Social ecology

Social ecology is a scientific discipline about harmonizing the relationship between nature and society. This branch of knowledge analyzes the human relationship (taking into account the correspondence of the humanistic side) with the needs of development. In this case, the comprehension of the world in its general concepts is used, expressing the degree of the historical unity of nature and man.

The conceptual and categorical structure of science is in constant development and improvement. This process of change is quite diverse and permeates all ecologies, both objectively and subjectively. In such a peculiar way, scientific creativity is reflected and the influence on the evolution of methods of scientific research and the interests of not only individual scientists, but also various groups in general is carried out.

The approach to nature and society that social ecology proposes to apply may, to a certain extent, seem intellectually demanding. At the same time, he avoids some simplification of dualism and reductionism. Social ecology seeks to show the slow and multiphase process of transformation of nature into society, taking into account all the differences on the one hand and, on the other, the degree of interpenetration.

One of the primary tasks facing researchers at the stage of modern science approval is the definition of a general approach to understanding the subject of the discipline. Despite some progress that has been achieved in the study of various areas of interaction between man, nature and society, a large amount of material published over the past decades, there is still a lot of controversy on the question of what exactly social ecology studies.

An increasing number of researchers give preference to an expanded interpretation of the subject of the discipline. For example, Markovic (Serbian scientist) believed that social ecology, considered by him as a private sociology, studies the specific connections that are established between a person and his environment. Proceeding from this, the tasks of the discipline may consist in studying the influence of the totality of social and natural factors that make up the surrounding conditions on a person, as well as the impact of an individual on external conditions, perceived as the boundaries of a person's life.

There is also, to some extent, another, however, not contradicting the above explanation, the interpretation of the concept of the subject of the discipline. So, Haskin and Akimova consider social ecology as a complex of individuals who study the relationship between social structures (starting with the family itself and other small social groups and groups), as well as between man and the natural, social environment. Using this interpretation, it becomes possible to study more fully In this case, the approach to understanding the subject of the discipline is not limited to the framework of one. At the same time, attention is focused on the interdisciplinary nature of the discipline.

When defining the subject of social ecology, some researchers tend to emphasize especially the importance that it is endowed with. The role of discipline, in their opinion, is very significant in the issue of harmonizing the interaction of mankind and its environment. A number of authors believe that the task of social ecology, first of all, is to study the laws of nature and society. In this case, these laws mean the principles of self-regulation in the biosphere, used by a person in his life.

Social Ecology Study Subject

The subject of the study of social ecology is to identify the patterns of development of this system, value-worldview, socio-cultural, legal and other prerequisites and conditions for its sustainable development. That is, the subject of social ecology is a relation in the system “society-man-technology-natural environment”.

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

The problem of developing a unified approach to understanding the subject of social ecology

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 achieved 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 to three decades in our country and abroad, on the issue of what exactly is studying this branch of scientific knowledge, there are still different opinions.

In the school reference book "Ecology" A.P. Oshmarin and V.I. Oshmarina gives two options for defining social ecology: in the narrow sense, it is understood as the science "of the interaction of human society with the natural environment", and in the broad sense of the science "of the interaction of an individual and human society with natural, social and cultural environments." It is quite obvious that in each of the presented cases of interpretation it is about different sciences that claim the right to be called "social ecology". No less indicative is the comparison between the definitions of social ecology and human ecology. According to the same source, the latter is defined as: “1) the science of the interaction of human society with nature; 2) the ecology of the human person; 3) the ecology of human populations, including the doctrine of ethnic groups. " The almost complete identity of the definition of social ecology, understood "in the narrow sense", and the first version of the interpretation of human ecology is clearly visible.

The striving for the actual identification of these two branches of scientific knowledge, indeed, is still characteristic of foreign science, but it is quite often subjected to well-reasoned criticism by domestic scientists. SN Solomina, in particular, pointing out the feasibility of breeding social ecology and human ecology, limits the subject to the latter by considering the socio-hygienic and medico-genetic aspects of the relationship between man, society and nature. With a similar interpretation of the subject of human ecology, V.A. Bukhvalov, L.V. Bogdanova and some other researchers, but strongly disagree with N.A. Aghajanyan, V.P. Kaznacheev and N.F. Reimers, in their opinion, this discipline covers a much wider range of issues of interaction of the anthroposystem (considered at all levels of its organization from the individual to humanity as a whole) with the biosphere, as well as with the internal biosocial organization of human society. It is easy to see that such an interpretation of the subject of human ecology actually equates it with social ecology, understood in a broad sense. This situation is largely due to the fact that at present there has been a steady tendency for the two disciplines to converge, when there is an interpenetration of the subjects of the two sciences and their mutual enrichment due to the joint use of the empirical material accumulated in each of them, as well as methods and technologies of socio-ecological and anthropoecological research.

Today, an increasing number of researchers are inclined towards an expanded interpretation of the subject of social ecology. So, according to D.Zh. Markovich, the subject of study of modern social ecology, understood by him as a private sociology, is the specific connections between man and his environment. Based on this, the main tasks of social ecology can be defined as follows: the study of the influence of the environment as a combination of natural and social factors on humans, as well as the influence of humans on the environment, perceived as a framework of human life.

