THE GREAT LAKES

cultural and natural realities within the biosphere. Their
views on reform are generally consistent with those of L.K.
Caldwell, J.R. Vallentyne, and colleagues, in their call for
ecosystemic practices, where the ecosystem involvesboth the
cultural and natural attributes of a region.
At the 1975 EPA Symposium, Woodwell said.the following:
#'And so we are asked now to dissect and define a phrase [to
restore and maintain the chemical, physical, and biological
integrity of the nation's waters] that should not be
dissected. Our interest is in the preservation of the biota
including man. The biota is dependent on the physics and
chemistry of the environment and affects both. In this
case, all is one and one is all. -A dissection is
inappropriate. "
Jorling, Woodwell, and others emphasized that reform
could not be achieved by incremental advances within the
dominant utilitarian traditions of the 1960s. Analysis and
detailed specification of integrity by the conventions of
bureaucracy would serve to defuse and subvert the necessary
reforms, as had been done previously with the concept of
conservation. People who share this view may agree that it
is preferable to have a strongly evocative banner with some
ambiguity as to its proximate, practical meaning than to
have ah objectively insipid recipe that does not address the
ultimate intent and implicitly invites the subversion of
that intent.
Some reforms have occurred since 1972 in the Great Lakes
basin and elsewhere, but we are still far from the integrity
evoked by Jorling, Woodwell, and others. In the 1980s the
need for such reform was assigned low priority within the
federal political agendas of the U.S. and Canada. But
interest in integrity has continued in nongovernmental
circles, and in some state and provincial government
agencies.
Like the terms health and wholeness, integrity has been
appried to a broad spectm. of phenomena. Usually, if often
implicitly, the underlying paradigm is that of a living
system, either in a natural sense, or in a cultural sense,
or both. If the underlying paradigm is made explicit, then
it is usually some version of general systems theory as
applied to evolutionary or successional development in
benign environments, and to recessional or crippling
degradation in malign environments.
Reformers are often wary of the tyranny of the paradigm,
especially if the paradigm's protagonists seek to be
inclusive of both the biotic and nootic- aspects of
ecosystemic reality. The history of ideological