecology by using the term biodiversity for the first time in a published work (2006). This term describes the degree of variation of life forms within a given ecosystem. Biodiversity incorporates diversity at multiple levels of an ecosystem to describe genetic diversity, species diversity, and ecosystem diversity. The term emerges coincident with the so-called sixth mass extinction event, an event that Wilson describes as the worst,

42 most rapid, episode of species extinction the earth has experienced in over 100 million years (2006). Following a different trajectory than the genetic reductionist program of Dawkins et al. in the late twentieth century, atmospheric scientist James Lovelock (1979) and biologist Lynn Margulis (1998) forwarded the now famous Gaia theory (then called the Gaia hypothesis), the view that the planet is a single, self-regulating system. When the Gaia hypothesis was introduced in the 1970s, Lovelock sought to test the idea that life and the behavior of organisms had meaningful consequences in the regulation of things such as global temperature, oxidity, acidity, and even the formation of rocks. The Gaia hypothesis linked atmosphere, ocean, and climate to ecology and organismic activity. Biota automatically produce and maintain a homeostatic, planetary feedback process that ensures the future stability of the proliferation of life-forms on earth, they argued. As life evolves, so do the environmental and atmospheric conditions of the planet. The Gaia hypothesis argued for the closely coupled evolution of organisms and their environments (Lovelock 1988, 19). Early publications of Lovelocks argument date back to 1972, with a popularized book version entitled Gaia: A New Look at Life on Earth published in 1979. This view articulates the position that life, from its inception, has played a dramatic role in transforming the surrounding environment.
10

Margulis also argues for symbiogenesis (an idea originally articulated by Konstantin Mereschkowsky in 1926) in a 1976 paper entitled The Origin of Mitosing Eukaryotic Cells (1998). Symbiogenesis is the process by which two separate organisms become one through a process of symbiosis, highlighting the role of cooperation as a key 10. See Stephan Hardings Animate Earth: Science, Intuition, and Gaia (2006) for a detailed and up to date account of Gaia theory today.

43 element in evolutionary theory. Margulis notes that symbiogenesis or symbiosis, was a term first coined by the German botanist Anton deBary in 1873. Margulis defines it as the living together of very different kinds of organisms (1998, 33). Symbiosis, for Margulis, is a major component of the evolutionary process where In certain cases of cohabitation, long-term living, results in symbiogenesis: the appearance of new bodies, new organs, new species (33). Margulis, contra the popular ideology of evolutionary thinking, views symbiogenesis as the main engine of evolutionary novelty and diversity. Margulis, taking an approach that differs from that of Dawkins and Wilson, forwards symbiosis, and not the competition of selfish genes, to explain evolutionary drives (1998). Unlike Gould and Lewontin, Margulis develops her understanding of evolution not by critiquing elements of the modern synthesis primarily (though she also does this), but by researching the role symbiosis has played in evolution. According to Margulis, all organisms large enough for us to see are actually ecologies of previously independent individuals. Margulis theory of symbiogenesis seeks to explain the origin of plant and animal cells alike through a process of symbiogenic body fusion. For Margulis, cell biology becomes cell ecology, a move that recognizes the autonomy of the cell, but also accounts for the emergence of the cell as a history of tightly coupled associations of previously distinct individuals. What are now the organelles within a cell were once full organisms operating independently in the environment (1998, 33-34). In the first half of the twentieth century, the modern synthesis appeared to have closed the door on the debate surrounding the nature of the evolutionary process, at least primarily, with only small details left to fill in. However, as Bowler acknowledges, newer interpretations of evolution such as punctuated equilibriumthe view that net species

44 change is largely static for the majority of a species existence but is then punctuated by sudden and rapid speciation events that produce great change, as well the effects of mass extinction periodsboth represent additional discontinuities within an evolutionary process thought to be gradual and continuous in a Darwinian sense (2009). Thus: The synthesis, especially in its hardened form, took it for granted that evolution was driven solely by the demands of adaptation . . . In response, a new generation of critics has emerged to suggest that this ultra-adaptationism goes too far (348). To Bowlers examples of synthesis, challengers one can also add the works cited above drawing upon Gould, Lewontin, Margulis, and Lovelock. In addition to this, several theories that are articulated in later chapters, such as Varela, Thompson, and Roschs (1983) autopoiesis, Lewontin and Levins (2007) dialectical biology, and niche construction theory also represent a movement away from the neo-Darwinian paradigm. All offer approaches to evolutionary theory, which, while not denying the role of Darwinian natural selection by adaptation, point variously to: the role of the cell as an independent autopoietic unity differentiated from, but dependent upon its environment (Varela, Thompson, & Rosch 1983); the complex relationship between gene, organism, and environment (Lewontin and Levins 2007); and the creative role organisms play in constructing their environments (Oddling-Smee, Laland, and Feldman 2003). In addition to the works of Varela, Thompson, Margulis, Lewontin, Gould, and Oddling-Smee, Gunter [drawing on Ilya Prigogines nonequilibrium thermodynamics ] offers seven expanded versions of traditional Darwinian approaches to natural selection including: (a) quantum evolution (drawing on quantum decoherence); (b) 11. See also Evolution, Complexity, and Energy Flow in the same volume.
11

45 thermodynamic evolution; (c) chaos evolution (again using physics to explore the nonlinear emergence of new forms); (d) neo-Lamarckianism (with supporting evidence drawn from Barbara McClintocks dynamic genome); (e) Howard Temins discovery of reverse transcriptase); (f) Baldwinian evolution (exploring the role of choice in the life of an organism to migrate to new environments with different selection pressures ); and (g) the already mentioned symbiogenesis of Lynn Margulis (Gunter 2008). These alternatives are not further explored in this paper, but are mentioned to establish the variety of approaches to contemporary evolutionary theory. The complexity of evolutionary dynamics requires that as a theory, evolution remain open to change, refinement, and in certain cases, the type of scientific revolution Kuhn (1996) points to as necessary in the case of a paradigm shift in scientific theory.
13

History of Ecology We begin our study of ecology with Ernst Haeckel (18341919), who published his work Morphology of Organisms in 1866 where the term ecology is coined and defined as the study of the relationships between organisms and their environments. Though he Haeckel is credited with establishing the term, some historians argue that his intention was never to create a new field of study apart from other scientific disciplines, but rather to suggest that Darwins idea of a struggle for existence presupposed the need for a new method of analysis within the sciences (Kingsland 2005, 68). The Morphology of Organisms, where Haeckel introduced the word Oekologie, marked a transition to a more holistic biology that looked at organisms in their context; 13. See also Weber and Depews Evolution and Learning: The Baldwin Effect Reconsidered (2007).

46 their life-cycle, their environment and their place in the cycle of energy use (Bramwell 1989, 40). Haeckels use of the term corresponded to the emergence of several related concepts present across disciplines. Terms such as fundamental biological notions and biological ethology expressed similar ecological ideas that extended the web of relationships from the physical sphere, energy and resources cycled between sun, water, plants and animals. It showed that habitat and animals, group and individual, instinctive drives and learned adaptations, had to be seen together and in context, if animals, and by implication man, were to be understood (Bramwell 1989, 41-42). According to Bramwell, not only did Haeckel express a scientific idea that was burgeoning amongst other researchers in his field, but his view of life as fundamentally ecological was also inspired by (and probably contributed to) his political and metaphysical beliefs (1989). Bramwell argues that Haeckels ecological vision was supported by three primary intuitions. The first being that, for Haeckel, the universe was best interpreted as a balanced and unified organism. Though he was an atheist for much of his young adult life and career, his monistic view of the cosmos eventually echoed Spinozas Deus sive Natura, remarking that God and Nature were identical concepts. The second idea which primed him for ecological thinking stemmed from his belief that human and animal were fundamentally of the same order, both morally and naturally; his nonanthropocentrism allowing him access to a style of thought consilient with the ecological attitude. Finally, Bramwell also suggests that ecological thinking, for Haeckel, could become the cornerstone for the organization of society, where scientific observation would establish the most appropriate structure of human culture.

47 Though many of his beliefs seem consistent with twenty-first century ecology, at least philosophically, Haeckel still held a number of ideas unacceptable to most contemporary interpretations of biological science. Influenced by social Darwinism and an unbridled belief in the capacity of science to achieve pure knowledge (and thus leading to a harmonious organization of the polis), Haeckel did not support the ideals of a democratic society, preferring instead to lead the populous by way of an apolitical sciencean anthropology of the human as a clear rationality that could replace the less accurate art of politics in the management of human beings (Bramwell 1989, 52-53). Ecological science and evolutionary theory both had impacts on the religious worldviews of the time. In particular, Darwinian mechanisms of evolution were threatening the approach taken by the Romantic traditions and approaches to science that were informed by natural theology. The latter was first proposed by William Paleys book Natural Theology, published in 1802. In general, natural theology posited that the scientific study of nature would lead to a greater understanding of God (Bowler 2009), an idea commensurable with both Haeckels and Spinozas positions. For Paley, using his famous analogy of the watch and the watchmaker, the fact that there was order and perceived design in the universe, called for the logical need for a designer, God. However, in the previous century, the works of Galileo, Descartes, and Newton (all of whom were still theists), were describing the universe as matter in motion, or perhaps more aptly, viewing the cosmos as a giant interconnected machine that flowed with lawful procession at every size and scale. This raised an important question to the faithful: if the world consisted only of material particles (atoms, as the ancient philosophers had called them), on what grounds could one believe there was a God who

48 both created and cared for the system? (Bowler 2009, 38). The influence of the mechanist position and the Romantic, natural theological position would both make their presence felt in the field of ecology, as was already anticipated by Haeckels monism. In the context of biological sciences, scientists of the Enlightenment such as Renee Descartes and Isaac Newton would later be joined by thinkers in the German idealist and Romantic tradition such as Immanuel Kant, Friedrich Schelling, and G. W. F. Hegel to create the context within which Darwinism could emerge as an ecological explanatory principle. The scientific approach founded in the Enlightenment would mix with a romanticism that stressed the freedom of the human spirit and the sublimity of nature (Bowler 2009, 100) and an idealism that saw history developing through a series of distinct stages and driven by a universal spiritual power beyond the control of individual human beings (101). Worster (1994), situating ecology within the greater context of spiritual and cultural ideals, also includes the philosophical precursors to ecology present in the Romantic thought of the time. Tracing the influence of writers such as Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, William Wordsworth, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Henry David Thoreau, Worster supports the idea of a romantic period of ecology rooted in the traditions of European Romanticism and American Transcendentalism. Worster explains that the Romantic approach to nature emphasized characteristics such as relation, interdependence, and holism. As such the Romantic worldview can be considered fundamentally ecological (1994). For Worster, the relationship between Romanticism and ecology is most evident with the work of Thoreau: In his life and work we find a key

49 expression of the Romantic stance toward the earth as well as an increasingly complex and sophisticated ecological philosophy (1994, 58). Thoreaus (Worster 1994) romantically inspired ecological ideas, though informed by Darwin and culturally very significant, did not capture the social imagination of biologists in an enduring way; they were gradually turning away from the Romantic notions of New England Transcendentalism (though not entirely committing to a full atheism) through a conversion to ideological precursors such Jeremy Benthams utilitarian ideals and the previous centuries introduction to Adam Smiths laissez-faire economics, both of which champion an individualistic, competitive drive at the center of human identity (cited in Bowler 2009). In this sense, Darwin marks a turning point in the conception of ecology, as evolution by natural selection revolutionized ecological thought in the late 1800s. Worster describes Darwin as The single most important figure in the history of ecology over the past two or three centuries (1994, 114), and also marks Darwin as the turning away from Romantic views of nature, toward a more pessimistic view shared by other thinkers who influenced Darwin, such as Thomas Malthus. Larson (2006) affirms this point, arguing that though Darwin was himself not an atheist, his success in explaining the evolution of life on earth through the mechanism of natural selection pushed the event of Gods creation further and further back into time. Larson goes on to suggest that by providing a mechanism for evolution that required no ongoing participation from the Divine Creator, Darwin effectively undermined natural theology. Moreover, this was culturally very significant in the English-speaking world because

