What is environmental science?

There was a time when, as an educated person, you would have been expected to converse confidently about any intellectual or cultural topic. You would have read the latest novel, been familiar with the work of the better-known poets, have had an opinion about the current state of the art, musical composition, and both musical and theatrical performance. Should the subject of the conversation have changed, you would have felt equally relaxed discussing philosophical ideas. These might well have included the results of recent scientific research, for until quite recently, the word ‘philosophy’ was used to describe theories derived from the investigation of natural phenomena as well as those we associate with philosophy today. The word ‘science’ is simply an anglicized version of the Latin Scientia, which means ‘knowledge.’ In German, which borrowed much less from Latin, what we call ‘science’ is known as Wissenschaft, literally ‘knowledge.’ ‘Science’ did not begin to be used in its restricted modern sense until the middle of the last century.

As scientific discoveries accumulated, it became increasingly difficult, and eventually impossible, for anyone to keep fully abreast of developments across the entire field. A point came when there was just too much information for a single brain to hold. Scientists themselves could no longer switch back and forth between disciplines as they used to do. They became specialists, and during this century, their specialisms have divided repeatedly. As a broadly educated person today, you may still have a general grasp of the basic principles of most of the specialisms, but not of the detail in which the research workers themselves are immersed. This is not your fault, and you are not alone. Trapped inside their own specialisms, most research scientists find it difficult to communicate with those engaged in other research areas, even those bordering their own. No doubt you have heard the cliché defining a specialist as someone who knows more and more about less and less. We are in the middle of what journalists call an ‘information explosion, and most of that information is being generated by scientists. Clearly, the situation is unsatisfactory, and there is a need to draw the specialisms into groups that will provide overarching views of broad topics. It should be possible, for example, to fit the work of the molecular biologist, extracting, cloning, and sequencing.

DNA, into some context that would relate it to the work of the taxonomist and the work of both to that of the biochemist. What these disciplines share is their subject matter. All of them deal with living or once-living organisms. They deal with life, so these and a whole range of related specialisms have come to be grouped as the life sciences. Similarly, geophysics, geochemistry, geomorphology, hydrology, mineralogy, pedology, oceanography, climatology, meteorology, and other disciplines are now grouped as the earth sciences because they all deal with the physical and chemical nature of the planet Earth. The third, and possibly broadest, groupings comprise the environmental sciences, sometimes known simply as ‘environmental science.’ It embraces all those disciplines concerned with the physical, chemical, and biological surroundings in which organisms live. Obviously, environmental science draws heavily on life and earth sciences, but there is some unavoidable overlap in all these groupings.

Should paleontology, for example, the study of past life, be regarded as life science or, because its material is fossilized and derived from rocks, an earth science? It is both, but not necessarily at the same time. The paleontologist may date a fossil and determine the conditions under fossilized as an earth scientist and life scientist. Any study of the Earth and the life it supports must deal with process and change. The earth and life sciences also deal with process and change. Still, environmental science is especially concerned with changes wrought by human activities and their immediate and long-term implications for the welfare of living organisms, including humans. At this point, environmental science acquires political overtones and leads to controversy. If it suggests that a particular activity is harmful, then modification of that activity may require national legislation or an international treaty, and, almost certainly, there will be an economical price that not everyone will have to pay or pay equally. We may all be environmental winners in the long term, but there will be financial losers in the short term; in the short rising, they will complain. This article provides an overview of the environmental sciences.

As with all the broad scientific groupings, opinions differ on which disciplines the term covers, but the net is cast widely. All the topics it includes are generally accepted as environmental sciences. That said, the approach adopted in Basics of Environmental Science is not the only one feasible. In this rapidly developing field, there are various ideas about what should be included and emphasized and what constitutes an environmental scientist.