Methods of social ecology briefly. Sociological approach to the study of environmental problems

Since social ecology is a transitional science between the natural and the humanities, insofar as in its methodology it must use the methods of both the natural and human sciences, as well as those methodologies that represent the unity of the natural sciences and the humanities.

As for general scientific methods, familiarization with the history of social ecology shows that initially it was used mainly method of observation (monitoring), later came to the fore modeling method. Modeling is a way of long-term and complex vision of the world. In its modern understanding, this is a universal procedure for comprehending and transforming the world. Generally speaking, each person, on the basis of his life experience and knowledge, builds certain models of reality. Subsequent experience and knowledge confirm this model or contribute to its change and refinement. A model is simply an ordered set of assumptions about a complex system. It is an attempt to understand some complex aspect of an infinitely varied world by choosing from accumulated ideas and experience a set of observations applicable to the problem under consideration.

The authors of one of the well-known models of the future - "Limits to Growth" (which we will talk about later) - describe the methodology of global modeling as follows. First, a list of important causal relationships between variables is compiled and a feedback structure is outlined. This is followed by a review of the literature and consultations with specialists in many fields related to these studies - demographers, economists, agronomists, nutritionists, geologists, environmentalists, etc. The goal at this stage is to find the most general structure that would reflect the main relationships between the five levels. Further development of this basic structure on the basis of other more detailed data can be carried out after the system itself is understood in its elementary form. Each relationship should then be quantified as accurately as possible, using global data, if available, and representative local data, if no global measurements have been made. With the help of a computer, the dependence of the simultaneous action of all these connections in time is determined. The impact of quantitative changes in the underlying assumptions is then tested to find the most critical determinants of the system's behavior. There is no one "hard" world model. The model, as soon as it emerges, is constantly criticized and supplemented with data as it is better understood.

The global model uses the most important relationships between population, food, capital investment, depreciation, resources, and output. First, several working hypotheses about the relationships between the parameters are put forward, and then they are tested on a computer (now on a computer). The model contains dynamic statements only about the physical aspects of human activity. It assumes that the nature of social variables - the distribution of income, the regulation of family size, the choice between manufactured goods, services and food - will remain the same in the future as it has been throughout the modern history of world development. Since it is difficult to predict what new forms of human behavior should be expected, these changes cannot be taken into account in the model. The value of the model is determined only by the point on each of the graphs, which corresponds to the cessation of growth and the beginning of the catastrophe.

Topic: Subject, tasks, history of social ecology

Plan

1. Concepts of "social ecology"

1.1. Subject, problems of ecology.

2. Formation of social ecology as a science

2.1. Human evolution and ecology

3. The place of social ecology in the system of sciences

4. Methods of social ecology

Social ecology is a scientific discipline that considers relationships in the "society-nature" system, studying the interaction and relationships of human society with the natural environment (Nikolai Reimers).

But such a definition does not reflect the specifics of this science. Social ecology is currently being formed as a private independent science with a specific subject of study, namely:

the composition and characteristics of the interests of social strata and groups that exploit natural resources;

perception by different social strata and groups of environmental problems and measures to regulate nature management;

taking into account and using in the practice of environmental measures the characteristics and interests of social strata and groups

Thus, social ecology is the science of the interests of social groups in the field of nature management.

Tasks of social ecology

The goal of social ecology is to create a theory of the evolution of the relationship between man and nature, the logic and methodology for transforming the natural environment. Social ecology is designed to clarify and help overcome the gap between man and nature, between humanitarian and natural sciences.

Social ecology as a science should establish scientific laws, evidence of objectively existing necessary and essential links between phenomena, the features of which are the general nature, constancy and the possibility of their foresight, it is necessary to formulate the main patterns of interaction of elements in the "society - nature" system in such a way that this made it possible to establish a model for the optimal interaction of elements in this system.

When establishing the laws of social ecology, one should first of all point to those that proceeded from the understanding of society as an ecological subsystem. First of all, these are the laws that were formulated in the thirties by Bauer and Vernadsky.

First law says that the geochemical energy of living matter in the biosphere (including humanity as the highest manifestation of living matter, endowed with reason) tends to maximum expression.

Second law contains a statement that in the course of evolution those species of living beings remain that, by their vital activity, maximize the biogenic geochemical energy.

Social ecology reveals patterns of relationships between nature and society, which are as fundamental as physical patterns. But the complexity of the subject of research itself, which includes three qualitatively different subsystems - inanimate and living nature and human society, and the short existence of this discipline lead to the fact that social ecology, at least at present, is predominantly an empirical science, and patterns are extremely general aphoristic statements (as, for example, Commoner's "laws").

Law 1. Everything is connected with everything. This law postulates the unity of the World, it tells us about the need to look for and study the natural origins of events and phenomena, the emergence of chains connecting them, the stability and variability of these connections, the appearance of gaps and new links in them, stimulates us to learn to heal these gaps, and also to predict the course of events .

Law 2. Everything must go somewhere. It is easy to see that this is, in essence, just a paraphrase of known conservation laws. In its most primitive form, this formula can be interpreted as follows: matter does not disappear. The law should be extended to both information and the spiritual. This law directs us to study the ecological trajectories of the elements of nature.

Law 3. Nature knows best. Any major human intervention in natural systems is harmful to her. This law, as it were, separates man from nature. Its essence is that everything that was created before man and without man is the product of lengthy trial and error, the result of a complex process based on such factors as abundance, ingenuity, indifference to individuals with an all-encompassing striving for unity. In its formation and development, nature has developed a principle: what is collected, then sorted out. In nature, the essence of this principle is that no substance can be synthesized in a natural way if there is no means to destroy it. The whole mechanism of cyclicity is based on this. A person does not always provide for this in his activity.

