It is a scale of increasing perfection leading to the Earth as the ultimate in physical perfection, over which man reigns as the ultimate in biological complexity and perfection. Belief in the balance of nature meant that even late 19th century ecologists were concerned mainly with static patterns, rather than with fundamental processes. The final trigger was probably the Industrial Revolution, which demonstrated that, well within human lifespans, all aspects of the natural world could be altered drastically, without invoking divine intervention. Modern classification and taxonomy of living and fossil organisms. The fields were not clearly separated until after Louis Pasteur showed experimentally in the late 1800s that microbes did NOT generate spontaneously, and Gregor Mendel 's work on inheritance became known at the turn of the 20th century, providing the basis of modern genetics.
Ecology is the scientific study of interactions between organisms and their environments .
Ecology is the scientific study of interactions affecting the distribution and abundance of organisms. Modern ecology is concerned with understanding Processes rather than with describing Patterns . It deals with changes in space and time. This means that all other members of an individual s own species are considered part of its environment. Andrewartha and Birch also introduced a classification of environmental factors under four general components.