Ecological Holism Research Articles

Ecological Revelations from Chinese Documentary Movie: Taking Nourishment of All Things as An Example

The ecological documentary movie Nourishment of All Things selects six natural resources in China and presents nature’s selfless gift to mankind from a unique perspective. It perfectly presents the ecological theme of the survival, growth and health of plants, animals, and humans. The film contains endless beauty of living creatures and the beauty of harmony between man and nature, which demonstrates the ecological holism of “the harmony between man and nature”. From the perspectives of three different dimensions, the article aims to analyze the ecological relationship between plants, animals, and humans. As a result, it is possible to provide a useful enlightenment for sustainable development of ecology.

Decision making in complex land systems: outline of a holistic theory of agency

ContextModels of human agency within research on land systems and landscapes do not fully account for social and cultural factors in decision making. Conversely, within social theory, parallel concepts of agency do not fully take biophysical and spatial factors into account. This calls for a synthesis of conceptual models addressing human decision making in land systems.ObjectivesThe review identifies parallels between social and ecological perspectives on humans as co-constituent parts of complex land systems. On this basis selected models of agency combining insights from social theory and land systems research are outlined and compared, and improved concepts are outlined.MethodsElements of agency in modern agricultural land systems are reviewed. A case study illustrating the application of agency concepts in an analysis of decision making among farmers on the Canterbury Plains (New Zealand) is presented. On this basis it is discussed how to improve understandings of human agency in land systems.ResultsThe review identifies and compares parallel conceptions of agency, practice and holism in landscape ecology and social theory. Taking the agency of farmers in contemporary agricultural landscapes as an example, theories currently used to characterise and interpret the agency of farmers are discussed and improvements considered. Potentials for improvement of current conceptual models are indicated and discussed, and an improved model of agency is suggested.ConclusionsBased on the review, the article presents an improved conceptual model of agency in land systems emphasizing the position of agents in social-ecological contexts of action.

The Oriental Turn of American Wilderness Literature in the Twentieth Century

Abstract: Early-American wilderness literature mainly praised the vast, magical, beautiful, and pleasant natural wilderness, expressed ideas of returning to nature, and raised environmental protection awareness through the writers' personal experiences. In the late-twentieth century, American ecological literary eco-critics turned to Eastern philosophy, and then developed a post-modern ecological holism. Wilderness literature of this period also reflected a significant shift to the East mainly in three aspects: (1) In a manner recalling the observations of Lao-tzu and Chuang-tzu, the range of wilderness literature extended to include wilderness in urban environments. (2) Corresponding to the East "Chaos" philosophy, literary speculation appeared in wilderness writing, trying to make the readers aware of limitations of a pure rational thinking from the level of ideology. (3) With the concept of "Dao," American wilderness literature reflected a consciousness returning to social issues and played a more engaged role in social responsibilities.

A Corpus-Assisted Analysis of Silent Spring from the Discourse-Historical Perspective

Silent Spring, an ecological work written by Rachel Carson, symbolizes the inception of the modern environmentalist movement since it reveals the astonishing and catastrophic consequences brought by the abuse of insecticides without beautification. The work struck the whole world and brought environmental protection to attention through its powerful arguments and rigorous logic. As a problem-oriented approach, the discourse-historical approach (DHA) examines a discourse from three aspects, namely context, discourse and text. This study integrates quantitative and qualitative methods to investigate the linguistic features of Silent Spring within the theoretical framework of DHA. It is found that the work centers around the abuse of insecticides and utilizes the nomination strategy and predicate strategy to present a negative image of human beings. In doing so, the writer opposes anthropocentrism and constructs her ecological holism thoughts in this work.

