Remarks on the term “environment”

✍ Scribed by P. Weichhart

• Book ID: 104655372
• Publisher: Springer Netherlands
• Year: 1979
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 984 KB
• Volume: 3
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0343-2521
• DOI: 10.1007/bf00186051

✦ Synopsis

The term "environment" has been used in various and inconsistent ways by scientists from many disciplines and can frequently be regarded as an empty formula. The author argues that this term has an ascertained meaning only within the concept of ecology. Therefore, any attempt to use the relative term "environment" in an absolute way and apart from this context must necessarily lead to its hypostatization, giving it the character of an entity of its own. The different aspects of the ecology concept -here called "dimensions" -should rather be defined according to the specific approaches of particular empirical studies. The paper briefly discusses the meaning of those dimensions which are interrelated and form a multidimensional space. Depending on the position of a particular approach within this multidimensional concept, a specific, ontologically neutral definition of "environment" may be developed, whose meaning (in accordance with the scale of reflections) can now be specified.