Law 4. Nothing is given for free. In other words, you have to pay for everything. In essence, this is the second law of thermodynamics, which speaks of the presence in nature of a fundamental asymmetry, i.e., the unidirectionality of all spontaneous processes occurring in it. In the interaction of thermodynamic systems with the environment, there are only two ways of transferring energy: heat release and work. The law says that in order to increase their internal energy, natural systems create the most favorable conditions - they do not take "duties". All the work done without any loss can be converted into heat and replenish the internal energy of the system. But, if we do the opposite, i.e., we want to do work at the expense of the internal energy reserves of the system, i.e., do work through heat, we must pay. All heat cannot be converted into work. Any heat engine (technical device or natural mechanism) has a refrigerator, which, like a tax inspector, collects duties. Thus, the law states that you can't live for free. Even the most general analysis of this truth shows that we live in debt, because we pay less than the real value of the goods. But, as you know, the growth of debt leads to bankruptcy.

The concept of law is interpreted by most methodologists in the sense of an unambiguous causal relationship. Cybernetics gives a broader interpretation of the concept of law as a limitation of diversity, and it is more suitable for social ecology, which reveals the fundamental limitations of human activity. It would be absurd to put forward as a gravitational imperative that a person should not jump from a great height, since death is inevitable in this case. But the adaptive capabilities of the biosphere, which make it possible to compensate for violations of ecological patterns up to a certain threshold, make ecological imperatives necessary. The main one can be formulated as follows: the transformation of nature must correspond to its possibilities of adaptation.

One way to formulate socio-ecological patterns is to transfer them from sociology and ecology. For example, as the basic law of social ecology, the law of the correspondence of productive forces and production relations to the state of the natural environment is proposed, which is a modification of one of the laws of political economy. The laws of social ecology, proposed on the basis of the study of ecosystems, we will consider after getting acquainted with the ecology.

The formation of social ecology as a science

In order to better present the subject of social ecology, one should consider the process of its emergence and formation as an independent branch of scientific knowledge. In fact, the emergence and subsequent development of social ecology was a natural consequence of the ever-increasing interest of representatives of various humanitarian disciplines - sociology, economics, political science, psychology, etc., - to the problems of interaction between man and the environment.

The topic “social ecology” owes its appearance to American researchers, representatives of the Chicago School of Social Psychologists ¾ R. Park and E. Burges, who first used it in his work on the theory of population behavior in an urban environment in 1921. The authors used it as a synonym for the concept of "human ecology". The concept of “social ecology” was intended to emphasize that in this context we are talking not about a biological, but about a social phenomenon, which, however, also has biological characteristics.

In our country, by the end of the 1970s, conditions had also developed for separating social and environmental problems into an independent area of ​​interdisciplinary research. A significant contribution to the development of domestic social ecology was made by , and etc.

One of the most important problems facing researchers at the present stage of the formation of social ecology is the development of a unified approach to understanding its subject. Despite the obvious progress made in the study of various aspects of the relationship between man, society and nature, as well as a significant number of publications on social and environmental issues that have appeared in the last two or three decades in our country and abroad, on the issue of what exactly this branch of scientific knowledge studies, there are still different opinions. In the school reference book "Ecology" two options for defining social ecology are given: in the narrow sense, it is understood as the science of "the interaction of human society with the natural environment",

and in a broad sense, the science "about the interaction of an individual and human society with natural, social and cultural environments." It is quite obvious that in each of the presented cases of interpretation we are talking about different sciences that claim the right to be called “social ecology”. No less revealing is the comparison between the definitions of social ecology and human ecology. According to the same source, the latter is defined as: “1) the science of the interaction of human society with nature; 2) ecology of the human personality; 3) the ecology of human populations, including the doctrine of ethnic groups. The almost complete identity of the definition of social ecology, understood "in the narrow sense", and the first version of the interpretation of human ecology is clearly visible. The desire for the actual identification of these two branches of scientific knowledge, indeed, is still characteristic of foreign science, but it is quite often subjected to well-reasoned criticism by domestic scientists. , in particular, pointing to the expediency of breeding social ecology and human ecology, limits the subject of the latter to consideration of the socio-hygienic and medical-genetic aspects of the relationship between man, society and nature. A similar interpretation of the subject of human ecology is in solidarity, and some other researchers, but categorically disagree, and, according to which, this discipline covers a much wider range of issues of interaction between the anthroposystem (considered at all levels of its organization ¾ from the individual to humanity as a whole) with biosphere, as well as with the internal biosocial organization of human society. It is easy to see that such an interpretation of the subject of human ecology actually equates it with social ecology, understood in a broad sense. This situation is largely due to the fact that at present there has been a steady trend of convergence of these two disciplines, when there is an interpenetration of the subjects of the two sciences and their mutual enrichment through the joint use of the empirical material accumulated in each of them, as well as methods and technologies of socio-ecological and anthropoecological research.

Today, an increasing number of researchers tend to broaden the interpretation of the subject of social ecology. So, in his opinion, the subject of study of modern social ecology, understood by him as a private sociology, are specific links between man and his environment. Based on this, the main tasks of social ecology can be defined as follows: the study of the influence of the environment as a combination of natural and social factors on a person, as well as the influence of a person on the environment, perceived as the framework of human life.

A somewhat different, but not contradictory to the previous, interpretation of the subject of social ecology is given by and. From their point of view, social ecology as part of human ecology is a complex of scientific branches that study the relationship of social structures (starting with the family and other small social groups), as well as the relationship of a person with the natural and social environment of their habitat. This approach seems to us more correct, because it does not limit the subject of social ecology to the framework of sociology or any other separate humanitarian discipline, but emphasizes its interdisciplinary nature.

Some researchers, when defining the subject of social ecology, tend to emphasize the role that this young science is called upon to play in harmonizing the relationship of mankind with its environment. In his opinion, social ecology should first of all study the laws of society and nature, by which he understands the laws of self-regulation of the biosphere, implemented by man in his life.

The history of the emergence and development of ecological ideas of people is rooted in ancient times. Knowledge about the environment and the nature of relationships with it has acquired practical significance since the dawn of the development of the human species.

