Human ecology / by J.W. Bews.

  • John William Bews
Date:
1935
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Human ecology / by J.W. Bews. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    novel and difficult an undertaking even a limited success would be worth while, and we are grateful to Professor Bews for pointing the way in what may yet prove a fruitful line to follow up to its ultimate consequences. My own impres- sion after reading the manuscript is that the attempt was well worth making, that a new and fruitful setting is pro- vided for the vast amount of anthropological work that has accumulated in the last half century, and that the ecological approach is fully justified. At the same time I have the feel- ing that this special line of approach is even more promising than would appear at first sight, and that the ecological method in human studies which is here begun may yet prove a most powerful instrument in anthropological and socio- logical research. Professor Bews has rightly stressed the necessity for the holistic view-point, of which the ecological method is a special scientific application. The world is not a chaos, a chance selection of items and fragments. It is a closely interwoven system of patterns. What we in our human way call plan and design is present everywhere. This is not to be under- stood as naive anthropomorphism. Our most painstaking effort at understanding the world discloses certain dominant features in it—rhythm, regularity, inter-connexion, and link- ings up, an interplay of active relationships which is creative of structures, forms, patterns. Such is reality—a vast Pattern of patterns. And to trace these patterns or wholes is to dis- cover the lineaments of beauty in all its forms, whether we call them beauty or truth or good. They are all, but holistic harmonies in the nature of things. Nothing exists for itself alone; there are no isolated units, but only structured pat- terns and inter-relations, from the primordial electrons to the most developed physical or moral or social complexes in the universe. This is the holistic doctrine which underlies ecology. The organism is not itself alone and in isolation. As a unit it is a mere static abstraction. The real dynamic unit is the organism functioning in its environment. This complex con- cept is the real biological unit and starting point. Life is living, and living is an active reciprocal relation between organism and environment. This is the central concept in ecology,
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