Lynn Thorndike’s massive History of Magic and Experimental Science, published in eight volumes between 1923 and 1958, is one of the lesser-known but nonetheless important reference books for modern scholars interested in the history of science, and of its early relationship to magic. I confess that I have only briefly dipped into the work, but one little piece of information has always stuck in my mind. Buried somewhere in this massive work is an account of a magical ‘knife of serpent horn’ which had the singular benefit of signaling to its owner that his/her food had been poisoned. Now, this seems fair enough for your average medieval warlord, but in this case, the knife was reputedly owned by Pope John XXII (1249-1334). Some readers might argue that he was a warlord anyway, but this does not seem to be the case. Perhaps it was a gift he could not refuse, or simply a precaution against Salmonella in poorly prepared food!
And this brings me directly to my main subject. Could it be that the course of science, so carefully charted through the centuries by Thorndike, is now devolving, as it were, such that we are now heading back to ‘the knife of serpent horn’ days? Professor Garth Paltridge thinks so. A few years ago he published a book titled The End of Science: How the Climate Change Debate is Compromising Science.[1] Now I am not sufficiently familiar with the subject matter to comment on this specific area of science (or lack of it), but there is the related area of ecology which certainly interests me, and it is upon this that I would now like to direct my attention.
Before proceeding further, it is worth noting one curious thing about ecology. The physical sciences for the most part, manage to conduct their enterprises without any need for overt political action. There is no political physics or political chemistry. Why then, amongst all the physical sciences, should the study of ecology be so closely associated with politics? There are now “Green” political parties in many countries, including Australia, and their whole raison d’être centres upon ecological concerns. Part of the answer, I believe, has to do with the history of the origin of ecology as a science, and with a particular elaboration of the subject matter beyond what might be regarded as the normal parameters of the scientific method. It is this elaboration of ecology beyond the realms of standard scientific inquiry which, to me, entails a fundamental paradox. So what is ecology, how did this field of study come into existence, and is it in danger of devolving into magic or a form of pantheistic religion?
First, some history. A marriage between evolutionary theory and German Romanticism might seem to be a rather incongruous alliance but that is exactly how ecology, both as a word and as an idea, had its genesis. The place to begin is with the philosophy of Immanuel Kant. This may seem an unlikely starting point for one of the consequences of Kant’s philosophy was to erect an impenetrable barrier between things in themselves and human experiences (noumena and phenomena). But this had a very interesting sequel. Those German philosophers who followed Kant, especially Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel, tended to interpret Kant’s transcendental idealism in such a way as to elevate the self-conscious subject as the constructor of all reality. An effect of this was to erect systems of philosophy which presented huge, lofty visions and which eschewed the much more arid field of analytical philosophy. Thus was German romantic philosophy born. Arthur Schopenhauer, a contemporary of Hegel’s, expressed some of his ideas in terms that were to anticipate evolutionary biology (e.g. survival of the species rather than of the individual) and it was only a matter of time before some biologist would make a connection between these strands of Romantic philosophy and the science of biology.
The German biologist Ernst Haeckel (1834 -1919) was strongly influenced by these trends and sought for some means of expressing all human experience in biological terms that were more in keeping with the age of science and especially with the newly emerging field of evolutionary theory. In a sense then, he reversed the Romantic notion of the human mind as a world creator but retained the general penchant for the lofty vision. It is worth noting here that Haeckel thus has some claim to being the first socio-biologist. He was, in his day, both hugely popular and hugely controversial. As an indication, in 1895, a mountain in the Californian Sierras was named after him. His supporters (though not without some reservations) included such disparate figures as V.I. Lenin and Rudolph Steiner. One of his main research interests was embryology, and it was Haeckel who coined the now famous (or infamous) term ‘ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny’. By this he meant that the development of the embryo in animals actually repeats the evolutionary path of that particular species. Not surprisingly, he was greatly interested in Darwin’s Origin of the Species but preferred a version of Lamarckism (inheritance of acquired characteristics) rather than Darwin’s approach. Like many modern-day socio-biologists, Haeckel’s ‘science’ sometimes went well beyond the available facts and often comprised little more than conjecture. Indeed, some of his published drawings in embryogenesis were shown to have no basis in fact. Nonetheless, much of his other work in biology was quite sound.