The process of formation of the labor and social organization of primitive people, the development of their mental and collective activity created the basis for understanding not only the very fact of their existence, but also for an ever greater understanding of the dependence of this existence both on the conditions within their social organization and on external natural conditions. The experience of our distant ancestors was constantly enriched and passed down from generation to generation, helping a person in his daily struggle for life.

Approximately 750 thousand years ago people themselves learned how to make fire, equip primitive dwellings, mastered ways to protect themselves from bad weather and enemies. Thanks to this knowledge, man was able to significantly expand the area of ​​\u200b\u200bhis habitat.

Beginning with 8th millennium BC. e. in Asia Minor, various methods of cultivating the land and growing crops are beginning to be practiced. In the countries of Central Europe, this kind of agrarian revolution took place in 6 ¾ 2nd millennium BC. e. As a result, a large number of people moved to a settled way of life, in which there was an urgent need for deeper observations of the climate, in the ability to predict the change of seasons and weather changes. By the same time, people discovered the dependence of weather phenomena on astronomical cycles.

Of particular interest are the thinkers of ancient Greece and Rome showed to the questions of the origin and development of life on Earth, as well as to the identification of relationships between objects and phenomena of the surrounding world. Thus, the ancient Greek philosopher, mathematician and astronomer Anaxagoras (500¾428 BC e.) put forward one of the first theories of the origin of the world known at that time and the living creatures inhabiting it.

Ancient Greek philosopher and physician Empedocles (c. 487¾ ok. 424 BC e.) paid more attention to the description of the very process of the emergence and subsequent development of earthly life.

Aristotle (384 ¾322 BC e.) created the first of the known classifications of animals, and also laid the foundations for descriptive and comparative anatomy. Defending the idea of ​​the unity of nature, he argued that all more perfect species of animals and plants descended from less perfect ones, and those, in turn, trace their lineage from the most primitive organisms that once arose by spontaneous generation. Aristotle considered the complication of organisms to be the result of their internal desire for self-improvement.

One of the main problems that occupied the minds of ancient thinkers was the problem of the relationship between nature and man. The study of various aspects of their interaction was the subject of scientific interests of the ancient Greek researchers Herodotus, Hippocrates, Plato, Eratosthenes and others.

Peruvian German philosopher and theologian Albert of Bolstedt (Albert the Great)(1206¾1280) belongs to several natural science treatises. The works "On Alchemy" and "On Metals and Minerals" contain statements about the dependence of climate on the geographical latitude of the place and its position above sea level, as well as on the relationship between the inclination of the sun's rays and the heating of the soil.

English philosopher and naturalist Roger Bacon(1214-1294) argued that all organic bodies are, in their composition, various combinations of the same elements and liquids that make up inorganic bodies.

The advent of the Renaissance is inextricably linked with the name of the famous Italian painter, sculptor, architect, scientist and engineer. Leonardo yes Vinci(1452¾1519). He considered the main task of science to establish the laws of natural phenomena, based on the principle of their causal, necessary connection.

The end of the XV ¾ the beginning of the XVI century. rightly bears the name of the era of the great geographical discoveries. In 1492 the Italian navigator Christopher Columbus discovered America. In 1498 the Portuguese Vasco da Gama rounded Africa and reached India by sea. In 1516(17?) Portuguese travelers first reached China by sea. And in 1521, the Spanish navigators, led by Ferdinand Magellan made the first trip around the world. Rounding South America, they reached East Asia, after which they returned to Spain. These travels were an important step in expanding knowledge about the Earth.

Giordano Bruno(1548¾1600) made a significant contribution to the development of the teachings of Copernicus, as well as to freeing him from shortcomings and limitations.

The onset of a fundamentally new stage in the development of science is traditionally associated with the name of a philosopher and logician. Francis Bacon(1561¾1626), who developed inductive and experimental methods of scientific research. He proclaimed the main goal of science to increase the power of man over nature.

At the end of the XVI century. Dutch inventor Zachary Jansen(lived in the 16th century) created the first microscope, which makes it possible to obtain images of small objects, enlarged with glass lenses. English naturalist Robert Hooke(1635¾1703) significantly improved the microscope (his device gave a 40-fold increase), with which he was the first to observe plant cells, and also studied the structure of some minerals.

French naturalist Georges Buffon(1707¾1788), author of the 36-volume Natural History, expressed thoughts about the unity of the animal and plant worlds, about their vital activity, distribution and connection with the environment, defended the idea of ​​species change under the influence of environmental conditions.

major event in the 18th century. was the emergence of the evolutionary concept of the French naturalist Jean Baptiste Lamarck(1744¾1829), according to which the main reason for the development of organisms from lower to higher forms is the desire inherent in living nature to improve the organization, as well as the influence of various external conditions on them.

A special role in the development of ecology was played by the works of the English naturalist Charles Darwin(1809¾1882), who created the theory of the origin of species through natural selection.

In 1866 a German evolutionary zoologist Ernst Haeckel(1834¾1919) in his work "General Morphology of Organisms" proposed to call the entire range of issues related to the problem of the struggle for existence and the influence of a complex of physical and biotic conditions on living beings by the term "ecology".

Human evolution and ecology

Long before individual areas of environmental research gained independence, there was an obvious trend towards a gradual enlargement of the objects of environmental study. If initially they were single individuals, their groups, specific biological species, etc., then over time they began to be supplemented by large natural complexes, such as "biocenosis", the concept of which was formulated by a German zoologist and hydrobiologist

K. Möbius as early as 1877 (the new term was intended to denote the totality of plants, animals and microorganisms inhabiting a relatively homogeneous living space). Shortly before this, in 1875, an Austrian geologist E. Suess To designate a "film of life" on the surface of the Earth, he proposed the concept of "biosphere". The Russian, Soviet scientist significantly expanded and concretized this concept in his book "Biosphere", which was published in 1926. In 1935, an English botanist A. Tansley introduced the concept of "ecological system" (ecosystem). And in 1940, the Soviet botanist and geographer introduced the term "biogeocenosis", which he proposed to designate the elementary unit of the biosphere. Naturally, the study of such large-scale complex formations required the unification of the research efforts of representatives of different "special" ecologies, which, in turn, would be practically impossible without harmonizing their scientific categorical apparatus, as well as without developing common approaches to organizing the research process itself. Actually, it is precisely this need that owes its appearance to ecology as a single science, integrating in itself the particular subject ecologies that developed earlier relatively independently of each other. The result of their reunification was the formation of a "great ecology" (in terms) or "macroecology" (in terms of i), which today includes the following main sections in its structure:

General ecology;

Human ecology (including social ecology);

Applied Ecology.

