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385 BCE
Aristotle
Throughout history there have been many who have given something to the ecology as a science, as in the case of Aristotle, who was one of the first to conclude that the Earth was round, based on the observation of the stars, eclipses and tides.
It is in the Roman Empire where environmental law begins to develop, as the Roman law recognized that: flora, fauna, sites, scenic resources and the environment itself, are "res communis", meaning, of public domain, and can be used by everyone. -
René Descartes
Centuries later, during the Renaissance, when science became the way to explain natural phenomena, detaching from faith, myths and religion, great scientists and thinkers appeared, like Descartes. He proposed an approach to nature through mental reasoning, because only then you can understand the causality of reality and consequently of natural phenomena. "It is only known through reason" (Garcia, 1980). It is the truth which Descartes uses to face and learn about nature. -
Francis Bacon
Later, Bacon was the first to base knowledge on sensorial experience, i.e. believe only what the senses say and not base your knowledge on legends or myths in order to understand nature. These two perspectives are what will shape science from the Renaissance on: to believe from experience and understand only through reason. In the sixteenth century. -
Carlos Linneo
Carolus Linnaeus did the first classification of species or taxonomy that is still in used up to today. -
Jean-Baptiste Lamarck
By the eighteenth century, "natural science" as it was called then, received such works as those of Jean-Baptiste Lamarck, author of Zoological Philosophy, in which explains the characteristics of organisms, the basics for populations studies. Moreover, it is in his research on living organisms where the term biology was first used
n Lamarck’s works, biological research was based on the work of Descartes and Bacon and was convinced that transmutation in the nature of a species occurred over time -
Alexander Von Humbolt
Afterwards the works of the Prussian Alexander Von Humboldt appeared; who was considered the father of modern geography, and studied the natural factors regarded as a whole, and also included historical studies.
He was also able to determine longitudes and latitudes, measurements of the Earth's magnetic field and very complete statistics on the economic and social situation existing in the Spanish colonies in Mexico. -
Ernst Haeckel
However, it was not until 1869 when Ernst Haeckel, a German zoologist, is the first to use the term "ecology" in order to define the relationships between living organisms and the habitat in which they move. Haeckel chose the Greek words oikos, meaning house; and logos, meaning study, to talk about the study of home, the planet, which is ultimately our home. -
Henry Ch. Cowles
In the late nineteenth century, Henry Chandler Cowles introduced the concept of ecological community in time and space, so that the controversy about the features and components of a community started. -
Eugene P. Odum
We should also mention Eugene P. Odum, considered the father of contemporary ecology, who discovered the homeostatic mechanisms of ecosystems; that is, the mechanisms that allow them to stay in balance and the impact that human activities have on them.
