Ever since I picked up The Tao of Physics at a used bookstore in Santa Barbara, as a kid, I have enjoyed reading Fritjof Capra's works. Recently, I've been reading a book entitled Belonging to the Universe, which is really a deep and lengthy duologue that took place at Big Sur's Esalen Institute between Capra, David Steindl-Rast, and Thomas Matus throughout the late 80's.
Admittedly out of context, I felt compelled to share one of Capra's many angles in describing Ecology.
"...An ecological worldview is holistic, but it's more than that. It looks not only at something as a whole but also at how this whole is embedded into larger wholes. This is especially important when you study living systems-living organisms, ecosystems, and so on-but it can be applied also to nonliving things. The ecological view of a bicycle, for example, would imply seeing it as a whole-the functional interrelatedness of all its parts-and also asking, where does the rubber for the tires come from? Where does the metal come from? What is the effect on the environment of riding a bicycle? And so on. It embeds the whole into larger wholes.
That is a very important difference, and because this is so important to the new paradigm, I prefer to call it ecological."
-EcoFlip.org Staff
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