Spiritual_Wellness_Holistic_Health_and_the_Practic

228 Philosophical Foundations of Health Education
encompasses mankind evolving and adapting — for better or for worse —as the dominant
species on earth (Dobzhansky, 1962; Dubos, 1965). Modern man ’ s health and life
depend upon how well he can adapt to and manipulate his environment to meet selection
pressures and goals, and there is a premium on how fast he can do it. Environmental
changes —many of them manmade — are occurring so rapidly that man can now be born
in one age and live and die in another. Man has demonstrated amazing adaptive potentialities
and the ability to change his environment to suit his own ends. But his greatest
strength may turn out to be his Achilles heel, for there are limits to man ’s adaptive
potentialities and limits to the life - support systems of our finite Spaceship Earth.
Fortunately, scientific discoveries such as the theory of evolution, plus our ecological
crisis, have finally led us to rediscover our environment and to reconsider our place in
nature and the dynamic web of life (biosphere). We are now learning the hard way that
man cannot live by and for himself alone, because man ’ s destiny is linked with nature. If
we continue to devastate the earth, ruthlessly plunder natural resources, kill off other
forms of life, and decimate our fellow man, we have signed our own death warrant.
Coined about one hundred years ago and unknown ten years ago except to a few
scientists, ecology is now a household word and headline news in the mass media
(Farb et al., 1963). What is it? Ecology is the study of the interrelationships of living
things with each other and with their environment. General ecology includes plant,
animal, and human ecology. Ecologists study the interactions between individual
organisms and populations and their environment (autecology), and between populations
and species and their environment (synecology).
Living things do not live alone (Bates, 1960). The plants, animals, and microorganisms,
and humans that live in a biotic community are all interconnected by an intricate
dynamic web of relationships. Living things —including man —live in what biologists
and ecologists call ecosystems . The ecosystem concept emphasizes the functional relationship
among organisms and between organisms and their physical environment.
Ecosystems include both a place and a way of life, and the more complex, the more stable
they are. Food webs are an example of those complex functional relationships, by
means of which energy flows and chemical elements essential to life and health move
through an ecosystem. The concept of ecosystem - interrelated organisms, populations,
biotic community, and environment is a complex and dynamic set of flows, factors,
forces, exchanges, and feedback regulations. Human ecosystems are exceedingly complex
and dynamic because they include the sociocultural as well as the physical and
biotic dimensions of environment. Man has both a nature and a history, and he lives —
coexists — both in the biosphere and noosphere (Teilhard de Chardin, 1959). Biologists
and geologists study biotic communities and ecosystems because all living things —
including man — are inseparable from each other and their environment.
An understanding of ecosystems and the ecology of public health is very important
for health educators. On the negative side, the concept of ecosystem is related to our
concepts of disease, disability, aging and death; and on the positive side, to our concepts
of the epigenetic human life cycle — with its critical stages, healthy growth and development,
and our quest for self -identity and self-fulfillment (Erikson, 1963, chapter 7 ).