Barry Commoner Laws Of Ecology

Ecology is the written report of relationships and processes linking living things to the physical and chemical environment. Heady, right?

In the 1971 volume The Endmost Circle, Barry Commoner gives u.s.a. a clear and understandable example of what ecology really means, while being ane of the showtime to audio the alert on the impending environmental crunch. (Although Rachel Caron's Silent Spring certainly holds the mantle for implanting ecological thought into the popular consciousness.)

Commoner'due south life was devoted to helping people see the benefits of ecological thinking:

Ecology has not yet explicitly developed the kind of cohesive, simplifying generalizations exemplified by, say, the laws of physics. Nevertheless there are a number of generalizations that are already evident in what we now know about the ecosphere and that can be organized into a kind of breezy set up of laws of environmental.

He goes on to lay outfour basic and inescapable laws of ecology (which nicely complement Garett Hardin's Three Filters). The principles describe a cute web of life on globe.

The Four Laws of Ecology

The First Law of Ecology: Everything Is Connected to Everything Else

It reflects the existence of the elaborate network of interconnections in the ecosphere: amidst dissimilar living organisms, and between populations, species, and individual organisms and their physicochemical environment.

The unmarried fact that an ecosystem consists of multiple interconnected parts, which act on one another, has some surprising consequences. Our ability to motion picture the behavior of such systems has been helped considerably by the development, even more recent than environmental, of the scientific discipline of cybernetics. We owe the basic concept, and the word itself, to the inventive mind of the late Norbert Wiener.

The word "cybernetics" derives from the Greek discussion for helmsman; information technology is concerned with cycles of events that steer, or govern, the behavior of a system. The helmsman is role of a system that too includes the compass, the rudder, and the ship, If the ship veers off the chosen compass course, the modify shows up in the movement of the compass needle. Observed and interpreted past the helmsman this result determines a subsequent one: the helmsman turns the rudder, which swings the transport back to its original form. When this happens, the compass needle returns to its original, on-class position and the bicycle is complete. If the helmsman turns the rudder likewise far in response to a small-scale deflection of the compass needle, the excess swing of the send shows upward in the compass—which signals the helmsman to correct his overreaction by an opposite movement. Thus the functioning of this cycle stabilizes the grade of the ship.

In quite a similar manner, stabilizing cybernetic relations are built into an ecological cycle. Consider, for example, the fresh h2o ecological bicycle: fish-organic waste-leaner of decay inorganic products—algae—fish. Suppose that due to unusually warm summer weather in that location is a rapid growth of algae. This depletes the supply of inorganic nutrients so that 2 sectors of the cycle, algae and nutrients, are out of residuum, simply in contrary directions. The operation of the ecological bicycle, like that of the ship, shortly brings the situation back into balance. For the excess in algae increases the ease with which fish can feed on them; this reduces the algae population, increases fish waste material production, and somewhen leads to an increased level of nutrients when the waste material decays. Thus, the levels of algae and nutrients tend to return to their original balanced position.

In such cybernetic systems the course is not maintained by rigid control, just flexibility. Thus the ship does not move unwaveringly on its path, but really follows it in a wavelike motility that swings as to both sides of the truthful course. The frequency of these swings depends on the relative speeds of the various steps in the cycle, such equally the rate at which ships responds to the rudder.

Ecological systems exhibit like cycles, although these are oftentimes obscured by the furnishings of daily or seasonal variations in atmospheric condition and environmental agents.

[…]

The dynamic behavior of a cybernetic system—for example, the frequency of its natural oscillations, the speed with which it responds to external changes, and its overall rate of performance, depends on the relative rates of its constituent steps. In the ship organisation, the compass needle swings in fractions of a second; the helmsman's reaction takes some seconds; the send responds over a time of minutes. These different reaction times interact to produce, for example, the ship'due south feature oscillation frequency around its true course.

[…]

Ecosystems differ considerably in their charge per unit characteristics and therefore vary a slap-up bargain in the speed with which they react to changed situations or approach the betoken of collapse.

