ISSN: 2641-9130
Authors: Allaerts W*
Faced with the problem of defining a global biodiversity estimate in terms of a fractal Global Ecosystem Approach and tackling the problem of interactions between trophic levels, in this paper the notion of biodiversity is analyzed from a different angle. The classical viewpoint of biodiversity is to count the numbers of species within a given framework, mostly a selected part of an ecosystem. The counting is based on the self-similarity of the elements in the chosen domain, basically the species within a community or specific trophic layer of the ecosystem. An opposing viewpoint is to regard the levels that generate biodiversity in all of its aspects, for instance the natural processes that alter uniform anthropogenic plants. We here elaborate on an hermeneutic scaffold of the four similitudes and their signature in sixteenth century epistemology, as documented and discussed in Michel Foucault’s The Order of Things (1966, 1970). In the transition from late medieval epistemology to modern natural sciences, they appear to contribute to the definition of the four dis-similitudes of biodiversity presented in this paper: chemodiversity, genodiversity, phenodiversity and ecodiversity. The idea of Nature as an infinite source of divisions and distributions, not only was expressed in Foucault’s work, it also was detected in one of Charles Darwin’s letters to J.D. Hooker. These letters were written before Darwin published his most famous work The Origin of Species (1859). Not only the present contrast in viewpoint of dissimilitude rather than of similitude, offers the possibility of an escape from the anthropocentric view on species-related biodiversity. For, this current, dominant view on biodiversity is well defined in higher vertebrate and some specialized invertebrate taxa, but is less sufficient to describe biodiversity in bacteria, fungi and socalled lower biological taxa. Also the Ecological Counterpoint as may be observed in these modest forms of nature, may help us to re-consider several continuing challenges of our post-modern way of life. Moreover, the case study of Saproxylic beetles and forest ecodiversity illustrates how neoliberal and political sustainability discourses may benefit from a deepening of the ecological debate and from a philosophical analysis of its foundations.
Keywords: Self-Similarity; Similitude and Dis-similitude; Biodiversity; Ecological Counterpoint; Saproxylic Beetles and Forest Ecodiversity