50 science was still organized around the idea that natural theology (i.e., science of the natural world) was a central and intellectual necessity (2006, 90). Darwins insighthat evolution occurs by descent with modification towards the ability to survive and reproduceis not just paradigmatically different from the approach of Thoreau and the Romantics; it paints a different world picture based on the competitive drives of individuals, rather than the organic, interdependent holism depicted by Romantic philosophers. This affirms Kuhns point that a shift in paradigms can also be implicated in a greater shift in worldviews (1996). In this way, paradigms themselves cannot be studied in isolation in terms of their adaptive fit to a given subject of study; rather, the worldview which accompanies some (but not all) paradigm shifts are recursively linked to larger political and cultural movements of the time. Paleys argument from design, however, still seemed a formidable claim to the remaining need for a Creator (cited in Alaya 2008 ).
14

Darwin, however, saw no need to

resort to arguments from design, having secured natural selection as a sufficient explanation of evolutionary processes. This contentious belief was difficult for many to accept, for if true, natural selection forced a shift in belief surrounding not just evolutionary processes, but by extension, a shift in the understanding of God and human nature. In other words, if it was as Darwin suggestedthat mental capacity or even human nature itself could result from purely natural, even mechanistic processesthen 14. Ayala (2008) still credits Paleys argument from design as the most articulate of all the design arguments. Variants of this argument still exist today, particularly in the work of Michael Behes book Darwins Black Box: The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution (2006). In this work Behe forwards a modern variant of Paleys argument, stating that evolution is irreducibly complex and cannot be accounted for by standard evolutionary mechanisms and implies the need for Gods intelligent design in the formation of life, a position refuted by most biologists.

51 natural theology had a serious crisis of explanation on its hands. Natural theology, which posited that a scientific study of the natural world would disclose the nature of its creator (God), had to in someway explain the apparently random and cruel processes of natural selection that seemed to describe so accurately how the forms of life came to be. Solutions to this crisis were limited in scope and necessarily implied that The escape from this dark line of reasoning came in denying either natural theology, God, or Darwinism (Larson 2006, 92). A further articulation of the debate surrounding the possibility of Gods participation in the world, even in Gods existence in general, is beyond scope of this work. However, it should be evident to the reader that ecology and evolution have implications that draw in theology and larger philosophical concepts, advancing the notion that ideas cannot be thought of as self-contained, and are rather complexly linked to their cultural environments and objects of study in an ongoing and ecologically recursive way. Leaving the natural theology debates, we turn to the first use of the word biosphere to describe the entire life sphere surrounding the planet. The term, originally coined by Eduard Suess in 1875 (Wikipedia 2004), would not become popularized until Russian biologist Vladamir Vernadsky (18631945) published his work La Biosphre, in 1926. Shortly following this publication, Vernadsky would be met by French paleontologist and Jesuit priest, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (18811955), who coined the term noosphere following their encounter (cited in Bramwell 1989, 62). Vernadsky introduced notable contributions through his use of the term, bringing together elements of physics, chemistry, and biology to describe the life-envelope that surrounds the

52 geological layers of the earth on a planetary scale. Teilhard, building upon Vernadsky, suggested that, in addition to a biosphere, there is also reason to delineate a noosphere, from the Greek nous meaning mind, that emerges out of the collective human capacity for self-reflection (Teilhard de Chardin 2003). In the context of early ecology, two different thinkers, Ellsworth Huntington, a geographer, and Frederic Edward Clements, a plant ecologist, described two different approaches to the new science: human ecology and general ecology, respectively (Kingsland 2005, 130). For Huntington: humans should be placed at center stage, so that the problems of human adaptation to a changing land could be explored as an intrinsic part of the larger study of organic adaptation (quoted in Kingsland 2005, 131). By contrast, Clements favored an approached that focused on natural communities of organisms, communities that might be studied without reference to human activity. In [Clements] vision, ecology was not directly concerned with problems of human health and evolution (Kingsland 2005, 131). Although their approaches are antagonistic, Kingsland suggests that both scientists adopted a near-utopian ideal of the future based on the belief that scientific knowledge of the world would enable control of it. For Huntington this would be achieved through a technological manipulation of the environment to better suit the needs of humans, while Clements believed that ecological knowledge would lead to land-management strategies that would secure an idealistic human future. The word ecosystem does not enter the vocabulary until English botanist Arthur Tansley coins the word in 1935 to refer to a holistic and integrative ecological concept that combined living organisms and the physical environment into a system

53 (quoted in Golley 1993, 8). Kingsland (2005), notes the shift in Tansleys approach to ecology, which rested on the inclusion of abiotic factors in the environment in addition to the evolution of living forms: Ecologists not only studied the organisms of a community but also the physical factors that formed the environment in which they lived, and from which they could not be separated (184). Tansley is also significant for his work on the problem of how to integrate humans and human societies into an ecological perspective. Tansley supported the idea of the existence of different kinds of ecosystems. Some of these might be created by humans, but this was irrelevant to Tansley because he believed both human created ecosystems and natural ecosystems were produced by the same fundamental processes. In his holistic perspective, Tansley wished to envision the whole in a way that included humans as intrinsic parts of the system (Kingsland 2005, 185). Tansleys holism thus sought to explore the impact humans might have on landscapes and on the ecological relationships between other organisms (185). Following a turn to the ecosystem as the focus of ecology, Eugene Odum published Fundamentals of Ecology in 1953 (Odum and Barret 2005).
15

For Odum the

ecosystem embraced both a concrete and an abstract definition. The concrete, commonsense approach would be easily understood by anyone accustomed to thinking of nature as made up of communities or natural groupings of organisms. An ecosystem was a natural unit including living and nonliving parts that interacted to produce a stable 15. Golley also suggests that the ecosystem concept, a concept that can be distinguished from other ecological concepts such as animal or plant ecology, can be broken into a formative phase between the nineteenth century and the start of the second world war, with developments occurring in both Europe and America (1993). This was followed by an organizational phase between world war two and the 1960s, and a contemporary phase leading into the present, both of which contain a strong American influence.

54 system (quoted in Kingsland 2005, 189). Odums idea of an ecosystem as a circular flow of materials exchanged between living and nonliving elements led him to postulate that the entire biosphere may be one large ecosystem (Kingsland 2005). Ideas of this scale were central to people like Odum in thinking about ecosystems science and for Vernadsky in describing the functioning of the biosphere. For both, the new science of cybernetics developed first by Norbert Weiner was an essential component (Bowler and Morus 2005, 231). For the science of cybernetics, self-regulation and positive or negative feedback loops were essential features, and key elements to the emerging ecosystems sciences. The ecosystem, though useful as a paradigmatic guide towards the organization and study of ecological communities, was also problematic in certain respects, for Ecosystems did not have easily identifiable boundaries; they were open systems connected to myriad other systems (Kingsland 2005, 191). In addition to the problems of identifying natural units of study, Eugene Odums approach to ecosystems science would differ greatly from that of his brother and collaborator, Todd Odum. Eugene approached the ecosystem using organic imagery and metaphors, implying that, for him, the ecosystem was a kind of living organism sustained by homeostatic processes. Likewise, Todd also thought of the ecosystem in terms of homeostatic mechanisms, but rather than organism, Todd saw the machine-like interface of complex feedback mechanisms operating in the ecosystem (Kingsland 2005). Thus His approach echoed the cybernetic way of thinking in its fascination with the similarity between organisms and machines. He took the ecosystem concept in a more mechanistic

55 direction . . . introducing symbols from electrical engineering to depict the main functions within the system using energy circuit diagrams (Kingsland 2005, 195). As evidenced by Todd Odums and Eugene Odums approaches to ecosystems ecology, the metaphors and paradigms applied to subjects of research have nontrivial effects in the delineation of functional apparatuses that are said to organize an ecosystem. Organismic metaphors are both qualitatively and functionally different from mechanistic ones. Though both Odum brothers were essential to establishing ecosystems ecology as a true paradigm of inquiry, it appears that even they did not agree on what an ecosystem was in a concrete sense, and differed in their metaphors and explanatory tools of study. This trend would continue into the 1970s, when a systems approach to ecology, marshaled further by an increase in mechanistic projection, would give the impression that human mastery over ecological systems was possible: Prediction implied control: systems ecology was about learning to design and control ecosystems, and the systems ecologists knew they would meet resistance from colleagues who found those goals inappropriate. Systems ecology brought together biology and engineering in a new synthesis. Humans were not just components of ecosystems, they were the designers and manipulators of systems. (Kingsland 2005, 218) The metaphors used to describe the functioning of natural systems, as well as the paradigmatic context within which research takes place, reinscribe the central thesis of this paper. Historical analysis provides a backing for understanding contemporary debates in ecological and evolutionary sciences, but perhaps more importantly, history also displays that science is always dependent upon paradigms and metaphoric descriptions to relate to any phenomena of study. This much has been said by Kuhn and other philosophers of science; however, the crucial distinction made in this paper refers to the capacity of paradigms to not simply reorganize intellectual practices, but also to

56 account for the roles paradigmatic ecosystems play in attempting to manage, describe, and in general, influence, the organization and well being of actual living ecological communities. The social imaginaries and mental ecologies that validate paradigmatic assumptions have real consequences for living worlds. Paradigmatic systems, because they have such consequences in describing the tone and character of living systems, are themselves necessary components of study. As Donna Haraway suggests, one needs to create an ethnography of cognitive practices to study the effects of the concepts being used in any given scientific research program (2001). Worster (1994) concludes his history of ecology with a movement towards what he calls the age of ecology, where he examines the contemporary integration of the reductive schools of Robert MacArthur and the holistic schools of Eugene Odum. Both of these schools will later take shape as evolutionary ecology and systems ecology, respectively.

Evolution and System Towards an Integrative Natural Ecology I focus now on current ecological debates surrounding what can be described as a rift between approaches to ecological science. Two divergent camps, one tending towards a systemic holism, the other towards reductionism, are, I argue, rearringing the fuller complexity of ecosystems activity through the employment of discipline-specific paradigms and metaphors. I offer this debate as an example of what Kuhn (1996) notes with regards to the relationship between paradigm and worldview, and how this relationship affects what sorts of entities emerge within a field of study.

