Ecologiacal

Is Ecology our most intuitive “science”?

Is Ecology even its own science, or must we consider biology or at least evolutionary biology and dynamics as a whole?

If we can consider it a science, and it is our most intuitive, why is that so?

Perhaps it is more socio-biological, or simply biological, in nature. As animals, there is in some sense a necessary intuitive (or innate, if that is a better way to put it) understanding of the way our natural environment works. For, in some evolutionary and purely biological sense, we must be able to recognize creatures and environs that surround us, and the way those interact, in order to find food and avoid becoming the food of others. In this sense, then, it might be argued that we are “wired” to understand many of the basic tenets of ecology.

By comparison, we needn’t, as animals on a level playing field with others in our order or family, have any intuitive understanding of the motions of the planets, the relationships of molecules in our bodies, or even the fundamental laws dictating gravity and other forces. We do need to understand that we are, in fact, stuck to the Earth, and that if we were to jump off a cliff, say, something would inevitably draw us straight to its bottom (and most likely to a rather gruesome demise.) Still, were we forced to explain this, if it weren’t taught to us, we might stumble and fall short of some effective way of teaching this without dropping a rock from our hand to the ground by way of example.

On the other hand, we see, across cultures, an incredibly complex set of ecological principles and understandings on the part of “indigenous” cultures, who might not otherwise be able to explain a lick of modern science to a Western visitor. In this sense, it is in the realm of ecology that we have the most to learn, as students of science, from indigenous people who make their living from the land.

Perhaps this is pointing us in a direction that will lead to an understanding of the nature of ecology, if you will, and how this might in turn lead us to new ideas about how to teach in other areas and the importance of nurturing, cultivating, and building on this advanced, animalian intuition of young human minds, towards better stewardship of our environs.

*I must make a concession here to mechanics, as this represents another quite fundamental area of "science." I would argue, however, that the intuitions in these two areas (ecology v. mechanics) are fundamentally different, and will go into this in further detail sometime soon.