ABSTRACT
Ecology is a study of the morphology of collective life in both its static and its dynamic aspects. The assignment of the concept competition to a key role in human ecology is, in fact, premised largely on the biological interpretation of the subject. The success of human ecology in attracting and holding the large share of attention it has enjoyed is largely a result of the ingeniousness, simplicity, and utility of the early definitive statement. Probably most of the difficulties which beset human ecology may be traced to the isolation of the subject from the mainstream of ecological thought. The widespread belief that ecology is a biologism, as it were, has no logical support, not even in the conventional academic distinction between sociology and biology. Human ecology, like plant and animal ecology, represents a special application of the general viewpoint to a particular class of living things.
