Social ecology summary. Prehistory of social ecology

social ecology

Social ecology is one of the oldest sciences. Interest in it was shown by such thinkers as the ancient Greek philosopher, mathematician and astronomer Anaxagoras (500-428 BC), the ancient Greek philosopher and physician Empedocles (487-424 BC), the greatest philosopher and encyclopedist Aristotle (384-322 BC). The main problem that worried them was the problem of the relationship between nature and man.

Also, the ancient Greek historian Herodotus (484-425 BC), the ancient Greek physician Hippocrates (460-377 BC), the famous scientist in the field of geography Eratosthenes (276- 194 BC) and the idealist philosopher Plato (428-348 BC). It is worth noting that the works and reflections of these ancient thinkers formed the basis of the modern understanding of social ecology.

Definition 1

Social ecology is a complex scientific discipline that considers the interaction in the "society-nature" system. In addition, a complex subject of study of social ecology is the relationship of human society with the natural environment.

Being a science about the interests of various social groups in the field of nature management, social ecology is structured into several main types:

Economic social ecology - explores the relationship between nature and society in terms of the economic use of available resources;
Demographic social ecology - studies the various strata of the population and settlements that simultaneously live throughout the globe;
Futurological social ecology - highlights environmental forecasting in the social sphere as a sphere of its interests.

Functions and key tasks of social ecology

As a scientific direction, social ecology performs a number of key functions.

First, it is a theoretical function. It is aimed at developing the most important and relevant conceptual paradigms that explain the development of society in terms of environmental processes and phenomena.

Secondly, a pragmatic function in which social ecology implements the dissemination of multiple environmental knowledge, as well as information about the ecological situation and the state of society. Within the framework of this function, some concern about the state of the environment is manifested, its main problems are highlighted.

Thirdly, the prognostic function - it means that within the framework of social ecology both immediate and long-term prospects for the development of society, the ecological sphere are determined, and it is also possible to control changes in the biological sphere.

Fourthly, the function of nature protection. It involves the study of the influence of environmental factors on the environment and its elements.

Environmental factors can be of several types:

Abiotic environmental factors - factors related to influences from inanimate nature;
Biotic environmental factors - the influence of one species of living organisms on other species. Such influence can take place within one species or between several different species;
Anthropogenic environmental factors - their essence lies in the impact of human economic activity on the environment. Such impact often leads to negative problems, such as excessive depletion of natural resources and pollution of the natural environment.

Remark 1

The main task of social ecology is to study the actual and key mechanisms of human impact on the environment. It is also very important to take into account those transformations that act as a result of such an impact and, in general, human activity in the natural environment.

Problems of social ecology and safety

The problem of social ecology is quite extensive. Today, the problems come down to three key groups.

Firstly, these are social problems of ecology on a planetary scale. Their meaning lies in the need for a global forecast in relation to the population, as well as to resources in the conditions of intensively developing production. Thus, the depletion of natural resources occurs, which calls into question the further development of civilization.

Secondly, social problems of ecology on a regional scale. They consist in the study of the state of individual parts of the ecosystem at the regional and district level. The so-called "regional ecology" plays an important role here. Thus, by collecting information about local ecosystems and their state, it is possible to get a general idea of the state of the modern ecological sphere.

Thirdly, the social problems of microscale ecology. Here, great importance is given to the study of the main characteristics and various parameters of the urban conditions of human life. For example, it is the ecology of the city or the sociology of the city. Thus, the condition of a person in a rapidly developing city, and his direct personal impact on this development, is explored.

Remark 2

As we can see, the most basic problem lies in the active development of industrial and practical practices in human activities. This led to an increase in his intervention in the natural environment, as well as to an increase in his influence on it. This led to the growth of cities, industrial enterprises. But the downside is such consequences in the form of soil, water and air pollution. All this directly affects the state of a person, his health. Life expectancy has also declined in many countries, which is a rather urgent social problem.

Prevention of these problems can only be done by prohibiting the buildup of technical power. Or a person needs to abandon certain activities that are associated with uncontrolled and harmful use of resources (deforestation, drainage of lakes). Such decisions must be made at the global level, because only by joint efforts is it possible to eliminate negative consequences.

Social ecology studies not only the direct and immediate influence of the environment on a person, but also the composition of groups that exploit natural resources, their relationships, as well as the general conceptualization of the universe (combined with the specific conditions of life).
Russian philosophical and sociological literature contains numerous attempts to define the subject of social ecology. In accordance with one fairly common approach, the subject of social ecology is the noosphere, a system of socio-natural relations that is being formed, functioning as a result of the conscious activity of people, i.e., the subject of social ecology is the processes of formation and functioning of the noosphere.
According to N.M. Mammadova, social ecology studies the interaction of society and the natural environment.
S.N. Solomina believes that the subject of social ecology is the study of global problems of mankind, such as: the problems of energy resources, environmental protection, the elimination of mass starvation and dangerous diseases, the development of the wealth of the ocean.
The definitions of the subject of social ecology reflect, first of all, the philosophical and theoretical approach of the authors to relations in the system “man-society-nature”, their attitude towards the environment and the position that ecology is not only a natural, but also a social science.
Based on this,
social ecology can be defined as a branch of sociology, the subject of which is the specific relationship between man and the environment, the influence of the latter as a combination of natural and social factors on man, as well as his influence on the environment from the standpoint of preserving it for his life as a natural social being .
Important in social ecology is the specific territorial environment: settlements, urbanized zones, individual regions, regions, the planetary level of the planet Earth. Social ecology at all these levels should strive to maintain ecological balance, take into account the interconnection of all levels in accordance with the motto: "Think globally, act concretely!".

More on the topic 2. SUBJECT OF SOCIAL ECOLOGY:

1.1. Didactic characteristics of the model of the professional-technological system of teaching special subjects

The emergence and development of social ecology is closely related to the widespread approach, according to which the natural and social world cannot be considered in isolation from each other.

The term "social ecology" was first used by American scientists R. Park and E. Burgess in 1921 to determine the internal mechanism of development of the "capitalist city". By the term "social ecology" they understood, first of all, the process of planning and developing the urbanization of large cities as the epicenter of the interaction between society and nature.

Danilo Zh. Markovic (1996) notes that "social ecology can be defined as a branch of sociology, the subject of which is the specific relationship between humanity and the environment; the influence of the latter as a combination of natural and social factors on a person, as well as its impact on the environment with position of its preservation for his life as a natural-social being".

social ecology is a scientific discipline that empirically investigates and theoretically generalizes the specific relationships between society, nature, man and his living environment (environment) in the context of global problems of mankind with the aim of not only preserving, but also improving the human environment as a natural and social being.

Social ecology explains and predicts the main directions in the development of society's interaction with the natural environment: historical ecology, cultural ecology, ecology and economics, ecology and politics, ecology and morality, ecology and law, environmental informatics, etc.

The subject of study of social ecology is to identify the patterns of development of this system, value-ideological, socio-cultural, legal and other prerequisites and conditions for its sustainable development. I.e the subject of social ecology is the relationship in the system "society-man-technology-environment".

In this system, all elements and subsystems are homogeneous, and the connections between them determine its immutability and structure. The object of social ecology is the system "society-nature".

In addition, scientists have proposed that within the framework of social ecology, a relatively independent (territorial) level of research should be singled out: the population of urbanized zones, individual regions, areas, the planetary level of the planet Earth was studied.

The creation of the Institute of Social Ecology and the definition of its subject of research were influenced primarily by:

The complex relationship of man with the environment;

Aggravation of the ecological crisis;

Norms of necessary wealth and organization of life, which should be taken into account when planning the ways of exploiting nature;

Knowledge of the possibilities (study of mechanisms) of social control, in order to limit pollution and preserve the natural environment;

Identification and analysis of public goals, including a new way of life, new concepts of ownership and responsibility for the preservation of the environment;

Influence of population density on people's behavior, etc.

