HUMAN LIFE AND CULTURE: DYNAMIC COMPONENTS OF ECOSYSTEMS |
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| Authors: | Napoleon Wola&# ski |
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| Affiliation: | Professor of natural sciences and head of the Department of Human Ecology at the Polish Academy of Sciences, Warsaw, Poland. This paper was presented during sub-conference V, The Human Encounter with Nature: Destruction and Reconstruction, of the World Academic Conference of the Seoul Olympiad, (21 August-8 September 1988). The paper is reprinted with the permission of WASCO, which is publishing the conference proceedings in a series of books under the conference's general title, The World Community in Post-Industrial Society. The paper is also being published in Nowe Drogi (New Ways);vol. 12, 1988, a journal of the Polish Joint Workers Party. |
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| Abstract: | Abstract. Contemporary humanity—especially urban-industrial civilization with its domination of nature—is disturbing complex, integrated, self-regulating systems that have evolved over long periods of time. We are threatening not only biological ecosystems but also human self-regulating capabilities at both the biological and the social-systems levels. This paper presents examples of such disturbance both in the organism—respiratory-cardiovascular problems related to environmental pollution-and at the population level—rates of infant mortality and relations between fertility and mortality in light of economic and emotional factors. Prospects for our future survival and flourishing are thus linked less to technical know-how than to ecological understanding. |
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| Keywords: | bio-cultural adaptation ecosystems evolution self-regulating systems urbicenose |
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