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

When defining the subject of social ecology, some researchers are inclined to emphasize the role that this young science is called upon to play in harmonizing the relationship of mankind with its environment. According to E.V. Girusov, social ecology should study, first of all, the laws of society and nature, by which he understands the laws of self-regulation of the biosphere, implemented by a person in his life.

Principles of social ecology

· Humanity, like any population, cannot grow infinitely.
· Society in its development must take into account the measure of biospheric phenomena.
· Sustainable development of society depends on the timeliness of the transition to alternative resources and technologies.
Any transformative activity of society should be based on an environmental forecast
· The development of nature should not diminish the diversity of the biosphere and worsen the quality of life of people.
· The sustainable development of civilization depends on the moral qualities of people.
· Everyone is responsible for their actions to the future.
· We need to think globally, act locally.
· The unity of nature obliges humanity to cooperate.

INTRODUCTION __________________________________________________ 3

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

1.1 Sources 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 between technology and ecology ___________________________ 8

2.2 Socio-ecological problems of our time ___________ 9

2.3 The ecological content of the scientific and technological revolution ___ 12

Chapter 3. Technological progress as a way to overcome

social and environmental problems ______________ 15

3.1 Philosophical views on the solution of global problems of mankind 15

3.2 Basic principles of environmentally friendly technologies _______ 16

3.3 Ecotechnology - 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

Bibliography ____________________________________ 24

INTRODUCTION

At the end of the twentieth century, destructive anthropogenic, mainly technological, pressure on the environment increased sharply, which led humanity to a global crisis. Modern civilization has found itself at that point in the world-historical process, called by various researchers in different ways ("moments" - I. Teng, "knots" - A. Solzhenitsyn, "breaks" - A. Toynbee, etc.), which determines dynamics and direction of civilizational development in the long term. The contradiction between the growth of the population 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 aggravation is fraught with irreversible degradation changes in the biosphere, radical transformation of the traditional natural conditions for the functioning of civilization, which also poses a real threat to the vital interests of future generations of mankind.

The need to comprehend and overcome the current situation has brought environmental issues to one of the first places in the hierarchy of global problems of our time. More and more often, at various forums of scientists, public and political figures, alarming statements are heard that the aggregate human activity is capable of radically undermining the natural balance of the biosphere and thereby putting civilization in danger of death. The social problems of growing environmental and technological risk are being discussed more and more actively.

The experience of recent decades irrefutably testifies that in the overwhelming majority of environmental disasters, the main culprit is increasingly not the unpredictability of the action of technological means or natural disasters, but ill-considered, unpredictable human activities, often causing irreparable harm to nature through their technogenic impact. Therefore, in environmental studies in different countries of the world, a turn towards taking social factors into account both in creating an environmental problem and in solving it is becoming more noticeable. It is becoming more and more clear that from an ecological imperative, a united humanity on a planetary scale must move to an environmentally oriented consciousness, thinking and action, to an environmentally oriented social development. It is from this point of view that the recently formed branch of scientific knowledge, social ecology, considers the ecological problem. In the center of her attention she places the study of extreme situations arising as a result of imbalance in the interaction of society with nature, clarification of anthropogenic, technological, social factors in the development of such situations and finding optimal ways and means to overcome their destructive consequences.

In domestic science, especially since the 70s, such scientists as M.M.Budyko, N.N.Moiseev, E.K.Fyodorov, I.T.Frolov, S.S.Shvarts, etc., widely discussed the acute problems of the ecological crisis of modern civilization, analyzed the stages of development of society and sociocultural values \u200b\u200bin the light of the relationship between the natural, technical and social systems. There was a search for optimal programs for solving environmental problems, various aspects of the environmental 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 undertaken a new research approach: a co-evolutionary strategy, considered as a new paradigm of civilization in the 21st century. It should influence a change in cognitive and value orientations, a new understanding of nature, and the establishment 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 civilization reaches 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 environmental 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 Kandidat exam in philosophy.

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

1.1 Sources of the emergence of social ecology

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

Scientists were the first to sound the alarm. Beginning in 1968, the Italian economist Aurelio Peccei began annually to gather in Rome major experts from different countries to discuss issues of the future of civilization. These meetings were called the Club of Rome. In the first reports to the Club of Rome, the 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 created 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. "By the" world system ", - noted the scientist, - we mean a person, his social systems, technology and natural environment. The interaction of these elements determines growth, changes and tension ... in the socio-economic-natural environment."

For the first time, the social forecast took 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 waste from human production activities.

If the previous forecasts, which took into account only traditional trends (production growth, consumption growth and population growth), were optimistic, then taking into account environmental parameters immediately translated the global forecast into a pessimistic version, showing the inevitability of a downward line of society development by the end of the first third of the 21st century in connection with the possibility of depletion of mineral resources and excessive pollution of the natural environment. Subsequent works commissioned by the Club of Rome under the leadership of D. Medouz ("The Limits of Growth", 1972), as well as M. Mesarovich and E. Pestel ("Humanity at the Turning Point", 1974), basically confirmed the justice forecasts made by J. Forrester.

So, for the first time in science, the problem of a possible end of civilization was posed not in the distant future, which was repeatedly warned by various prophets, but for a very specific period of time and for very specific and even prosaic reasons. There was a need for such an area of \u200b\u200bknowledge that would thoroughly investigate the discovered problem and find out the way to prevent an impending catastrophe.

This area of \u200b\u200bknowledge 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.