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INTRODUCTION __________________________________________________ 3

Chapter 1. Social ecology - the science of global problems of our time 5

1.1 Origins of social ecology ______________ 5

1.2 The subject and tasks of social ecology ______________________ 7

Chapter 2. Technological progress as a source of social and environmental problems 8

2.1 Conflict of technology and ecology _____________________ 8

2.2 Socio-ecological problems of our time ___________ 9

2.3 Ecological content of the scientific and technological revolution ___ 12

Chapter 3

social and environmental problems______________ 15

3.1 Philosophical views on solving global problems of mankind 15

3.2 Basic principles of environmentally friendly technologies _______ 16

3.3 Ecotechnology is the basis for the transition to the noospheric ____________ 18

type of civilization __________________________________________ 18

3.4 Technical and technological component of the concept __________ 21

sustainable development _______________________________________ 21

Conclusion __________________________________________________ 23

Bibliographic list ____________________________________ 24

INTRODUCTION

At the end of the 20th century, destructive anthropogenic, mainly technological, pressure on the environment increased sharply, which led humanity to a global crisis. Modern civilization found itself at that point in the world-historical process, called by various researchers in different ways ("moments" - I. Ten, "knots" - A. Solzhenitsyn, "breaks" - A. Toynbee, etc.), which determines dynamics and direction of civilizational development in the long term. The contradiction between population growth and the possibility of meeting its material and energy needs, on the one hand, and the relatively limited capabilities of natural ecosystems, on the other, are becoming antagonistic. Their exacerbation is fraught with irreversible degradation changes in the biosphere, a radical transformation of the traditional natural conditions for the functioning of civilization, which also creates a real threat to the vital interests of future generations of mankind.

The need to comprehend and overcome the current situation has put forward environmental issues to one of the first places in the hierarchy of global problems of our time. Increasingly, at various forums of scientists, public and political figures, alarming statements are heard that the cumulative human activity can fundamentally undermine the natural balance of the biosphere and thereby put civilization in danger of death. The social problems of the growing environmental and technological risk are being discussed more and more actively.

The experience of recent decades irrefutably shows that in the overwhelming majority of environmental disasters, the main culprit is increasingly becoming not the unpredictability of the action of technological means or natural disasters, but ill-considered, unpredictable human activity, often causing irreparable harm to nature with its technogenic impact. Therefore, in environmental studies in different countries of the world, there is an increasingly noticeable turn towards taking into account social factors both in creating an environmental problem and in solving it. It is becoming more and more clear that mankind, united on a planetary scale, must move from the ecological imperative to an ecologically oriented consciousness, thinking and action, to an ecologically oriented social development. It is from this angle that the recently established branch of scientific knowledge, social ecology, considers the ecological problem. She places the focus of her attention on the study of extreme situations that arise as a result of an imbalance in the interaction of society with nature, the elucidation of anthropogenic, technological, social factors in the development of such situations and finding the best ways and means to overcome their devastating consequences.

In domestic science, especially since the 1970s, such scientists as M. M. Budyko, N. N. Moiseev, E. K. Fedorov, I. T. Frolov, S. S. Schwartz, and others, widely discussed the acute problems of the ecological crisis of modern civilization, analyzed the stages of development of society and socio-cultural values in the light of the relationship between natural, technical and social systems. There was a search for optimal programs for solving environmental problems, and various aspects of the ecological reorientation of the economy, technology, education, and public consciousness were considered.

So, at present, in order to restore the parity of society and the biosphere, man and nature, domestic philosophers have taken a new research approach: co-evolutionary strategy, considered as a new paradigm of civilization in the 21st century. It should have an impact on a change in cognitive and value orientations, on a new understanding of nature, on the approval of a new morality in the minds of people.

Thus, although the resolution of various contradictions in the relationship between man and his environment, which ensures the exit of civilization to the level of rationalization, optimization and harmonization in the system of relations "man-society-biosphere" is a matter of practice, a preliminary change in the conceptual apparatus is necessary, and in this process philosophy should play a major role in helping the ecological reorientation of modern science, influencing socio-political and technological decisions in the ecological field and, ultimately, contributing to the modification of public consciousness and fundamental approaches to the technical solution of emerging socio-ecological problems. This determines the choice of the topic of this essay in preparation for the Ph.D. exam in philosophy.

Chapter 1. Social ecology - the science of global problems of our time

1.1 Origins of social ecology

The population explosion and the scientific and technological revolution have led to a colossal increase in the consumption of natural resources. Thus, at present, 3.5 billion tons of oil and 4.5 billion tons of hard and brown coal are produced annually in the world. At such a rate of consumption, it became obvious that many natural resources would be depleted in the near future. At the same time, waste from giant industries began to pollute the environment more and more, destroying the health of the population. In all industrialized countries, cancerous, chronic pulmonary and cardiovascular diseases are widespread.

Scientists were the first to sound the alarm. Beginning in 1968, the Italian economist Aurelio Peccei began to gather annually in Rome major experts from different countries to discuss questions about the future of civilization. These meetings were called the Club of Rome. In the first reports to the Club of Rome, simulation mathematical methods developed by MIT professor Jay Forrester were successfully applied to the study of trends in the development of socio-natural global processes. Forrester used research methods developed and applied in the natural and technical sciences to study the processes of evolution, both in nature and in society, occurring on a global scale. On this basis, the concept of world dynamics was built. "Under the" world system ", - the scientist noted, - we understand a person, his social systems, technology and natural environment. The interaction of these elements determines the growth, changes and tension ... in the socio-economic-natural environment" .

For the first time in the social forecast were taken into account the components that can be called ecological: the finite nature of mineral resources and the limited ability of natural complexes to absorb and neutralize the waste of human industrial activity.

If the previous forecasts, which took into account only traditional trends (growth in production, growth in consumption and population growth), were optimistic, taking into account environmental parameters immediately turned the global forecast into a pessimistic version, showing the inevitability of a downward trend in the development of society by the end of the first third of the 21st century due to the possibility of exhaustion of mineral resources and excessive pollution of the natural environment. Subsequent work commissioned by the Club of Rome under the direction of D. Meadows ("Limits to Growth", 1972), as well as M. Mesarovich and E. Pestel ("Humanity at the Turning Point", 1974), basically confirmed the validity forecasts made by J. Forrester.

Thus, for the first time in science, the problem of the possible end of civilization was raised not in the distant future, which was repeatedly warned by various prophets, but during a very specific period of time and for very specific and even prosaic reasons. There was a need for such a field of knowledge that would thoroughly investigate the discovered problem and find out the way to prevent the coming catastrophe.

This area of knowledge has become social ecology, the task of which is to study human society in terms of its compatibility with the characteristics of the natural environment.

To conduct research on human ecology, a theoretical basis was required. The first theoretical source, first Russian, and then foreign researchers, recognized the teachings of V.I. Vernadsky about the biosphere and the inevitability of its evolutionary transformation into the sphere of the human mind - the noosphere.

VI Vernadsky proved that human activity is now becoming the main transforming factor in the development of the active shell of the Earth. Hence the need for a joint study of society and the biosphere, subordinating them to the common goal of preserving and developing mankind. It can be carried out only if the main processes of the biosphere are controlled by the mind. Noospheric development is a reasonably controlled co-development of man, society and nature, in which the satisfaction of the vital needs of the population is carried out without prejudice to the interests of future generations.

The second source of the formation of socioecology is modern engineering science - a multifaceted set of technical sciences. They consider the diverse functions of technology as a structure of technical systems and technologies created in the process of labor to facilitate all types of human activity in terms of their impact on the natural environment.

The third source of the formation of socioecology is the modern complex of social sciences, which make it possible to reveal the social essence of a person, the social conditionality of his mental activity, feelings, volitional impulses, value orientations, attitudes in practical activities, including in relation to the surrounding natural and social environment.

The fourth source is global environmental modeling, the methodology of which was developed by J. Forrester.