57 In the fifth and most recent edition to the Fundamentals of Ecology series, Eugene Odum and Gary Barret (2005) argue that the term ecology, since it was coined by Ernst Haeckel in 1866, has undergone a series of paradigm shifts, culminating in the bridging of two major schools of thought: the reductionist approach forwarded by evolutionary ecology and the holistic approach of systems ecology. Odling-Smee, Laland, and Feldman (2003) also note this distinction; they argue that an extended theory of evolution must integrate what they refer to as process-functional ecology (systemic) and population-community ecology (evolutionary). Each approach has its own strengths and weaknesses, and is organized by different paradigms of scientific research. As discrete sciences, the systemic and evolutionary approaches reveal very different aspects of ecosystem functioning. In general, the evolutionary paradigm favors the study of genes, organisms, populations, and species; the biotic diversity of a given ecosystem; and the patterns of interaction between species as they conform to processes of natural selection. Because of this emphasis: The questions population-community ecologists ask are therefore strongly organism-oriented. Their subjects include the dynamics of population interactions, fluctuations in population sizes, the abundance of organisms, and the distribution of different species of organisms in communities (Oddling-Smee, Laland, and Feldman 2003, 204). The evolutionary approach is strong on maintaining the integrity of whole organisms, but loses sight of whole systems that would include biotic and abiotic levels of ecological interaction. The holistic or systemic approach focuses on material energy flows throughout the ecosystem as a whole. Systems ecologists use the principles of thermodynamics to study the material energy flows through an ecosystem and focus on biogeochemical

58 cycles, bioenergetics, and interactions between biotic and abiotic aspects of the ecosystem. The process-functional approach to a systems-level study of ecology proceeds in the following way: One of the principal goals of process-functional ecology is to understand how energy and matter flow through ecosystems, and, more particularly, how energy fluxes drive nutrient and material flows through both biotic and abiotic ecosystem compartments . . . The currencies they deal with are therefore energy and matter . . . they look primarily to the physical laws of thermodynamics, to the availability of free energy, to the conservation of energy and matter . . . (Oddling-Smee, Laland, and Feldman 2003, 202) Systems ecologists study an ecosystem in terms of the two laws of thermodynamics. The first law is that energy is neither created nor destroyed, only transformed; and the second law states that, within the boundaries of a closed system, all transformations of energy result in the loss of energy available to do future work, and an increase in the production of entropy in the system as a whole. A systems approach is holistic in nature, but also implies that ecosystems as a whole are nonevolutionary entities. Whole ecosystems cannot be said to evolve in the sense that organisms do because there is no process by which material energy flows can produce heritable traits that can be passed down generationally and inherited by future configurations of the ecosystem. The fact that physical systems technically cannot be said to evolve, is a key element in the rift between systemic and evolutionary approaches. I will return to this problem in more detail later. The systemic, process-functional approach is a strong framework for modeling biogeochemical cycles and the overall regulation of energetics within an ecosystem, but is weak in that systems approaches tend to lose sight of whole organisms and their impact

59 on ecosystemic cycles and flows (Oddling-Smee et al. 2003, 202-203). Golley writes of this discrepancy: The evolutionary ecology challenge was ignored by ecosystems ecologists initially because it was framed in terms that were not relevant to their interests. They had relatively little interest in species because they collapsed species into categories such as trophic levels . . . For this work, the theory of evolution was of little direct interest in the interpretation of ecosystem data. (Golley 1993, 5) The tension between evolutionary ecology and systems ecology exhibits the manner in which the paradigm of research is deeply implicated within its subjects of study. From different paradigmatic perspectives, variable entities emerge within an ecological system as the necessary and fundamental objects of study. Delineated by paradigmatic suppositions, scientists are in this way always bringing forth the study of certain kinds of worlds and not others. One of these worlds sees not organisms, but trophic structures and energy gradients, defining the landscape; the other sees a world of organismic evolution, where the environment is more or less fixed and poses an inflexible constraint on the populations that encounter it. A key element in the emerging transdisciplinary approaches to ecology is an awareness of, and sensitivity to, the role paradigms play in organizing features of the living world.
16

As is evidenced by the reductionist/holist split, paradigms

have real consequences for the configuration of living world spaces. Eugene Odums approach as it was originally formulated in the 1950s favored the holistic systems approach, arguing ecology must develop a unified theory of the ecosystem, described in precise mathematical and statistical terms, if the field was to be of any practical value. Such a theory must be holistic, not reductive (quoted in Worster 16. Both Nicolescu (2002) and Morin (2001) argue that a transdisciplinary approach is one that is attentive to the roles paradigms and disciplinary specialization play in influencing their objects of study.

60 1994, 364) Other scientists, such as Robert MacArthur, believed that the vision of a synthesized holistic system was too grand, and that science could not progress in this way. Rather than systems, MacArthur argued, a detailed study of the smallest components of an ecosystem would lead to positive knowledge (cited in Worster 1994). According to Worster, MacArthurs approach, skeptical of the Odum school, gave voice to the evolutionary perspective: [MacArthur] showed little interest in the Odums grand flow of energy and matter through air, seas, and coral reefs alike; instead he wanted to find detailed patterns in the populations of animals. Ecology must be primarily the study of one species reacting upon another, [MacArthur] felt, a study focused on demography, fluctuating numbers, competition, predation, dispersal, geographical distribution. The fewer the number of species studied the more fruitful the research. (Worster 1994, 374) Macarthur, a student of the zoologist G. Evelyn Hutchinson, became interested in and developed what became known as population ecology, which emphasized the diversity of organisms in a community and the complex arrangements of food webs in the context of the overall structure of an ecological community (Kingsland 2005, 219). Current ecological theory, as expressed by Odums Fundamentals of Ecology (5th edition) is a transdisciplinary synthesis of the MacArthur and Odum schools (2005). This approach is referred to as holological and involves the study of several interdependent hierarchies of exchange that occur within the ecosystem as a whole. As such, contemporary natural ecology combines the principles of evolutionary ecology and systems ecology into a complex whole. Such an effort is necessarily transdisciplinary and draws in the sciences of physics, geology, chemistry, biology, and geography. One can look at a number of approaches that incorporate such an integral and transdisciplinary approach. The following section will be an exploration into theories of

61 ecology and evolution that parallel Odums transdisciplinary syntheses, taking into account both organism and environment. Three paradigms are detailed: the approach taken by dialectical biologists Richard Lewontin and Richard Levins (2007), niche construction theory (NCT) (Oddling et al. 2003), and the theory of natural drift and autopoiesis as explained by Francisco Varela (Maturas and Varella 1998), Humberto Maturana and Evan Thompson (2007). NCT, dialectical biology, and autopoiesis all argue for a more complex interpretation of evolutionary theory that incorporates both the population and community levels of evolving species, as well as the more systemic approach advocated by Odum and Barret (2005).

62 CHAPTER 4 DIALECTICAL BIOLOGY, AUTOPOIESIS, AND NICHE CONSTRUCTION THEORY This chapter highlights the work of several scientific theories concerning evolution that could be considered post-Darwinian, a term suggested by John Cobb (2008). Like the contributors to that work, the following scientists hold numerous criticisms of the traditional Darwinian approach to evolution. These criticisms arise out of the acknowledgement not so much that Darwin was wrong, but because of the fact that science as a political entity has its own kind of orthodoxy to which its practitioners must adhere. Thus in various ways, the scientists discussed below do not deny natural selection per se, but rather point to those elements within the evolutionary process which are marginalized in both the scientific community and the popular imagination. Lewontin and Levins, for example, highlight the need for a critique of the political economy that allows scientific research to take place. That is to say that, science, particularly laboratory technoscience, requires a relationship to specific modes of economic production to receive funding and to continue research (2007). Dialectical biology approaches the production of scientific knowledge critically as both the accumulation of scientific knowledge and the production of knowledge as a commodity within the context of market-driven knowledge industry. This dual nature describes science as an accumulative practice, recorded and refined through history, but also acknowledges that this accumulation has, since the advent of modern economics, been largely driven in the direction of industry such that The result is a peculiarly uneven development, with increasing sophistication at the level of the laboratory and research

63 project, along with a growing irrationality of the scientific enterprise as a whole (2007, 9). Thus the practice of science as a system of coordinated problem solving is crucial, but so is maintaining a critical eye towards the metaphors, conceptual frameworks, and institutional apparatuses that govern scientific research. Scientific knowledge for Lewontin and Levins must itself be politically scrutinized because it inherently lacks the neutrality and objectivity that scientific practice must attempt to maintain. This does not lead to the conclusion that scientific knowledge does not disclose real facts about the world, but rather that the tendency towards producing certain kinds of facts over others, driven by the needs of the market, requires a close scrutiny of the meta-picture being developed by the sciences as a whole. Thus, the prevailing metaphors used by scientists or popularizers of science alike must be held lightly and be open to vigilant reinterpretation. The same sentiment is echoed by the sociologist of science Bruno Latour, when he writes: Since the proof race is so expensive that only a few people, nations, institutions, or professions are able to sustain it, this means that the production of facts and artifacts will not occur everywhere and for free, but will occur only at restricted places at particular times (1987, 179). Lewontin (1991) and Latour (1987) highlight the role of networks in the analysis of scientific fact production. The networks of science must be interpreted in terms of who has access to those networks, what kind of information is permissible to travel through them, and perhaps most importantly of all, which members of society are permitted access and travel via those networks. Thus, as a reading of the history of evolution suggests, scientific theory making is a contingent process enmeshed within a complex

64 ecology of research workers embedded within their networks of study and their cultural context. The following sections describe niche construction theory (NCT), dialectical biology, and autopoiesis; I approach them not as opponents of Darwins theory, for this would be too strong a claim, but rather as the accounts of scientists with access to the networks of science. Nevertheless, I contest commonly held assumptions within the scientific orthodoxy. These works provide evidence for the emergence of several novel shifts in scientific practice, each one expanding the relevancy of Darwins theory of natural selection in light of new evidence, new methods of research practice, and by building on over three centuries of coordinated study into the mechanisms of evolutionary processes. I highlight these three examples to demonstrate that, just as the history of evolution has been seen to be the complex interaction of multiple paradigms enfolded within their objects of study, so do current debates in evolutionary theory exhibit similarly dynamic and entangled approaches to evolutionary science. NCT, dialectical biology, and autopoiesis all show the living, interactive nature of paradigmatic and political debates circulating amongst scientists and evolutionary theorists. Evolution as Dialectical Biology Dialectical biology is the approach to evolutionary theory foremost advocated by Harvard geneticists Richard Lewontin and Richard Levins. Of major concern for both geneticists is the focus on the dialectical interaction: gene-organism-environment. For Levins and Lewontin (1985), none of these three categories can be reduced to the others,

65 and because of this they must be viewed as coevolutionary elements of a more complex system. Dialectical biology emphasizes wholeness, interconnection, and historical contingency to forward an integral, complex, and dynamic view of the world (Levins and Lewontin 1985). For the dialectical biologist it is not the case that organisms adapt to fixed environments, and here they are critical of traditional Darwinian approaches to evolution: In Darwins view, organisms were acted upon by the environment; they were the passive objects and the external world was the active subject. This alienation of the organism from its outside world means that the outside world has its own laws that are independent of the organisms and so cannot be changed by those organisms. Organisms find the world as it is and must either adapt or die. (Lewontin 1991, 12) The alienation between organisms and environments Lewontin refers to is echoed by the distinction made by Odum and Barretss (2005) holological approach. Namely, organisms and environments must be brought together in order to adequately understand the nature of ecosystems in a complex way. Rather than understand the evolution of organisms within the context of fixed environments, the dialectical biologist understands organisms to be actively involved in the transformation of their environment in such a significant way that it is no longer appropriate to describe the activity of the organism as adapting to a fixed niche. The dialectic between the organism and the environment leads to the conclusion that it is not simply organisms that evolve, but the complex system: the organismenvironment co-evolves (Levins and Lewontin 1985). As organisms transform environments, those new environments change the selective pressures on the next generation of organisms, which then go on to change the environment again. This

