ENV100H1 Study Guide - Biocoenosis, Land Ethic, Soil Biology

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

Document Summary

Aldo leopold the land ethic reading (for oct 3 2013) Raw wilderness gives definition and meaning to the human enterprise. Extension of ethics is a process in ecological evolution. An ethic, ecologically, is a limitation on freedom of action in the struggle for existence. Origin: in the tendency of interdependent people or groups to evolve modes of cooperation (ecologist calls these symbioses) There is no ethic yet that deals with man"s relation to land and to the animals and plants, which grow upon it. The land relation is strictly economical, entailing privileges but not obligations. An ethic may be regarded as a mode of guidance for meeting ecological situations. All ethics so far evolved rest upon a single premise: the individual is a member of a community of interdependent parts. Instincts prompt him to compete for his place in the community, but ethics prompt him to cooperate.