1.2 Subject and tasks of social ecology

Social ecology focuses not only and not so much on the natural processes of interaction between living organisms and the natural environment, but on the processes of interaction of complex eco- and sociosystems with social ones in their essence, i.e. arising as a result of the active social activity of man, the relationship of society with artificially created, before man did not exist elements of the environment, bearing the imprint of human activity. At the same time, the usual partitions between the cycle of natural sciences (about nature), on the one hand, and social sciences (about society and man as its subject), on the other hand, are destroyed, but at the same time new ones are constructed that unite subject relations between these two different groups of sciences.

Thus, social ecology studies the structure, features and tendencies of the functioning of objects of a special kind, objects of the so-called "second nature", i.e. objects of an artificially created subject environment that interacts with the natural environment. It is the existence of a "second nature" in the vast majority of cases that gives rise to environmental problems that arise at the intersection of ecological and social systems. These problems, socioecological in their essence, act as the object of socioecological research.

Social ecology as a science has its own specific tasks and functions. Its main tasks are: the study of the relationship between human communities and the surrounding geographic-spatial, social and cultural environment, the direct and secondary impact of production activities on the composition and properties of the environment. Social ecology considers the Earth's biosphere as an ecological niche of mankind, linking the environment and human activity into a single system "nature-society", reveals the impact of man on the balance of natural ecosystems, studies the management and rationalization of the relationship between man and nature. The task of social ecology as a science is also to offer such effective ways of influencing the environment that would not only prevent catastrophic consequences, but also make it possible to significantly improve the biological and social conditions for the development of man and all life on Earth.

By studying the causes of degradation of the human environment and measures to protect and improve it, social ecology should contribute to expanding the scope of human freedom by creating more humane relations both to nature and to other people.

Chapter 2. Technological progress as a source of social and environmental problems

2.1 Conflict of technology and ecology

If our ancestors had limited their activity only to adapting to nature and appropriating its finished products, then they would never have left the animal state in which they were originally. Only in opposition to nature, in constant struggle with it and transformation in accordance with its needs and goals, could a creature be formed that has passed the path from animal to man. Man was not generated by nature alone, as is often claimed. The beginning of a person could only be given by such a not quite natural form of activity as labor, the main feature of which is the production by the subject of labor of some objects (products) with the help of other objects (tools). It was labor that became the basis of human evolution.

Labor activity, while giving man enormous advantages in the struggle for survival over other animals, at the same time put him in danger of becoming in time a force capable of destroying the natural environment of his own life.

It would be wrong to think that human-induced environmental crises became possible only with the advent of sophisticated technology and strong demographic growth. One of the most severe ecological crises took place already at the beginning of the Neolithic. Having learned to hunt animals well enough, especially large ones, people, by their actions, led to the disappearance of many of them, including mammoths. As a result, the food resources of many human communities were drastically reduced, and this, in turn, led to mass extinction. According to various estimates, the population then decreased by 8-10 times. It was a colossal ecological crisis that turned into a socio-ecological catastrophe. A way out of it was found on the paths of transition to agriculture, and then to cattle breeding, to a settled way of life. Thus, the ecological niche of the existence and development of mankind has significantly expanded, which was decisively promoted by the agrarian and handicraft revolution, which led to the emergence of qualitatively new tools of labor, which made it possible to multiply the impact of man on the natural environment. The era of “animal life” of man turned out to be completed, he began to “actively and purposefully intervene in natural processes, rebuild natural biogeochemical cycles” .

Violation of the "order" in nature, its pollution have ancient traditions. It can be called the greatest Roman building of the VI century. BC. – a large drainage channel for faeces and other waste. Already in the XIV century, in the pre-industrial period, the English king Edward II was forced to ban the use of coal for heating houses under the threat of the death penalty, London was so polluted with smoke.

But pollution of nature acquired significant dimensions and intensity only during the period of industrialization and urbanization, which led to significant civilizational changes and to a mismatch of economic and environmental development. This disagreement has taken on dramatic proportions since the 1950s. of our century, when the rapid and hitherto unthinkable development of the productive forces caused such changes in nature that lead to the destruction of the biological prerequisites for the life of man and society. Man has created technologies that deny life forms in nature. The use of these technologies leads to an increase in entropy, a denial of life. The conflict between technology and ecology has its source in man himself, who is both a natural being and a bearer of technological development.

2.2 Socio-ecological problems of our time

Environmental problems of our time in terms of their scale can be conditionally divided into local, regional and global ones and require different means and different scientific developments for their solution.

An example of a local environmental problem is a plant that dumps its industrial waste into the river without treatment, which is harmful to human health. This is a violation of the law. The nature protection authorities or the public should fine such a plant through the courts and, under threat of closure, force it to build a sewage treatment plant. It does not require special science.

An example of regional environmental problems is the Kuzbass, a basin almost closed in the mountains, filled with gases from coke ovens and fumes from a metallurgical giant, or the drying up Aral Sea with a sharp deterioration in the environmental situation along its entire periphery, or high radioactivity of soils in areas adjacent to Chernobyl.

To solve such problems, scientific research is already needed. In the first case, the development of rational methods for the absorption of smoke and gas aerosols, in the second, accurate hydrological studies to develop recommendations for increasing the flow into the Aral Sea, in the third, elucidation of the impact on the health of the population of long-term exposure to low doses of radiation and the development of soil decontamination methods.

However, the anthropogenic impact on nature has reached such proportions that global problems have arisen that no one could even suspect a few decades ago.

Since the emergence of technical civilization on Earth, about 1/3 of the area of forests has been reduced, deserts have sharply accelerated their attack on green areas. Thus, the Sahara desert is moving south at a speed of about 50 km per year. The pollution of the Ocean with oil products, pesticides, synthetic detergents, and insoluble plastics has reached catastrophic proportions. According to inaccurate data (in the direction of underestimation), now about 30 million tons of oil products per year enter the ocean. Some experts believe that about 1/5 of the ocean area is covered with an oil film.

Atmospheric pollution is occurring at a rapid pace. So far, the main means of obtaining energy remains the combustion of combustible fuels, therefore, oxygen consumption increases every year, and carbon dioxide, nitrogen oxides, carbon monoxide, as well as a huge amount of soot, dust and harmful aerosols enter in its place.

More than 10 billion tons of standard fuel are burned annually in the world, while more than 1 billion tons of various suspensions are emitted into the air, including many carcinogens. According to a review by the All-Russian Research Institute of Medical Information, over the past 100 years, more than 1.5 million tons of arsenic, 900 thousand tons of cobalt, and 1 million tons of silicon have entered the atmosphere. More than 200 million tons of harmful substances are emitted annually into the US atmosphere alone.

It is believed that the United States has burned out all the oxygen above itself and supports energy processes at the expense of oxygen from other parts of the planet. With 6% of the world's population, the US consumes about 40% of the world's natural resources and provides approximately 60% of all pollution on the planet.

The sharp warming of the climate that began in the second half of the 20th century is a reliable fact. The average temperature of the surface layer of air has increased by 0.7 ° C compared to 1956-1957, when the First International Geophysical Year was held. There is no warming at the equator, but the closer to the poles, the more noticeable it is. Beyond the Arctic Circle, it reaches 2° C. At the North Pole, the water under the ice has warmed by 1° C, and the ice cover has begun to melt from below. Some scientists believe that warming is the result of burning a huge mass of fossil fuels and releasing large amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, which is a greenhouse gas, i.e. hinders the transfer of heat from the Earth's surface. Others, referring to climate change in historical time, consider the anthropogenic factor of climate warming negligible and attribute this phenomenon to increased solar activity.

No less complex is the environmental problem of the ozone layer. The depletion of the ozone layer is a much more dangerous reality for all life on Earth than the fall of some super-large meteorite. Ozone prevents dangerous cosmic radiation from reaching the Earth's surface. If not for ozone, these rays would destroy all life. Studies of the causes of the depletion of the ozone layer of the planet have not yet given definitive answers to all questions.

