Interaction, as applied to the diverse organisms and materials which comprise our environment, is the subject of a letter in the Lancet for December 18/25, 1999, whose author draws our attention to the valuable insight into the essentially holistic rather than reductionist nature of the universe conveyed by James Lovelock, the author of the Gaia concept. Lovelock's idea is of an ecosystem in which chemical and biological systems act together to maintain a balance by which living beings are able to survive, where any excess in one system meets with a correction in the other.
The notion that living organisms evolve in unity with their environment and interact with it is self-evident to many scientists, but denied by others who concentrate on parts of the universe while neglecting the overall picture. Politicians, economists and people whose sole idea of progress is ensuring higher business profits or reduced financial expenditure are unable to grasp this concept, let alone act in response to it.
In his book 'Gaia: the practical science of planetary medicine' (1991), James Lovelock comments: "We are not managers or masters of the Earth, we are just shop stewards, workers chosen, became of their intelligence, as representatives for the others, the rest of life on our planet. . . . People should be living in union with the other members, not exploiting them and their habitats."
Unfortunately, the reductionist attitude to knowledge and action prevails. Reductionism is part of our educational system. From an early age at school we are exhorted to specialise in our studies, which makes us experts in our narrow fields, with no notion of how our fragment of knowledge intersects and interacts with the fragments to which our neighbours have devoted their attention. We need to revise our system of primary, secondary and tertiary education to confer on our descendants the capacity to think in what I am compelled to call holistic lines. Perhaps we should recollect the moral of our government departments and their civil servants, who think and act strictly on reductionist lines and so are never able to pursue compatible policies.