Translation of Cosmetic Trademark Names in Eco-Translatology

Under the influence of global economic integration, a large number of foreign cosmetic brands have entered the Chinese market, and many domestic cosmetic brands have gradually gone international. The brand name represents the core ideology and and molds the image. Therefore, the translation of cosmetics brand name plays a vital role in the sales of products and the improvement of market competitiveness. Eco-Translatology is a paradigm of ecological translation studies rooted in eco-reason and synthesized from an ecological perspective. It originated and was displayed in an upsurge of worldwide ecological theories to synthesize and describe the entire ecology of translating and translation theories proper (including the essence, processes, criteria, principles, methods, and factual cases of translation) from the ecological perspective, drawing support from the isomorphic metaphor between the translation ecosystem and the natural ecosystem; conceived in ecological holism; subordinated to Eastern ecological wisdom; probing into textual ecology, translator-community ecology, translationenvironment ecology, and their interrelationship; and narrated in ecological terms and an ecological manner. Based on the micro-level translation of ecological translation, this paper try to explore the translation methods of cosmetics brands name from four aspects: grasping multi-dimensional conversion, creating a new situation, adapt to the translation ecology and consider subjects and environment.

The Beauty of Symbiosis in Bamboo-Weaving Culture: A Case Study of Daoming Bamboo Weaving Culture in Sichuan Province

The symbiosis view in the context of ecological aesthetics is a transgression of the traditional epistemological philosophy view. It breaks through the limitation of anthropocentrism with the dimension of ecological holism and expands the category from the symbiosis between man and nature to the harmonious symbiosis between man and nature, society and individual. As a local folk culture, bamboo weaving not only connects the artisan with true nature but also connects the artisan with society and itself in the form of a carrier of cultural inheritance, revealing the possibility of a symbiotic view.

“A Delicate Equilibrium of the Most Complex Sort”

This article examines the intertidal ecological research of the commercial lab owner and popular science writer Edward F. Ricketts, best known as the prototype for John Steinbeck’s character “Doc” in the novel Cannery Row (1945). Ricketts’s friendship with Steinbeck and unconventional philosophical style have regrettably overshadowed his scientific work, particularly his novel faunal zonation surveys of the North American Pacific littoral in the 1930s and 1940s. These surveys resulted in a landmark handbook, Between Pacific Tides (1939), designed for novices and specialists alike. Ricketts’s work demonstrates how the place of ecological investigation (Billick and Price)—here Monterey Bay’s pounding surf, storm-tossed debris, eclectic bohemianism, and the collaborative energies at Hopkins Marine Station—“imprinted” West Coast animal ecology. At first, Ricketts adopted the physiological methods and conceptions of ecological holism he had learned at the University of Chicago under mentor Warder C. Allee in the early 1920s. Allee had conducted his investigations of intertidal organisms in the relatively placid bays and estuaries at the Woods Hole research center on Cape Cod, Massachusetts. Allee envisioned animal aggregations as higher-order societies guided by “unconscious cooperation” and evolving toward a climax state. Yet Ricketts found that physiochemical factors, such as temperature and salinity, could not explain the distribution of organisms amid the Pacific’s far more precarious rough-and-tumble surf, nor could they account for fierce competition among organisms. Rejecting Allee’s cooperative metaphors, Ricketts came to see community structure as an unintended result of tidepool invertebrates’ Darwinian struggle to occupy resource niches—a “set of sieves” that transferred nourishment from one part of the aggregation to the next, binding it together in interlocking food webs. Through dialogue with Steinbeck about the implications of modern physics during their Sea of Cortez voyage (1940), Ricketts developed a “unified field hypothesis” to conceptualize the dynamic interwovenness created by transfers of metabolic energy. Yet Steinbeck ultimately held fast to a super-organismic understanding of ecological holism—a hierarchical relationship between constituents and the whole that underlays the novelist’s idea of the human “phalanx” in Grapes of Wrath and other works. The article offers new insights about the ecological origins of Steinbeck and Ricketts’s disputes over “non-teleological” reasoning and the pair’s divergent understandings of nature, society, and progressive politics.

Stubble Burning in India: Politics and Policy Responses

Stubble burning has emerged as an important environmental policy issue in India in recent times. This article contends that in addition to the apparent, practical reasons for burning stubble by farmers, there are also historical, policy-based reasons associated with the Green Revolution of India that has led to the perpetuation of the practice. It then provides an assessment of the extant policy responses toward the practice in India, and comments on their efficacies. Having done so, the article maintains that it would be more prudent to approach stubble burning by contextualising it within other environmental issues (and consequent policies) and not as an isolated issue in itself so that environmental sustainability and ecological holism are realised.