The structure of each of these sections and the range of problems considered in each of them are shown in Fig. 1. It well illustrates the fact that modern ecology is a complex science that solves an extremely wide range of problems that are extremely relevant at the present stage of the development of society. According to the succinct definition of one of the largest modern environmentalists Eugene Odum, "ecology¾ this is an interdisciplinary field of knowledge, the science of the structure of multi-level systems in nature, society, their interconnection.

The place of social ecology in the system of sciences

Social ecology is a new scientific direction at the intersection of sociology, ecology, philosophy, science, technology and other branches of culture, with each of which it is in close contact. Schematically, this can be expressed as follows:

Many new names of sciences have been proposed, the subject of which is the study of the relationship between man and the natural environment in their entirety: natural sociology, noology, noogenics, global ecology, social ecology, human ecology, socio-economic ecology, modern ecology. Big ecology, etc. At the present time, one can speak more or less confidently about three directions.

Firstly, we are talking about the study of the relationship of society with the natural environment at the global level, on a planetary scale, in other words, the relationship of humanity as a whole with the Earth's biosphere. Vernadsky's doctrine of the biosphere serves as a concrete scientific basis for research in this area. This direction can be called global ecology. In 1977, the monograph "Global Ecology" was published. It should be noted that, in accordance with his scientific interests, Budyko paid primary attention to the climatic aspects of the global environmental problem, although such topics as the amount of resources of our planet, global indicators of environmental pollution, global circulations of chemical elements in their interaction, and the influence of space on Earth, the state of the ozone shield in the atmosphere, the functioning of the Earth as a whole, etc. Research in this direction implies, of course, intensive international cooperation.

The second direction of research into the relationship of society with the natural environment will be research from the point of view of understanding a person as a social being. Human relations to the social and natural environment correlate with each other. "The limited relationship of people to nature determines their limited relationship to each other" and their limited relationship to each other - their limited relationship to nature "(K. Marx, F. Engels. Soch., 2nd ed., vol. 3, 29) In order to separate this trend, which studies the attitude of various social groups and classes to the natural environment and the structure of their relationships, determined by the attitude to the natural environment, from the subject of global ecology, we can call it social ecology in the narrow sense. In this case, social ecology, in contrast to global ecology, is closer to the humanities than to the natural sciences.The need for such research is enormous, and they are still carried out on a very limited scale.

Finally, the third scientific direction can be considered human ecology. Its subject, which does not coincide with the subjects of global ecology and social ecology in the narrow sense, would be a system of relationships with the natural environment of a person as an individual. This direction is closer to medicine than social and global ecology. By definition, "human ecology is a scientific direction that studies the patterns of interaction, the problems of purposeful management of the preservation and development of the health of the population, the improvement of the Homo sapiens species. The task of human ecology is to develop forecasts of possible changes in the characteristics of human (population) health under the influence of changes in the external environment and development of scientifically based correction standards in the relevant components of life support systems ... Most Western authors also distinguish between the concepts of social or human ecology (ecology of human society) and ecology of man (human ecology). the process of "entry" of the natural environment into the relationship with society as a dependent and controlled subsystem within the framework of the "nature-society" system. The second term is used to name a science that focuses on the person himself, as "biol ogical unit" (Issues of socioecology. Lvov, 1987. p. 32-33).

"Human ecology includes genetic-anatomical-physiological and medical-biological blocks that are absent in social ecology. In the latter, according to historical traditions, it is necessary to include significant sections of sociology and social psychology that are not included in the narrow understanding of human ecology" (ibid., p. 195).

Of course, the three scientific directions noted are far from enough. The approach to the natural environment as a whole, which is necessary for the successful solution of an environmental problem, involves the synthesis of knowledge, which is seen in the formation of transitional directions from them to ecology in various existing sciences.

Environmental issues are increasingly included in the social sciences. The development of social ecology is closely connected with the trends in the sociologization and humanization of science (natural science, in the first place), just as the integration of rapidly differentiating disciplines of the ecological cycle with each other and with other sciences is carried out in line with the general trends towards synthesis in the development of modern science.

Practice has a twofold impact on the scientific understanding of environmental problems. The point here, on the one hand, is that transformative activity requires an increase in the theoretical level of research into the system "man - natural environment" and an increase in the predictive power of these studies. On the other hand, it is the practical activity of man that provides direct assistance to scientific research. Knowledge of cause-and-effect relationships in nature can advance as it is transformed. The larger projects for the reconstruction of the natural environment are carried out, the more data penetrates into the sciences about the natural environment, the deeper the cause-and-effect relationships in the natural environment can be identified and, ultimately, the theoretical level of research into the relationship of society with the natural environment becomes higher.

The theoretical potential of the sciences studying the natural environment has grown markedly in recent years, which leads to the fact that "now all the sciences about the Earth in one way or another are moving from descriptions and the simplest qualitative analysis
observational materials for the development of quantitative theories built on a physical and mathematical basis" (E.K. Fedorov. Interaction of society and nature. L., 1972, p. 63).

Formerly a descriptive science - geography - on the basis of establishing closer contact between its individual branches (climatology, geomorphology, soil science, etc.) and improving its methodological arsenal (mathematization, using the methodology of physical and chemical sciences, etc.) becomes constructive geography, focused not only and not so much on the study of the functioning of the geographical environment, regardless of man, but on the theoretical understanding of the prospects for the transformation of our planet. Similar changes are taking place in other sciences that study certain aspects, aspects, etc. of the relationship between man and the natural environment.

