Just one response - in text below.  CP

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Discussion forum for environmental ethics.
> [mailto:[log in to unmask]]On Behalf Of John Foster
>
> Chris:
> > Neither get quite the full picture - and both have been accused of being
> > reductionist.  The emerging ecology seems to emphasise chance, change,
> > hierarchical systems (where both species processes
> > [reproduction/recruitment/species dynamics] and more classical abiotic
> > processes [production - from sun, energy & nutrient flows, consumption,
> > decomp] are each acknowleged - as are landscape, hydrological and even
> > social processes), patch dynamics, etc.
>
> John F: Hierarchical systems should in fact be termed 'holarchic' systems.
The
> problem of hierarchies is that something most dominate something else, and
> this dominance must be long lasting, nearly infinite. The criticism is
> therefore evident that well - if something is really dominating -
> then there
> is no cooperation. For instance this term is only applicable when
> considering natural hierarchies  (individual wolf families, packs
> with alpha
> males and females)  such as food hiearchies and reproductive
> hierarchies. It
> is my belief that competition cannot be the rule simply because
> competition
> is only observed between organisms, not between species (should be rather
> obvious). IF two species compete, then the result will always be
> extinction
> in one species. Competition is not a term that could be applied
> to a forest
> ecosystem.

Chris here: Holism has one disadvantage over hierarchy.  Just as
reductionism doesn't see the emergent patterns above, so holism does not
always acknowledge the pattern beneath.  Anyway that is one argument I read
about the preference for heirarchical systems.

As to competition v cooperation, you seem to be applying an artificial
dichotomy - a polemic - EITHER cooperation OR cooperation, either order OR
chaos, either industrial agronomy OR National Park, etc.  The same applies
in my main problem with the extremes of environmentalism - either
"crop"/"rape"/resourcism/humans dominant OR
"Madonna"/"worship"/preservationism/no humans.  No room for AND.  That is
where hierarchy comes in, because it achnowledges that word!

Coevolution and mutualism etc. exist.  Nothing in the ecology that
recognises no "balance of nature"/climax/teleological myth says that it is
all some transfer of Friedman's economics to nature.  On the contrary, the
ideas of ecological systems that are not atomic and mechanistic (being
hierarchical and affected by many different variables - both as "elements"
[species & individuals] and the biotic and abiotic processes impacting on
them  - which are largely indeterministic.  **Interesting aside - does
modern ecology have any application with an evolutionary Biological Systems
Theory view???**) and a lack of equilibria is a direct challenge to social
sciences that still maintain an atomic and mechanistic approach (the natural
and social sciences have a lot in common - as "difficult" sciences).

Maybe that is the major split - the determinism v indeterministic view.
Accepting indeterminsm/probabalism does not bind you to a new fascism, or
industrial ascendancy.  Might be the reverse..

Capra's The Turning Point - away from the machine to the system
perspective - is in accord with both the rise in the
anti-teleological/anti-mechanistic view in ecology, as much as it is with
some developments (eg ecological economics) in other "difficult"
disciplines.  Quantum physics has made that discipline anything but
straightforward - and Schroedinger (sp?) probably did more for the rejection
of determinism that any ecologist.  In fact Callicott makes this point
(about a change in underlying metaphysics to the sciences) in his intro to
his latest book of essays - Beyond the Land Ethic - More Essays in
Environmental P - arguing that these old ecological ideas (like the old
science ideas) stem from a Cartesian/Baconian/Newtonian world view.  His
argument (from history) is that - as it took 100 years for the Copernican
revolution to come about, so we are on the cusp of another one coincident
with Einstein/Heisenberg.  He argues there are implications for the analytic
philosophic tradition as well.

I don't have a view on whether he is correct ot not (time will tell), but I
think your attempt to create some sort of "good"/"bad" Manichaen dichotomy
on some of these developments is - well - wrong.  It doesn't help when your
point of view is challenged to paint the proponents of new ideas as Attila
the Hun reincarnate.  After all, we might just be rather small despots like
Vlad the Impaler, or Eichmann - or Enid Blyton.

Chris Perley
Think like a mountain