Early Ecology

The majority of that first-term OWU course – “Man and Nature” -- was taught by Dr. J.N. Chase, Associate Professor of Biology, and by Dr. J.G. Ogden, III, Professor of Botany.  We also benefitted from presentations by Dr. P.B. Burnside, Associate Professor of Physics; Dr. L.D. Easton, Professor of Philosophy; and Dr. B.A. Jones, Professor of Sociology. With this kind of professor-power, you can imagine that class discussions were wide-ranging and often impassioned. At least that’s how I remember them.

The first announced topic was “a review of contemporary man, with all his technological and scientific advances.”  Having no textbook as such, we were given a suggested reading list. I don’t know how many got through the whole thing; it looks like I did not (nor do I think I could manage it in similar circumstances even today.  And we were freshmen!)  A primary reading was Paul B. Sears’ Where There Is Life.  Unfortunately, this book has disappeared from my own library, and I have not been able to locate another copy, but I do still have some articles. One by the early ecologist Lawrence B. Slobodkin uses game theory analogies to take a critical look at various theories about who or what directs evolution.  In his article “The Strategy of Evolution,” he asserts that

the absence of morally and philosophically satisfying conclusions about the ultimate meaning of evolutionary history are not weaknesses of biological theory nor are they due to a shortage of biological facts. They are simply wrong [my italics]. Evolution, in fact, is simply a consequence of the general homeostatic ability of organisms combined with the bio-chemical properties of genetic material.

So, I extrapolate from this that, in Slobodkin’s view, human organisms move toward internal equilibrium by self-adjusting physiological processes. Evolution can occur when this ability to adjust is turned on by the activity of genetic material.  Such a pattern of events could be seen as conflict that moves toward resolution that leads to new conflict and then to new resolution, ad infinitum. We also looked at complex interactions in nature, or ecosystems, in  Marston Bates’s The Forest and the Sea. Here he compares, based on first-hand knowledge, the biological systems of a tropical sea and a rain forest. (It should be noted that Slobodkin and Bates were among the earliest ecologists – before ecology  had become a household word).