Since social ecology is a new emerging discipline in the process of rapid development, its subject can only be outlined, not clearly defined. This is characteristic of every emerging field of knowledge, social ecology is no exception. We will understand social ecology as a scientific direction that combines what is included in social ecology in the narrow sense, in global ecology and in human ecology. In other words, we will understand social ecology as a scientific discipline that studies the relationship between man and nature in their complex. This will be the subject of social ecology, although it may not be definitively established.

Methods of social ecology

A more complicated situation occurs with the definition of the method of social ecology. Since social ecology is a transitional science between the natural and the humanities, insofar as in its methodology it must use the methods of both the natural and human sciences, as well as those methodologies that represent the unity of the natural science and humanitarian approaches (the first is called pomological, the second is ideographic).

As for general scientific methods, familiarization with the history of social ecology shows that at the first stage, the method of observation (monitoring) was mainly used, and the modeling method came to the fore in the second place. Modeling is a way of long-term and complex vision of the world. In its modern understanding, this is a universal procedure for comprehending and transforming the world. Generally speaking, each person, on the basis of his life experience and knowledge, builds certain models of reality. Subsequent experience and knowledge confirm this model or contribute to its change and refinement. A model is simply an ordered set of assumptions about a complex system. It is an attempt to understand some complex aspect of an infinitely varied world by choosing from accumulated ideas and experience a set of observations applicable to the problem under consideration.

The authors of The Limits to Growth describe the global modeling methodology as follows. First, we made a list of important causal relationships between variables and outlined the feedback structure. We then consulted the literature and consulted with experts in many areas related to these studies - demographers, economists, agronomists, nutritionists, geologists, environmentalists, etc. Our goal at this stage was to find the most common a structure that would reflect the main relationships between the five levels. Further development of this basic structure on the basis of other more detailed data can be carried out after the system itself is understood in its elementary form. We then quantified each relationship as accurately as possible, using global data if available, and representative local data if no global measurements were made. With the help of a computer, we determined the dependence of the simultaneous action of all these connections in time. We then tested the impact of quantitative changes in our underlying assumptions to find the most critical determinants of the system's behavior. There is no one "hard" world model. The model, as soon as it emerges, is constantly criticized and updated with data as we begin to understand it better. This model uses the most important relationships between population, food, capital investment, depreciation, resources, and output. These dependencies are the same all over the world. Our technique is to make several assumptions about the relationships between the parameters, and then check them on the computer. The model contains dynamic statements only about the physical aspects of human activity. It assumes that the nature of social variables - the distribution of income, the regulation of family size, the choice between manufactured goods, services and food - will remain the same in the future as it has been throughout the modern history of world development. Since it is difficult to predict what new forms of human behavior should be expected, we did not try to account for these changes in the model. The value of our model is determined only by the point on each of the graphs, which corresponds to the cessation of growth and the beginning of the catastrophe.

Within the framework of the general method of global modeling, various particular methods were used. Thus, the Meadows group applied the principles of system dynamics, which assume that the state of systems is completely described by a small set of quantities characterizing different levels of consideration, and its evolution in time - by differential equations of the 1st order, containing the rates of change of these quantities, called fluxes, which depend only on time and the level values ​​themselves, but not on the rate of their changes. System dynamics deals only with exponential growth and equilibrium.

The methodological potential of the theory of hierarchical systems applied by Mesarovich and Pestel is much wider, allowing the creation of multilevel models. The input-output method, developed and used in global modeling by V. Leontiev, involves the study of structural relationships in the economy in conditions where "a multitude of apparently unrelated, in fact interdependent flows of production, distribution, consumption and investment constantly influence each other , and, ultimately, are determined by a number of basic characteristics of the system "(V. Leontiev. Studies of the structure of the American economy.

The input-output method represents reality in the form of a chessboard (matrix) reflecting the structure of interbranch flows, the field of production, exchange and consumption. The method itself is already a kind of representation of reality, and thus the chosen methodology turns out to be essentially connected with the content aspect.

A real system can also be used as a model. Thus, agrocenoses can be considered as an experimental model of biocenosis. More generally, all nature-transforming human activity is a simulation that accelerates the formation of a theory, but it should be treated as a model, given the risk that this activity entails. In the transformative aspect, modeling contributes to optimization, i.e., the choice of the best ways to transform the natural environment /

Social ecology is in its infancy as a science. It experiences certain difficulties with the development of its own categories, laws. When studying its objects, social ecology uses not only its own categories, but also bioecology, ecology, sociology, etc.

Used in social ecology, first of all, the system method. What is its essence? It is known that a system is understood as a set of elements that are in relationships and connections with each other, forming a certain integrity, unity. From the point of view of modern science, consistency is an integral property of all matter, its attribute. The system reflects the predominance of organization in the world over chaotic changes. Consistency, organization - universal in all spatio-temporal scales. Using the system method as the leading one, social ecology considers the natural environment as a single systemic entity. Moreover, it analyzes the natural environment as a differentiated system, the various components of which are in dynamic equilibrium. The biosphere of the Earth is considered as an ecological niche of mankind, linking the environment and human activities into a single system: nature - society. On this basis, social ecology reveals the human impact on the balance of natural ecosystems and substantiates the issue of managing and rationalizing the relationship between society and nature.

Social ecology also makes extensive use of dialectical ideas about the interconnection and interaction of system components. In scientific programs and the generalization of empirical material, it is based on the doctrine of development, and not only society, but also nature is considered developing. In the arsenal of social ecology, there are also such methods of research as historical and logical, analysis and synthesis, analogy, hypothesis, etc. Synergistic methodology is also successfully used in the analysis of systemic socioecological objects and their interaction. Synergetics is a science that studies the processes of self-organization in open systems. The reliability of the methodology of social ecology makes it possible to formulate and convincingly argue recommendations to power structures that find high public recognition. These are, first of all, options for reorienting technology and production, creating new environmentally friendly technical means and technological processes, creating an ecological economy, modern processes of urbanization of society, etc.