66 recursive loop has a significant impact on the development of organisms, argues Lewontin (1991). Lewontins aim, though distinct from Odums, echoes the need for an approach to evolution that does not simplify evolution to either a holistic system or a fragmented reductionism. The dialectical biologist seeks to construct a third view. This perspective sees the world not as an indissoluble whole or with the equally incorrect, but currently dominant view that at every level the world is made up of bits and pieces that can be isolated and that have properties that can be studied in isolation. For the dialectical biologist both the reductionist and holist accounts of the world fall short of the mark and prevent us from seeing the full richness of interaction in nature (Lewontin 1991, 15). Following this third, complex view, the dialectical biologist interrupts current arguments in evolutionary discourse. Lewontin, a staunch critic of genetic reductionism, is quoted as saying that DNA is not self-producing, that it makes nothing, and that organisms are not determined by it (1992). To support these assertions, Lewontin draws out several explanatory principles and examples from empirical data. His argument is more clearly understood if one breaks down his claims one at a time. First, DNA is not self-producing. The metaphor of self-replicating/self-producing DNA is common, but Lewontin urges one to remember that this is simply a metaphor (1991). DNA cannot make anything by itself; there are no living entities that can make themselves out of nothing. Lewontin argues that while it is true that DNA does provide the information required for the production of amino acids, the actual material construction of those amino acids happens within the cell body as a whole. The cell uses the information provided by DNA in order to shape amino acids that are then formed into

67 proteins for use by the cell. Again, this requires the structure of the cell as a whole to accomplish and not simply the DNA. Thus upon further scrutiny the statement DNA is self-producing is incoherent with the empirical evidence (Lewontin 1991). Second, DNA makes nothing. As indicated above, DNA provides the instructions for the production of amino acids; it does not actually make anything in and of itself. The production of amino acids and their subsequent transformation into proteins necessary for the sustained existence of the cell is an activity performed by the cell body as a whole. The variability in protein production is dependent upon several factors: the cells environment, the state of already existing proteins, and the larger conditions of the organism in relation to its environment (Lewontin 1991). Thus to say that DNA makes anything by itself is a simplification; the functioning of DNA must always be thought of as within the contingency of the cell body, the organism, and the environment. Third, genes do not determine the organism. Lewontin here is critical of other geneticists, such as Syd Brenner, who argue that if he [Syd Brenner] had the complete sequence of DNA of an organism and a large enough computer then he could compute the organism (Lewontin 1991, 10). Lewontins reason for being critical of this notion again has to do with his dialectical approach. If one takes points one and two into consideration, then the idea of being able to compute an organism does not make sense, because an organism does not even compute itself. Thus Lewontin: The trouble with the general scheme of explanation contained in the metaphor of development is that it is bad biology. If we had the complete DNA sequence of an organism and unlimited computational power, we could not compute the organism, because the organism does not compute itself . . . There exists, and has existed for a long time, a large body of evidence that demonstrates that the ontogeny of an organism is the consequence of a unique interaction between the genes it carries, the temporal sequence of external environments through which it

68 passes during its life, and random events of molecular interactions within individual cells. (1991, 17-18) In order to understand the development of an organism, a complex dialectic is necessary. Organisms are actively engaged in the transformation of their environment as they transform them. Again, it is more accurate to say organisms and environments co-evolve. In order to then compute an organism one would have to take into account not just the genome of an organism, but one would also have to trace out and map every single factor in the environment that influences the complex expression of genes as a dialectical process. Even then, says Lewontin, if one were able to map both the genome and the entirety of all environmental conditions present in that organisms lifetime, one would still be faced with quantum level disruptions of development referred to as developmental noise (Lewontin and Levins 2007). In other words, an organism cannot be computed from its DNA, not because human scientists lack sufficient computer processing speeds to make the necessary calculations, but because the question of organisms computing themselves from DNA is a fallacious one to begin with. The authors write: Simply put, the organism is a unique result of both its genes and the temporal sequence of environments through which it has passed, and there is no way of knowing in advance, from the DNA sequence, what the organism will look like, except in general terms. In any sequence of environments we know of lions give birth to lions and lambs to lambs, but all lions are not alike. (Lewontin and Levins 2007, 227) To summarize then, the dialectical approach to biology focuses on complex, holistic interconnections between several hierarchical levels expressed in the relationship between gene, organism, and environment (Lewontin and Levins 2007, 10). In order to understand the development of organisms, populations, or species, the environment and

69 genes must both be considered. Philosophers of science have also advocated a similarly complex approach to evolution, emphasizing that development must not be understood as the straightforward execution of genetic instructions but rather more comprehensively defined as the regeneration of a lifecycle occurring by way of emergent, dynamic, multilevel, self-regulating processes of construction that take place when a constellation of conditions and resources is made available by the parent generation within a particular ecological context (Mengel 2011, p. 26). To further add validity to the dialectical paradigm, Lewontin and Levins offer evidence in the form of clone studies to highlight the significant role environment plays in the development of organisms (2007). When looking at genetically identical plant clones developing in the context of variable environments, one sees how the dialectical approach gains empirical merit. Genetically identical plant species grown in different environmental conditions (e.g., changes in altitude) reveal that the cloned plants grown in separate environments experience greater levels of morphological change compared to those of noncloned plants developing in the same environment (2007, 225-228). In other words, the environment had just as much (in some cases more) of an impact on the development of genetically identical plants than the genes alone had on plants that were not clones of each other (Lewontin and Levins 2007). This reveals that genetically identical plant species cannot be computed in the sense Brenner et al. (cited in Lewontin 1991) argue for, and that the gene-organism-environment relationship must be studied in its complex interdependencies. Concerns arising about the generalization of the developmental trajectories of plant clones can be refuted by similar results gained from tests done on drosophila flies and in twin studies done on the morphological and

70 psychological development of human beings, which again show significant variation in development based on historical conditions (Lewontin and Levins 2007).

Evolution as Autopoiesis Like dialectical biology and niche construction theory, evolution as natural drift contests the modern synthesis of evolutionary theory. Varela, Thompson, and Rosch describe this view in the following way: [The modern synthesis] established the view that modifications occur by small changes in organismic traits specifiable by heritable units, the genes. The genetic makeup responsible for the ensemble of traits leads to differential reproduction rates, hence to changes in the genetic makeup of an animal population over generations. Evolution simply is the totality of these genetic changes in interbreeding populations. (1983, 186) This description of evolution, as described by the modern synthesis, should at this point be familiar to the reader. The alternative offered by Varela et al. (1983) follows along similar lines as dialectical biology and NCT. However, where dialectical biology focuses on genes and NCT on the role of environmental transformation, autopoiesis focus on the cell as the fundamental feature of biology. Thompson describes three main approaches to understanding the dynamics of evolution (2007). One approach characterizes life on the basis of reproductive populations and genetics. This is the standard view of evolution described by the modern synthesis where life depends on the historical continuity of genetically linked generations of populations. The second is more ecological in tone, taking into account the importance of reproductively linked populations, but adds to this notion the role of organisms in constructively interacting with a given environment. This approach closely parallels that of both dialectical biology and NCT. Thompsons third approach, following Varela et al.

71 is one in which the focus is on the single individual entity or organism, here and now (2007, 96). For Thompson, these three approaches are not antagonistic, though their presence in current evolutionary discourse is unbalanced: In the case of life on our own planetthe only life we know at presentlife in a full sense means reproductively linked populations of ecologically embedded and active individual organisms. Modern molecular biology, however, has neglected the individual characterization of life and adopted almost exclusively the genetic-population characterization. (2007, 96) Thus for Thompson, it is not so much that he stands against the modern synthesis or the dialectical approach, so much as he is pushing for a more complete, or integral definition of the evolutionary process vis--vis a focus on the individual cells ability to act discriminately and creatively with its environment. The main proponents of the autopoietic paradigm, Maturana, Varela, Thompson, and Rosch (1983) begin their assessment asking the basic question: What constitutes life? For these thinkers, the distinction between life and nonlife is crucial to understanding autopoiesis, which for all four, is the defining characteristic of living systems. In order to understand autopoiesis, one must understand the nature of the cell. The cell is central to autopoietic theory. As a thermodynamically open system, the cell is engaged in the constant exchange of matter and energy with its environment. This ongoing process is a circular system of production wherein the cell produces and maintains its own components out of the external environment. These components then go on to constitute and maintain the cell as a whole. This complex, though fundamental process, defines autopoiesis (Thompson 2007, 98). All living systems are, in their most basic definition, autopoietic. Furthermore, [Cells] are organized in such a way that their constituent processes produce the

72 components necessary for the continuance of those same processes (Thompson 2007, 98). The cell is defined in terms of the boundary maintained by its own membrane, a membrane that is itself a feature of the cells ongoing renewal; the simplest of these autopoietic entities is the prokaryotethe single celled bacteria. The cell membrane is critical to the process of autopoiesis because it allows the chemical processes occurring within the cell as a whole to remain distinct from variables occurring outside of the cell. Moreover, it is also important to recognize that the cell wall is not just a medium of separation, but also a feature of the cell itself that allows it to interact with, and renew itself through, the surrounding environment. The cells capacitys are remarkable because this double process of maintaining distinction from, but relation to, its surrounding environment allows it the potential to build its own internal components necessary for functioning semi-independently from the surrounding environment. Stated again, Thompson writes: In summary, the form or pattern of the autopoietic organization is that of a peculiar circular interdependency between an interconnected web of selfregenerating processes and the self-production of a boundary, such that the whole system persists in continual self-production as a spatially distinct individual. (2007, 101) The critical reader at this point will have noticed that certain tenets of the autopoietic paradigm appear to be in direct conflict with Lewontins critique of self-production described earlier. This important factor is not lost on Thompson, who wants to maintain the integrity of individual cells, but also recognizes their fundamentally ecological nature. Autopoiesis, Thompson tells us, is always ecologically embedded. The term self-producing is a metaphor that actually refers to the necessarily circular processes that make the cell an individual; the cell cannot make itself apart from

73 its environment. Furthermore, the ecologically embedded nature of the cell also implies that, from lifes first emergence, it began an immediate, transformative, and evolutionary process that changed the entire surface of the planet (Thompson 2007, 118). Thus, though autopoiesis places an emphasis on the self-production of individual cells, it does not imply that these cells are somehow produced in a vacuum. Lewontins critique of selfproduction is honored, whilst still leaving room for the emergence of unique individuals that are distinct from the background environment, but once present begin to dramatically transform that environment. The difficulties in maintaining a complex view may stem from overt commitments to adaptationist versions of evolutionary paradigms (Varela, Thompson, and Rosch 1983). As demonstrated earlier, units of selection shift depending on paradigmatic and disciplinary variabilities. In ecological discourse, the tension rests between evolutionary ecologists and ecosystems theorists. This tension is mirrored in evolutionary discourses exemplified by the conflict between Neo-Darwinist and the more integrative approaches suggested by Thompson. The authors of The Embodied Mind write: The adaptionist program has also been criticized for its almost unquestioned assumption that the individual is the only unit of evolution and selection. In contrast, theories that emphasize multiple levels or units of selection working in parallel are entirely plausible and suggest revised interpretations of many phenomena that have puzzled those who assume selection can operate only at the individual level. (1983, 192) Those theories that emphasize multiple levels or units of selection are precisely the ones that have been articulated in this paper. Thus each approach covered so fardialectical, and autopoieticrepresent alternative paradigms for approaching evolutionary discourse, and, as has been seen, each offers a way of interpreting evolution from a multi-level

74 approach that supports the integration of genes, organisms, and environments. Each of these paradigms is constructive in helping to think about ecological science. The importance of this paradigm shift is not lost on advocates of a more integral approach, nor does this shift lend itself to a loss of scientific credibility within the context of evolutionary discourse, but it does raise several critical new questions. The authors of The Embodied Mind comment: Part of the difficulty in moving beyond the adaptionist framework is to determine what to do after we abandon the idea of natural selection as the main explanation, so that every structure, mechanism, trait, or disposition cannot be explained away by its contribution to survival value (1983, 195). Earlier, Lewontin and Levins critique of the adaptationist paradigm was described as the view in which organisms are seen to adapt to fixed environments. This view states that niches are pregiven in a given ecological system and organisms either adapt to those niches or die out. Ample evidence has been supplied to indicate that this is not the case, and while several alternative paradigms have been offered that indicate the need for a revision of the adaptationist view, there still remain several problems with viewing natural selection as an element within a more complex process. As in the quotation above, the ecologist is left with the daunting question: If not natural selection, then what is the mechanism by which evolution proceeds? The authors continue: The temptation is to say, But then are things there for no reason at all? The task in evolutionary biology is to change the logical geography of the debate by studying the tangled, circular relations of congruence among the items explained (Maturana, Varela, Thompson, and Rosch 1983, 195). The authors offer several contributions towards