Multi-dimensional interpretation of the connotation of ecological rule of law

With the continuous Sinicization of Marxist ecological rule of law thought, the idea of ecological rule of law in the new era has emerged, which is full and contains multi-level content. This paper interprets the ecological rule of law in the new era from four dimensions: ecological holism, ecological capital, ecological equity and ecological rule of law. It not only analyzes the concept of ecological rule of law in the new era from the content level, but also thinks about the development path of ecological rule of law in China.

Ecological perceptual holism – unity of the individual and the environment in perception

In the second half of the 20th century, ecological theory of perception presented a new concept of perception according to which it is not a one-sided process within the perceiver, in the form of representation and interpretation of sensory data obtained from the environment, but a process within direct and continuous interaction between the percipient and the environment. Opposing the almost intuitive acceptance of numerous dualities based on the traditionally accepted separation of subject and object, ecological theory introduces an innovative concept of affordance. At about the same time, the initial ideas of an equally innovative theory of the organism-environment system arise, and in this paper they are connected in the context of the interpretation of perception. The goal of the paper is to present the concept of affordance and point out its affinity with the theory of the unity of organism and environment, as well as the need for further introduction of similar theoretical concepts, and with this intention, the concept of ecological perceptual holism is proposed.

Interpretation of Li Gonglin Ecological View of Landscape Painting Based on Chinese Soil Smoke Culture

Objectives: Cigarettes are not goods that have existed in China since ancient times, but consumer goods that were introduced into China by western countries and accepted and developed by Chinese people in modern times. The application of Chinese soil smoke culture in Li gonglin’s landscape painting is studied in this paper. Methods: From the perspective of art history, landscape painters in the Northern Song Dynasty, as a prosperous period of Chinese art history landscape painting, thought deeply about painting from the artistic form of nature, and integrated their own view of environment into their creation, forming many landscape aesthetic paradigms. Results: This paper focuses on the interactive dialogue between the literati and the environment with the involvement of how space planning and governance are allocated. It is aimed at the global perspective in the Anthropocene and a local position in the Northern Song Dynasty. Localization is not only the exploration of the ecological approaches of China and the West in space, but also the integration of the past and the present, observing its ecological image from the perception and practice of traditional environmental aesthetics to the harmonious coexistence of modern cities and nature. Conclusion: Local tobacco is not a traditional local consumer product. Under the public’s praise, it has gradually formed a unique thing in China - cigarette culture. People in the society are not only the observers of the environment, but also the participants of the environment. Through the aesthetic configuration of the classification of environmental belonging space and the transformation of the image and vision into such realistic or ideal landscapes as “Longmian Villa”, it goes towards ecological holism. Therefore, from the perspective of environmental aesthetics research, Li Gonglin’s paintings have research value.

Beyond the limit: carrying capacity (K) and the holism/reductionism debate.

As the debate about holism and reductionism in ecology has ebbed in the last twentyyears, this article aims to reassess the traditional opposition between holistic and reductionist epistemologies during the development of population biology. The history of the notion of carrying capacity, the upper demographic limit of a viable population, will be analyzed as a paradigmatic case of the progressive imposition of reductionist strategies, from both an epistemological and a semantic point of view, since the middle of the twentieth century. Then, Richard Looijen's reduction of the carrying capacity concept to the niche partitioning theory will be assessed and rebuked for both empirical and logical reasons. Eventually, some recent "weak" and "hard" emergent conceptualizations of the notion of carrying capacity, in logistic map models or in coupled niche-population systems, will be presented in order to show how they call into question the nature and the use of the notion of carrying capacity as a predefined ecological limit.

Ecological Holism Thoughts in Wolf Totem

This thesis attempts to interpret Wolf Totem according to the theory of Ecological Holism advocated by Eugene Odem and the ecological criticism ideas summarized by Wang Nuo to prove that Wolf Totem reveals such ecological holism thoughts as:1. Respect for nature; 2. Nature is a whole in which all species are interrelated; 3. Respect for the nature of all species; 4. Look at everything from the perspective of overall ecological benefits, and thus calls for action to respect and protect both nature and the nature of all species in it.