Research into human ecology required a theoretical foundation. 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 a single goal of preserving and developing humanity. It can be realized only if the main processes of the biosphere are controlled by reason. 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 technical studies - a multidimensional set of technical sciences. They consider the diverse functions of technology as a structure of technical systems and technologies created in the labor process 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 conditioning of his mental activity, feelings, volitional impulses, value orientations, attitudes in practical activity, including in relations with the surrounding natural and social environment.

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

1.2 The subject and tasks of social ecology

In the field of view of social ecology, not only and not so much the natural processes of interaction of living organisms with the natural habitat fall, but the processes of interaction of complex ecosystems and socio-systems with social ones, i.e. arising as a result of active social activities of a person, the relationship of society with artificially created elements of the environment that did not exist before humans, bearing the imprint of human activities. 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, are being destroyed, but at the same time new ones are being constructed that unite subject connections between these two different groups of sciences.

Thus, social ecology studies the structure, characteristics and tendencies of functioning of objects of a special kind, objects of the so-called "second nature", i.e. objects of an artificially created by man subject environment, interacting with the natural environment. It is the existence of a "second nature" in the overwhelming majority of cases that gives rise to environmental problems that arise at the junction of ecological and social systems. These socioecological problems 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 side effects of industrial 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 activities into a single "nature-society" system, reveals the human impact 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 propose such effective ways of influencing the environment, which 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 the degradation of the human environment and measures to protect and improve it, social ecology should contribute to expanding the sphere of human freedom by creating more humane relations both to nature and to other people.

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

2.1 Conflict of technology and ecology

If our ancestors limited their activities only to adaptation to nature and the appropriation of its finished products, 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 their needs and goals, could a creature be formed that had passed the way from animal to man. Man was not born of nature alone, as is often claimed. The beginning of a person could only be given by such a not entirely natural form of activity as labor, the main feature of which is the production of certain objects (products) by the subject of labor with the help of other objects (tools). It was labor that became the basis of human evolution.

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

It would be wrong to think that environmental crises triggered by human activity became possible only with the emergence 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 well enough to hunt animals, especially large ones, people by their actions led to the extinction of many of them, including mammoths. As a result, the food resources of many human communities have sharply decreased, and this, in turn, led to mass extinctions. According to various estimates, the population then decreased by 8-10 times. It was a colossal ecological crisis that grew into a socio-ecological disaster. A way out of it was found on the path 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 man's "animal life" was over, he began to "actively and purposefully interfere with natural processes, rebuild natural biogeochemical cycles."

Violation of "order" in nature, its pollution have ancient traditions. The greatest Roman building of the 6th century can be called. BC. - a large outlet for faeces and other waste. Already in the XIV century, in the pre-industrial period, the English king Edward II was forced to prohibit the use of coal for heating houses under the threat of death, so London was polluted with smoke.

But pollution of nature has acquired significant dimensions and intensity only during the period of industrialization and urbanization, which led to significant civilizational changes and to a mismatch between economic and environmental development. This reconciliation took on dramatic proportions in the 1950s. of our century, when the rapid and still unthinkable development of the productive forces caused such changes in nature that lead to the destruction of the biological prerequisites for human life and society. Man created technologies that deny life forms in nature. The use of these technologies leads to an increase in entropy, 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

The environmental problems of our time in terms of their scale can be conditionally divided into local, regional and global 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, harmful to human health, into the river without cleaning. This is a violation of the law. Nature protection authorities or the public must through a court fine such a plant and, under threat of closure, force it to build a treatment plant. In this case, no special science is required.

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

Scientific research is already needed to solve such problems. 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 runoff into the Aral Sea, in the third - clarification of the impact on public health of prolonged exposure to low doses of radiation and the development of soil decontamination methods.

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

Since the emergence of technical civilization on Earth, about 1/3 of the forest area has been cleared, the deserts have sharply accelerated their advance on green zones. Thus, the Sahara Desert is advancing southward 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 enter the ocean per year. Some experts believe that about 1/5 of the ocean is covered with oil film.

Air pollution is occurring at a rapid pace. While the main means of obtaining energy remains the combustion of combustible fuel, 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 its place.

More than 10 billion tons of standard fuel is burned annually in the world, while more than 1 billion tons of various suspensions, including many carcinogenic substances, are released into the air. 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 annually emitted into the US atmosphere alone.

It is believed that the United States 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 United States consumes about 40% of the world's natural resources and accounts for about 60% of all pollution on the planet.

The sharp climate warming that began in the second half of the 20th century is a reliable fact. The average temperature of the surface air layer, compared to 1956-1957, when the First International Geophysical Year was held, increased by 0.7 ° C. 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 ice water warmed by 1 ° C and the ice cover began to melt from below. Some scientists believe that warming is the result of burning a huge mass of fossil fuel and releasing large amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, which is a greenhouse gas, i.e. makes it difficult to transfer heat from the Earth's surface. Others, referring to climate change in historical time, consider the anthropogenic factor of climate warming to be negligible and associate this phenomenon with increased solar activity.

The environmental problem of the ozone layer is no less complex. 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 living things. Research into the causes of the depletion of the planet's ozone layer has not yet provided 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 in demand for it and the increase in 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 ice cover of the Earth. In most industrial areas, water is already perceptibly lacking, and its shortage is growing every year.

