This is the third in a series of foundational posts.
First post summary
The first, “An Invitation,” was a solicitation to join in inquiry deeper than we commonly pursue. I framed it in terms of our extraordinary times and the possible necessity for extraordinary adaptation of thought and action to survive and thrive in them.
Second post summary
In the second, “How might we link value to science with prediction?” I argue for valuescience by examining its constituent elements “value” and “science,” pointing to prediction as a nexus between them, and noting that all of us currently valuescience—using “science” as a verb to characterize it first and foremost as something we do—and can benefit individually and collectively by valuesciencing better.
Third (this) post summary
In this posst, “Why a human ecology framework?” I’ll characterize human ecology as an overarching discipline comprising valuescience and other subdisciplines, and I’ll outline a human ecology framework for valuesciencing.
Why read the foundational posts
I anticipate that readers familiar with the contents of the foundational posts will reap greater benefit from those that follow by being able to understand better the context from which I generated them and into which I fit them.
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Why a human ecology framework?
This post is an elucidation of an ecological framework, specifically a human ecology framework. Human ecology is an overarching discipline of which valuescience is a specialty.
What shall we mean and understand by “ecology”?
In 1866, zoologist Ernst Haeckel coined the German term Öekologie from which we’ve derived the English cognate, ecology. Haeckel defined Öekologie as, “the study of all the complex interrelations referred to by Darwin as the conditions of the struggle for existence.” With this definition Haeckel included interactions among all living things with each other and with the abiotic components of the surrounding world, both those that occurred naturally, including those resulting from action of other living things, and those shaped from the rest of nature by humans.
Flexibility in centering ecological study
We can center ecological study in many ways. For example, we can research a certain kind of ecosystem such as freshwater lakes, or a particular location such as Mt. Kilimanjaro, or a specific organism such as Vibrio cholerae, the cholera bacterium.
Human ecology
In valuescience, we rely on human ecology, scientific study of interactions between humans and our environment. We can summarily represent human ecology with three elements: humans, environment, and a double-headed arrow representing interaction between these.
Inclusive definition of environment
Many people think of “the environment” as all of nature, except humans. In human ecology, we take a broader view, including in the environment air, land, and water, even the sun and to a lesser extent other extraplanetary phenomena (e.g., cosmic rays). We also include other species and each other, making the rest of humankind part of the environment for each of us. Finally, we include artifact we shape from nature (e.g., buildings, books).
With ecology we study of interaction.
With this definition, we aim to capture everything with which we interact, in the sense of exchanging matter or energy with it. For example, we interact with the sun when we feel the warmth of its radiation or capture some of it with solar photovoltaic panels. We interact with each other when we buy and sell. We interact with other life when we domesticate it or drive it to extinction.
Human interaction with environment is constrained.
Interactions between us and the environment are supported and constrained by its and our characteristics. We can easily see this in countless aspects of life, from how we eat and dress, to what language we speak.
Resource, hazard, and environmental quality
If we characterize aspects of the environment as resources or hazards—admittedly imprecise categories as water can be a resource when we’re dehydrated and a hazard when we’re overboard in an icy ocean—we term resources those environmental qualities that are conducive to interactions necessary for us to survive and thrive and hazards those that are impediments to surviving and thriving.
Ecologically important features of humans
From an ecological perspective, two features of humans are particularly important, our number (population size) and our information.
With our number (population size) we mandate minimal aggregate levels of critical interactions necessary to our survival. For example, each of us extracts food from our surroundings and returns waste to them. As we move beyond bare survival, we require additional interactions. If we are more or less numerous, we affect how much of what interaction is essential.
We interact on the basis of our information. We can sustain interaction only to the extent that we’ve information well-matched to the environment.
We symbolize this by representing our individual selves or whatever population we’re studying with a key that reflects our information and number, and by representing the environment with a lock.
Critical role of information
With this simple diagram, we make evident the critical role of information. With information we underpin reproductive behavior, exerting powerful influence upon how many we are and become. With information we shape actions by which we identify and draw upon resources, generate and avoid hazards, and accumulate, qualify, and disseminate information itself. By reshaping the key, our information, to fit an ever changing lock, the environment, we persist individually and collectively.
Three categories of information
We can place information into three categories, one of which comprises two sub-categories. Some information is encoded in genes. A second kind we gain through experience. An intermediate form, epigenetics, results from influence of experience upon expression of genes. These three types of information are the basis for our behavior.
Cultural and non-cultural experience
We divide information gained through experience into two sub-categories: the first we term culture, information we transmit behaviorally by teaching and learning. We communicate culture both through direct interpersonal interaction, and by embodying it in artifact. Though non-cultural experience we acquire information by interacting with the rest of nature devoid of human artifact.
Primacy of culture
Considering the categories of information, we note the primacy of culture. We’ve yet to develop capacity to reliably alter most genes in a positive way. In today’s crowded world already overbrimming with artifact and made each day more artificial by our own action, non-cultural experience is increasingly rare. Even the regulation of gene expression by epigenetics is often in large part a result of cultural influence.
Culture is key to rapid, global information evolution.
We can evolve culture rapidly and on global scale. If we are to maintain a match between our information and qualities of our environment, we will necessarily rely heavily upon culture. We might term valuescience “metaculture,” an instrument for reshaping the entirety of culture, including valuescience itself, towards greater adaptivity.
