"Symbiosis or Death": - Rhodes University

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Darwinian evolutionary thinking” (23). Haeckel as zoologist placed ecology firmly in
the area of biology. Shortly afterwards the social campaigner Ellen Swallow extended
ecology into the cultural and was, according to Jonathan Bate, the first to apply ecology
to man’s relationship with the environment, referring to it as “this knowledge of right
living” (1991: 36). (See p 3 for a fuller discussion.) The double strand of the biological
and the cultural or, as I claim, the scientific and the spiritual within ecology was thus
evident from its beginnings in the late 19 th Century. Haeckel’s correlation between
interrelationship and Darwin’s theory of evolution remains the vital cornerstone in
ecology (see p 131).
Pat Irwin’s definition of ecology (given above) offers important detail. In Ecology:
An introduction to principles he explains that an ecosystem is a natural system on land or
water, or both, in which the living community interacts with its abiotic environment (5).
His inclusion of the non-living (rock, sand, solar energy) is important. In the broader
ecological framework the non-living may be extended to include manmade inanimate
things, from cities to works of art. The OED makes a distinction between ecology and
human ecology: “the branch of knowledge that deals with the interaction of humans with
the environment”. The role of art in describing and clarifying human interactions with the
environment falls into this more opaque (dare I say?) spiritual strand of ecology.
Scientific ecology’s theory of interdependence is used as a model in philosophical
ecology (ecophilosophy):
If the ‘dominant [dualistic] worldview’ emphasizes separation, alternative,
ecological worldviews rest on a principle of interconnectedness. ‘Ecology’ is not
intended here in its literal sense, as denoting merely a branch of biological
science. The science of ecology, with its representation of the living world as a
system of relationships, is in itself neutral with respect to its deeper metaphysical
implications. In ecophilosophy, however, this science serves as a model – an
appropriate theoretical image for a set of irreducible ontological
interdependencies. (Mathews in Craig 3:198)
Scientific ecology as a model and “appropriate theoretical image” is a useful (and
pertinent) explanation of the dynamics of both literary ecocriticism and ecopoetics. And
Livingstone uses both metaphysics and metaphor to explain humankind’s position in the
world.
The connections or interactions between organisms are multi-dimensional and, for
the most part, beyond our ken. A true ecological understanding of the world is instinctual.