In general, 10% of the planet's river flow is withdrawn for household needs. 5.6% of them are spent irrevocably. If the irretrievable water intake continues to increase at the same rate as now (4-5% annually), then by 2010 mankind 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 domestic waste. All this eventually ends up in the Ocean, which is already heavily polluted.

In the future, the situation is also alarming with another natural resource that was previously considered inexhaustible - atmospheric oxygen. When burning products of photosynthesis of past eras - fossil fuels, free oxygen is bound into compounds. Approximately, the Earth's interior contains 6.4x10 15 tons of fossil fuels, the combustion of which would require 1.7x10 16 tons of oxygen, i.e. more than there is in the atmosphere.

Therefore, long before the depletion of the reserves of fossil fuels, people must stop burning them, so as not to suffocate themselves and not to destroy all living things.

It is believed that the reserves of oil on Earth will be depleted in 200 years, coal - in 200-300 years, oil shale and peat - within the same limits. In about the same time, 2/3 of the oxygen reserves in the planet's atmosphere can be depleted. It should be noted that with increasing rates of oxygen consumption, the rate of its reproduction by green plants is steadily decreasing, since the developing production and the multiplying population are advancing on nature, taking away more and more green areas for buildings and land. Every 15 years the area of \u200b\u200balienated lands doubles and, apparently, the limit of the development of the territory is already close. Green plants are being replaced not only by buildings, but also by a sprawling strip of pollution. The pollution is especially destructive for phytoplankton, which covered the water surface of the planet with a continuous layer. It is believed to reproduce 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 development time for these resources is known to be finite and varies depending on the richness of their content in the earth's crust. It is believed that at the current rate of extraction, reserves of lead, tin, and copper may last for 20-30 years. The terms are short, and therefore means are already being sought in advance to compensate and save scarce raw materials. In particular, the improvement of mining methods makes it possible to start developing rocks with a poor content of the required elements and in some places 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 being considered renewable and which really were such until the increased rates of their consumption and environmental pollution undermined the ability of the complexes to self-purify and self-heal. Moreover, these undermined abilities are not renewed by themselves, but, on the contrary, are progressively declining as the pace of the industry increases in the previous technological regime. However, the consciousness of people has not yet had time to reorganize. It, like technology, works in the same environmentally carefree regime, considering water, air and wildlife to be free and inexhaustible.

2.3 The ecological content of the scientific and technological revolution

The basis for the interaction of the natural environment and human society in the production of material goods is the growth of mediation in the production relationship of man to nature. Step by step, a person places between himself and nature, first the substance (instruments of labor) transformed with the help of his energy, then energy transformed with the help of instruments of labor and accumulated knowledge (steam engines, electrical installations, etc.), and finally, more recently, between the third major link of mediation arises by man and nature - 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 covers first the tools of labor, then energy, and, finally, recently, information.

Naturally, the natural environment is thus more and more widely and thoroughly involved in the production process. The need for conscious control and regulation of the entire set of anthropogenic processes both in society itself and in the natural environment is becoming more acute. This need has 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 social life.

The first link of mediation (the manufacture of tools) is associated with the leap from the animal world into the social world, with the second (the use of power plants) - the leap into a higher form of class antagonistic society, with the third (the creation and use of information devices) the conditionality of the transition to society is qualitatively a new state in interhuman relations, since for the first time there appears 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 restriction on the part of energy sources of labor, which remained natural, began to affect more strongly. A contradiction arose between the new (artificial) means of processing matter and the old (natural) energy sources. The search for ways to resolve the arisen contradiction led to the discovery and use of artificial energy sources. But the very solution to the energy problem gave rise to a new contradiction between artificial methods of processing. substance and energy production, on the one hand, and the natural (with the help of the nervous system) method 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 calculating machines. Now, finally, all three natural factors (matter, energy, information) have been captured 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 limiting (in terms 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.

In 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 environmental crisis. This is a fairly new and therefore still little studied phenomenon that arose in the course of the development of the scientific and technological revolution.

The danger of an ecological crisis did not coincide with the scientific and technological revolution. The scientific and technological revolution creates conditions for the removal of technical restrictions in the use of natural resources. As a result of the removal of internal restrictions on the development of production, a new contradiction took on an exceptionally acute form - between the internally unlimited possibilities for the development of production and the naturally limited possibilities of the natural environment. This contradiction, like those that arose earlier, can be resolved only if the natural conditions of society's life are increasingly covered by artificial means of regulation by people.

Measures to update production technology, clean up waste, fight noise, etc., which are now being organized in developed countries, only delay the onset of a disaster, but are not able to prevent it, since they do not eliminate the root causes of the environmental 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 for ensuring a new nature of the relationship to nature arise (the possibility of switching production to closed cycles, the transition to machineless production, the possibility of efficient use of energy up to the creation technical autotrophic systems, etc.).

VI Vernadsky showed from a natural-scientific point of view that mankind must realize its place and role in natural cycles of matter and energy and optimally fit its production activity into these cycles. Hence, 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 on the earth's surface based on new ways of using information. 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, as they have long taken into account the laws of individual parts and elements of the biosphere, transforming them for practical purposes.

