From Seeking Truth To Merging Truth And Goodness In Ecology

Nowadays,as a subject closely related to human destiny in natural sciences,ecology embodies the evolution and evolution of two value orientations of seeking truth and seeking goodness.This paper reviews the period division of ecology,the progress of bibliometrics and the discussion on seeking truth and goodness,and defines goodness as the ecological research for the purpose of seeking "good results".Such good results mainly involve the coordination of the relationship between human and nature,the fate of human beings,the sustainable development mode of human beings,the harmony and integrity of the ecosystem,and the survival of other animals,etc.,whose research provides a theoretical basis or guidance for human protection behavior or pollution control and other activities.Truth-seeking orientation refers to the research with the ultimate goal of obtaining a true and objective understanding of nature..The annual publication trend of ecology literature from 1866-2020 in the Web of Science database is investigated.It shows that ecology has experienced the germination period from 1866-1900 since 1866,developed slowly from 1901 to 1945,began to develop after 1945,and developed rapidly after 1966.According to the meaning of the research direction,it can be divided into the research direction of seeking truth,and the research direction of seeking truth and seeking goodness.The value orientation in the three research directions is discussed.The conclusion is that before the 1960 s,the research direction of ecology was based on the theme of seeking truth,aiming at building an objective understanding of nature.Since the 1970 s,the research on the purpose of seeking good in the theme of ecological research has been developed.In the literature of biodiversity conservation,forestry,Marine freshwater biology and other research directions,concerns about the relationship between human and nature and the ecological crisis have appeared.After nearly a hundred years of development,ecology showed the orientation of seeking good in the late 20 th century.The ecological literatures in the core database of Web of Science during 1921 to 2020 were divided into ten periods.Cite Space 5.7R2 software was used to investigate and make statistics on the value orientation of academic frontier.It is found that before the 1990 s,the literature in the frontier field of ecology mainly focused on seeking truth,and the research with the purpose of seeking good in the frontier field began to increase in the 1990 s.The application of ecology appeared in the frontier field in the 1930 s,showing the development of ecology.In the past 100 years,ecology has experienced a course from the truth-oriented to the integration of truth-seeking and goodness.In this process,the two also show the characteristics of mutual promotion,and further show the tendency of mutual integration and interweaving.By examining the subjective attitude of epoch-making ecologists towards the orientation and function of discipline,it is found that they have contributed to the development of both the orientation of seeking truth and the orientation of seeking goodness in ecology,and have a kind of humanistic feelings related to the orientation of seeking goodness.The process of the IBP project shows that ecologists have a collective awareness of seeking goodness and a sense of social responsibility.The mistakes of the IBP also show that ecology can only play the role of seeking goodness when it is in the mature stage of development..Ecology is a natural science integrating truth seeking and goodness seeking.The purpose of ecology is to obtain an objective understanding of the nature.After the development to a relatively mature stage,it further requires to make provisions on human behavior based on the purpose of seeking good,to improve the relationship between human and nature,and to build a more harmonious ecological world.