The rapid growth of industry, accompanied by global pollution of the natural environment, has posed an unprecedentedly acute problem of raw materials.

Of all types of resources, fresh water is in the first place in terms of the growth of demand for it and the increase in the deficit. 71% of the entire surface of the planet is occupied by water, but fresh water makes up only 2% of the total, and almost 80% of fresh water is in the Earth's ice cover. In most industrial areas, there is already a significant shortage of water, and its deficit is growing every year.

In general, 10% of the planet's river runoff is withdrawn for household needs. Of these, 5.6% are spent irretrievably. If irretrievable water intake continues to increase at the same rate as now (4-5% annually), then by 2010 humanity may exhaust all fresh water reserves in the geosphere. The situation is complicated by the fact that a large amount of natural water is polluted by industrial and household waste. All this eventually ends up in the Ocean, which is already heavily polluted.

In the future, the situation with another natural resource that was previously considered inexhaustible - the oxygen of the atmosphere - is alarming. When the products of photosynthesis of past eras - combustible fossils - are burned, free oxygen is bound into compounds. Approximately, the bowels of the Earth contain 6.4 × 10 15 tons of combustible fossils, the combustion of which would require 1.7 × 10 16 tons of oxygen, i.e. more than it is in the atmosphere.

Consequently, long before the depletion of fossil fuels, people must stop burning them, so as not to suffocate themselves and destroy all life.

It is believed that oil reserves on Earth will be depleted in 200 years, coal - in 200-300 years, oil shale and peat - within the same limits. Approximately during the same time, 2/3 of the oxygen reserves in the planet's atmosphere can be exhausted. It should be taken into account that with an increasing rate of oxygen consumption, the rate of its reproduction by green plants is steadily declining, since developing production and a multiplying population are attacking nature, taking away from it more and more green areas for buildings and lands. Every 15 years, the area of expropriated land doubles and, apparently, the limit of development of the territory is already close. Green plants are being replaced not only by buildings, but also by a sprawling strip of pollution. Pollution is especially detrimental to phytoplankton, which covered the planet's water surface with a continuous layer. It is believed that it reproduces about 34% of the oxygen in the atmosphere.

Until now, the prospect of resource depletion is associated by inertia with the so-called non-renewable factors of the natural environment: reserves of iron ores, non-ferrous metals, fossil fuels, precious stones, mineral salts, etc. The terms for the development of deposits of these resources are obviously finite and vary depending on the richness of their content in the earth's crust. It is believed that at the current rate of production, the reserves of lead, tin, copper can last for 20-30 years. The terms are short, and therefore means of compensating and saving scarce raw materials are already being sought in advance. In particular, the improvement of mining methods makes it possible to start mining rocks with a poor content of the necessary elements, and in some places they have already begun to process rock dumps. In the future, it will be possible to extract the necessary elements in any required quantity from the most common rocks in nature, for example, from granite.

The situation is different with resources that have long been accustomed to consider renewable and which really were such until the increased rates of their consumption and environmental pollution undermined the ability of complexes to self-purify and self-repair. Moreover, these undermined abilities do not renew themselves, but, on the contrary, progressively decline as the pace of the industry increases in the previous technological regime. However, the consciousness of people still has not had time to rebuild. It, like technology, works in the same ecologically carefree mode, considering water, air and wildlife to be free and inexhaustible.

2.3 Ecological content of the scientific and technological revolution

The basis for the interaction of the natural environment and human society in the process of production of material goods is the growth of mediation in the production relation of man to nature. Step by step, a person places between himself and nature, first the substance transformed with the help of his energy (tools of labor), then the energy transformed with the help of tools of labor and accumulated knowledge (steam engines, electrical installations, etc.) and, finally, more recently between by man and nature, the third major link of mediation arises - information transformed with the help of electronic computers. Thus, the development of civilization is ensured by the continuous expansion of the sphere of material production, which first embraces tools, then energy, and, finally, in recent times, information.

Naturally, the natural environment becomes more and more widely and thoroughly involved in the production process. The need for conscious control and regulation of the totality of anthropogenic processes, both in society itself and in the natural environment, is becoming more acute. This need increased especially sharply with the beginning of the scientific and technological revolution, the essence of which is primarily the mechanization of information processes and the widespread use of control systems in all areas of public life.

The first link of mediation (manufacturing of labor tools) is associated with a leap from the animal world to the social world, with the second (the use of power plants) - a leap into the highest form of class-antagonistic society, with the third (creation and use of information devices) is connected the conditionality of the transition to a society of qualitatively a new state in interpersonal relations, since for the first time there is the possibility of a sharp increase in people's free time for their full and harmonious development. In addition, the scientific and technological revolution necessitates a qualitatively new attitude to nature, since those contradictions between society and nature that previously existed in an implicit form are exacerbated to an extreme degree.

At the same time, the limitation on the part of the energy sources of labor, which remained natural, began to have a stronger effect. A contradiction arose between the new (artificial) means of processing matter and the old (natural) sources of energy. The search for ways to resolve the contradiction that arose led to the discovery and use of artificial energy sources. But the very solution of the energy problem gave rise to a new contradiction between artificial methods of processing. substances and obtaining energy, on the one hand, and in a natural (with the help of the nervous system) way of processing information, on the other. The search for ways to remove this limitation was intensified, and the problem was solved with the invention of computing machines. Now, finally, all three natural factors (substance, energy, information) have been covered by artificial means of their use by man. Thus, all natural restrictions on the development of production, inherent in this process, were removed.

The most important feature of the scientific and technological revolution is that for the first time in the interaction of society with nature, the ultimate (in the sense of coverage) mediation of all natural factors of production has been achieved, and thus fundamentally new opportunities have opened up for the further development of society as a consciously controlled and regulated process.

Under these conditions, the subordination of production only to the selfish interests of entrepreneurs can be fraught with serious consequences for society. Proof of this is the threat of an ecological crisis. This is a fairly new and therefore still little studied phenomenon that arose in the course of the deployment of the scientific and technological revolution.

The danger of an ecological crisis coincided with the scientific and technological revolution not by chance. The scientific and technological revolution creates conditions for the removal of technical restrictions on the use of natural resources. As a result of the removal of internal restrictions on the development of production, a new contradiction has assumed an exceptionally sharp form - between the internally unlimited possibilities for the development of production and the naturally limited possibilities of the natural environment. This contradiction, as well as the earlier ones, can be resolved only if the natural conditions of the life of society are increasingly covered by artificial means of regulation on the part of people.

Measures to upgrade production technology, waste treatment, noise control, etc., which are now being organized in developed countries, only delay the onset of the catastrophe, but are not able to prevent it, since they do not eliminate the root causes of the ecological crisis.

The ecological content of the scientific and technological revolution and its contradiction are also manifested in the fact that in the course of its deployment, the necessary technical prerequisites arise for ensuring a new nature of the relationship to nature (the possibility of switching production to closed cycles, the transition to machine-free production, the possibility of efficient use of energy up to the creation of technical autotrophic systems, etc.).

V. I. Vernadsky showed from natural-scientific positions that humanity should realize its place and role in the natural cycles of matter and energy and optimally fit its production activity into these cycles. From this, V. I. Vernadsky made an important conclusion that people need to realize not only their interests and needs, but also their planetary role as energy transformers and redistributors of matter over the earth's surface based on new ways of using information. The global processes caused by people must correspond to the organization of the biosphere, which developed long before the appearance of man. People are quite capable of knowing the objective laws of the organization of the biosphere and consciously taking them into account in their activities, just as they have long taken into account the laws of individual parts and elements of the biosphere, transforming them for practical purposes.