75 answering this question, each of which are foundational to what they call natural drift, an essential component to understanding autopoiesis (1983). Natural drift in its most basic sense is a critique of the understanding that all evolutionary changes are the results of adaptations based on optimal fit. Natural drift shifts this understanding by suggesting that the organisms are not selected based on the values of survivability and reproducibility alone, but are instead based on viability. Viability shifts the focus of analysis from specific heritable traits onto organismic patterns expressed in the life history of an individual. Viability, according to Maturana, Varela, Thompson, and Rosch, requires a transformation of conceptual metaphors. Rather than adaptation, natural drift suggests the term bricolage, or the putting together of parts and items in complicated arrays, not because they fulfill some ideal design but simply because they are possible (1983, 196). Natural drifts emphasis on viability presents a challenge to neo-Darwinists because it suggests that, from the perspective of survival and reproduction, an organism can be said to be underdetermined by these criteria (Maturana, Varela, Thompson, and Rosch 1983, 196). In other words, the array of complexity and diversity of species, coupled with the impact species have on transforming environments (and vice-versa) creates an evolutionary context that can only be described as coimplicative. Coimplicative in this sense means that organisms and environments are mutually enfolded within one another; the environment is in the organism, and the organism is in the environment (1983, 200). Varela, Thompson, and Rosch (citing development systems theorist Susan Oyama) describe genomes as being ecologically embedded (1983, 200). These terms should sound analogous to the previous descriptions of dialectical biology. The similarity in

76 description stems from a shared fundamental intuition explored by both paradigms, namely that organisms and environments are coupled in complex ways not fully understood by mainstream schools of evolutionary thinking. For Maturana and Varela (1998) and Varela, Thompson, and Rosch (1983), this relationship is described as structural coupling. Structural coupling simply stated refers to a history of recurrent interactions leading to the structural congruence between two (or more) systems (Maturana and Varela 1998, 75). Several different kinds of structural coupling are possible: couplings between organisms and the environment, between organisms and other organisms, or the complex interactions of multiple organisms and environments over time. The first kind of structural coupling deals with an autopoietic unity (any living organizational structure such as a cell) in relation to its environment. In this instance, the unity of the cell has its own structurally determined metabolism that is distinct from its environment, though is not separate from its environment (Maturana, and Varela 1998). Thus when the environment perturbs the activity of the cell, the cell responds in terms of its own structural capacities, its autopoietic organization: From this perspective, the structural changes that occur in a unity [the autopoietic system] appear as selected by the environment through a continuous chain of interactions. Consequently, environment can be seen as an ongoing selector of structural changes that the organism undergoes in its ontogeny. The reverse can then also be said of the environment: In a strict sense, the same could be said about the environment. Thus we could say that living beings which interact in it operates as selectors of their structural change (1998, 100-102). In this

77 context, organisms are not determined by the state of environments or vice-versa; the chain of causality is circular, not linear. Highlighting again the idea of mutual enfoldment present in natural drift, the manner in which organisms and environments influence one another can be said to be resulting from perturbations rather than instructions (Maturana and Varela 1998, 96). The difference between these two is important: instructional changes would be ones where the environment, for example, created a direct causal effect on the organism, as in instructing its behavior. What actually occurs, the authors argue, is that because of the differentiation of individuals from their environment, vis--vis the cell membrane, an operational closure is effected that results in the environment perturbing the trajectory of organisms, but not directing it in a fixed way. The organism (or the environment) has a complex set of dynamics with which it interprets a response based upon its own structural nature. This relationship is referred to as structural coupling. The second form of structural coupling is organized around two tiers: first order and second order autopoietic systems. This distinction, described by Thompson, differentiates first-order autopoietic systems, or individual cells (such as single celled organisms), from second order autopoietic systems, or metacellulars, and include those structures composed of multiple individuals such as multicellular organisms, colonies, and societies (2007, 105). Recurrent interactions are then possible between autopoietic unities of the same order, and between first order and second order autopoietic unities (as

78 is the case with the structural coupling of the cells in your body. ) From the autopoietic perspective then, most structural couplings are first and second order structural couplings, being that the only first order couplings happen at the level of bacteria. Third-order couplings then have to do with recurrent interactions between multicellular organisms that also have a nervous system (Maturana and Varela 1998, 181). This type of coupling is particularly interesting because it results in what is referred to as structural drift, or a form of co-ontogentic conservation of adaptation and organization. The authors explain, When [third-order coupling] happens, the co-drifting organisms give rise to a new phenomenological domain, which may become particularly complex when there is a nervous system (1998, 181). The emergence of new phenomenological domains is of central interest when considering structural coupling. It implies that new worlds of experience, composed of variously arranged organisms reciprocally interacting with environments, enact new world spaces. The use of the word enaction is a technical term used to describe a shift in the understanding of perception, based on processes of structural coupling so that: In such an approach, then, perception is not simply embedded within and constrained by the surrounding world; it also contributes to the enactment of this surrounding world (Varela, Thompson, and Rosch 1983, 174). The phenomenological domain of experience 17. Biologist Lynn Margulis argues: The life-centered alternatives to mechanistic neo-Darwinism recognize that, of all organisms on Earth today, only prokaryotes (bacteria) are individuals. All other living beings (organismssuch as animals, plants and fungi) are metabolically complex communities of a multitude of tightly organized beings. That is, what we generally accept as an individual animal, such as a cow, is recognizable as a collection of various numbers and kinds of autopoietic entities that, functioning together, form an emergent entitythe cow. Individuals are all diversities of co-evolving associates. Said succinctly, all organisms larger than bacteria are intrinsically communities (1997, 273).
17

79 is in this way linked not to pregiven structural elements of the organisms, nor by constraints imposed by the environment, but rather situates perception within the entire complex of ecological activities arrayed around any autopoietic unity. Stated differently, enactivism has correlates in philosophical traditions that help bridge the gap of understanding this novel concept: The term hermeneutics originally referred to the discipline of interpreting ancient texts, but it has been extended to denote the entire phenomenon of interpretation, understood as the enactment or bringing forth of meaning from a background of understanding (1983, 149). Speaking philosophically, then, meaning takes a shape that is relative to an ecological matrix of structurally coupled events that are both organismic and environmental in nature. What is meaningful for organisms is then coimplicative with its structural coupling. This approach forwards a new understanding of knowledge and meaning as always-already emerging from, and transforming of, specific ecological environments. Evolution as Niche Construction The following section introduces key concepts relevant to niche construction theory (NCT). NCT is a mode of inquiry into evolutionary dynamics that emphasizes the importance of organism-environment relationships. NCT can be defined as the process by which, through their activities and choices, organisms modify their own environments and the environments of other organisms, creating an eco-evolutionary feedback system fundamental to evolution. Proponents of NCT study the capacity of organisms to transform the natural selection pressures in their environment. The feedback generated by

80 the niche-constructing capacities of organisms suggests a new approach to studying evolution. This new approach suggests that niche construction alters the evolutionary dynamic in fundamental ways that have been historically underestimated and marginalized. NCT suggests that the constructive capacities of organisms should be viewed as a new, fundamental, evolutionary mechanism.

NCT is a response to the rift between evolutionary ecology and systems ecology. By emphasizing the organisms role in producing and transforming environments, the link between biotic and abiotic can be understood in a more complex way. Niche construction is consilient with both Odums view that ecosystems are composed of bioenergetic flows linking the organism to its environment, and the view held by evolutionary ecologists that organisms and populations must be the emphasis of study. According to Oddling et al. (2003): An evolutionary theory that stresses niche construction can shed light on how ecosystems may be governed by engineering webs of connectivity (2003, 195). Niche construction provides scientists with the tools to extend ecological theory into an integrative, evolutionary paradigm. In Niche Construction: The Neglected Process in Evolution, a framework is developed that includes two kinds of ecosystem components: biotic and abiotic, with each component capable of receiving an input from an outside source, and capable of emitting an output to another ecosystem component (Oddling et al. 2003). With these two main components, four elementary links are proposed: bioticbiotic, abioticbiotic, bioticabiotic, and abioticabiotic. These linkages are comprised of evolutionary (biotic) and nonevolutionary (abiotic) components. Throughout these elementary links,

81 three different currencies of energy are described: units of energy, units of matter (both abiotic), and units of fitness (biotic) (2003). Niche construction theory explores the systems oriented, process-functional ecology and the evolutionarily oriented, population-community ecology, suggesting an integrative synthesis. Population-community ecologists deal with all four kinds of elementary links, but do not make clear distinctions between biotic and abiotic components, most likely because they emphasize only two of three universal currencies (units of matter and energy) but do not emphasize the fitness of organisms (Oddling et al. 2003, 202-203). Conversely, population-community ecologists, using this frame, are only concerned with one of the main ecosystem components (the biota) and mainly study only three out of four elementary links: the biotic biotic, biotic abiotic, and abiotic biotic (2003, 204). Observing that both approaches are partial, the niche constructionists use their theory to bridge the gap between evolution and system to form a more integrative, extended theory of evolution. The key concept linking these two domains of study is referred to as semantic information and can be defined in the following way: The niche constructing activities of organisms must be at least partly governed by and guided by semantic information [sic], or knowledge, supplied by the evolutionary process as a result of natural selection . . . and typically encoded in the DNA. By semantic information we mean information that relates to the fitness of specific organisms, about their requirements, about their local environments, and about how to operate in their local environments in ways that satisfy their requirements, and that is, in this sense, meaningful to organisms in their local environments. (Oddling et al. 2003, 177) The relationship between evolution and ecology is a central problem for scientists today. With NCT, integration is suggested by using the idea of semantic information as a link. Organisms must obey the laws of thermodynamics when performing their life tasks, and

82 these actions have effects on the larger thermodynamic properties of the ecosystem as a whole. Traditionally, these effects were said to be nonevolutionary from the perspective of the ecosystem because semantic information could be said to flow through organisms, but not the rest of the abiotic environment (2003). Proponents of NCT argue that this is not the case. Though thermodynamics is an element in the decision-making processes of organisms, the manner in which they organize and act on their environment is also in part coded by their semantic heritage, their DNA. Thus the manner in which an environment is transformed takes a shape that is specific to a particular species of organism. In other words, the specificity of the effect of niche construction on an environment is always related to the semantic activity of organisms: To the extent that an abiotic ecosystem is driven out of equilibrium and into a new physical state by its interactions with a biotic system component, it should reflect the specific information that is carried in the genes of the niche constructing organism (Oddling et al. 2003, 211-212). In other words, the relationship between an organism and its environment is not entirely random, nor determined. Rather, organisms have specific relationships to the ecologies they participate in, and transform those environments in ways that have a specific meaning relative to the requirements of that organism. Thus the link between the evolution of species and the nonevolution of physical systems is encouraged by a kind of intimacy the organism develops with the environment it transforms. The term intimacy is appropriate because as the organism transforms its environment it is tied closely both to its own genetic heritage that informs its activity, and the energetic constraints of the

83 environment it transforms. This creates a very unique relationship between organism and environment, where both participate in shaping the other. In review then, one can say that niche construction is a theory that integrates ecology and evolution. Ecology has historically been the systemic study of energy flows within an ecosystem, and evolution has been interpreted as the processes of natural selection by which organisms adapt to fixed environments. Natural selection is supplemented by the insights of genetic sciences to produce a synthesis that attempts to explain the evolution of life on earth. These two streams of thought can now be said to be converging through Odums holological approach to integrative levels. What one is left with then is a coevolving system of immense complexity, composed of living and nonliving parts; this system is both holistic and reductionistic, and focuses on the interplay of specific organisms and populations, each having specific transformative effects on their environments relative to their semantic heritage. NCT in Search of a Human Ecology Niche construction theory has further application when exploring the role of human niche construction in evolution. Specifically, human niche construction contributes valuable insights and frameworks, not only to the tension between systems ecology and evolutionary ecology; it also helps bridge the gap between the natural and human sciences. One can explore this from two primary avenues: first, by exploring the role human niche construction plays in evolution, and second, by understanding how NCT reframes the nature-culture discourse that divides the human and natural sciences.