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

3.1 Philosophical views on the solution of global problems of humanity

The needs of the emerging natural science and developing industrial production substantiated the reality of man's opposition to the surrounding reality. The French Enlightenment tried to destroy these stereotypes within the framework of anthropological-naturalistic ideas. Nature (external environment), interpreted in different ways, has, in the opinion of representatives of this trend, a decisive influence on a person. Thus, the French materialists defended the principle of the unity of man and nature, while basing it on the contemplative, "eternally given" harmony between them.

Representatives of the philosophical and religious trend, "Russian cosmism" of the 19th century, occupy a special place in the interpretation of the processes of the relationship between man and nature. (N.F. Fedorov, K.E. Tsiolkovsky, V.I. Vernadsky and others), who, in the system of philosophical and theological constructions, raised the question of the "theocosmic total unity", the ways of "the total salvation of mankind", the immortality of the human race, substantiated a positive trend towards the harmony of biospheric and cosmic processes, trying to find a 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 twentieth century, especially the second half of it, are united by the philosophy of technocratism, based on the fact that scientific and technological progress creates the preconditions for overcoming most, if not all, contradictions of world development, reaching the level of a society of "general prosperity".

In the mainstream of technocratism, numerous sociological theories of social development were created, among which the most famous were 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 crisis ecological consequences, technical and ethical "side effects" of scientific and technological progress, manifested in the 1960s, cast doubt on the rationality of the chosen path, a revision of the values \u200b\u200bof unlimited consumption began, which in some cases led to technophobia.

However, the technocratism 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 his rational and technological orientation, in the process of which the personality loses its integrity, turning into a "partial man" ... The way out was offered in the "spiritual revolution", liberation from the "demon of technology", in the revelation of the "human in man."

A radical transformation of the modern philosophical view of world development within the framework of solving more and more pressing environmental problems took place in the early 70s, when the idea of \u200b\u200bgrowth limits 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 ecology began to form - a worldview proceeding from the defining status of the problem of the relationship between man and the biosphere in the dynamics of the civilization process. If in the 70s. philosophical environmentalism had a pessimistic connotation, then in the 80s. clearly began to prevail "optimistic realism" due to the fact that the ambiguity of the "technological demon" phenomenon was revealed, which, on the one hand, is indeed fraught with dangerous, including socio-ecological, processes, and on the other hand, along with the improvement of the spiritual potential of the individual, it opens the path to real overcoming the contradictions on a global scale.

Summing up what has been said, it should be noted that true cognition of being in a period of unprecedented global changes, when it is required to rethink the essence of the relationship between man, society and nature, to reach a different level of global development, presupposes not a confrontation of ideas, but their interaction. And it is precisely the interconnection of religious and philosophical interpretations of being that can create the preconditions for an adequate answer to the question of the positive directions of development of civilization.

3.2 Basic principles of environmentally friendly technologies

At the present stage of development of society, the development of scientific awareness of the unity of society and nature is stimulated by the need to practically ensure such unity. In fact, society everywhere was faced with the task of greening technology, its optimal coordination with natural

Over the long years of industrial development, a one-sided inertia has been accumulated 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 for the greening of 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 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 industrial waste will continuously increase as the number and capacity of enterprises grow. In some unique natural complexes, such as Baikalsky, 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 value of the plant itself. Consequently, the current main method of greening technology is becoming economically inexpedient and environmentally ineffective. A contradiction arose 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 of improving environmental 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 move to waste-free production with the fullest possible 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 coordinated so that the wastes of one type of enterprises serve as raw materials for other types, and so on until the most complete utilization of all, without exception, substances that entered the system at the entrance.

Modern production is organized in violation of systemic principles. The ratio of the extracted and used in the production process of the substance (98% and 2%, respectively) shows that the processes of obtaining the substance and energy from the environment clearly prevailed over the utilization of the seized 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 production is built in accordance with the laws of the systemic integrity of self-regulating systems.

Natural biogeocenoses and the biosphere as a whole can serve as an approximate analogue of such an organization of metabolic processes of matter and energy. 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 types is an important prerequisite for ensuring the closed circuit 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 as a result of dispersion, dispersion, etc., with the new technology, all matter will circulate in the social environment, and new quantities of matter will be required only for expanded reproduction and compensation for inevitable losses, i.e. approximately the same as in wildlife. If living nature from the very beginning took the same path of using a substance that a person took, then nothing would have remained of the entire enormous mass of our planet at the existing biogenic rates of migration of elements. The 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 has become the circulation of matter. Social production must also obey the principle of the circulation of matter.

3.3 Ecotechnology - the basis for the transition to the noospheretype of civilization

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

From servo technology to ecotechnology - this is the main way to improve environmental management.

The social relations of modern civilization are not yet able to ensure the implementation of the necessary technological revolution in the volume and in the direction required for the transition to ecotechnology. There are two reasons for this. Ecotechnology assumes:

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

A qualitatively different stimulus to the economy (not the maximum profit, but the planned accounting 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 \u200b\u200band developing directly in the interests of people, and not indirectly through ensuring profit. Ecotechnology is compatible only with a society where the immediate goal of production is not the 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 lifted altogether. Sooner or later, new restrictions will appear, to remove which a technological revolution will be required, 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 disputes about whether there are limits to the growth of social production or not becomes understandable.

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 \u200b\u200bof its growth in this capacity. Studies of the Club of Rome have shown this unequivocally.