In 1869, Haeckel coined the word oekologie to describe the relationship between organisms and their general environment. This word, in turn, he derived from the Greek oikos meaning ‘household’. His intention was to promote an idea of the natural world as a sort of well managed and integrated household – a self-managed household. This is how the English word ecology came into being. In 1905, Haeckel founded a group called ‘The Monist League’ to further promote this view and to give it both a quasi-religious and a political standing. The Monist outlook combined a scientifically based ecological holism with völkisch social views. Indeed, there is a very strong link between this early German view of ecological holism and National Socialism. It is an inescapable fact that Blut und Boden contained strong elements of ecological thinking. This link has been studied in some detail by Daniel Gasman[2] and many other authors. There is also a prodigious array of secondary literature which deals, inter alia, with the interrelationship between early German ‘Green’ ideology and Nazism. A word of warning though; some of these accounts come from those who are anxious to discredit all forms of evolutionary theory. As such, they often lack intellectual rigor and are prone to using selective quotes in support of their ideas. Moreover, it should not be assumed that political ecology will always be Fascist in nature. Both left and right wing ideologies might theoretically embrace such a view. Importantly too, modern political ecology often concerns itself with global issues, not national ones.
It is significant that Haeckel and the Monist League campaigned vigorously against all forms of traditional religious belief, but especially against Catholicism. This strongly suggests that the Monist view was religious in nature, and that the God of cosmic life-force was a jealous God who would brook no contenders. Further elaboration of the Monist philosophy is difficult, for it seems always to be couched in very general terms, and heavy on rhetoric and emotion, but rather light on details. Certainly though, it seems to contain elements of Bergson’s ‘life force’ and Comte’s ‘positive religion’. Significantly, Haeckel, like Comte, believed that all human behaviour was ultimately reducible to biological laws. In short, he supposed that holistic ecology was a cosmology – an overarching theory through which all things were to be explained. Where Haeckel and the German Monists differed from Comte was in their overt depreciation of the human enterprise. Here, it is worth quoting Gasman:
… for the Monists, perhaps the most pernicious feature of European bourgeois civilization was the inflated importance which it attached to the idea of man in general, to his existence and to his talents, and to the belief that through his unique rational faculties man could essentially recreate the world and bring about a universally more harmonious and ethically just social order. [Humankind was] an insignificant creature when viewed as part of and measured against the vastness of the cosmos and the overwhelming forces of nature.[3]
This depreciation of the human and the concomitant deterministic view of human nature hold the key as to why ecological views almost invariably lead to both political action and antagonism towards traditional religious views. Here, I stress the word traditional because there are a great many ‘new age’ religions or quasi religions which embrace holistic ecological views. Indeed, within the mainstream Christian Churches, too, there are progressive elements striving toward the same end. The more radical expression of ‘Creation Spirituality” such as the writing of Matthew Fox in America constitutes an example.
Political action is the obvious outcome of any view which holds firstly, that humans as merely intelligent apes are entirely responsible for their own destiny and secondly, that such destiny can be wholly manipulated by purely human action. Consider these words from the Australian philosopher, John Passmore:
Only if men see themselves, I should rather argue, for what they are, quite alone, with no one to help them except their fellow-men, products of natural processes which are wholly indifferent to their survival, will they face their ecological problems in their full implications. Not by the extension, but by the total rejection, of the concept of the sacred will they move towards that sombre realization.[4]
And yet, there appears to be a conflict at the very heart of this idea. If we are products of natural processes, from whence comes our freedom to make real choices regarding our future survival? In ecological holism, humans are simply part of something called the Web of Life (the actual title of a recent school textbook on ecology). Since all other parts of this ‘web’ are ultimately governed by physical laws, including the ‘laws’ of evolution, it seems to me inescapable that all human behaviour must therefore be regarded as being determined ultimately, by ‘the laws of nature’. What then becomes of the notion of human freedom? I know of no more masterly account of this problem than that supplied by Reinhold Niebuhr. Commenting first upon the human ability for reflection such that the human spirit stands continually outside itself in terms of infinite regression (thinking about thinking about thinking …), he goes on:
The self knows the world, insofar as it knows the world, because it stands outside both itself and the world, which means that it cannot understand itself except as it is understood from beyond itself and the world.
This essential homelessness of the human spirit is the ground of all religion; for the self which stands outside itself and the world cannot find the meaning of life in itself or the world. It cannot identify meaning with causality in nature; for its freedom is obviously something different from the necessary causal links of nature. Nor can it identify the principle of meaning with rationality, since it transcends its own rational processes, so that it may, for instance, ask the question whether there is a relevance between its rational forms and the recurrences and forms of nature. It is this capacity of freedom which finally prompts great cultures and philosophies to transcend rationalism, and to seek for the meaning of life in an unconditioned ground of existence.[5]
There have been attempts by sociobiologists to solve this problem but, in every case known to me, the proffered solution is unconvincing. Here for example is E.O. Wilson on the subject:
The self, an actor in a perpetually changing drama, lacks full command of its own actions. It does not make decisions solely by conscious, purely rational choice. Much of the computation in decision making is unconscious – strings dancing the puppet ego. Circuits and determining molecular processes exist outside conscious thought. They consolidate certain memories and delete others … The hidden preparation of mental activity gives the illusion of free will. … Free will as a side product of illusion would seem to be free will enough to drive human progress and offer happiness.[6]
Wilson is forced actually agrees that, in the last analysis, his view of human nature is deterministic. But this in no way perturbs him because he can simply argue that, given the extraordinary complexity of the brain and of mental processes, we could never get to a fully demonstrated, deterministic account: “Because the individual mind cannot be fully known and predicted, the self can go on passionately believing in its own free will”. The philosophical difficulties entailed in Wilson’s account are legion, but it will here suffice to mention just one from the account given above: If ‘circuits and determining molecular processes exist outside conscious thought’, how can Professor Wilson be so confident of their existence? And so it is, from Haeckel’s day until our own, that holistic ecology can go on believing in a deterministic biology and yet maintain that humans have a real choice in determining their future. Hence the call to political action.
