The Concept of Organism-Environment Relationship and the Emergence of a Unified Concept of Environments

Nowadays, the concept of environment is commonly used, both in scientific speech or in more mundane realms, such as in political or economic issues. However, this conceptualization of the environment, as something singular and abstract with which organisms continuously interact, was not known until the middle of the nineteenth century. This concept was coined and emphasized by Herbert Spencer, who primarily inherited the idea that organisms are constantly affected by their external circumstances firstly from Lamarck, and then Charles Lyell, Alexander von Humboldt, and especially Auguste Comte. From Lamarck, who was influenced by Cuvier and Buffon, Spencer received the idea of a physicochemical environment sustaining life. With Humboldt and Lyell, Spencer became progressively aware of the relevance of other living beings in defining a specific organism’s environment. With Comte, Spencer encountered the idea of a correspondence between organism and environment, in which the latter was abstractly regarded. Consequently, Spencer would include physical, biological, and social circumstances under the umbrella of this abstraction. Darwin would also contribute to this perspective on environment while highlighting the idea of “struggle for existence”, in which a new ecological stance, focused on the interdependence of organisms, was brought to the fore. My aim is to outline the history of the progressive concealment of elements of the external world surrounding an organism, which was involved in this continuous metaphysical abstraction of the concept of environment. Only then, I argue, did it become possible to construct a dichotomy between organism and environment, and conceptualize their interaction, crucial aspects in the history of ecology.