The problem of population is also directly related to speculations about the limits of economic growth. Can the Earth's population grow infinitely? No. For each specific social system and the qualitatively defined nature of production technology, there may be a quite definite optimal level of the 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 primarily because here, too, the 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 with the growth of culture and literacy of the population, the development of industrial potential and the involvement of women in studies and production activities, the birth rate, as a rule, begins to decline, reaching 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 like the modern stage of the scientific and technological revolution dramatically changed the position of the employee in the "man-technician" system. The common feature of both stages of the scientific and technological revolution is that the role of man in technical and natural processes is significantly increasing.

In the process of unfolding a new stage of the scientific and technological revolution, biological principles of production processes will find much wider application than before, up to the transition to industrial photosynthesis outside plants. 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. eating at the expense of others and dependent on them, there is the only possibility of overcoming this dependence by passing to autotrophy. But unlike plants, they must consciously acquire this ability through the use of scientific knowledge and technology, giving them the appropriate direction.

For clarity, let us present the relationship between the 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 the food chains of various types of organisms.

Anthropogenic development builds up in the process of its resource supply over the ecological pyramid, which was formed long before the appearance of man on Earth. The regularity of this natural pyramid is the ratio of each next nutrition 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 emergence of man, who, using artificial methods of his resource provision, succeeded in significantly changing the ecological pyramid, giving it a tendency to unnaturally expand from the cone upwards.

Humanity has a tendency to expanded reproduction of the population and everything necessary for its provision at the expense of the biosphere, up to its complete depletion. Modern society is already 10 times greater than the capabilities of the planet's biota.

To overcome the natural limitations of the biosphere, people need to either switch to reducing their bio- and technomass in order to fit into the natural law of proportional ratios of nutritional links (1:10), or take measures to ensure the transition of humanity 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. Machine-less production, which does not know hazardous waste, will receive priority development. Instead, there will be semi-finished products that are essential for the next stages of production. Naturally, such production will be completely noiseless and will not be accompanied by harmful radiation. It will fully correspond to the environment and psychophysical organization of the person himself.

It's hard to imagine that technology could change so drastically, and yet it will. Moreover, this will not happen in some distant future, but rather soon, judging by some signs in the development of modern science and technology. Academician NN Semenov believed that "all these possibilities will be closely related to the prospects that will open the research of the late XX and early XXI 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) to a more significant and radical revolution in the entire system of technologies and social relations as a whole. This coup can be called a new scientific and technological revolution or a new stage in the deployment of scientific and technological revolution.

"The noosphere, embracing the natural and social environment with its unity, will become a convenient abode for humanity and a condition for the free development of all human abilities. From the cradle of humanity, 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. XX 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 preserving peace on the entire planet, at reasonable satisfaction of people's needs while improving the quality of life of living and future generations, for 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 is 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 imminent environmental catastrophe will break out. At the same time, underdeveloped countries cannot be blamed for the desire to improve the living standards of a rapidly growing population. In world politics today, the tendency of the economically prosperous quarter of the world's population to resolve, at least temporarily, acute environmental problems is clearly traced 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 economics is universal 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 the present, but also for future generations to satisfy their basic life needs;

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

Ensuring environmental safety of noospheric development;

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

A gradual transition from energy based on burning fossil fuels to alternative energy using renewable energy sources (sun, water, wind, biomass energy, underground heat, etc.).

Conclusion

All previous history can be viewed in an ecological sense as an accelerating process of the accumulation of those changes in science, technology and the state of the environment, which ultimately developed into a modern ecological crisis. The main symptom 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 in front of a choice of a further path of development: should it still be focused on unlimited growth of production or this growth should be consistent with the real capabilities 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 of labor and the first technologies led to the beginning of anthropogenic pressure on nature and the emergence of the first human-induced environmental cataclysms. With the development of technogenic civilization, the risk of environmental crises increased and their consequences worsened.

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

However, in spite of such "aggressiveness", it is technical progress that can be the key to mankind's exit from the global ecological crisis. The creation of new technologies for low-waste, and then waste-free 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 humanity. And it is only on the collective human mind, on the thoughtfulness and coherence of the actions of governments, educational and public organizations around the world, which face of technical progress will see our descendants, they will curse us, or glorify.

Bibliographic list

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This principle was formulated at the conference of ecologists of the world on environment and development in Rio de Janeiro in 1992.

Social ecology is a scientific discipline that considers the relationship of society with the geographical, social and cultural environment, i.e. with the environment surrounding a person. Communities of people in connection with their environment have a dominant social organization (levels from elementary social groups to humanity as a whole are considered). The history of the emergence of society has long been studied by anthropologists and social scientists-sociologists.
The main goal of social ecology is to optimize the coexistence of man and the environment on a systematic basis. A person, acting in this case as a society, making large contingents of people a subject of social ecology, breaking up into separate groups depending on their social status, occupation, age. Each of the groups, in turn, by specific relationships is associated with the environment within the framework of housing, recreation sites, garden areas, and so on.
Social ecology is the science of adaptation of subjects to processes in natural and artificial environments. The object of social ecology: the subjective reality of subjects of different levels. The subject of social ecology: adaptation of subjects to processes in natural and artificial environments.
The goal of social ecology as a science is to create a theory of the evolution of the relationship between man and nature, the logic and methodology of transforming the natural environment. Social ecology is designed to understand and help bridge the gap between man and nature, between humanitarian and natural science knowledge.
Social ecology reveals the laws of the relationship between nature and society, which are as fundamental as physical laws.