It is important here to note that the religious justification for ecological awareness and ecological action does not suffer from this internal contradiction. The freedom involved in Niebuhr’s account of human nature given above is a real freedom, and the ensuing responsibilities are therefore quite clear. Humans are uniquely responsible, not just as mere ‘nodes’ in the Web of Life, but as self-conscious custodians In a sense, the religious form of ecological awareness places a much greater onus on the individual human than could possibly be the case in a wholly materialistic account.
But there is yet another way in which we can approach some understanding of the dangers inherent in popular usage of the word ecology. Consider the following three sentences:
- Little is known of the ecology of this species and much more scientific investigation is needed.
- A spokesperson said that the ecology of the area was under threat.
- Human activity is now adversely affecting the ecology of the planet and we need to live in a more environmentally sensitive way.
A casual reading might suggest that the word ecology in each of these three sentences was referring to the same scientific process or thing, but a more careful analysis will, I think, make it clear that in each sentence, the word is being used to describe quite separate processes or things.
In the first example above, ecology is being used in what I would regard as the normal, scientific sense. When scientists study the various ways in which particular organisms interact with one another and with their environment, they are investigating the ecology of these organisms. These interactions may be quite complex but they are, at least in theory, measurable in some real way. This is the least problematic use of the word. Strictly speaking, the science of ecology is purely a descriptive or experimental method of obtaining knowledge about the interactions between different organisms and the interactions between organisms and their environment. As such we might say that it has little or no philosophical, ethical or political content. Ecologists may, of course, draw certain inferences from their data, or make certain predictions based on the data, but as scientists they do not make any wider judgements – judgements which go beyond the actual content of their findings or logical inferences from such findings.
It is important here to note that ecology as a science, differs from most other physical sciences in yet another respect. In physics and chemistry, for instance, the scientific laws involved are usually what we call process laws – that is to say, laws which permit the inference of all past and future states of a given system, given the values for the relevant variables at any one time. This is not the case in the science of ecology. The reason for this is that most biological interactions are not closed systems but are subject to a huge range of external influences. To illustrate the difference, we could bring to mind a simple chemical reaction between two elements or compounds. When copper is added to sulphuric acid under conditions that can be fully specified, the two entities combine in an unvarying way and in strict proportions, to produce copper sulphate. However, when two living organisms interact, they do so within a hugely complex environment, and a huge number of variables may influence the outcome. Some of these variables may be unpredictable or unmeasurable, and many different outcomes are possible. All this, of course, does not invalidate ecology as a science. Biologists can still derive much useful information by studying biological systems, and they normally do so by limiting the number of variables involved and by appropriate use of statistical probability. Indeed, the use of statistical methods is a hallmark of ecology and nearly all findings are accompanied by some statement of probability. Invariably though, there is some measure of uncertainty, and it is really a question of agreement between scientists as to what level of probability constitutes a valid conclusion from the data.
In example 2 above, the word ecology is being used in a far broader way, and the question of value is involved – some inhering quality is assumed to be in danger. Ecology here denotes some sort of harmony or balance. But the particular nature of this harmony or balance is very difficult to measure in any ‘scientific’ way without making a number of rather ‘unscientific’ assumptions. Moreover, the general idea of harmony in nature has now been firmly rejected. Today, scientific ecologists do not regard homeostasis as a fundamental property of ecological systems. There is no harmony at the community level. Disturbances such as fire, flood, and disease outbreaks change the course of succession, and are more or less random events. Thus, for instance, it is very likely that patch burning by early Aboriginals in Australia permanently altered the structure of some vegetation communities. Disturbances are largely unpredictable in time and magnitude. The general approach to ecology involved in this particular usage of the word goes well beyond the normal methodology of modern science.