Discussion on the Hoh Xil Wolf from the Perspective of Ecocriticism

Ecocriticism is a literary criticism that explores the relationship between literature and nature under the guidance of ecologism, especially ecological holism. It aims to reveal the ecological thoughts contained in literary works and the ideological and cultural roots of the ecological crisis reflected in literary works. Du Guanghui's <em>Hoh Xil Wolf</em> is a masterpiece on ecology. The work will sort out the concepts related to ecology, briefly introduce the author, and deeply analyze the ecological themes and important ecological enlightenment contained in his works, thus arousing people's ecological consciousness and ecological concept and protecting the beautiful natural environment on which people live.

Neither superorganisms nor mere species aggregates: Charles Elton's sociological analogies and his moderate holism about ecological communities.

This paper analyzes community ecologist Charles Elton's ideas on animal communities, and situates them with respect to the classical opposition between organicist-holistic and individualistic-reductionist ecological views drawn by many historians of ecology. It is argued that Elton espoused a moderate ecological holism, which drew a middle way between the stricter ecological holism advocated by organicist ecologists and the merely aggregationist views advocated by some of their opponents. It is also argued that Elton's moderate ecological holism resonated with his preference for analogies between ecological communities and human societies over more common ones between communities and individual organisms. I discuss, on the one hand, how the functionalist-interactionist approach to community ecology introduced by Elton entailed a view of ecological communities as more or less self-maintaining functionally organized wholes, and how his ideas on this matter were incorporated into their views by organicist ecologists Frederic Clements, Victor Shelford, and Warder C. Allee et al. On the other hand, I identify some important divergences between Elton's ecological ideas and those of organicist ecologists. Specifically, I show (1) how Elton's ideas on species distribution, animal migrations, and ecological succession entailed a view of animal communities as exhibiting a weaker degree of part-whole integration than that attributed to them by Clements and Shelford; and (2) how Elton's mixed stance on the balance of nature idea and his associated views on community stability attributed to communities a weaker form of self-regulation than that attributed to them by Allee et al.

The Lotus Sutra and Christian Wisdom: Mutual Illumination in Interreligious Dialogue

While the worldview of the Lotus Sutra is profoundly different from the Bible and the Christian tradition, much of the Buddha's analysis of the human predicament and many of the virtues that he recommends resonate strongly with Christian values as expressed in the traditional three stages on the spiritual path: via purgativa (purgative way), via illuminativa (illuminative way), and via unitiva (unitive way). Buddhist descriptions of the three poisons offer many points of contact and convergence with Christian analyses of sin in condemning ignorance, greed, and anger. Both Buddhist and Christian traditions describe breakthrough moments of illumination when persons come to see what they had not seen before. In the Lotus Sutra, as also in different ways in the Bible and the Christian tradition, learning wisdom is not mastering a concept but going through a process of transformation that one cannot adequately define but that one can display in compassion and charity. Like Pope Francis reflecting on the implications of the doctrine of creation for caring for the earth, many Buddhists have reflected on the implications of Buddhist teachings for ecological holism. In a time of ecological catastrophe, the Lotus Sutra and the Christian wisdom tradition join in calling us to acknowledge our ignorance and folly, awake from our delusions, and join together in acting with compassion to care for the earth and all its inhabitants.

Deep Neural Networks in the View of Ecological Holism

In the view point of ecological holism, deep neural networks can be view as a machine cognitive agent with overall multi-level nested structure, the representation learning and problem-solving ability of machine cognitive agent with multi-modal perception function is also the results from the perception and judgment of ambient situation environment. In the paper, a machine cognitive method based on ecological holism was deconstructed. Then, two core questions to characterize learnability of AlphaGo were answered, one is how to explain the characteristics of the hierarchical gradient and update parameters between different layers of networks? Two is how to understand the effective ability to choose the drop sampling at the strongest level of game of Go. These core controlling structural and functional roles proposed in this study may be further improved to a new type of artificial intelligence law of machine cognitive system.