But the complexity of the subject of research itself, which includes three qualitatively different subsystems - inanimate and living nature and human society, and the short time of existence of this discipline lead to the fact that social ecology, at least at the present time, is mainly an empirical science, and the ones formulated by it patterns are extremely aphoristic statements.
The concept of law is interpreted by most methodologists in the sense of an unambiguous causal relationship. Cybernetics gives a broader interpretation of the concept of law as a limitation of diversity, and it is more suitable for social ecology, which reveals the fundamental limitations of human activity. The main of the laws can be formulated as follows: the transformation of nature must correspond to its adaptive capabilities.
One of the ways to formulate socio-ecological laws is to transfer them from sociology and ecology. For example, the law of conformity of productive forces and production relations to the state of the natural environment is proposed as the basic law of social ecology, which is a modification of one of the laws of political economy.
Two directions are subordinated to the fulfillment of tasks of social ecology: theoretical (fundamental) and applied. Theoretical social ecology is aimed at studying the patterns of interaction between human society and the environment, and developing a general theory of their balanced interaction. In this context, the problem of identifying the co-evolutionary laws of modern industrial society and the nature it is changing comes to the fore.

Definition, subject, goals and tasks social ecology. Social ecology - a scientific discipline that considers the relationship between society and geography, social and cultural environments, i.e. with the environment surrounding a person.

Definition, subject, goals and tasks social ecology. Social ecology - a scientific discipline that considers the relationship between society and geographic, social ... more ".

Definition, subject, goals and tasks social ecology.
Theoretical function social ecology has its aim primarily the development of basic conceptual paradigms (examples) explaining the nature ecological development of society, man and ...

If there is a problem. If the application does not start on your phone, use this form. Subject forecasting, goals and tasks forecasting, main definitions.

Comparison with each other is no less revealing. definitions social ecology and ecology
It is easy to see that such an interpretation subject ecology human actually
The main tasks social ecology based on this may be identified...

social ecology
The organization of the environmental management system includes: ecological politicians; definition goals, tasks, environmental policy priorities; production ...

2. Definition prevalence, symptomatology and degree of manifestation of speech disorders.
Data solution tasks defines the course of speech therapy.

It is enough to download the cheat sheets for social ecology - and you are not afraid of any exam!
Ecological audit is a systematic, documented process of verifying objectively obtained and measurable audit data for definitions matching ...

Water resources are the reserves of water of internal and territorial seas, lakes, rivers, reservoirs, Subject, target, tasks and a system of indicators for natural resources statistics.

System analysis is designed to solve complex poorly solvable tasks
it definition can be considered systemic defining subject area.
goal system analysis - to find out these interactions, their potential and "direct them to the service of man."

Similar pages found: 10

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 socio-ecological 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 emerging 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 biological and social factors of human development, establishing the adaptive capabilities 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 is reduced 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 should be in a 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 laws of interaction between society and the biosphere is clearly traced. Therefore, the focus of her attention is the regularities of the impact of society on the biosphere and those changes in it that affect society as a whole and each person individually.

One of the most important tasks of social ecology (and in this respect it approaches sociological ecology - O.N. Yanitskiy) is to study the ability of people to adapt to the ongoing changes in the environment, to identify the unacceptable boundaries of changes that have a negative impact on human health. These include the problems of a modern urbanized society: people's attitude to the requirements of the environment and to the environment that is formed by the industry; questions of the restrictions that this environment imposes on relations between people (D. Markovich). The main task of social ecology is to study the mechanisms of human impact on the environment and those transformations 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 - a global forecast for the population and resources in conditions of intensive industrial development (global ecology) and the determination of ways for the further development of civilization; regional scale - 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 (city ecology, or city sociology).

Social ecology is a new direction of interdisciplinary research, which took shape at the junction of natural (biology, geography, physics, astronomy, chemistry) and humanitarian (sociology, cultural studies, psychology, history) sciences.

The study of such large-scale complex formations required combining the research efforts of representatives of different "special" ecology, which, in turn, would be practically impossible without agreeing on their scientific categorical apparatus, as well as without developing common approaches to organizing the research process itself. Actually, it is precisely this need that ecology owes its appearance as a unified science, integrating in itself particular subject ecologies that developed earlier relatively independently of each other. The result of their reunification was the formation of a "big ecology" (in the words of NF Reimers) or "macroecology" (according to T.A. Akimova and V.V. Haskin), 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. Burgess, 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. McKenzill, who characterized it as the science of territorial and temporal relations of people, which are influenced by selective (selective), distributive (distributive) and accommodative (adaptive) forces of the environment. This 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 isolation from bioecology took place in the 60s. XX century. A special role in this was played by the 1966 World Congress of Sociologists. 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 Social Ecology. Thus, as D. Zh. Markovich notes, 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 designed to solve, significantly expanded. If at the dawn of the formation of social ecology, the efforts of researchers were mainly reduced to searching in the behavior of a geographically 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, developing 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 swept social ecology over the past two decades has led to the fact that, in addition to the above-mentioned tasks, the range of issues developed by it included the problems of identifying 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 emerged for the separation of socio-ecological problems into an independent direction 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 a person with the environment, two main aspects are distinguished. First, the entire 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 usually denoted by the term "adaptive factors" . These factors are usually subdivided into three large groups - biotic, abiotic and anthropogenic environmental factors. Biotic factors − these are direct or indirect influences from other organisms that inhabit 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 consists of anthropogenic factors generated by the activities of the person himself, the human community (pollution of the atmosphere and hydrosphere, plowing of 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. Originally appearing within the framework of physiology, the term "adaptation" soon penetrated into other areas of knowledge and began to be used to describe a wide range of phenomena and processes in the natural, technical and humanitarian sciences, initiating the formation of a large group of concepts and terms reflecting various aspects and properties of adaptation processes a person to the conditions of his environment and its result.

