Where this pattern is most pronounced, scientists evoke a scenario of
evolution running in reverse, returning to the primeval seas of
hundreds of millions of years ago.
I question the veracity of this proposition. If ecological succession
consists a fundamental dualism of both devastation and aggregation, how
can we separate one from that other and say one is "good" while the
other must be "bad". While this *subjective* assumption may pertain to
the human organism, et al., it cannot be forced across the boards and
applied as truth. The assumption sits in a myopic binary opposition mode
of thinking, too narrow to categorize the flowing forth of Nature.
The antiquated mindset of classical Darwinian theory has wallowed too
long in ecological applications, despite overwhelming evidence of its
insufficiency, stemming foremost from the works of Norman Pace and Carl
Woese (see /A New Biology for a New Century/, Carl Woese, Microbiology
and Molecular Biology Reviews, June 2004). Classical Darwinian theory
operates in a linear time perception that is essentially separated from
itself. We see this operation signified in the above quote when the
author says that Fireweed is growing an ecology that is "returning to
the primeval seas of hundreds of millions of years ago". The author
cannot comprehend how a time that is supposed to be fit in a box and
filed away could creep back onto the scene. If indeed an organism that
was supposed to be transgressed, in the great Liberal dogma of Progress,
was not passed and this "primeval" organism is still existing, then
maybe we should question the conceptual health of Progress and classical
Darwinian theory.
This author does not feel, as signified through his words, Nature as a
holistic process. He works within a paradigm that is hierarchically
related, trying to anthropomorphize Nature to his subjective whim.
Biology becomes for him a tool to change the world, not primarily a
window from which to understand it.
Comments?
[permaculture] On Fireweed and Ecological Understanding,
Johnathan Yelenick, 10/19/2006