Chapter 3. Technological progress as a way to overcome social and environmental problems

3.1 Philosophical views on solving global problems of mankind

The needs of the emerging natural science and developing industrial production substantiated the reality of opposing a person to the surrounding reality. The French Enlightenment tried to destroy these stereotypes within the framework of anthropological and naturalistic ideas. Nature (environment), interpreted in various ways, has, according to representatives of this trend, a decisive influence on a person. The French materialists thus defended the principle of the unity of man and nature, based on the contemplative, "eternally given" harmony between them.

A special place in the interpretation of the processes of the relationship between man and nature is occupied by representatives of the philosophical and religious direction, "Russian cosmism" of the 19th century. (N. F. Fedorov, K. E. Tsiolkovsky, V. I. Vernadsky and others), who in the system of philosophical and theological constructions raised the question of "theocosmic unity", the ways of "the total salvation of mankind", the immortality of the human race, substantiated the positive trend towards the harmony of biospheric and cosmic processes, striving to find the proper place for man in the system of his relations with the world of material and ideal things and phenomena.

Most of the conceptual constructions of the 20th century, especially of its second half, are united by the philosophy of technocracy, proceeding from the fact that scientific and technological progress creates the prerequisites for overcoming most, if not all, of the contradictions of world development, reaching the level of a "general welfare" society.

In line with technocracy, numerous sociological theories of social development were created, among which the most famous are the concepts of industrial and post-industrial society, postulating the positive role of scientific and technological progress. From this point of view, the concepts of "quality of life", prosperity, harmony and stable existence are inseparable from the growth of material well-being, the development of technology and technology. However, the ecological crisis consequences that manifested themselves in the 1960s, the technical and ethical “side effects” of scientific and technological progress, cast doubt on the wisdom of the chosen path, a revision of the values of unlimited consumption began, which in some cases led to technophobia.

However, the technocracy of Western consciousness was rejected within the framework of the philosophy of "critical humanism" (M. Heidegger, K. Jaspers, G. Marcuse, etc.) for the absolutization of its rational-technological orientation, in the process of which the personality loses its integrity, turning into a "partial person" . The way out was offered in the "spiritual revolution", the liberation from the "demon of technology", in the identification of the "human in man".

A radical transformation of the modern philosophical view of world development in the framework of solving increasingly urgent environmental problems occurred in the early 1970s, when the idea of the limits of growth was formulated, predicting an "ecological collapse" for the civilization of the future while maintaining modern guidelines for world development. It was from that time that the modern philosophy of environmentalism began to take shape - a worldview based on the defining status of the problem of the relationship between man and the biosphere in the dynamics of the civilizational process. If in the 70s. philosophical environmentalism had a pessimistic connotation, then in the 80s. “optimistic realism” clearly began to prevail due to the fact that the ambiguity of the phenomenon of the “technological demon” was revealed, which, on the one hand, is really fraught with dangerous, including social and environmental, processes, and on the other hand, along with the improvement of the spiritual potential of the individual, opens way to a real overcoming of contradictions of a global scale.

Summing up what has been said, it should be noted that the true knowledge of being in a period of unprecedented global changes, when it is necessary to rethink the essence of the relationship between man, society and nature, to reach a different level of planetary development, does not involve a confrontation of ideas, but their interaction. And it is the interrelation of the religious and philosophical interpretation of being that can create the prerequisites for an adequate answer to the question of the positive directions of the development of civilization.

3.2 Basic principles of environmentally friendly technologies

At the present stage of the development of society, the development of a scientific understanding of the unity of society and nature is stimulated by the need to ensure such unity in practice. In fact, society everywhere faced the task of greening technology, its optimal harmonization with natural

Over the long years of industrial development, a one-sided inertia has been gained in the development of technology in an environmentally carefree regime, and the transition to a qualitatively new regime sometimes seems simply impossible. In addition, the measures taken so far to ecologize technology do not radically solve the problem, but only delay its real overcoming. The fight against pollution of the natural environment by production is carried out so far mainly through the construction of treatment facilities, and not by changing the existing production technology. However, these measures alone are not enough to solve the problem.

Requirements for the degree of purification of production waste will continuously increase as the number and capacity of enterprises grow. In some unique natural complexes, such as Baikal, for example, the requirements for the efficiency of treatment facilities are already very high. According to experts, the water treatment facilities of the Baikal Pulp and Paper Mill do not meet these requirements, although the cost of the facilities is high and amounts to 25% of the cost of the mill itself. Consequently, the current main method of greening technology becomes economically inexpedient and environmentally inefficient. There was a contradiction between the old type of production technology and the new requirements for environmental protection.

Equipping modern production with treatment facilities should be considered only as a stage, albeit a very important one, on the way to improving nature management. Simultaneously with this stage, it is necessary to move on to the next, more important and radical stage - the restructuring of the very type of production technology. It is necessary to switch to waste-free production with the most complete utilization of the entire complex of substances entering the production and household system from the mining and procurement industries.

This technology requires a complete restructuring of production based on the creation of territorial production complexes. In these complexes, all the variety of types of production should be linked so that the waste of one type of enterprise serves as a raw material for other types, and so on until the most complete utilization of all substances without exception that enter the system at the entrance.

Modern production is organized in violation of systemic principles. The ratio of the substance extracted and used in the production process (98% and 2%, respectively) shows that the processes of obtaining substance and energy from the environment clearly prevailed over the processes of disposal of the withdrawn substance. Thus, the ecological crisis is programmed into the existing production technology.

But it does not follow from this that technology is in principle incompatible with natural processes. It is quite compatible with them, but on condition that the production is built in accordance with the laws of the systemic integrity of self-regulating systems.

An approximate analogue of such an organization of metabolic processes of matter and energy can be natural biogeocenoses and the biosphere as a whole. As in biogeocenoses, the diversity of species of organisms determines the possibility of a closed cycle in the movement of matter and energy, so in social production, the very diversity of its species serves as an important prerequisite for ensuring the closed circuits of technological processes.

The transition to a qualitatively new production technology with a closed cycle of substance use will dramatically reduce the consumption of materials from the environment. With the exception of small losses due to dispersion, spraying, etc., all the substance under the new technology will circulate in the social environment, and new quantities of the substance will be required only for expanded reproduction and compensation for inevitable losses, i.e. about the same as in nature. If living nature from the very beginning had embarked on the same path of using matter that man had taken, then nothing would have been left of the entire huge mass of our planet at the existing biogenic rates of element migration. Cycles of matter became a way to overcome the contradiction between the increase in the intensity of metabolic processes in living nature and the limited amount of matter in the inanimate nature of the planet. Social production must also obey the principle of the circulation of matter.

3.3 Ecotechnology is the basis for the transition to the noospherictype of civilization

The restructuring of production technology on an ecological basis is the next stage in the improvement of nature management after the stage of nature protection based on traditional technology. For brevity, traditional technology in its relation to nature can be called "servo technology" (i.e., involving the protection of nature with the help of additional technical systems), and a new technology that is organically consistent with natural processes and therefore does not need parallel technology to protect the environment - " ecotechnology".

From servo technology to eco-technology - this is the main way to improve nature management.

The social relations of modern civilization are not yet able to ensure the implementation of the necessary technological revolution in the volume and direction required for the transition to eco-technology. We note two reasons for this. Ecotechnology involves:

Coordination and planned regulation of the entire set of production links;

A qualitatively different stimulus to the economy (not maximum profit, but planned consideration of the needs of people and the requirements of the environment, regardless of the amount of profit). Such an incentive is possible only in an economy based on a different system of values and developing directly in the interests of people, and not indirectly through the provision of profit. Ecotechnology is compatible only with a society where the immediate goal of production is not maximum profit, but the interests of all people, their health and happiness.

Ecotechnology will remove a number of restrictions on the development of production that have arisen in modern conditions, and above all restrictions on the part of the natural environment. However, this does not mean that any technical restrictions will be removed in general. Sooner or later, new restrictions will appear, the removal of which will require another technological revolution, and so on as long as society and the production that serves it exist. In the light of what has been said, the pointlessness of the disputes about whether there are limits to the growth of social production or not becomes clear.