84 In order to address the significance of NCT in humans, Oddling et al. (2003)provide a current overview of different approaches to the nature-culture debate from different evolutionary perspectives. Of these, three main approaches are identified, each with a different emphasis: the standard Darwinian approach to explaining culture vis--vis natural selection, the gene-culture coevolutionary approach, and an extended coevolutionary approach that includes niche construction into its framework. Before assessing the impact of niche construction on these paradigms, it is helpful to give a brief overview of each of these systems, as they are accounted by Odling-Smee, Laland, and Feldman (2003). The Darwinian approach to cultural theory generally accounts for several subdisciplines such as human sociobiology, human behavioral ecology, and evolutionary psychology. Each of these fields corresponds to different disciplinary specializations, but each share a meta-perspective provided by the underlying paradigm of Darwinian evolution as described by descent through modification. As the most reductionistic of all three approaches, the Darwinian approach favors a system of one-way exchange: genes culture. In other words, genes are singled out as the determining factor, with culture taking the place of epiphenomenon. The level and amount of interactive exchange between biological evolution and cultural transformation, from the traditional Darwinian perspective, offers only a narrow opportunity for understanding complex bio-cultural relationships. The traditional Darwinian approach suggests that the only way cultural processes can effect evolution is by changing the fitness of individual organisms, thus influencing the frequency of certain characteristics within the population (Odling-Smee, Laland, and Feldman 2003, 245-246). This approach is not incorrect, but, from the NCT

85 perspective, is incomplete. The traditional Darwinian approach universalizes human culture and reduces it to a biological phenomenon that can be explained by the relatively simple functions of an evolutionary paradigm that views organisms as only the vehicles for gene transmission to subsequent generations.
18

In this sense, cultural processes are

not differentiated from genetic processes in a meaningful way, as this perspective ignores the fact that cultural activities modify the environments of humans in important ways that provide feedback on the selection pressures of human populations (2003, 246). Proponents of NCT find this perspective lacking, as explained in more detail below. The second commonly held perspective about nature-culture relations comes from theories of gene-culture coevolution, which complexifies the one-way trajectory of the Darwinian approach by incorporating cultural feedback mechanisms where cultural activities are assumed to affect the evolutionary process by modifying selection pressures. Cultural change is included in human genetic evolution in the traditional Darwinian sense, but adds to this the capacity of human cultural change to drive or codirect the evolution of human populations (Odling-Smee, Laland, and Feldman 2003, 246). This model of the gene-culture relationship expands upon the Darwinian, unidirectional paradigm, but still stays within the boundaries of standard interpretations of evolution. In this way, certain forms of human cultural transmissionsuch as the sharing of information through ideas or beliefsare seen to be influential on the natural selective pressures occurring within human environments. The authors cite as an example the domestication of cattle, a cultural activity, as one where human populations cultivate 18. As in Wilsons sociobiology program, described in Chapter 2.

86 new dietary habits through a cultural act that then selects for, in this case, genes that confer greater lactose tolerance in adults (Odling-Smee, Laland, and Feldman 2003, 248). However, for niche construction theorists, the gene-culture coevolutionary approach is still too restrictive in that it is still highly species specific. The coevolution of genes and cultures is seen as acceptable in exploring the evolution of human communities where culture takes on a dominating presence in organizing social relations, but is not incorporated into the understanding of the evolution of other-than-human species. Niche constructionists, to their credit, are critical of this anthropocentric view and find it misleading. Humans may be unique in their extraordinary capacity for cultural processes Odling-Smee, Laland, and Feldman write, but they are not unique in their capacity to modify their environments and hence the way in which they may be affected by natural selection (2003, 250). NCT advocates, leaning away from anthropocentrism, suggest that for all species, natural selection, the coevolution of genes and culture, and niche construction play an important role in the evolution of life. Where the Darwinian model is overly simplistic and reductionistic, and the coevolutionary model offers an expanded interpretation, but repeats the standard alienation of organism from environment; the extended coevolutionary model suggested by NCT opens up into a deeper paradigm of geneculture interactions.

NCT uses a triple-inheritance model that includes natural selection, coevolution, and niche construction, each of which contributes to the evolution of species. For NCT researchers, the relationship between genes and culture is recursive in the same ways as understood by standard theories of coevolution, but expands upon them by extending the

87 number of ways in which organisms feed back to their environment. NCT argues that the inheritance of human cultural activity to subsequent generations impacts human genetic inheritance in two ways. The first, direct influence emphasizes survival and reproduction. The second influence is indirect, centering on the way in which human cultural inheritances contribute to cultural niche construction that in turn has an impact on the human ecological inheritance. In other words, like the semantic information supplied by the genetic code of other niche-constructing organisms, human cultural activities have specific impacts on the surrounding ecological systems. By modifying selection pressures in this way, human cultural niche construction feeds back on genetic evolution and influences the selection of different genes within a population (Odling-Smee, Laland, and Feldman 2003, 252). This expanded version of coevolution can also be described as consisting of three distinct, though interrelated levels that organize the adaptation of organisms: a population genetic level which corresponds to the naturally selected genes; an ontogenetic level comprised of the information-acquiring processes involved in the ability to learn; and a cultural level involving the transmission of ideas, values, and belief systems. The relationships between these three levels is complexly recursive so that: Genetic processes, ontogenetic processes, and cultural processes operate at three distinct but interconnected levels. Each level interacts with but is not completely determined by the others: that is, learning is informed, but only loosely, by genetic information, and cultural transmission may be informed, but not completely specified, by both genetic and developmental processes. (OdlingSmee, Laland, and Feldman 2003, 254) One can see that, from the triple perspective of genetic, ontogenetic, and cultural coevolution, launching a deterministic explanation of human behavior as advocated by

88 the likes of sociobiology and evolutionary psychology will be, in the final analysis, insufficient modes with which to explore the evolution of life, and particularly the evolution of human beings. Whether or not NCT ends up being an enduring scientific program, of course, depends on how often it is used, and whether or not future paradigm innovators must modify it. Three crucial insights will remain with us for the remainder of this work; I list and briefly describe them in the following way. First, human niche construction highlights the obvious fact that humans are born into a massively constructed world, with an ecological inheritance that includes a legacy of houses, cities, cars, farms, nations, ecommerce, and global warming (Odling-Smee, Laland, and Feldman 2003, 241). Each human is born into an ecological environment that is complexly natural, cultural, and technological. Any theory of evolution or ecology thus requires an approach that transcends the natural science/human science divide, whilst simultaneously being cautious not to collapse one set of disciplines into the other. If one takes this to be the casei.e., that humans are both producers of culture and transformed by culture on at least three levels (the genetic, ontogenetic, and cultural)then a paradigm that explores the processes of evolution from only a reductionist perspective is inevitably inadequate. NCT avoids the reductionism of standard evolutionary theory and points towards the complexities of human environments. Second, following the first insight, human ecologies can be understood to also implicate subtler dimensions of culture: Cultural information, expressed in the use of tools, weapons, fire, cooking, symbols, language, agriculture, and trade, may also have played an important role in driving hominid evolution in general, and the evolution of the human brain in particular (Odling-Smee, Laland, and Feldman 2003, 242). This again

89 opens up the study of human ecology to natural environments, human cultural environments, and also draws language, symbols, and human technologies into the question of ecology. Third, knowledge, language, and culture appear to be the dominant forms of evolution of the human species in recent times: In the last 25 to 40 thousand years, the dominant mode of human evolution has been purely cultural. However, that does not mean there has been no evolutionary feedback from niche construction; it merely switches the evolutionary response to the cultural domain (Odling-Smee, Laland, and Feldman 2003, 249). Situating culture within the context of a complex evolutionary process that no longer sees population genetics as the fundamental category by which human evolution can be understood accomplishes several things. The reductionistic approaches of sociobiology and evolutionary psychology, though contributing in meaningful ways to certain elements of the evolutionary process, no longer carry the panoptic hold in describing human nature they once did. Furthermore, this complexification of the evolutionary process brings ecology and culture into a more meaningful relationship that does not reduce one category to the other, nor lead to a simple synthesis of the two. Rather, nature (population genetics), culture (ontogenetics), and knowledge (the transmission of cultural ideas) become complexly reciprocal and recursive agencies, each feeding back into and influencing the others. In this way, ecology is expanded into an integral domain, not just in the sense of articulating an expanded scientific principle of evolution, though it accomplishes this, but rather because it situates ecology as the context from which other disciplines can be understood to be relational agencies enfolded within their objects of study.

90 In this sense, ecologizing the principles of other disciplines or domains of human activity is not a move to reduce them to various kinds of fundamental categories, because ecology in this context is approached as a complex and recursive agency of evolving actors that are simultaneously natural, cultural, and paradigmatic. Ecology in this way provides a novel approach not only to relationships between a systemic or evolutionary approach to ecological theory, but in a more general way allows the connection of disparate disciplines of science into a more coherent and interdependent whole.

