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 holistic 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 
components that are then assigned to specialists for detail study. Rather, we 
perhaps 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, lie 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. 
Holism 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 
IV 
