Ecology
Since the nineteenth century, ecology has been defined as the study of the functional interrelationships of living organisms, played out on the stage of their inanimate surroundings. Ecology has developed through an ongoing dialogue between two distinct ways of seeing the world. We might call these “synthetic” and “analytic” tendencies. Throughout the history of ecology, they have competed for attention, at times replacing one another sequentially, at others coexisting uneasily.