Week 6: The history of Biodiversity
“There is no peculiar merit in ancient things, but there is merit in integrity, and integrity entails the keeping together of the parts of any whole, and if these parts are scattered throughout time, then the maintenance of integrity entails a knowledge, a memory, of ancient things. …. To think, feel or act as though the past is done with, is equivalent to believing that a railway station through which our train has just passed, only existed for as long as our train was in it.” - Edward Hyams, Chapter 7, The Gifts of Interpretation
It took me a while to form my interpretation of this quote. Hyams uses the word integrity quite a bit in it, which got me thinking about how he was using and why that word over any others. In its modern connotation, ‘integrity’ typically refers to someone or somethings reliability or the quality of their morality and nature. The word came into the English language via the Old French ‘integrité’ then meaning innocence, chastity, or purity. ‘Integrité’ evolved out of the Latin ‘integritas’ whose root is ‘integer’ meaning soundness, wholeness, or completeness. Reading the quote again but with the connotation of ‘a whole’ in mind, Hyam began to make a lot more sense to me. “There is no peculiar merit in ancient things, but there is merit in [completeness], and [completion] entails the keeping together of the parts of any whole , and if these parts are scattered throughout time, then the maintenance of [a whole] entails a knowledge, a memory, of ancient things [...]”. What I think Hyam is getting at is that history doesn’t make sense without context, understanding why certain actions were taken or why certain events occurred. Its often easy to overlook historical context in favour of personal belief, but this often leads to dangerous rhetoric. Countless times we have seen history distorted in order to target ethnic, religious, linguistic, and cultural minorities.
Here’s an example of how languages evolve and change over time using the pronoun “I”. (Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/europe/comments/dj7rb1/evolution_of_the_pronoun_i_in_indoeuropean/)
What stood out to me in this week’s unit were the questions “Who/what benefits from this story and how might that impact them/others in the future?” and “how a community might be enhanced, it is often through the recognition of collective memories, stories” (Hooykaas 2021). This week I want to talk about the history of biodiversity (my uni major).
The concept of biodiversity has existed in some form for as long as the human conscious has. Aristotle made note of the differences between animals; and in its most basic sense, that is what biodiversity is, differences between organisms and their variety (Mayr, 1998). Biodiversity, the word itself, has a much shorter history, but why? It was coined in 1985 by Walter G. Rosen for the creation of the National Forum on BioDiversity. The forum was made to discuss the increasing demands of the human species on economic development and the potential ramifications it might have on the natural environment. Edward Wilson, an American biologist, summarized the forum as “BioDiversity creates a systematic framework for analyzing the problem and searching for possible solutions” (Wilson, 1988). This describes the political, economic, and scientific climate during the time of ‘biodiversity’s creation. The public and scientific community were becoming increasingly aware of the negative impacts of human development, of air pollution, deforestation, habitat fragmentation, water pollution, etc… on the environment and the implied repercussions on the economy (Wilson, 1988).
Image illustrates some of the main threats causing global biodiversity decline. (Source: https://www.visualcapitalist.com/biggest-threats-to-earths-biodiversity/)
Through out the century, scientists were noticing that when certain species were removed from their ecosystems trophic downgrading would occur, and, notably, the increasing the rate of extinction worldwide (Wilson, 1992; Myers, 1979). In 1979, Norman Myers, an English ecologist, published The Sinking Ark: A New Look at the Problem of Disappearing Species. In it, he discusses extinction but draws attention to the unexpectedly fast rate at which species were going extinct in the modern day; far greater than one would expect over the course of the process of evolution. However, unlike the Cretaceous or any mass extinctions before, this one was not caused by natural disasters but by a single species; the cause was and is anthropogenic (Myers, 1979). A warning call. Wilson’s Biodiversity, a series of articles written by leading authorities in biological and environmental disciplines, compiled from the BioDiversity Forum, further outlined the importance of diversity of species and the ecosystems that support them as well as the very species that threatens their stability (Wilson, 1986).
“The Sinking Ark” by Norma Myers (source: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2381140.The_Sinking_Ark)
By the late 1980s, biodiversity, used interchangeably with biological diversity, had entered the mainstream of scientific literature and public culture. Yet the understanding of what biodiversity is and what it means was vague at best and measuring biodiversity was controversial and can be a challenging task (Franco, 2013). With its growing popularity and the urgency felt by the scientific community, in 1992, the United Nation’s Environment Program organized and launched the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) to clarify what was meant by ‘biodiversity’. The broad definition of “Biological diversity means the variability among living organisms from all sources including, inter alia, terrestrial, marine and other aquatic ecosystems and the ecological complexes of which they are part; this includes diversity within species, between species and of ecosystems” was given (CBD, 1992).
So “Who/what benefits from this story and how might that impact them/others in the future?” and “how a community might be enhanced, it is often through the recognition of collective memories, stories” (Hooykaas 2021). Knowing this story, we understand that ‘biodiversity’ is a word made for a purpose, as a defence of conservation biology. In this sense, the two are inexorably linked. Biological diversity had no need for a name before the 20th century because it was a constant of life. As a community we are enhanced in our collective appreciation of it and its causes. Human development caused, and is causing, a massive reduction in native species diversities, which in turn reduces genetic diversity, and on a global scale, human development has caused the largest and fastest mass extinction on record (Wilson, 1988).
What do you think of the story of biodiversity? Although not a physical artifact, certainly an important part of history. Can you think of any other historically significant words?
Convention on Biological Diversity Article 2. Use of Terms. (CBD). (2006, November 2). Retrieved April 10, 2020, from: https://www.cbd.int/convention/articles/?a=cbd-02
Hooykaas, A. (2021). Unit 6: Nature Interpretation Through History. Lecture Notes Retrieved, February 24, 2021 from https://courselink.uoguelph.ca/d2l/le/content/666945/viewContent/2592718/View
Mayr, E. W. (1998). The Development of Biological Thinking.
Myers, N. The Sinking Ark: A New Look at the Problem of Disappearing Species. Oxford, United Kingdom: Pergamon Press, 1979.
Wilson, E. O. Biodiversity. Washington, DC: National Academy of Sciences Press/Smithsonian Institution,1988.