“Everything is connected to everything else“ Ecology as an Epistemic Laboratory of Relational and Interdisciplinary Thinking

Abstract

This article reconstructs the historical development of ecology as an early form of integrative and systemic thinking and examines its significance for the emergence of interdisciplinary research. Drawing on Newell’s theory of interdisciplinarity as an analytical framework, the article argues that interdisciplinary research becomes epistemically necessary as soon as its objects are understood not as isolated units but as complex systems of dynamically interconnected components. The article traces this line of thought from Ernst Haeckel’s introduction of the term ‘`Oecologie’ through the relational perspectives of von Humboldt, Möbius, and Warming to the conceptual consolidation of the ecosystem concept in the work of Tansley, Lindeman, and the Odum brothers. It demonstrates that ecology did not merely integrate methods from various scientific disciplines but gradually transformed the conception of scientific objects from isolated entities to relational systems. By reconstructing selected key stages of the intellectual history of ecological thought, the article illustrates how relational thinking developed into a fundamental epistemological principle that extended beyond biology into broader scientific and societal contexts. In this sense, ecology emerges not only as a biological discipline but also as one of the historical roots of modern interdisciplinary—and ultimately transdisciplinary—research.

Keywords: History of Ecological Ideas, History of Ecology, Reductionism and Holism, Ecosystems Theory, Integration