Balance of nature
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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"The crux, the fulcrum over which the argument chiefly rests, is that Miss Carson maintains that the balance of nature is a major force in the survival of man, whereas the modern chemist, the modern biologist and scientist, believes that man is steadily controlling nature."--Robert White Stevens cited in CBS Reports: The Silent Spring of Rachel Carson (1963) "To these people, apparently the balance of nature was something that was repealed as soon as man came on the scene - you might just as well assume that you could repeal the law of gravity."--Rachel Carson cited in CBS Reports: The Silent Spring of Rachel Carson (1963) |
The balance of nature (also known as ecological balance) is a theory that proposes that ecological systems are usually in a stable equilibrium or homeostasis, which is to say that a small change (the size of a particular population, for example) will be corrected by some negative feedback that will bring the parameter back to its original "point of balance" with the rest of the system. The balance is sometimes depicted as easily disturbed and delicate, while other times it is inversely portrayed as powerful enough to correct any imbalances by itself.
See also
