Name: John Rowel P.

Bagunu
HUME 101 G

A reflection paper of Terry Rambos Conceptual approaches to Human Ecology

The book first started on the origins of Human Ecology. Terry Rambo is
attempting to explain that even in the early times, people had vague knowledge of the
relationship between human and the environment. This manifested in the form of politics
and different social organization affecting the climate in a certain area. In the early
1800s one writer, George P. Marsh was able to write a book pertaining to the natural
environment and how mans action affects it. It is surprising that even in the early days
the Human Ecology perspective is already present. It may not have been fully dwelled
upon but nevertheless it is there.

Environmental determinism is one of the theory that widely known in the early
1920s. It states that all tradition, culture and habit of Humans is directly related to the
environment. I find it quite true since what we do and how we do something is perfectly
dependent on where we grew up. Our language, belief and other cultural traits comes
directly from our heritage and where people are spatially located. His example for the
seafarers being seafarers because of living in an island is very convincing. This tells us
that livelihood and source of food is directly affected on where one is located.

In the modern era, Terry Rambo presented the general systems theory which
states that atoms, cells organisms and even the universe shares the same trait of being
self-organizing. This theory strengthened the idea of every institution are related. They
may have different purpose but they have similar functions. However, the general
system theory has an inductive approach in which it focuses in a particular institution
and its effect on a specific environmental conditions rather than how a social system
affects the environment. There are a lot of theories discussed in this book and I have
come to realize that explanations on what is Human Ecology vastly differs from the
understanding of one person to another. Hence, my definition of Human Ecology will
need to be put on hold until I have gained more understanding.