Visualization of POPULATION: A biocentric perspective

Ernst Mayr refers to one of Charles Darwin’s great contributions to western thought as “population thinking.” That is, he thought of the world in terms of separate groups of interbreeding creatures producing viable offspring to face the rigors of cultural and natural selection. He envisioned populations as the formative unit of biological systems, not types, nor kinds of creatures, as earlier thinkers had believed were the basis of all living communities.

This was a seminally important idea that toppled --at least in biological thought-- typological thinking that dated way back to Plato and Pythagoras. From ancient times to Darwin's own training, naturalists described differences in living creatures in terms of distinct types or kinds; differences arose from variations on those few kinds of living things. Life was not described in terms of descent from common ancestors or divergent populations from the same parentage. Creatures were not understood in light of existing, but slightly variable and numerous offspring forming isolated populations.

The influence on Darwin of the Essay on Population by Thomas Malthus cannot be overlooked in regard to the influence of social ideas on significant concepts in the biological sciences. Little else would really provide a rationale for the variations Darwin sought to account for in his Origin of Species. These changes are not due to random shifting, instead they are variations around a common set of body plans, organ forms or ancestral traits that appear in more recent offspring, or the capacity of bacteria to share enzymes and metabolic pathways.

Biology, since Darwin, describes living beings as siblings in a larger population. We are subject to the consequences that nourished previous populations. Impacts on our surroundings by the scale of our population growth in the past still affects our conditions today. Past and present consumption creates long lasting demands upon the land, air and water we use. The duration of our interference in natural cycles is persisting beyond the power of natural areas to recover from disturbances or recurrent perturbations.

Collective perturbations of nature also shape recently born populations and the populations of potentially interbreeding creatures. By reading Malthus and realizing his own tragic personal history with the loss of his daughter, Darwin knew well that not all descendents survive to raise new offspring. The inability of places to sustain the pressure form the highest and densest populations was itself a check on the number of surviving new born that could live to reproduce. And the physical world also conspired against the ability of a reproducing population to fill up an area.

Storms, volcanoes and meteor showers influence climate and availability of climate dependent resources needed by life on earth further restricts population growth. As human population expands at the rate of 90 million per year the conditions for the sustenance of wildlife diminishes. Those creatures representing the tips of our biological wealth are being attenuated by our demands. Our 5% of the world’s people consume 35% of its resources producing nitrogen oxide and carbon dioxide that is altering our climate.

Every environmental problem is a plight of existence when correctly viewed from the impact of dominant creatures on on surrounding populations. This plight is to some degree or another due to consumption and not solely population growth. With human population growth, this includes matters arising from the loss of habitat to the loss of our security on city streets. Population requires more water, more energy and contaminates more air and more water than we can possibly replace at the rate we are consuming the earth. The late Garrett Hardin argued that if we fail to see that population growth is the single greatest threat to humankind’s future then many other features of a free civilization that we cherish will be lost to the privileged right of families to have as many children as they decide.

The right to a woman’s control over her economic potential and her freedom in reproductive decision-making is essential in this context of limiting the unwanted children of the world. In nations where women have economic opportunity and security, the birth rate is declining. As the cost of rearing children becomes more expensive for families the birth rate also declines. But in those nations where no social insurance and old age pensions protect families and the infant mortality rate is high due to lack of access to basic medical care birth rates are among the highest in the world.

The global commons is shrinking at such a rate that population increase if not stemmed will tip the balance of the planet’s assimilative capacity against our expanding interference, despite our best intentions of preserving biological diversity.

“The four suggestions I will offer here are:

to develop institutions that balance the goals of efficiently using resources with equality among women and men.
to improve the accounting directly and indirectly of indicators that reveal social well-being, materials & the consequences of actions
to integrate thinking about populations with thinking about faith, institutional religions, economies, environments and cultures
and
to create a better understanding of mutual aid, emphasizing the benefits that the well-off derive from helping the poor to live better lives.” (Joel E. Cohen, p. 380 with additions J. Siry, 10/15/2007)

Data:

Growth in the population of the US.

Demographical change is a factor that drives ecological alterations
date	number of inhabitants	key
1790	3,000,000
1860	30,000,000
1915	100,000,000
1968	200,000,000
1998	300,000,000

I = P * A * T

impact I =

population P * (density)

affluence A * (per capita income)

technology T. ( per capita electricity use, or CO2 emissions)

New concepts.

WEAL derives from weald in old English and the German word,wald forested areas, these forests were necessary for sustaining living conditions in the Middle Ages and were sources of wealth.

Wealth

WEAL

Water, H20 Energy, Potential & kinetic

Air, Atmosphere Land, Landscape

Water, energy, air & land form the matrix within which ecological integrity is manifest.

Lesson One :

literally weal stands for the features of an ecological habitat.

Lesson Two :

figuratively, Weal is used to describe the origins of wealth; biological wealth.

Lesson Three :

by analogy biological wealth is described in terms of biotic diversity; biological diversity, or biodiversity, for short.

Lesson Four :

a summary way to think about biological wealth and our world; a global ecology. Darwin's contributions as a matrix.

The features of an ecological habitat, make up the inorganic conditions and are:

Water -- hydrological cycle of snow, rain, surface & underground flow, evaporation.

Energy -- radiation from the sun, especially blue & red ranges of the spectrum.

Air -- wind and atmospheric pressure, composition and pollutants.

Landscape -- the geographical setting and geological past terrains.

= Wealth from WEAL

patterns | matrix | Alphabetical index | ecology | garden as a case | ecological problem