In the final example, the word ecology now seems to carry some moral or ethical implications for us as human beings. Moreover, the whole of our planet is now seen as having this inhering quality or principle called ecology. It is much more than the aggregate of interacting processes between species and their total environment. Note, too, that we are enjoined to take action as beings whose particular mode or organisation of existence threatens this inhering quality. We are, in some sense outside of nature because if we were in it, anything that we do is, by definition, natural. In short, ecology now has political implications as well as moral and ethical ones.
As mentioned, in the second and, by inference, the third of my example sentences above where the word ecology is used, a question of value arises. What constitutes such value? Almost universally, the answer given to this question is diversity – the species richness of the area. Indeed, ecology and diversity have almost become interchangeable terms today. On casual examination this seems fair enough but, given its obvious importance, it is worthwhile examining this concept of diversity in some more detail. We need to be absolutely clear as to what it entails. If we take diversity as the critical measure of ecological ‘health’ (as is certainly done in popular ecology), then it follows that in any two habitats, the one with the greater array of species will be considered more ‘healthy’ or ‘stable’. Why? I can find no suitable answer to this question in the ‘laws’ of biology, but I can find one in the history of philosophy.
A world in which there existed one angel and one stone, St. Thomas Aquinas supposed, was ‘better’ than a world containing just two angels. Here, Aquinas was repeating a much more ancient idea, the history of which has been carefully elaborated by Professor Arthur Lovejoy in The Great Chain of Being.[7] It turns out that this idea, in the West at least, had its genesis in the works of Plato. In the Republic, the Timaeus, and certain other dialogues, we are introduced to two fundamental and opposing notions – the Idea of the Good as a self-existing, self-sufficing Absolute and the idea that this Absolute, in order to fully express all possibilities of being, must also become the dynamic source of the diversity in the expression of being as we experience it in our world of space and time.
The critical passage here comes from the Timaeus when the main character, Timaeus, explains the motive for the creation of the world:
Let us therefore state the reason why the framer of this universe of change framed it at all. He was good, and what is good has no particle of envy in it; being therefore without envy he wished all things to be as like himself as possible.
In Lovejoy’s succinct phrases ‘the concept of Self-Sufficing Perfection, by a bold logical inversion, was … converted into the concept of a Self-Transcending Fecundity.’ Now, if not to Plato himself then certainly to the Neoplatonists who followed him, what this meant was that the ideal Absolute, in order to be ideal, must express all possibilities of being in order to be beyond all possibilities of enhancement or diminution. The later Platonists, and particularly Plotinus, took Plato’s account of the formation of the visible universe a step further. Where Plato says that God, “being … without envy … wished all things to be as like himself as possible”, they interpret this to mean that God ‘overflows’ with goodness and so acts to produce a world of diversity and order.
As Lovejoy points out, Plato’s account of the Divine and his explanation of the material world and its origin was to have an enormous impact on the future path of philosophy and theology in the West. Working from Plato’s basic premises, later thinkers developed what Lovejoy calls ‘the principle of plenitude’. In producing the various kinds of things in the Cosmos, the Good must cover every possible ‘type’ of existence. That is to say, every possibility must be realized. You have a self-sufficient unity expressing itself in the manifold of the created order. It is this very principle which informs the modern, popular view of ecology, most evident in terms such as ‘ecosphere’, ‘green planet’, ‘Gaia’ and ‘spaceship earth’. Ecological holism may claim to reject Plato’s metaphysics, but it embraces the material consequences of such a metaphysical view.
And so, by way of conclusion, I want to argue that while the study of ecology is a valid and useful science, it does have many limitations imposed by the very nature of the subject matter, by its origins and by the human propensity to automatically derive some form of unity (ecological holism) from a world of plurality. The central concept in holistic ecology is a philosophical/religious one. In short, as much as they might deny it, holistic ecologists have appropriated a metaphysical or religious idea and attempted to give it an exclusively scientific basis. This is why Haeckel in his day and Richard Dawkins in our own, have been so vehemently opposed to the notions contained in traditional religious belief. It is also why ecological concepts give rise to controversies and why the bemused layperson has need of some magical implement like Pope John’s ‘knife of serpent horn’ to separate scientific fact from political opinion and personal philosophy. History has shown that, under certain conditions, political ecology can turn into a very poisonous affair indeed. It did so in Germany between the Wars and it is always possible that some new and virulent form will arise in the future. That is why science needs to conduct itself with great caution and with scrupulous attention to possible sources of error or unfounded assumptions.
[1] Connor Court Publishing, Ballan, 2009.
[2] Gasman, D., The Scientific Origins of National Socialism, Transaction Publishers, 1971.
[3] Ibid.
[4] Passmore, J., Man’s Responsibility for Nature, Duckworth, 1974.
[5] The Nature and Destiny of Man, Nisbet & Co,. 1941.
[6] Wilson, E.O., Consilience, Random House [Vintage Books], N.Y., 1998.
[7] Harvard Univ. Press, 1936.
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