The term "human adaptation" is used not only to denote 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 (adaptability ).

However, even under the condition of an unambiguous interpretation of the concept of adaptation, it is felt that it is insufficient 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 a gradual loss of adaptive properties and, as a consequence, a decrease in fitness; readaptation is a reverse process), and the term "dysadaptation" (disorder of the body's adaptation to changing conditions of existence), reflecting the nature (quality) of this process.

Speaking about the types of adaptation, they distinguish genetic, genotypic, phenotypic, climatic, social, etc. adaptation. implementation and duration of existence. Climate adaptation is the process of human adaptation to climatic environmental conditions. Its synonym is the term "acclimatization".

The ways of adaptation of a person (society) to changing conditions of existence are designated in anthropoecological and socio-ecological literature as adaptive strategies . Various representatives of the plant and animal kingdoms (including humans) most often use a passive strategy of adaptation to changes in living conditions. We are talking about the reaction to the effects 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 humans and other representatives of the animal kingdom is that they use a variety of active adaptive strategies much more often and more successfully. , such, for example, as strategies for avoiding and provoking the action of certain adaptive factors. However, the most developed form of active adaptive strategy is the economic and cultural type of adaptation to the conditions of existence characteristic of people, 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 achieved 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 to three decades in our country and abroad, on the issue of there are still different opinions about what exactly this branch of scientific knowledge is studying.

According to D. Zh. Markovich, the subject of study of modern social ecology, understood by him as a private sociology, is the specific connections between man and his environment. Based on this, the main tasks of social ecology can be defined as follows: the study of the influence of the environment as a combination of natural and social factors on humans, as well as the influence of humans on the environment, perceived as a framework for human life. T.A. Akimov and V.V. Haskin believe that social ecology as a part of human ecology is a complex of scientific branches that study the relationship of social structures (starting with the family and other small social groups), as well as the relationship of a person with the natural and social environment of their habitat. According to E.V. Girusov, social ecology should study, first of all, 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 formation and has developed a complex social organization.

Having left 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 - Dryopithecus, a representative of the branch of hominids, which separated about 20-25 million years ago from the higher narrow-nosed apes. The reason for the departure of human ancestors from the general line of evolution, which predetermined an unprecedented leap in improving his physical organization and expanding the possibilities of functioning, was the changes in the conditions of existence that occurred as a result of the development of natural natural processes. The general cold snap, which caused a reduction in the areas of forests - natural ecological niches inhabited by human ancestors, made it necessary to adapt to new, extremely unfavorable circumstances of life.

One of the specific features of the specific strategy of adaptation of human ancestors to new conditions was that they “staked” primarily on the mechanisms of behavioral rather than morphophysiological adaptation. This made it possible to more flexibly respond to current changes in the external environment and thereby more successfully adapt to them. The most important factor that determined the survival and subsequent progressive development of a person 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, the development of intelligence, 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 disclosed by drawing up 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 of this interaction.

The first who drew attention to the multidimensional and hierarchical nature of the concept of “person” in the system “person - 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, age and gender 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, the concept of the hierarchical structure of the concept of "person" became more complicated. So, the matrix model of N.F. Reimers has already 6 ranks of hierarchical organization (species (genetic anatomomorphophysiological 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 the inherent human adaptive abilities and adaptive characteristics . She owes her education to such human qualities as variability and heredity.

The concept of adaptation mechanisms reflects the idea of \u200b\u200bhow humans and society 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 adaptability reflects the degree 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 characteristics such as social and labor potential and health.

The concept of "social and labor potential man ”was proposed by VP Kaznacheev as a kind, 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 labor activity of individuals and groups of the population."

The concept of “health” is widely used as another criterion for adaptation in human ecology. Moreover, health, on the one hand, is understood as an integral characteristic of the human body, which in a certain way affects 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. Human environment and its properties

The concept of "environment" is fundamentally correlative, since it reflects the subject-object relationship and therefore loses its content without defining which subject it belongs 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 “human environment” is 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 aggregate space directly or indirectly accessible to man. This is, first of all, the planet Earth with its various shells. The social part of a person's 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 examines the atmosphere, hydrosphere, lithosphere, plants, animals and microorganisms.

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

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

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

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

Figure: 3. Components of the human environment (according to L. V. Maximova)

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

The study of human relations with the environment has 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 in terms of human needs. Special anthropoecological methods make it possible to determine the degree to which the environment meets human needs, to assess its quality and, on this basis, to identify its properties.

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

Questions for discussion and discussion

What are the main tasks of social ecology?
What are planetary (global), regional and micro-scale environmental problems?
What elements and 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 socio-ecological interaction.
The subject of studying social ecology.
List the biological and socio-economic features of the concept of "person" in the system "person - 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."