ENV100H1 Chapter Notes -Biocoenosis, Walkover, Land Ethic

• School: UTSG
• Department: School of Environment
• Course: ENV100H1
• Professor: Stephen Scharper

Document Summary

An ethic, ecologically is a limitation on freedom of action in the struggle for existence. An ethic, philosophically is a differentiation of social from anti-social conduct. Symbioses having a origin in the tendency of interdependent individuals or groups to evolve modes of co-operation. Golden rule tries to integrate(mix, emerge) the individual to society; democracy integrates (mix,emerges) social organization to the individual. The extension of ethic to this third element in human environment is an evolutionary possibility and an ecological necessity. An ethic may be regarded as a mode of guidance for meeting ecological situations so new or intricate, or involving such deferred reactions that the path of social expediency isn"t discernible to the average individual. Animal instincts are modes of guidance for the individual in meeting such situations. Ethics are a kind of community instinct in the making. All ethics so far evolved rest upon a single premise: that the individual is a member of a community of interdependent parts.