Representatives of social ecology sharply raise issues of human ecology, ecology of culture, in which ways of preserving and restoring the cultural environment, ecology of science, etc. are justified. the natural environment, the National Ecological Center has been established, measures have been taken to develop environmental research, environmental education and enlightenment, and social ecology. The successes of social ecology made it possible to put forward new values ​​for mankind - the preservation of ecosystems, the attitude towards the Earth as a unique phenomenon, an ecosystem, life as a value in itself.

In the process of evolution of society, the interaction between man and the natural environment was contradictory. In the early stages of the development of society, there is a tendency for man to depend on nature. So, in the Paleolithic era, although man produced tools, but only for gathering and hunting (appropriation of readily available food), and in this sense he was not much different from animals. The hunting-gathering economy was placed in a strong dependence on nature, and the zone of human distribution was limited to warm climate zones and an abundance of food.

As the productive forces of society developed, man increased his relative independence from the forces of nature. The improvement of labor tools, which made it possible to create quickly and in greater quantities the benefits necessary for human life, the construction of irrigation facilities ensured a stable harvest, and the creation of dams protected from floods - all this created favorable conditions for a person, for his life and involvement in his economic activity. circulation of new territories of the Earth. Simultaneously with the process of weakening the dependence of man on the natural environment, a tendency is being formed to expand the ties and relations of society with nature. This is manifested in the ever-expanding possibilities of using various natural resources and raw materials. So, for a long time oil was used only to produce heat. Modern petrochemistry produces more than 8 thousand types of products for various purposes. Having developed production for the processing and use of diverse types of natural raw materials, man found himself in an even greater dependence on nature than in the early stages of social evolution. Dependence is manifested in the exhaustion of many minerals necessary for humanity, primarily ores, ferrous and many non-ferrous metals, oil, water, timber, coal, etc.

In the process of interaction between society and nature, as a result of a powerful anthropogenic, that is, human, impact on the environment, the threat to the very existence of mankind increases for two reasons: environmental pollution and the depletion of natural resources. Actively using natural resources on the basis of ever-improving technology and production, society has achieved tremendous success and qualitatively changed the way of life. Over the past 100 years, for example, mankind has increased its energy reserves by a thousand times; worldwide energy consumption per inhabitant is more than 10 kW. In developed countries, the total volume of goods and services doubles every 15 years. At the same time, humanity is already beginning to pay heavily for the technical and other achievements of civilization. During the 90s of the XX century, 3/4 of the forests covering the Earth were destroyed, and the amount of harmful emissions into the environment is growing every year. The composition of the biosphere has changed. Experts note that the accumulation of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, dustiness, compared with the state at the beginning of the century, increased by 20 percent by the end of the 20th century. Under new conditions for mankind, the interaction of society and nature should be built in such a way that the development of society and all its components does not harm nature, but, on the contrary, contributes to its development, it is necessary to create conditions under which the natural factor would be more fully taken into account and included in the structure of production. In modern social ecology, this approach to solving urgent problems of interaction between society and nature is called co-evolution.

Co-evolution is understood as a set of socio-ecological views, according to which society and nature represent a socio-natural system, where the harmonious development of society is impossible without a comprehensive consideration of the natural and vice versa. In other words, the further development of society, of all its cultural and material factors, is impossible without coordination with the development of nature.

The society-environment system is a rather rigid system, the elements of which mutually determine each other. Apparently, an analogy with the principle of anthropicity, which is quite popular in modern science, is appropriate here. In accordance with it, all world constants - the speed of light, the gravitational constant, and others - are coordinated with each other so precisely that even an insignificant change, let's say by a fraction of a percent, in their values ​​\u200b\u200bwould turn the Universe into a completely different world. The deep relations between society and nature are built in such a way that certain changes in nature are reflected in society and vice versa. Co-evolution therefore teaches the need to study the interrelationships and interdependencies of society and nature and to take into account their nature in the practical activity of man. From the standpoint of co-evolution, society, while improving technique and technology, involving all new objects of nature in the process of material production, at the same time must strictly observe its laws and balances, and comply with the requirements of environmental standards. This is not about transforming nature, but about adapting to it, preserving and developing ecosystems, creating an artificial environment there and in such a form that it does not deform the natural human habitat.

The ideas of co-evolution did not arise from scratch. They were first theoretically stated and substantiated by Vladimir Ivanovich Vernadsky. In his work "The chemical structure of the Earth's biosphere and its environment" and others, he developed the doctrine of the biosphere and noosphere, showed the relationship between them and the changing nature of human activity. The noosphere is understood as the sphere of interaction between nature and society, in which human activity becomes the determining factor in development. The noosphere is formed, according to Vladimir Vernadsky, only as a natural reproduction at a qualitatively new level of the characteristics of the organization of the biosphere. This is the only way that human activity can shape its own path of development. The logic of human activity in the society-nature system must be built in unison with the way the biosphere is organized. The noosphere, as Vladimir, Vernadsky imagined, is the biosphere transformed by people in accordance with the known and practically mastered laws of its structure, development and functioning. “Man in all his manifestations,” he wrote, “is a certain natural part of the structure of the biosphere.” And further, developing the idea of ​​humanity as a new geological force in the history of the planet, he continued: “... this is a great natural phenomenon that corresponds to the historically, or rather, geologically established organization of the biosphere. Forming the "noosphere", it is connected by all roots with this earthly shell, which was not to any comparable extent earlier in the history of mankind.

The general concept of the need to know the laws of nature, taking them into account in practical activities, the organic relationship between society and nature remains true. The ideas of co-evolution, therefore, substantiate the need for a restructuring of human priorities, their close coordination with the possibilities of nature. Academician Nikolai Moiseev rightly noted that the delicate, jeweled consistency of human behavior with the requirements of environmental stability is a characteristic feature of the coming era. It requires a new understanding of the world, a new morality and, ultimately, a new spiritual world. The understanding of the co-evolutionary path of development of society is only just getting fixed in the mass consciousness. There is much to be done theoretically and more practically in order to implement them. One of the main problems here is the transfer of production to ecological principles of development, because the powerful productive forces developed by man pose the main threat to the natural environment in modern conditions.