[…]

The corporeality of stress which an ecosystem tin absorb before it is driven to collapse is also a result of its various interconnections and their relative speeds of response. The more circuitous the ecosystem, the more successfully it can resist a stress. … Most ecosystems are then complex that the cycles are not simple circular paths, but are crisscrossed with branches to form a network or a cloth of interconnections. Like a net, in which each knot is continued to others by several strands, such a fabric tin can resist collapse better than a simple, unbranched circle of threads—which if cut anywhere breaks downwardly as a whole. Environmental pollution is often a sign that ecological links have been cut and that the ecosystem has been artificially simplified and made more than vulnerable to stress and to last collapse.

The feedback characteristics of ecosystems result in distension and intensification processes of considerable magnitude. For example, the fact that in food chains small organisms are eaten by bigger ones and the latter by notwithstanding bigger ones inevitably results in the concentration of certain environmental constituents in the bodies of the largest organisms at the top of the food chain. Smaller organisms always exhibit much higher metabolic rates than larger ones, so that the corporeality of their food which is oxidized relative to the amount incorporated into the torso of the organism is thereby greater. Consequently, an animate being at the top of the food chain depends on the consumption of an enormously greater mass of the bodies of organisms lower down in the food chain. Therefore, any not-metabolized material present in the lower organisms of this chain will go full-bodied in the body of the height one. …

All this results from a simple fact almost ecosystems—everything is connected to everything else: the system is stabilized past its dynamic self-compensating backdrop; those same properties, if overstressed, can lead to a dramatic collapse; the complexity of the ecological network and its intrinsic rate of turnover determine how much it tin can be stressed, and for how long, without collapsing; the ecological network is an amplifier, so that a small perturbation in one network may have big, distant, long-delayed effects.

The Second Law of Ecology: Everything Must go Somewhere

This is, of course, simply a somewhat breezy restatement of a basic law of physics—that matter is indestructible. Applied to environmental, the law emphasizes that in nature there is no such thing as "waste." In every natural system, what is excreted by ane organism as waste product is taken up by another every bit nutrient. Animals release carbon dioxide as a respiratory waste; this is an essential nutrient for greenish plants. Plants excrete oxygen, which is used past animals. Beast organic wastes nourish the bacteria of disuse. Their wastes, inorganic materials such as nitrate, phosphate, and carbon dioxide, go algal nutrients.

A persistent effort to reply the question "Where does it become?" tin can yield a surprising amount of valuable data near an ecosystem. Consider, for instance, the fate of a household detail which contains mercury—a substance with serious environmental furnishings that have simply recently surfaced. A dry out-cell bombardment containing mercury is purchased, used to the point of exhaustion, and so "thrown out." But where does information technology really go? First it is placed in a container of rubbish; this is collected and taken to an incinerator. Hither the mercury is heated; this produces mercury vapor which is emitted by the incinerator stack, and mercury vapor is toxic. Mercury vapor is carried by the wind, eventually brought to earth in rain or snowfall. Inbound a mountain lake, let united states of america say, the mercury condenses and sinks to the lesser. Hither it is acted on by leaner which convert it to methyl mercury. This is soluble and taken upwards by fish; since it is not metabolized, the mercury accumulates in the organs and flesh of the fish. The fish is caught and eaten by a man and the mercury becomes deposited in his organs, where it might exist harmful. And so on.

This is an effective mode to trace out an ecological path. Information technology is also an first-class way to counteract the prevalent notion that something which is regarded as useless but "goes away" when it is discarded. Cypher "goes away"; it is only transferred from place to place, converted from one molecular form to another, acting on the life processes of any organism in which information technology becomes, for a fourth dimension, lodged. I of the chief reasons for the present environmental crisis is that great amounts of materials have been extracted from the earth, converted into new forms, and discharged into the environs without taking into account that "everything has to go somewhere." The upshot, too often, is the accumulation of harmful amounts of fabric in places where, in nature, they do not vest.