К ПРОБЛЕМЕ ФИЛОСОФСКО-МЕТОДОЛОГИЧЕСКИХ АСПЕКТОВ ИССЛЕДОВАНИЯ ЭКОЛОГИЧЕСКИ ЭКСПЛИЦИРУЕМОГО МИРОВОЗЗРЕНИЯ

&lt;p&gt;The article is devoted to the methodology of formation of the ecologically interpreted outlook, different kinds of which determine the formation and resolution of environmental problems. The author makes an attempt to develop methodological tools to research the ecological components of social outlook and the concept of highly ecological, holistic worldview (the worldview of ecocentrism), as opposed to the atomic technocratic worldview of anthropocentrism, which fundamentally denies nature. As a major methodological tool of constructing this methodology, the principle of ecological holism was selected, where holism is interpreted as complex (in the absence of organization in the system) or systemic, and where ecological holism is interpreted as environmentalism, involving completeness and integrity of views on the relationship between society and nature. The article puts forward the idea that environmentalism is a variant of holism.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;The novelty and the heuristic of the author's approach is in the attempt to explicate the component of the ecological worldview as an environmental outlook represented in the form of varieties of the not-ecological worldview and the worldview of ecocentrism, which is truly holistic. The significance of the results lies in the attempt to identify and explain the origins of environmental problems in the individual psyche, generalized opinions of people on their relationship with nature, in the consciousness of society, and in pointing out the conditions, means, ways of formation and implementation of corresponding to the nature worldview as a guarantor of the settlement of these problems.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;A philosophical representation of the concept of environmental philosophy and methodology of his study is a contribution to the further development of the new ideological paradigm and the subject of the new environmental philosophy. It is highly necessary to develop and introduce the research methodology of the ecologically oriented worldview phenomenon into philosophical issues for the formation of environmental values and for resolving the global ecocrisis.&lt;/p&gt;

Criteria for Sustainable Community Economic Development: Integrating Diversity and Solidarity into the Planning Process

Fundamental to social provisioning is ensuring that community members have access to employment opportunities that pay living wages and sustain the environment. In a previous study, two of us (Underwood, Friesner and Cross 2014) presented criteria for sustainable community economic development, a three-fold test to comparatively assess economic development policies: ecological holism, community centeredness, and institutional legitimacy. Applying this test generates an iterative, evolutionary process of economic development. Absent from these criteria is the concept of intention, as policy options are not “given,” but rather designed by self-interested groups to manipulate interpretations of these test criteria in advancement of their vested interests — outcomes which can be juxtaposed to the “interests of community.” Here, we integrate two additional principles: economic diversity and solidarity. Economic diversity emphasizes living wages in numerous industries to stabilize exogenous economic shocks. Solidarity, as a unit of socio-economic interdependence, stresses commonality of wellbeing within communities. Integrating solidarity and economic diversity into the criteria for sustainable community economic development improves policy design and outcomes that sustain the environment, while also providing living wage employment for community members.

Are there ecological problems that technology cannot solve? Water scarcity and dams, climate change and biofuels

This paper shows through a comparative case study that many contemporary engineers working on a technological response to climate change—biofuel production—continue to be guided by traditional ethical and historical principles of efficiency and growth in spite of the uniqueness of climate change as a problem unbounded globally in space and time. The comparative case study reveals that in the past environmental issues like water scarcity were viewed as deficiencies of nature. In contrast, the development of biofuels as an engineering response to climate change shows that environmental and ecological issues today are viewed as deficiencies of technologies. Yet, just like large dams on rivers had (and continue to have) negative socioecological outcomes, political economy and political ecology research show biofuel development has socially unjust and ecologically degrading outcomes. Many engineers continue to separate the “technical” from the “political” aspects of engineering work, resulting in lost opportunities to reshape the technological development paradigm. While every technology has some negative impacts, engineers, as socioecological experimentalists, must account for these outcomes in their work to mitigate them. Encouragingly, the engineers interviewed for this paper (along the authors of this paper, who are all engineers) believe that problems like climate change are too narrowly defined, and that the problem-solving capabilities of engineers would lead to more favorable outcomes if problems were more broadly defined to incorporate concerns of social justice and ecological holism, and if we are given legitimacy and agency in proposing alternative, radical, and paradigm-changing solutions to problems like climate change.