One of the goals of Ecology is to study the relationship between living beings and their environment and humans fit fully to this. To my understanding, the idea that humans are someting appart is an european idea (my apologies to europeans, nothing personal). Ancient greeks classified living beings into something like the plant-, animal- and human kingdom. Even worse, humans being "not like we the greeks" were considered "barbarians", a kind of "sub-humans", like saying "wild animals". Until today, many countries study the "History of Mankind" but it is just a History of Europe. No space to give many history- and current examples of people thinking like this, many of them ruling powerful countries. Religions like the ones asking Evolution lessons to include The Bible added another dimension: they are the ones thinking that a God made humans following His template. I'm not so sure on the quality of such a template, probably some humans made God according to their own template just to say that they are outside Nature. Fortunately, many current Anthropologist do not loose time arguing on it. Two Sciences contributed greatly to Anthropology to become mature: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology. On my opinion, any practicer of such sciences thinking that humans are something appart of nature must forget about Science and become priests. Yours,
Edgardo I. Garrido-Pérez Goettingen University, Germany > Date: Sat, 8 Aug 2009 17:11:02 +0100 > From: cien...@silvert.org > Subject: [ECOLOG-L] Are humans part of nature? > To: ECOLOG-L@LISTSERV.UMD.EDU > > An anthropologist writing on another mailing list wrtoe that "... human > beings, and indeed human cultures, have developed as a part of evolutionary > processes. This is something that a fair proportion of ecologists do not > acknowledge. At my Ph.D. institution, I have had ecologists tell me that > humans ARE NOT part of nature!" I find this statement remarkable, and would > like to know whether it is indeed true that "a fair proportion of > ecologists" feel that "humans ARE NOT part of nature". Comments on this > would be welcome. > > Bill Silvert _________________________________________________________________ Drag n’ drop—Get easy photo sharing with Windows Live™ Photos. http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowslive/products/photos.aspx