In the early 1990s, the UN General Assembly, as well as the Global Forum of Modern Manufacturing and religious leaders, parliamentarians and scientists on environmental protection and development, noted that the nuclear threat was relegated to the background. In the strategy of survival of mankind, the environmental problem is becoming more and more a priority. In creating such a situation, of course, the leading role belongs to the productive forces of society.

Having developed powerful productive forces, man already in the middle of the 20th century turned out to be, in a certain sense, their hostage. Experts note that the ecological crisis in Ukraine in modern conditions has affected all its spheres of the environment.

According to some foreign scientists, Ukraine's annual losses from inefficient, irrational nature management and environmental pollution range from 15 to 20% of its national income and are perhaps the largest in the world.

The document "Environment and Development", submitted by Ukraine to the UN, notes that for decades the economic policy in the country was formed without taking into account the capabilities of individual regions. As a result, one of the most difficult ecological economies has developed: oversaturated with chemical, metallurgical, mining industries with outdated technologies. A tragedy in the fate of the Ukrainian people was the accident at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant - the first global environmental disaster in world history. As a result of the accident, 50 million curies of various radionuclides were released into the environment. The catastrophe affected not only the human environment of Ukraine, Belarus and Russia, but also Sweden, Germany, Italy, Austria, Belgium, etc. Huge economic damage was caused to Ukraine and other countries. The people of Ukraine suffered enormous moral and psychological damage: the unique culture of those areas from which people were resettled is under threat, after all, 200 thousand people moved from two thousand settlements. 2.4 million people continue to live in the contaminated zone, including 500,000 children under 14 years of age. An unfavorable ecological situation has developed not only in countries with a low technological level and technological discipline, unreliable technology, but also in technically developed countries. Modern production, taking from nature 100 units of a substance, uses only 3-4, and throws 96 units into the environment in the form of toxic substances and technical waste.

How to be in such a difficult environmental situation? Ban production, return to nature, as some of the green movement call? Social ecology provides the answer. Modern humanity can significantly remove the technogenic impact on nature if it creates environmentally friendly production. There has been much debate about the accident at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. There was a problem of the future fate of the power plant, nuclear energy. There were not lonely voices about the closure of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant - an important source of energy resources for Ukraine! After all, in the future, in the development of the world economy, oil will be replaced by coal, and in a number of countries by nuclear energy and natural gas.

In modern conditions in Ukraine, specialists of various profiles are actively studying the impact of specific technologies on nature, have formulated a number of environmental restrictions in various industries, justify new strategic environmentally friendly areas of production: changing technologies to those that do not affect nature; creation of low-waste and waste-free production; use of solar energy, etc.; individual or even complex environmental measures are carried out and the concepts of comprehensive greening of social production are developed and implemented; a scientific, technical and investment policy is being developed aimed at solving environmental problems, creating an effective system of state and public control to regulate the interaction between production and nature; development of a reliable market-type economic mechanism in nature management and environmental protection. The most important direction in the greening of social production is structural restructuring. We are talking about ecological optimization and rationalization of social production and individual industries. The problem is relevant for the production of Ukraine. However, the direction of greening production can be successfully implemented in practice only under the condition of the processes of greening science and technology.

Each science in its research uses both general and special methods of scientific research.

Method(from the Greek words “tracking”, “path of research”) - a way of building and substantiating knowledge. In science, a method is a way to achieve new results of scientific truths.

Philosophy in the course of its development has developed a universal method of cognition - dialectics. Dialectics(from the Greek words “I talk”, “I reason”) is one of the most important forms of thinking.

Man cognizes the world in a dialectical way, since the world itself develops according to dialectical laws.

Social ecology is a relatively young science, its method has not yet been fully developed, so it must use the methods of natural and social sciences. The method of social ecology is determined by the objective laws that make up the essence of the subject of its study.

For scientific research to be complex, the free functioning of several research methods is necessary. This allows social ecology to develop a common approach, to comprehend a number of theoretical problems:

¨ systemic understanding of the world;

¨ ecological crisis;

¨ the crisis of human existence in the modern world;

¨ profit-oriented industrialism as the cause of the ecological crisis;

¨ overcoming the ecological crisis is a prerequisite for civilizational development;

¨ the global nature of environmental problems;

¨ universal responsibility for their solution.

In the methodological apparatus of social ecology, there are three main groups of methods:

¨ informational;

¨ mathematical;

¨ normative and technological.

Information methods, in turn, are divided into sociological and biospherological.

As mathematical methods are considered, which, based on the results of information research, build predictive models of the relationship between man and nature.

Normative-technological methods are intended both to change the technological basis of anthropological activity, and to develop new principles for the relationship of the human community to the natural environment.

So, the process of movement of socio-ecological knowledge has as its starting point the epistemological design of the subject of social eclogue by generalizing already known properties and relationships, as well as as a result of a meta-ecological analysis of objects of other sciences that structure modern environmental knowledge.

Knowledge of the subject of social ecology is carried out by summarizing the data of a number of particular and complex sciences that are part of the structure of modern environmental knowledge and have as their subject various aspects or properties of the general interaction of society and nature.

Socio-ecological research necessarily involves the implementation of interdisciplinarity, which is a specific feature of an integrated approach.

The methods of social ecology do not just complement each other, but are in some unity, due to the specifics of its subject, and are closely related to the real processes that take place in socio-ecological research.

The objective necessity of the unity of the methods of social ecology is determined by the fact that each of them has limits to its cognitive capabilities, which depend on the characteristics of their epistemological nature, although these limits change with the development of scientific knowledge; none of the methods functioning within the framework of socio-ecological research becomes universal.

Thus, the considered methods form a system within the framework of social ecology, which is characterized by a close relationship between the elements determined by the nature of the environment, a certain structure and the system integrity determined by them.