91 CHAPTER 5 ACTOR-NETWORKS AND MEDIA ECOLOGIES: STABILIZING SITUATED OBJECTIVITY Actor-Network Theory The following section uses actor-network theory and media ecology to assess the relationship between objects of study and the influence or presence of an environment or network that influence and in part define those objects. By highlighting the contributions of actor-network theory and media ecology, the threefold approach described by Hornborg (2001) is considered in terms of the three main categories of ecological research affirmed by this work: the natural ecology, the media ecology, and the knowledge ecology. Actor-network theory (ANT), as described by Bruno Latour, rephrases basic issues in social theory, politics, epistemology, and philosophy (1987). ANT and its associated field of science and technology studies (STS) emphasize the capacity of networks to redistribute conceptions of action. STS and ANT demonstrate that any object, despite appearing to be a self-contained entity, is actually a coordinated swarm of entities connected through space and time by networks. The self-contained object, upon further inspection of its location within a network, reveals itself to be not a unity-in-itself, but rather a distributed assemblage of actors that are variously entities of technique, resource, bureaucracy or information (Latour, 1987). Latour uses the example of a space shuttle to illustrate his point. Sitting on the launch platform, the shuttle appears to be a discrete, self-contained piece of machinery, which once activated, causes its own propulsion into space (2010). Latours point,

92 however, is that the shuttle does not exist in a simple location on the platform, but rather is an extended and distributed collection of actors (the entire bureaucratic, technical, and scientific network that comprises NASA). The shuttle could not accomplish its goal of space flight in the absence of any of these components. Latour suggests that the seemingly isolated, self-contained nature of objects is disrupted when an anomaly or accident occurs. If a space shuttle fails to launch, or explodes on the platform, it may not necessarily be that the incident was caused by a local mechanical problem with the shuttle itself. Rather, any actor at any level (bureaucratic, technical or otherwise) is implicated within the distributed action of the space shuttles launch (Latour 2010). Latour uses examples such as these to redefine the ontology of objects, not just in the case of exotic spacecraft and their associated technoscientific networks, but in the sense of objects in general. Latours network ontology thought in terms of the production of knowledge (focusing primarily on the production of scientific fact) sees action as located in a widely distributed assemblage of actors, each contributing resource, technique, and information and asks the question: What are the unexpected beings necessary for an entity to exist? Latour writes: Network is the shock that reveals around any given substance the vast deployment of its attributes (Latour 2010, 11:33 ) and goes on to say: Take any substance that has seemed at first self-contained . . . and transform it in what needs to subsist through a complex ecology of tributaries, allies, accomplices, and helpers (Latour, 2010, 11:50). For Latour, objects are not independently definable substances, but rather are more accurately described as areas of condition where any of the various actors that constitute objects (be they natural, technical, or of any other kind)

93 can influence the trajectory and functioning, indeed the fundamental characteristics of that object. The actor-network is a conceptual term that requires the definition of entities to be reframed as the employment of their attributes that are only definable by tracing their location in networks. Latour speaks of this paradoxically noting: An actor is nothing but a network, except that a network is nothing but actors (Latour, 2010, 13:50). The actornetwork relationship connotes a move from objects as substances, or self-contained entities, to objects as attributes, the distributed conditions of their associated networks. For Latour, the actor-network concept is applicable to technical artifacts (such as space shuttles or computers) as well as to scientific concepts and ideas (such as Newtons laws or the equations of quantum theory). Every actor, whether it be a technical object or scientific network, is deployed within the complex ecologies of the networks which support their existence and enable their ability to perform the tasks usually understood to be causally located in a discrete space. Latour uses the concept of the actor-network to rethink the relationship between local and universal knowledge. Where universal knowledge (the objective kind to which science strives) is not so much a universal knowledge in-itself as may be casually assumed, but rather universal knowledge is only real within a network that supports the universality of its objective claims. The universal is only universal insofar as there are networks that can consistently deliver universal knowledge. Thus without the laboratories of technoscience, the accumulated knowledge of scientific history, and the bureaucratic and economic techniques that allow science research to take place, there can be no transmission of scientific, universal knowledge. Thus, rather than universality, Latour

94 speaks of mobility, or the capacity of knowledge to travel from one environment to another (1987). It is the mobility of science, rather than its universality, that allows it to travel globally and be reproduced empirically in laboratories, whether they are in the United States, China, or on the moons of Jupiter. The mobility of scientific fact highlights that while objective knowledge is possible, it is only possible provided that the networks of scientific inquiry extend into new environments. Latour writes: We now have a much clearer idea of what it is to follow scientists and engineers in action. We know that they do not extend everywhere as if there existed a Great Divide between the universal knowledge of the Westerners and the local knowledge of everyone else, but instead they travel inside narrow and fragile networks, resembling the galleries termites build to link their nests to their feeding sites. (1987, 232) Latour here reorganizes the epistemological dichotomy between the universalizing tendency of Western knowledge-making practices, and those of the local knowledgemaking practices of the non-Western, frequently labeled indigenous populations of the world (1987).
19

Rather than one group having access to universal knowledge

juxtaposed to another with merely local knowledge, the discussion is reframed through actor-networks whose focus is on the distance in space and time a network covers. Latours (2010) insistence on the complex ecology of tributaries, allies, accomplices, and helpers (13:50) suggests that, in the same way that organisms and environments can only be understood in relation to one another, so must the ideological and technological ecologies of scientific knowledge making be studied in relation to one another. Latours network ontology and the previously described insights drawn from the history of evolution and science as well as the information drawn from contemporary 19. For a detailed account of the complex relationships between knowledge making groups see Anna Tsings Friction (2005).

95 debates in the ecological sciences (Chapter 3) which dove-tailed into critical discourses in current evolutionary theory (Chapter 4), demonstrated that the natural ecology of the ecosystem is in a recursive relationship to various structures of mind (most predominately in this case the paradigm being employed) and now, through Latours actor-network, also an ecology of networks which allow the construction of scientific knowledge that is objective, but not universal, or mobile but not unconditionally reproducible. In this context I defer to Donna Haraways comments at a recent conference, held in regards to the emerging philosophical movement known as speculative realism (2010). Haraway suggests that the insights of her own work on situated knowledges, as well as Latours actor-networks, prepares one epistemologically not for a God-like objectivity (which remains impossible) but rather, for a situated objectivity. To paraphrase Haraway on this topic one can say that objectivity is a real accomplishment, but it is a fragile and situated accomplishment. It is in this sense of objectivity that there are grounds to speak, not simply of an ecology of the ecosystem and an ecology of the research worker, but also an extended network of diverse actors, comprising a media ecology.

Media Ecology Neil Postman first coined the term media ecology, defining it as the study of media as environments (2006). While Postman first used the neologism, he does not credit himself as founding the field; rather he points to numerous historical works that

96 take a media-ecological approach, but do not identify themselves as such.

20

For Postman,

the main concern of media ecology is how mediums of communication affect human perception, understanding, and feeling; how our interactions with media facilitate or impede our chances of survival as species. Generally speaking, media ecology can be divided into two main emphases: the first dealing with media in the common sense of the word relating to different forms of communication such as language, speech, the printed word, electronic media such as television and the Internet. The second emphasis refers to media in the broader sense of a medium or environment; this aspect of media ecology manifests in media environments such as architecture, design, city infrastructure, or modes and techniques of production as they relate to human ecologies of culture and subjectivity. For the media ecologist, a medium is not an independent object, but is rather an interactive environment that encourages a change of scale, proportion, or frequency in certain aspects of culture (this sense of location echoes Latours network ontology). Mediums in this way grow cultures that are recursively linked to a multitude of natural ecologies from which the medium emerges. Media ecologists will study various entities such as the phonetic alphabet, writing, the printing press or the Internet as processes which reshape the structure of culture by reshaping means of communication and interaction amongst elements within culture. 20. Media ecologists cite several theorists as foundational to the study of media ecology including: Marshall McLuhan, Neil Postman, Harold Innis, Walter Ong, Jacques Ellul, Lewis Mumford and Erick Havelock. The diversity of these thinkers reflects the fields tendency towards transdisciplinarity drawing upon communications theory (McLuhan), media studies (Postman), orality/literacy studies (Ong/Havelock), technology studies (Ellul) the role of the city in history (Mumford). The media ecologist unites the work of these fields towards a comprehensive theory of media as an environment.

97 Media ecology emphasizes the distribution of entities not just in time and space, but in medium as well. In other words, the function and character of individual identity is always in relation to available linguistic modes such as writing or speech and communicative modes of nonlocal interaction such as computer networks, telegrams, or cell phones. The emphasis on multiple ecologies of communication and interaction redistributes the sense of individual identity in much the same way as Latours actornetworks redistribute the location of objects, or the way Lewontin redistributes the geneenvironment distinction. The distribution of identity then, is thought in terms relative to other ecologies of media found in literature, books, film, and others that coalesce into an ecological definition of identity and relation. Media ecology is the analysis of the entire environment of communication mediums and the symbolic ecologies of interaction amongst sign-interpreters. Lance Strate, the foremost advocate of media ecology and writer of the fields most comprehensive overview, Echoes and Reflections: On Media Ecology as a Field of Study, understands media ecology to be a way of uniting environments that consist of techniques, technologies, symbols, information systems, and machines (2006). For ecologists such as Eugene Odum the total human ecosystem is comprised of two major parts: the natural ecosystem and the technoecosystem, understanding both is central to articulating a comprehensive human ecology. The technoecosystem can be understood as the construction of human megacities, urban ecologies that dominate the landscape of a particular bioregion. This sense of construction mirrors precisely the insights of niche construction theorists who, as we saw in Chapter 4, argue that all organisms are in a

98 significant way involved in the transformation of their environments, a situation that is amplified in human ecologies through the construction of culture and urban environment. Media ecology arises at a critical point in the history of ecology, where natural and human scientists are simultaneously awakening to the presence of not just a planetary ecosphere, but also a human generated technosphere. Where natural ecology in the holological sense described in previous chapters is adequate to the study of the ecosphere, media ecology coupled with actor-network theory provides a robust mode of inquiry capable of studying complex ecosystems that are simultaneously composed of natural, technological, and paradigmatic components. The task of the media ecologist is to sort out the manner in which particular forms of media restructure both cultural organization and individual subjectivity. In other words, a print culture will be characteristically different from an oral culture, as Walter Ong has demonstrated (2002). Likewise, Marshall McLuhan traces the evolution of media through oral, print, type and electronic formats. Each medium of communication provides its own ecology of communicative interaction that human individuals both transform and are transformed by (2003). Take for example Ayalas (2008) commentary on the difference between print information and electronic information. The King James version of the bible, according to Ayala, contains about 3 million letters or other grammatical symbols. Contrast to this, one single human genome sequence consists of one thousand times that much information. The volume of this information must be stored electronically; it is simply not possible for information of that magnitude and complexity to be written down character for character by monks in a monastery (as the original scriptures surely were). In other words, in order to sequence human genomes, a

99 medium of storage and expression must be available to house such knowledge. In this way, the media environment is inextricably linked to the kind of knowledge that can be stored there.

At the other end of the media ecology spectrum are people like Jacques Ellul (1964) and Lewis Mumford (1989). Ellul, most famous for his work The Technological Society critiques the way in which the technification of society following the industrial revolution, has reorganized human labor and social relationships so that in the postindustrial period humanity must now be organized around the logic of the machine (1964). As such the requirements of efficiency, rationality, automation, technification, and the subordination of the natural world are mandated in order for machine technology to continue thriving. The Technological Society highlights the manner in which human culture is subsumed by machine culture, and rather than technology acting for humans, humans begin to take roles as elements in a larger machine structure, again echoing Odums technoecosystem.

Lewis Mumford launches similar critiques through the history of technology and more specifically, by tracing the history of the city (1989). For Mumford, in the period before and after the industrial revolution, human technological activity gave birth to what Mumford calls the mega-machine. The mega-machine echoes many of Elluls insights into the technification of society. A structure composed of natural material elements, technological machines, and human labor, the mega-machine is a technological superstructure that subordinates human beings and the natural world into the logic of the machine. Again, this has profound effects on human sociocultural organization and subjectivity and dramatically reorganizes the natural environment.

100 CHAPTER 6 CONCLUSION Ecologies of Knowledge: Patience and Risk in Staying With the World The French transdisciplinary thinker Morins insistence on remaining selfreflective and self-critical informs the overall character of this work (2008). For Morin, human beings are open to possession by their own ideologies and systems of belief; the ecology of ideas has a real impact on the lived perceptions and practices of Homo sapiens. In Morins thinking, it is not just knowledge that is of central importance in the solving of problems, but rather a knowledge of knowledge. That is to say that, in keeping with a transdisciplinary approach, Morin is able to articulate how the production of knowledge varies across disciplines, and that this production has significant impacts on its objects of study.
21

Because of his deep relationship to the effect of knowledge in the

world, Alfonso Montuori calls Morin a meta-paradigmatic thinker, or one who is able to see the way in which different paradigms influence the shape and impact of knowledge (Montuori 2008). Thinking of knowledge, disciplines, and paradigms in this way opens the research worker to a realm of creative uncertainty: If one asserts that knowledge production is variable across paradigmatic divides, the idea of positive or stable knowledge becomes problematic. Morins critique of the concept self-organization is helpful here (2001). Morin, like Lewontin, who critiques the idea of the self-producing gene, recognizes that all systems at any scale, be they physical systems like a weather pattern, a social 21. Thorough descriptions of the transdisciplinary method can be found in Nicolescu (2002), Morin (2001), and in Rapport and Somerville (2000).