Of course, there are limits to growth, but they do not exist in general, but specifically for each social system and for each specific level of development of production technology. It is obvious that the existing production technology is generally close to the limiting values of its growth in this capacity. Research by the Club of Rome unambiguously showed this.

The problem of population is directly related to the discussions about the limits of economic growth. Can the world's population grow indefinitely? No. For each specific social system and the qualitatively determined nature of the technology of production, there may be a well-defined optimal level of population. This level can be calculated on the basis of taking into account the real potential of social production and the natural environment. It can be assumed that for the future society, the problem of the population simply will not exist. But today the problem of the population is very acute, and above all because here, too, technical civilization has reached the limit of its development, creating an excess population due to both social and natural, but not food reasons.

Demographic problems are complicated primarily by outdated national and religious traditions, combined with spontaneity in the distribution and use of labor resources, on the one hand, and contrasts in the distribution of national wealth, on the other. Excessive population growth, which primarily distinguishes, as a rule, underdeveloped countries is not fatal. The experience of the history of industrialized countries shows that as the culture and literacy of the population grows, industrial potential develops and women are involved in education and production, the birth rate, as a rule, begins to decrease, coming to some very modest value. This is a general trend in population dynamics. .

Thus, the necessary harmony of relations between society and nature can be ensured in the process of an immediate transition to a new stage of the scientific and technological revolution, the main content of which should be a radical change in the position of man in the "society-nature" system, just as the current stage of the scientific and technological revolution dramatically changed the position of the worker in the "man-technique" system. A common feature of both stages of the scientific and technological revolution is that the role of man in technical and natural processes is growing significantly.

In the process of unfolding a new stage of the scientific and technological revolution, the biological principles of production processes, up to the transition to industrial photosynthesis outside plants, will find much wider application than before. Thus, humanity will become the second autotroph on the planet, with the difference, however, that people will learn to use the energy of the Sun with a much higher efficiency than plants.

For people, as leading their origin from heterotrophic organisms, i.e. feeding at the expense of others and depending on them, there is the only way to overcome this dependence by switching to autotrophy. But unlike plants, they must acquire this ability consciously through the use of scientific knowledge and technology, giving them the appropriate direction.

For clarity, let's imagine the ratio of development trends of modern social development with those processes that are characteristic of the natural ecological pyramid, each of the levels of which shows the ratio of food chains of various types of organisms.

Anthropogenic development builds up in the process of its resource supply over the ecological pyramid that has developed long before the appearance of man on Earth. The pattern of this natural pyramid is the ratio of each next power link to the previous one in a ratio of 1:10.

This ratio was clearly maintained in nature by the law of natural selection until the appearance of man, who, using artificial methods of his resource provision, succeeded in significantly changing the ecological pyramid, giving it a tendency of unnatural expansion from the cone upwards.

Mankind tends to expand the reproduction of the population and everything necessary for its provision at the expense of the biosphere, up to its complete depletion. Modern society already exceeds the capabilities of the planet's biota by 10 times.

To overcome the natural limitations of the biosphere, people need either to reduce their bio- and techno-mass in order to fit into the natural law of proportional ratios of nutritional links (1:10), or to take measures to ensure the transition of mankind to autotrophy, and thus remove the excessive anthropogenic load on biosphere.

The universal use of biophysical and biochemical patterns in production will radically transform the entire technology of the future. The predominant development will be machine-free production, which does not know hazardous waste. Instead, there will be semi-finished products that are essential for the next stages of production. Naturally, such production will be completely silent and will not be accompanied by harmful radiation. It will fully correspond to the environment and the psychophysical organization of the person himself.

It is hard to imagine that technology could change so radically, and yet it will. Moreover, this will happen not in some distant future, but rather soon, judging by some signs in the development of modern science and technology. Academician N.N. Semenov believed that "all these possibilities will be closely related to the prospects that will be opened up by research in the late 20th and early 21st centuries" . Apparently, the most important technical condition for the transition to a completely new type of production will be a fundamentally different energy orientation towards the predominantly direct use of solar energy.

Thus, the modern scientific and technological revolution is the first link (prelude) of a more significant and fundamental revolution in the entire system of technologies and social relations as a whole. You can call this revolution a new scientific and technological revolution or a new stage in the development of scientific and technological revolution.

"The noosphere, embracing the natural and social environment with its unity, will become a convenient abode for mankind and a condition for the free development of all human abilities. From the cradle of mankind, the Earth with its environment will turn into a reliable and desirable home for each of its members."

3.4 Technical and technological component of the concept

sustainable development

Humanity is entering a new era in its history. its most characteristic feature is the emergence of global problems. For the first time in history, a situation has arisen when humanity can unite on such a basis as ensuring the global security of modern civilization.

In the 70-80s. 20th century in foreign literature in the field of economics, ecology, sociology and other humanities, the term "sustainable development" has become widespread, which denoted socio-economic and environmental development aimed at maintaining peace throughout the planet, at reasonable satisfaction of people's needs while improving the quality of life current and future generations, on the careful use of the planet's resources and the preservation of the natural environment.

In June 1972, at the UN Conference on the Environment in Stockholm, in addition to many important documents, the concept of sustainable development was formulated. This concept was based on the fact that if three-quarters of the world's population, now living in underdeveloped countries, follow the same path of industrial development as the inhabitants of developed countries, then the planet Earth will obviously not withstand such a load and an inevitable ecological catastrophe will strike. However, underdeveloped countries cannot be blamed for seeking to improve the standard of living of a rapidly growing population. In world politics today, there is a clear tendency for the economically prosperous quarter of the world's population to solve, at least temporarily, acute environmental problems by freezing the economic growth of the poorest three-quarters. Expressing the opinion of very influential circles, many politicians and scientists in developed countries suddenly started talking about the wasteful consumption of natural resources by the population of the Earth, but they offer a starvation diet to everyone except themselves. In reality, it is impossible to solve environmental problems without solving socio-economic ones. "Ecology without economy is total poverty"

The concept of long-term sustainable development can be analyzed in different aspects, but we are interested in the role of technological progress in sustainable development. The relevant principles of the environmental aspect of the concept of sustainable development can be formulated as follows:

Ensuring the co-evolution of society and nature, man and the biosphere, the restoration of relative harmony between them, the focus of all transformations on the formation of the noosphere;

Preservation of real opportunities not only for present, but also for future generations to satisfy their basic vital needs;

Theoretical development and practical implementation of methods for the efficient use of natural resources;

Ensuring the environmental safety of noospheric development;

Deployment of first low-waste, and then non-waste production in a closed cycle, thoughtful development of biotechnology;

Gradual transition from energy based on the combustion of fossil fuels to alternative energy using renewable energy sources (sun, water, wind, biomass energy, underground heat, etc.).

Conclusion

The entire previous history can be viewed in an ecological sense as an accelerating process of accumulation of those changes in science, technology and the state of the environment, which eventually grew into a modern ecological crisis. The main sign of this crisis is a sharp qualitative change in the biosphere that has taken place over the past 50 years. Moreover, not so long ago, the first signs of the development of an ecological crisis into an ecological catastrophe appeared, when the processes of irreversible destruction of the biosphere begin.

The ecological problem has put humanity before the choice of a further path of development: should it continue to be oriented towards an unlimited growth of production, or should this growth be consistent with the real possibilities of the natural environment and the human body, commensurate not only with the immediate, but also with the distant goals of social development.

In the emergence and development of the ecological crisis, a special, decisive role belongs to technical progress. In fact, the emergence of the first tools and the first technologies led to the beginning of anthropogenic pressure on nature and the emergence of the first human-provoked environmental disasters. With the development of technogenic civilization, there was an increase in the risk of environmental crises and the aggravation of their consequences.

The source of such a relationship is man himself, who is both a natural being and a carrier of technological development.

