KEYNOTE ADDRESS 



DEDICATION OF NEW WING OF 



NARRAGANSETT EPA LABORATORY 



JUNE 1977 



Delivered by 



Eugene P. Odum, Director 



Institute of Ecology, University of Georgia 



The theme of my address at today's dedication is that the time has come to 

 adopt a hoHstic approach to researching and managing our environmental 

 problems. This is not to say that we abandon the traditional reductionist way 

 of science which involves dividing up a complex problem into small com- 

 ponents that are then assigned to specialists for detailed study. Rather, we 

 pertiaps need to follow the general procedure we use in microscopy, namely, 

 shifting back and forth between powers so as to examine the subject at 

 different levels of organization. To put it another way, we need to develop the 

 "macroscope" as a tool as well as the microscope. Most of all, we need to 

 promote integrated team research as well as reward the individual effort that is 

 the traditional, and too often the only, criterion for promotion in universities 

 and research institutions. 



Reductionism in science has led to important discoveries in physics, 

 chemistry, molecular biology and genetics, but this approach comes up short in 

 ecology where the exciting problems, and also those of most concern to 

 society, He at the ecosystem level rather than at the molecular level. The 

 Environmental Protection Agency was organized by society to fight cancer at 

 the ecosystem level, not at the cell or organism level. Theories, and tools, must 

 be organized accordingly, since procedures appropriate for one level of concern 

 may not be appropriate at all for another level of study. 



HoUsm as a basic operational principle or paradigm rests on the theory of 

 hierarchal systems, a theory not yet fully understood nor accepted by many 

 scientists. Since there is both continuity and discontinuity in the evolution of 

 the universe, development may be viewed as continuous because it is 

 never-ending, but also discontinuous because it passes through a series of 

 different levels of organization with vertical as well as horizontal integration. 

 The keystone in the theory of hierarchal organization is the concept of 

 emergent properties. As components, or subsets, are combined to produce 

 larger functional wholes, new properties emerge that were not present or not 

 evident at the next level below. In speaking of these matters in general lectures, 

 I often use water as an example. Water has many unique properties not shared 



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