101 system like the economy, or a biological system like an organism, are fundamentally open to influence from multiple scales of interaction and intervention. Thus autoorganization is in fact always auto-eco-organization, an approach that recognizes the existence of concrete entities, but always within the context of an enfolded and recursively interactive ecology. Morins approach has also been described as a noncentered systems approach (Whiteside 2002, 81) that incorporates elements of biology, psychology, anthropology, ecology, and systems theory into what he refers to as complex thought or a fundamental anthropology. Complex thought emphasizes the trouble of producing adequate accounts of the world in light of the embedded particularity of the research worker. The role of paradigms, uncertainty, and disorder, especially in the context of disciplinary specialization, have a capacity to mutilate their objects of study, or to inadequately reduce or explain away the features of one system in terms of the language and functioning of another (Morin 2001). Morins fundamental anthropology is a response to the ethical demands for producing adequate knowledge. For Morin, a fundamental anthropology asserts the inadequacy of both pan-biologisms and panculturalisms, in favor of a more complex truth that inhabits neither biology nor culture, but, in keeping with a noncentered orientation, integrates multiple levels of interaction and organization (Whiteside 2002). Morins approach discloses that what is called Nature is, from the complex view, a multiple objective reality disclosed by multiple empirical sciences (2008). Furthermore, these multiplicities are expressed through metaphoric relationalities that reflect the human understanding of Nature from a particular point of view (i.e., when

102 the natural world is described variously as a mechanical clockwork, an organism or a massive parallel processing super-computer). Finally, this Nature is also, for Morin, an interconnected system of information-energy flows that is in an unending process of reorganization of itself. For Morin, these entities are multiple and shifting, reciprocally interactive, hologrammatically related (i.e., each external component is internally related to every other component), and contain elements of an inherent direction towards order and disorder simultaneously (2008). The concepts with which these relations can be thought or understood are also enfolded within Morins sweep of complexity. Every entity in the universe, be it a thought, a mythos, a political movement, or a thermodynamic energy gradient, are enfolded within the ecology of the cosmos. This complex movement of nature, culture, and thought, for Morin, is now leading towards what he refers to as The Planetary Era, a perspective that reveals the relationality and dialectical processes of influence that link the earth into a multidimensional, planetary whole (Morin and Kern 1999). The idea of ecology is central for Morin, who uses the ecological approach to understand not just environmental systems but also systems of knowledge, identity, and perception. Morin writes: What we need is an ecologized thinking, a thinking that, founded on the concept of auto-eco-organization, considers the vital link of every living, human, or social system to its environment (Morin and Kern 1999) 52). The knowledge of knowledge, for Morin, relates the idea of an organism-environment coupling to the idea of a researcher-paradigm coupling. If, as we have seen, organisms and environments are structurally coupled (as in Varelas autopoiesis) and engaged in

103 complex eco-evolutionary feedback loops (as in niche construction theory), then Morin suggests a rethinking of the subject-object distinction present in scientific practice along similar lines. Thus human perception is in a recursively dynamic, ecological relationship to ideas and paradigms that reframe perception itself in an ongoing evolutionary process. Recall that in the previous chapter, objectivity was recast not as the producer of universal objects of knowledge, but rather, objectivity was shown to be a complex and situated matter of actor-networks supplying the agents for a media ecology necessary to produce certain kinds of objective knowledge. Linking the actor-network and the media ecology to traditional conceptions of ecology is central to creating a more comprehensive and integral ecology. The threefold structure described is thus completed by an analysis of three interdependent ecological systems: the natural ecology, the media ecology, and the knowledge ecology. As suggested by all three approaches independently, it is not the case that a natural ecology exists in a simple a priori sense waiting for objective discovery by scientists. Rather, much like the evolutionary approaches described by Lewontin (1991), Oddling-Smee et al. (2003), or Thompson (2007) ecologies are complex, dialectical and mutually enfolded, evolutionary entities. Furthermore, actor-networks deny the claims of simple location present in the nave representation of objects absent of their networks; a position affirmed by the media ecologist who points to the environmental conditions necessary for the emergence of certain kinds of knowledge and communication. In the same way, in our final analysis of paradigmatic value structures, it became clear that through a study of history and a study of current ecological science debates, paradigms matter in the organization of living world systems. The summation of these three complex ecologies thus rests on the

104 position that nature, media, and knowledge are all coimplicative structures that are ecological in nature, and must all be taken into consideration when studying the concrete entity called an ecosystem. Morins aim is not to reduce the concreteness of reality to one or another social or paradigmatic projections, but rather to point to the mutually implicative character of perception and world that constitutes the ecology of experience: Here we enter the debate around constructivism (2008, 91). Morin writes, Personally, I am a coconstructivist, which means that I think we construct our perception of the world, but with the help of the world itself which, as it were, lends us a hand (91). Drawing from the insights of the sociology of science, complexity theory, and Quantum Mechanics, Morin continues: what we know is not the world itself, but the world along with our knowledge of it. We cannot isolate the world from our structures of knowing. Mind and world are inseparable. And this is particularly true of the human world . . . it is evident that the observer must analyze itself while observing others (91). For Whiteside, What [Morin] provides are methodical reflections on transcending the nature/culture dividereflections designed to make us adopt a political-cultural posture that would revitalize the spontaneous, self-regenerating capacities of the systems in which we are dialectically engaged (2002, 109). In a similar way Haraway, like Morin, recognizes the situated character of knowledge, and of knowledge claims. For Haraway, the aim of research is to inhabit a space where the abstractions employed embody the ongoingness of a speculative adventure in which new worlds of meaning are produced (2001). As is the case for many cultural theorists, feminists, philosophers, environmentalists, and social justice workers,

105 the appeal and necessity of critique looms large, but for Haraway, within the context of the current historical moment, the demands of constructive, rather than only critical, participation with the world is necessary. These patterns of ecology, media, and knowledge, propelled and co-created by the actor-networks that participate in the bringing-to-awareness of ecological knowledge require, I argue, following Donna Haraway, that we must stay present to each of these complex, entangled, and multiple ecologies, even as this awareness remains in a multitudinous flux. This complexity engages us in what Morin has termed the vital combat for lucidity (2001, 3:00). Militaristic metaphors aside, Morins point is well taken. It is, as Haraway suggests in this context, of great importance that It matters which concepts we use to think other concepts with (4:00). In this context, evolution and ecology imply a becoming-with the surrounding ecologies of the planet, not only in a materialistic, eco-evolutionary sense. The human being is also becoming-with the sweep of an organic evolution that incorporates natural ecologies, media ecologies and knowledge ecologies. The human ecological community is, in this sense, comprised not just of other organisms and environments. The human ecological community from an integral perspective is arrayed with a variety of entities that are part culture, part technology, and part idea. This point affirms, as Alf Hornborg suggests, that we must simultaneously inhabit a tense intersection between views that an objective biophysical and evolutionary environment exists, as well as maintain a vigilance to the embedded processes of history and culture that remain critical to a discourse known as the social construction of nature, and to be vigilantly aware of the distribution of power, resources, and technology (2001). Hornborgs informative insights

106 are well received in this context: All ecosystems carry the imprints of human activity. In other words, human social phenomena such as culture, language, and power are really components of ecosystems! (n.d., para. 2). This current planetary becoming-with reveals itself to be the co-evolution of a multi-species, multi-ecological, multi-technological, and multi-paradigmatic enfolding of actor-networks that are never solely natural, technological, or semiotic. For Haraway, a practice of relating to these multiple worlds implies a capacity to weld together disparate entities of experience so as to world (the word is here used as a verb) the types of ecologies that can not just create, but be attentive too, an idea so large as an integral ecology. In this sense it is as important to recognize the human embeddedness with more-than-human ecological processes as it is to resist the urge to naturalize processes of evolution that serve to background political and economic practices of marginalization that exist within certain readings of evolution, natural law, and science. We are tasked with constructing a new view of ecology and of ecological thinking. This requires assessing the descriptive metaphors we use to understand our relationship to larger ecological communities. These communities are both internal and external to us, both composed of material elements as much as noetic ones. Ecology is a practice of a mental environment as much as it as an understanding of a biophysical one. Ecologists literally need to make sense of the complex interdependencies that organize the sweep of activity that is engaged by the word ecology. This making sense of the world is the enaction of a world that makes sense to us as we produce it in the context of ecological knowledge.

107 Ecological thinking continuously reproduces new relations amongst entities that are not contained by observer-dependent boundaries. Nothing is completely itself without everything else, writes Thomas Berry (1988, 91). This is as true of organisms in physical environments as it is of ideas in paradigmatic environments. Ecology presents one with not only a plurality of perspectives on the natural world, but also with a plurality of legitimate perspectives on the natural world. In this way, science and ecology alike must be understood within the larger complexities of the ecologies from which they emerge. In other words, ecology is in idea embedded within its own ecology of ideas! The ambitious project of enlightenment science to produce positive, value-free knowledge of the world has, paradoxically, led to an empirically rigorous and theoretically profound understanding that such a perspective is impossible, at least not in the traditional sense. The world exists out there, burgeoning with its full compliment of consequences, but not in the way scientific inquiry once believed. Expectations of scientific practices that depend on regularity and simplicity are profoundly inadequate in the context of an integral ecology. This does not mean that one must suspend the construction of an elegant philosophy or cosmology, as though shared knowledge of a common world were impossible. Rather, the realization of ecology points to the nature of uncertainty that both frees and entangles us. Thankfully, it appears that humans, and to a great extent their multi-species peers, are not simply biologically determined when it comes to many important choices of ecological consequence. Unfortunately, this also means that entanglement occurs on many levels. Nineteenth century biology will always be fused with Victorian cultural assumptions and power dynamics. It also means that objectivity is possible, but only in a

108 sense. Objectivity is fragile, not robust. The networks that make objectivity possible are prone to violent, unexpected shifts of politics and economies; objectivitys basic underlying assumptions are always shifting and are related to the contingencies of history and the environment. Objectivity is empirically enacted, not universally discovered. Objectivity is situated within contingent networks of complex, nonobjective phenomena. Or to put it in other words, objectivity is the outcome of very specifically coordinated acts of subjectivity performed within the appropriate media-laboratories that can produce an ecosystem capable of supporting objectivity. It is a precious and problematic achievement. As Bruno Latour has helped us to see, If modernism claimed to be detached from the constraints of the world, ecology for its part gets attached to everything (2004, 21). Ecology suspends the faculties of certainty, but reinscribes the ever-present intimacy with a multiplicity of beings that are sometimes technical, sometimes organic, but rarely stable. Epistemology, politics, and media are as much a part of ecology as are the atmosphere or the biochemical cycles of the earth. The planet is an Oikos and humans are its Kairos. The crisis of objectivity and the clash amongst representations of Nature, far from leading to a deluded solipsism, provide the opportunity for a transformation of human understanding through an awareness of the ecology of knowledge. Ecology complexifies the relationship between perception, modes of communication, and ideas. Even as ecology destabilizes the fixity of the world and problematizes an easy reading of what the world might be, it rematerializes the reality of a world that, though uncertain, humanity must stay with. Humanity must risk committing to a world that exists in a meaningful way in order to save a world it may never fully know. Thinking about

109 ecology in this way allows the construction of new modes of practice in relation to language, ideas, power, culture, and to the Earth. With this sentiment I suggest that ecology is becoming integral.

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