However, despite such "aggressiveness", it is technical progress that can be the key to humanity's way out of the global environmental crisis. The creation of new technologies for low-waste, and then non-waste production in a closed cycle will ensure a sufficiently high standard of living without violating the fragile ecological balance. A gradual transition to alternative energy will preserve clean air, stop the catastrophic combustion of atmospheric oxygen, and eliminate thermal pollution of the atmosphere.

Thus, technological progress, like the two-faced Janus, has two opposite hypostases in the picture of the present and future of mankind. And it depends only on the collective human mind, on the thoughtfulness and coherence of the actions of governments, educational and public organizations around the world, what face of technological progress our descendants will see, whether they will curse us or glorify us.

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This principle was formulated at the Conference of World Ecologists on Environment and Development in Rio de Janeiro in 1992.

SOCIAL ECOLOGY

1. The subject of social ecology and its relationship with other sciences

2. History of social ecology

3. The essence of social and environmental interaction

4. Basic concepts and categories characterizing social and environmental relationships, interaction

5. Human environment and its properties

1. The subject of social ecology and its relationship with other sciences

Social ecology is a recently emerged scientific discipline, the subject of which is the study of the patterns of society's impact on the biosphere and those changes in it that affect society as a whole and each person individually. The conceptual content of social ecology is covered by such sections of scientific knowledge as human ecology, sociological ecology, global ecology, etc. At the time of its inception, human ecology was focused on identifying the biological and social factors of human development, establishing the adaptive possibilities of its existence in conditions of intensive industrial development. Subsequently, the tasks of human ecology expanded to the study of the relationship between man and the environment, and even problems of a global scale.

The main content of social ecology comes down to the need to create a theory of interaction between society and the biosphere, since the processes of this interaction include both the biosphere and society in their mutual influence. Consequently, the laws of this process must be in a certain sense more general than the laws of development of each of the subsystems separately. In social ecology, the main idea associated with the study of the patterns of interaction between society and the biosphere is clearly traced. Therefore, the regularities of society's impact on the biosphere and those changes in it that affect society as a whole and each person individually are in the center of her attention.

One of the most important tasks of social ecology (and in this respect it approaches sociological ecology - O.N. Yanitsky) is to study the ability of people to adapt to ongoing changes in the environment, to identify unacceptable boundaries of changes that have a negative impact on people's health. These include the problems of a modern urbanized society: the attitude of people to the requirements of the environment and to the environment that the industry forms; issues of restrictions that this environment imposes on relationships between people (D. Markovich). The main task of social ecology is to study the mechanisms of human impact on the environment and those changes in it that are the result of human activity. The problems of social ecology are mainly reduced to three main groups on a planetary scale - the global forecast for the population and resources in the conditions of intensive industrial development (global ecology) and the determination of ways for the further development of civilization; regional scale - the study of the state of individual ecosystems at the level of regions and districts (regional ecology); microscale - the study of the main characteristics and parameters of urban living conditions (ecology of the city, or sociology of the city).

Social ecology is a new area of interdisciplinary research that has taken shape at the intersection of natural (biology, geography, physics, astronomy, chemistry) and humanitarian (sociology, cultural studies, psychology, history) sciences.

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 “big ecology” (according to N.F. Reimers) or “macroecology” (according to T.A. Akimova and V.V. Khaskin), which currently includes the following main sections in its structure:

General ecology;

Bioecology;

Geoecology;

Human ecology (including social ecology);

Applied Ecology.

1. History of social ecology

The term "social ecology" owes its appearance to American researchers, representatives of the Chicago School of Social Psychologists - 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.

One of the first definitions of social ecology was given in his work in 1927 by R. McKenzil, who characterized it as the science of the territorial and temporal relations of people, which are influenced by selective (selective), distributive (distributive) and accommodative (adaptive) forces of the environment. Such a definition of the subject of social ecology was intended to become the basis for the study of the territorial division of the population within urban agglomerations.

Significant progress in the development of social ecology and the process of its separation from bioecology occurred in the 60s. 20th century The 1966 World Congress of Sociologists played a special role in this. The rapid development of social ecology in subsequent years led to the fact that at the next congress of sociologists, held in Varna in 1970, it was decided to create a Research Committee of the World Association of Sociologists on Problems of Social Ecology. Thus, as noted by D. Zh. Markovich, the existence of social ecology as an independent scientific branch was, in fact, recognized and an impetus was given to its faster development and a more accurate definition of its subject.

During the period under review, the list of tasks that this branch of scientific knowledge, which was gradually gaining independence, was called upon to solve, significantly expanded. If at the dawn of the formation of social ecology, the efforts of researchers mainly boiled down to searching in the behavior of a territorially localized human population for analogues of laws and environmental relations characteristic of biological communities, then from the 2nd half of the 60s, the range of issues under consideration was supplemented by the problems of determining the place and role of a person. in the biosphere, working out ways to determine the optimal conditions for its life and development, harmonizing relationships with other components of the biosphere. The process of its humanitarization that has engulfed social ecology in the last two decades has led to the fact that, in addition to the above tasks, the range of issues it develops includes the problems of identifying the general laws of the functioning and development of social systems, studying the influence of natural factors on the processes of socio-economic development and finding ways to control action. these factors.

In our country by the end of the 70s. conditions have also developed for separating socio-environmental issues into an independent area of interdisciplinary research. A significant contribution to the development of domestic social ecology was made by E.V. Girusov, A.N. Kochergin, Yu.G. Markov, N.F. Reimers, S. N. Solomina and others.

2. The essence of social and environmental interaction

When studying the relationship of man with the environment, two main aspects are distinguished. First, the whole set of influences exerted on a person by the environment and various environmental factors is studied.

In modern anthropoecology and social ecology, environmental factors to which a person is forced to adapt are commonly referred to as "adaptive factors" . These factors are usually divided into three large groups - biotic, abiotic and anthropogenic environmental factors. Biotic factors − these are direct or indirect effects from other organisms inhabiting the human environment (animals, plants, microorganisms). Abiotic factors - factors of inorganic nature (light, temperature, humidity, pressure, physical fields - gravitational, electromagnetic, ionizing and penetrating radiation, etc.). A special group is anthropogenic factors generated by the activities of man himself, the human community (pollution of the atmosphere and hydrosphere, plowing fields, deforestation, replacement of natural complexes with artificial structures, etc.).

The second aspect of the study of the relationship between man and the environment is the study of the problem of human adaptation to the environment and its changes.

The concept of human adaptation is one of the fundamental concepts of modern social ecology, reflecting the process of human connection with the environment and its changes. Initially appearing in the framework of physiology, the term "adaptation" soon penetrated other areas of knowledge and began to be used to describe a wide range of phenomena and processes in the natural, technical and human sciences, initiating the formation of a large group of concepts and terms that reflect various aspects and properties of adaptation processes. man to the conditions of his environment and its result.

The term "human adaptation" is used not only to refer to the process of adaptation, but also to comprehend the property acquired by a person as a result of this process, adaptability to the conditions of existence (adaptation ).

However, even under the condition of an unambiguous interpretation of the concept of adaptation, its insufficiency is felt to describe the process it denotes. This is reflected in the emergence of such clarifying concepts as “deadaptation” and “readaptation”, which characterize the direction of the process (deadaptation is the gradual loss of adaptive properties and, as a result, a decrease in fitness; readaptation is the reverse process), and the term “disadaptation” (disorder of the body's adaptation to changing conditions of existence), reflecting the nature (quality) of this process.

Speaking about the varieties of adaptation, they distinguish genetic, genotypic, phenotypic, climatic, social, etc. adaptation. implementation and duration. Climate adaptation is the process of adapting a person to the climatic conditions of the environment. Its synonym is the term "acclimatization".

Ways of adaptation of a person (society) to changing conditions of existence are designated in the anthropoecological and socio-ecological literature as adaptive strategies . Various representatives of the plant and animal kingdom (including humans) most often use a passive strategy of adaptation to changes in the conditions of existence. We are talking about a reaction to the impact of adaptive environmental factors, which consists in morphophysiological transformations in the body aimed at maintaining the constancy of its internal environment.

