The Economy of Nature

The word ‘ecology’ (Oekologie) was coined in 1866 by the German zoologist Ernst Haeckel and defined more fully by the same scientist in 1870:

By ecology we mean the body of knowledge concerning the economy of nature – the investigation of the total relations of the animal both to its inorganic and to its organic environment; including above all, its friendly and inimical relations with those animals and plants with which it comes directly or indirectly into contact – in a word, ecology is the study of all those complex interrelations referred to by Darwin as the conditions of the struggle for existence. ¹