The Organism-Environment Relationship and the Emergence of a Unified Concept of Environment

Abstract

Nowadays, the concept of environment is commonly used, both in scientific speech or in more mundane realms, such as in political or economic issues. However, this conceptualization of the environment, as something singular and abstract with which organisms continuously interact, was not known until the middle of the 19^th century. This concept was coined and emphasized by Herbert Spencer, who primarily inherited the idea that organisms are constantly affected by their external circumstances firstly from Lamarck, and then Charles Lyell, Alexander von Humboldt, and especially Auguste Comte. From Lamarck, who was influenced by Cuvier and Buffon, Spencer received the idea of a physicochemical environment sustaining life. With von Humboldt and Lyell, Spencer became progressively aware of the relevance of other living beings in defining a specific organism’s environment. With Comte, Spencer encountered the idea of a correspondence between organism and environment, in which the latter was abstractly regarded. Consequently, Spencer would include physical, biological, and social circumstances under the umbrella of this abstraction. Darwin would also contribute to this fully different perspective on environment while highlighting the idea of struggle for existence, in which a new ecological stance, focused on the interdependence of organisms, was brought into the fore. My aim is to outline the history of the progressive concealment of elements of the external world surrounding an organism, which was involved in this continuous metaphysical abstraction of the concept of environment. Only then it became possible to construct a dichotomy between organism and environment, and the respective conceptualized interaction, which are crucial aspects to understanding the history of ecology.