The Anthropocene, man’s domination over nature, has produced an environmental crisis, but this is not understood in an entirely negative sense because the destruction of nature has brought some socioeconomic benefits too. However, we must understand that survival requires a decisive change of direction. The benefits mentioned are precarious and transitory if obtained by destroying nature! The emergence of the concept of the landscape lead to the discipline of Landscape Ecology, and this science tried to demonstrate the grave perils hidden in nature. Many limitations appeared, however, in Biology (from Genomics to Ecology), from the dominance of the so-called dogma of microbiology to the ambiguous concept of ecosystem. Even geography and landscape ecology, together with general ecology, are of crucial importance in studying the environment but they present many limits. For instance, the definition proposed by the European Landscape Commission (ELC) does not mention the complex adaptive system concept. This failure represents a severe limitation, because it leads to errors in the criteria of application for environmental assessment and territorial design (planning) too. It must be noted that a good part of the crisis in life sciences depends on reductionism. As Evandro Agazzi reminds us, reductionism is at a dead end today because it claims to arrive at unity regardless of variety. Many phenomena follow principles and methods proper of complex systems and must be studied following this approach; therefore, to get out of this crisis, science needs to change the paradigm, moving towards Holism, at first following the System Theory. As underlined in the Preface, the need to direct studies toward the systemic paradigm have been felt in almost all disciplines, both natural and human sciences. This need has pushed toward the development of disciplinary branches of updating. The two most significant disciplines are landscape bionomics (LB) and planetary health (PH), born a few years apart in the architectural/naturalistic and medical/environmental fields.

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Environmental Studies and the Systemic Paradigm

  • Vittorio Ingegnoli

摘要

The Anthropocene, man’s domination over nature, has produced an environmental crisis, but this is not understood in an entirely negative sense because the destruction of nature has brought some socioeconomic benefits too. However, we must understand that survival requires a decisive change of direction. The benefits mentioned are precarious and transitory if obtained by destroying nature! The emergence of the concept of the landscape lead to the discipline of Landscape Ecology, and this science tried to demonstrate the grave perils hidden in nature. Many limitations appeared, however, in Biology (from Genomics to Ecology), from the dominance of the so-called dogma of microbiology to the ambiguous concept of ecosystem. Even geography and landscape ecology, together with general ecology, are of crucial importance in studying the environment but they present many limits. For instance, the definition proposed by the European Landscape Commission (ELC) does not mention the complex adaptive system concept. This failure represents a severe limitation, because it leads to errors in the criteria of application for environmental assessment and territorial design (planning) too. It must be noted that a good part of the crisis in life sciences depends on reductionism. As Evandro Agazzi reminds us, reductionism is at a dead end today because it claims to arrive at unity regardless of variety. Many phenomena follow principles and methods proper of complex systems and must be studied following this approach; therefore, to get out of this crisis, science needs to change the paradigm, moving towards Holism, at first following the System Theory. As underlined in the Preface, the need to direct studies toward the systemic paradigm have been felt in almost all disciplines, both natural and human sciences. This need has pushed toward the development of disciplinary branches of updating. The two most significant disciplines are landscape bionomics (LB) and planetary health (PH), born a few years apart in the architectural/naturalistic and medical/environmental fields.