생태학적 통합을 위한 방법론적 고찰 - 이 비 화이트의 『샬롯의 거미줄』에서의 공생 관계의 예시

Abstract

Environmental problems arise largely from human economic activities, which involve industralization, Westernization, and development. Over these activities, two opposite sides of naturalists and exemptionists in E. O. Wilson's term confront over how to live, and most environmental debates and discourses presuppose this binary opposition. On the contrary, reality teaches us that we cannot exist in either perspective alone in individual or social level. Wilson argues that necessity of combining two perspectives needs to emerge because neither perspective can guarantee human being's existence alone. However, combining these two opposite perspectives is not simple matter as it is evidenced in the heated debates around sustainability. The most serious problem with naturalist perspective is reductionism. With such essentialist and reductionist position, we can't expect a consilience of naturalist and exemptionist position. Instead, we need 'ecological' perspective in literal sense, which values comprehensive and integrating one that include even opposite tendencies. From ecological perspective, we need to accept economic activities as a condition of existence that has been advocated by Darwinian theory of nature. This kind of concept has been recognized as hypothesis stage which can initiate scientific process. This paper briefly examines perspectives of Darwinism, Aldo Leopold's land ethics, and James. E. Lovelock's gaia theory, and argues that the necessity for interrelations of these two perspectives. Ecological thinking, which can serve well to combine naturalist and exemptionist perspectives, is can be an alternative to Wilson's consilience that reveals the problem of reductionism. This ecological perspective is an efficient tool in interpreting many literary works whose metrics are of the two perspectives, and Charlotte's procedure with her web in E. B. White's Charlotte's Web is a good example to explore the ecological perspective.