One of the key differences between man and other representatives of the animal kingdom is that he uses a variety of active adaptive strategies much more often and more successfully. , such as, for example, strategies for avoiding and provoking the action of certain adaptive factors. However, the most developed form of an active adaptive strategy is the economic and cultural type of adaptation characteristic of people to the conditions of existence, which is based on the object-transforming activity they carry out.

4. Basic concepts and categories that characterizesocio-ecological relationships, interaction

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.

According to D.Zh. Markovich, the subject of study of modern social ecology, understood by him as a particular sociology, is the specific relationship between a person 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. T.A. Akimov and V.V. Haskin believe that 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 man with the natural and social environment of their habitat. According to E.V. Girusov, 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.

Modern science sees in Man, first of all, a biosocial being that has gone through a long path of evolution in its development and developed a complex social organization.

Coming out of the animal kingdom, Man still remains one of its members.

According to the ideas prevailing in science, modern man descended from an ape-like ancestor - driopithecus, a representative of a branch of hominids that separated about 20-25 million years ago from higher narrow-nosed monkeys. The reason for the departure of human ancestors from the general line of evolution, which predetermined an unprecedented leap in improving its physical organization and expanding the possibilities of functioning, was the change in the conditions of existence that occurred as a result of the development of natural processes. The general cooling, which caused a reduction in the areas of forests - natural ecological niches inhabited by human ancestors, made it necessary for him to adapt to new, extremely unfavorable circumstances of life.

One of the features of the specific strategy of adaptation of human ancestors to new conditions was that they “stakes” mainly on the mechanisms of behavioral rather than morphophysiological adaptation. This made it possible to respond more flexibly to current changes in the external environment and thus more successfully adapt to them. The most important factor that determined the survival and subsequent progressive development of man was his ability to create viable, extremely functional social communities. Gradually, as a person mastered the skills of creating and using tools, creating a developed material culture, and, most importantly, developing intellect, he actually moved from passive adaptation to the conditions of existence to their active and conscious transformation. Thus, the origin and evolution of man not only depended on the evolution of living nature, but also largely predetermined serious environmental changes on Earth.

In accordance with the approach proposed by L. V. Maksimova to the analysis of the essence and content of the basic categories of human ecology, the concept of “man” can be revealed by compiling a hierarchical typology of his hypostases, as well as human properties that affect the nature of his relationship with the environment and the consequences for him this interaction.

The first who drew attention to the multidimensionality and hierarchy of the concept of "man" in the system "man - environment" were A.D. Lebedev, V.S. Preobrazhensky and E.L. Reich. They revealed the differences between the systems of this concept, distinguished by biological (individual, gender and age group, population, constitutional types, races) and socio-economic (personality, family, population group, humanity) characteristics. They also showed that each level of consideration (individual, population, society, etc.) has its own environment and its own ways of adapting to it.

Over time, ideas about the hierarchical structure of the concept of "man" became more complicated. So, the model-matrix N.F. Reimers already has 6 series of hierarchical organization (species (genetic anatomical morphophysiological basis), ethological-behavioral (psychological), labor, ethnic, social, economic) and more than 40 terms.

The most important characteristics of a person in anthropoecological and socio-ecological studies are his properties, among which L.V. Maksimova highlights the presence of needs and the ability to adapt to the environment and its changes - adaptability. The latter is manifested in human adaptive abilities and adaptive features. . She owes her education to such human qualities as variability and heredity.

The concept of adaptation mechanisms reflects ideas about how a person and society can adapt to changes in the environment.

The most studied at the present stage are the biological mechanisms of adaptation, but, unfortunately, the cultural aspects of adaptation, covering the sphere of spiritual life, everyday life, etc., remain poorly studied until recently.

The concept of the degree of adaptation reflects the measure of a person's adaptability to specific conditions of existence, as well as the presence (absence) of properties acquired by a person as a result of the process of his adaptation to changes in environmental conditions. As indicators of the degree of adaptation of a person to specific conditions of existence, studies on human ecology and social ecology use such characteristics as social and labor potential and health.

The concept of "social and labor potential of a person” was proposed by V.P. Kaznacheev as a peculiar, expressing the improvement of the quality of the population, an integral indicator of the organization of society. The author himself defined it as "a way of organizing the life of a population, in which the implementation of various natural and social measures to organize the life of populations creates optimal conditions for socially useful social and labor activities of individuals and groups of the population."

As another criterion of adaptation in human ecology, the concept of "health" is widely used. Moreover, health, on the one hand, is understood as an integral characteristic of the human body, in a certain way influencing the process and outcome of a person’s interaction with the environment, on adaptation to it, and on the other hand, as a person’s reaction to the process of his interaction with the environment, as a result of his adaptation to conditions of existence.

3. The human environment and its properties

The concept of "environment" is fundamentally correlative, as it reflects subject-object relations and therefore loses its content without determining which subject it refers to. The human environment is a complex formation that integrates many different components, which makes it possible to talk about a large number of environments, in relation to which the “human environment” acts as a generic concept. The diversity, the multiplicity of heterogeneous environments that make up a single human environment, ultimately determine the diversity of its influence on him.

According to D. Zh. Markovich, the concept of “human environment” in its most general form can be defined as a set of natural and artificial conditions in which a person realizes himself as a natural and social being. The human environment consists of two interrelated parts: natural and social (Fig. 1). The natural component of the environment is the total space directly or indirectly accessible to a person. This is, first of all, the planet Earth with its diverse shells. The public part of the human environment is made up of society and social relations, thanks to which a person realizes himself as a social active being.

As elements of the natural environment (in its narrow sense), D.Zh. Markovich considers the atmosphere, hydrosphere, lithosphere, plants, animals and microorganisms.

Plants, animals and microorganisms make up the living natural environment of man.

Rice. 2. Components of the human environment (according to N. F. Reimers)

According to N. F. Reimers, the social environment, combined with the natural, quasi-natural and arte-natural environments, forms the totality of the human environment. Each of these environments is closely interconnected with others, and none of them can be replaced by another or be painlessly excluded from the general system of the human environment.

L. V. Maksimova, based on the analysis of extensive literature (articles, collections, monographs, special, encyclopedic and explanatory dictionaries), compiled a generalized model of the human environment. A somewhat abbreviated version is shown in Fig. 3.

Rice. 3. Components of the human environment (according to L. V. Maksimova)

In the above scheme, such a component as "living environment" deserves special attention. This type of environment, including its varieties (social, industrial and recreational environments), is now becoming an object of close interest of many researchers, primarily specialists in the field of anthropoecology and social ecology.

The study of human relations with the environment led to the emergence of ideas about the properties or states of the environment, expressing the perception of the environment by a person, an assessment of the quality of the environment from the point of view of human needs. Special anthropoecological methods make it possible to determine the degree of compliance of the environment with human needs, evaluate its quality and, on this basis, identify its properties.

The most common property of the environment from the point of view of its compliance with the biosocial requirements of a person is the concept of comfort, i.e. compliance of the environment with these requirements, and discomfort, or inconsistency with them. The extreme expression of discomfort is extremeness. Discomfort, or extremeness, of the environment can be closely related to its properties such as pathogenicity, pollution, etc.

Issues for discussion and discussion

What are the main tasks of social ecology?
What are planetary (global), regional and microscale environmental problems?
What elements, sections does "big ecology" or "macroecology" include in its structure?
Is there a difference between "social ecology" and "human ecology"?
Name two main aspects of social-ecological interaction.
The subject of the study of social ecology.
List the biological and socio-economic features of the concept of "man" in the system "man - environment".

How do you understand the thesis that "the diversity, the multiplicity of heterogeneous environments that make up a single human environment, ultimately determine the diversity of its influence on him."