In other words, the specificity of the method of social ecology lies in the unity, consistency, complexity and modeling, due to the unity of the geocosmic habitat of mankind. The method of integrative science is universal.

It is impossible to study social ecology only by collecting and describing phenomena and factors. It is necessary to give their explanation through the establishment of links between elements in separate phenomena and to affirm the relationship of these phenomena.

In other words, social ecology as a science must establish scientific laws, the features of which are general character, constancy and the ability to foresee them.

Laws should form the basic patterns of interaction of elements in the system "society - nature - man", so that this allows us to establish a model for the optimal interaction of elements in this system.

At the same time, the question should be asked: can a young science - social ecology - at this stage of its development begin to formulate scientific laws from the standpoint of defining the subject of social ecology?

In the 30s. In the 20th century, two important laws were formulated by Bauer and Vernadsky.

The 1st law says that the geochemical energy of matter in the biosphere (including humanity as the highest manifestation of living matter endowed with reason) tends to its maximum expression.

The 2nd law contains a statement that in the course of evolution those species of living beings remain that, by their activity, maximize the biogenic geochemical energy.

But these laws are most often called principles by researchers.

Life on Earth develops only under conditions of a constant influx of new energy, since the entire circulation cycle of living matter is carried out in the same mass of living substance with a small recovery factor.

Man penetrated into this system due to the fact that he violated the system of consumption and accumulation of energy of living nature. Moreover, the needs of society for energy are constantly increasing, and therefore they require a large structural reorganization of the biosphere, and the production of new energy becomes energetically unfavorable.

Society is indeed subject to a number of unified ecological laws of the natural environment, but it also has a number of properties that are not subject to these laws.

Therefore, when formulating the laws of social ecology, scientists proceed from the laws of "theoretical ecological influence", however, they should not be understood as the laws of social ecology.

B. Commoner's work outlines four main global environmental laws that can be considered the laws of social ecology.

1st law. The desire of the human environment arises from the disruption of relationships in the ecological system within its cause-and-effect relationships.

Therefore that the impact on any natural system on Earth causes a number of effects, the optimal development of which is difficult to foresee.

2nd law contains the provision that a person lives in a confined space, therefore everything that is created, and everything that is taken from nature, returns to it in a certain way.

3rd law indicates the connectedness of our knowledge of nature and our impact on it. That is, if we do not know how to reshape nature, we cannot “improve” it by our actions, then we must return to those forms of life that represent ecological harmony.

4th law says that global ecological systems are an indivisible whole and everything that a person extracts from them must be compensated. Therefore, the consumption of natural resources cannot be unlimited.

More specific Commoner's laws say:

There can be no ecological happiness in one country, the whole community must fight against ocean pollution, the greenhouse effect and ozone holes.

You have to pay for everything. The international community is funding scientific projects to maintain biological balance.

Everything has to go somewhere. The international community has adopted special laws prohibiting the removal and disposal of toxic and radioactive waste in poor countries. The oceans are also not a place for waste.

nature knows best. A person must maintain the ecological balance of the biosphere, not trying to be smarter than nature, and create an artificial environment of the mind - the noosphere.

Five laws of social ecology were formulated by N.F. Reimers. He arranged them in this order.

1. Rules of socio-ecological balance.

2. The principle of cultural development management.

3. Rules of socio-ecological substitution.

4. The law of historical (socio-ecological) irreversibility.

5. The law of the noosphere V.I. Vernadsky.

Law "Rules of social and ecological balance".

The ratio of the rates of demographic saturation, the pressure of society on the living environment and changes in society itself can be formulated as rules of social and ecological balance: society develops until and insofar as it maintains a balance between its pressure on the environment and the restoration of this environment in a natural and artificial way.

Since the external conditions of historical development, the living environment of people and the functioning of their economy are destroyed or noticeably destroyed, the reproduction of natural resources and the maintenance of social and ecological balance require significant material, labor and financial resources.

The stage of extensive progress of society was based on the widest distribution of people, their pan-neicumenity, the maximum desire of mankind to “conquer” nature, increase its productivity through successional rejuvenation, increase energy production, growth in the working-age population (which led to a general increase in people) and a rapid turnover of goods. . The only criterion for development was economic profit, enrichment.

Law "Principles of cultural development management" says that religion, customs and legal laws formulated the rules for the behavior of people in their relationship with nature and within society in accordance with what has just been said.

Social ecology is a branch of science that studies the interaction between the human community and nature. At the moment, this science is being formed into an independent discipline, has its own field of research, subject and object of study. It should be said that social ecology studies various groups of the population that are engaged in activities that directly affect the state of nature, using the resources of the planet. In addition, various measures are being studied to solve environmental problems. A significant place is occupied by environmental protection methods that are used by different segments of the population.

In turn, social ecology has the following subspecies and sections:

• — economic;
• — legal;
• - urban;
• - demographic ecology.

Main problems of social ecology

This discipline primarily considers what mechanisms people use to influence the environment and the world around them. The main problems include the following:

• — global forecasting of the use of natural resources by people;
• – study of certain ecosystems at the level of small locations;
• — study of urban ecology and the life of people in various settlements;
• - Ways of development of human civilization.

Subject of social ecology

Today, social ecology is only gaining momentum in popularity. The work of Vernadsky "Biosphere", which the world saw in 1928, has a significant influence on the development and formation of this scientific field. This monograph outlines the problems of social ecology. Further research by scientists is considering such problems as the cycle of chemical elements and human use of the planet's natural resources.

Human ecology occupies a special place in this scientific specialization. In this context, the direct relationship between people and the environment is studied. This scientific direction considers man as a biological species.

Development of social ecology

Thus, social ecology is developing, becoming the most important field of knowledge that studies a person against the background of the environment. This helps to understand not only the development of nature, but also of man in general. By conveying the values ​​of this discipline to the general public, people will be able to understand what place they occupy on earth, what harm they cause to nature and what needs to be done to preserve it.