The Third Law of Ecology: Nature Knows Best

In my experience this principle is likely to come across considerable resistance, for it appears to contradict a deeply held idea nigh the unique competence of human beings. Ane of the most pervasive features of modernistic applied science is the notion that information technology is intended to "ameliorate on nature"—to provide food, clothing, shelter, and ways of advice and expression which are superior to those available to human in nature. Stated baldly, the third constabulary of environmental holds that any major man-made change in a natural organization is likely to exist detrimental to that system. This is a rather extreme claim; nevertheless I believe it has a good deal of merit if understood in a properly defined context.

I have establish it useful to explain this principle by means of an analogy. Suppose you were to open the back of your scout, close your eyes, and poke a pencil into the exposed works. The nigh sure upshot would be damage to the picket. Nevertheless, this consequence is non absolutely certain. At that place is some finite possibility that the picket was out of adjustment and that the random thrust of the pencil happened to make the precise change needed to meliorate it. Nevertheless, this consequence is exceedingly improbable. The question at issue is: why? The answer is self-axiomatic: at that place is a very considerable amount of what technologists now call "research and development" (or, more than familiarly, "R & D") behind the spotter. This ways that over the years numerous watchmakers, each taught by a predecessor, have tried out a huge variety of detailed arrangements of sentinel works, have discarded those that are not compatible with the over-all operation of the system and retained the better features. In result, the spotter mechanism, as it now exists, represents a very restricted selection, from among an enormous variety of possible arrangements of component parts, of a singular organization of the lookout works. Any random alter made in the watch is likely to fall into the very large grade of inconsistent, or harmful, arrangements which have been tried out in past watch-making feel and discarded. One might say, equally a police of watches, that "the watchmaker knows best,"

There is a close, and very meaningful, analogy in biological systems. Information technology is possible to induce a certain range of random, inherited changes in a living matter by treating it with an agent, such as ten-irradiation, that increases the frequency of mutations. Generally, exposure to x-rays increases the frequency of all mutations which take been observed, albeit very infrequently, in nature and can therefore be regarded every bit possible changes. What is pregnant, for our purpose, is the universal observation that when mutation frequency is enhanced by 10-rays or other means, about all the mutations are harmful to the organisms and the nifty majority so dissentious as to kill the organism before information technology is fully formed.

The Fourth Law of Environmental: There Is No Such Thing every bit a Free Lunch

In my experience, this idea has proven so illuminating for environmental problems that I have borrowed it from its original source, economics. The "police" derives from a story that economists like to tell virtually an oil-rich potentate who decided that his new wealth needed the guidance of economic science. Accordingly he ordered his directorate, on pain of death, to produce a set of volumes containing all the wisdom of economics. When the tomes arrived, the potentate was impatient and once again issued an order—to reduce all the knowledge of economics to a unmarried volume. The story goes on in this vein, every bit such stories will, until the advisers are required, if they are to survive, to reduce the totality of economic science to a single sentence. This is the origin of the "free dejeuner" law.

In environmental, as in economics, the law is intended to warn that every gain is won at some price. In a way, this ecological law embodies the previous three laws. Because the global ecosystem is a connected whole, in which nil can be gained or lost and which is not subject to over-all improvement, anything extracted from it past homo effort must be replaced. Payment of this cost cannot be avoided; it tin just be delayed. The present environmental crisis is a alert that we have delayed nearly too long.

Lest you experience these are all scientific, Commoner ends past referring you to classic literature:

"A great bargain about the interplay of the concrete features of the environment and the creatures that inhabit information technology can be learned from Moby Dick."

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Still Interested?Cheque these related posts out:

Garrett Hardin on the 3 Filters Needed to Think Well-nigh Problems — "The goal of these mental filters, and so, is to understand reality by improving our ability to guess the statements of experts, promoters, and persuaders of all kinds."

The Effect of Scale in Social Scientific discipline, or Why Utopia Doesn't Work — Why tin can't a mouse be the size of an elephant? Weclome to the effect of calibration on values.