Last night I was re-reading an old favourite, **The Kraken Wakes ** by John Wyndham. It was first published in 1953.
One of the chief characters, the narrator’s wife, is portrayed as a very intelligent woman. Yet at one stage she professes ignorance of the meaning of the word “ecology”.
This rather surprised me. Perhaps it wasn’t in common use during the 1950s? If not, when did it become part of everyday language?
IIRC the first time I heard the word was around the first Earth Day in 1970.
The word “ecology” (oekologie) was coined by the German biologist Ernst Haeckel in 1866. However, it did not receive much currency even among scientists until some decades later, and didn’t really penetrate popular culture much until the 1950s and 1960s, with the dawning of environmentalism (with which it was often confused).
The book Silent Spring advanced the idea into popular consciousness.
Idea, yes, with Silent Spring, but the word didn’t become generally recognizable till the early '70s.
I hate Me Too posts, but Bosda’s got it. I was very interested in biology, and moderately so in the environment, in my teens. And Silent Spring was the bellwether of the ecology movement. I seem to recall something Nader did about the same time giving it impetus, but the details escape me.
Before then it was an accepted branch of biological science, but the province of specialists, about as familiar as limnology or herpetology.
When was it published?
Silent Spring was published in 1962. However, according to the link, Rachel Carson rarely used the term “ecology” herself.
Frank Herbert’s science-fiction novel Dune (1965) probably also helped to introduce the word to the general public.
Ralph Nader published Unsafe at Any Speed in 1965, but this was more related to the consumer-rights movement than to environmentalism.
The character Liet-Kynes in particular may have been one of the first “ecologists” in popular fiction.
Quick analysis by using my general US newspaper database.
1950-1960…578 hits
1960-1965…432 hits
1966-68…793 hits
1969…789 hits
1970…5,167 hits
1971…9,419 hits
Make of this what you will
I can only approve of the wonderful philology presented above, but it might be worth noting that “ecology” as a term was put to marvelous use and adaptation by the very great J. J. Gibson – perhaps as early as 1950 (I can’t recall if he was using the term in his book of this year). I can’t say for sure whether or not his use of the term was truly unique, but in some circles, it’s his work which would form the background for an understanding of the term as a region of study.
I first encountered the word around 1948-49. A large dam was proposed on the Iowa River between Cedar Rapids and Iowa City. There was considerable discussion in the press and around the University of the effect of the dam and the lake (Lake McBride was the proposed name) on the ecology of the region.
The OP asks about general use – I think samclem’s timeline makes it clear that that happened in the early '70s, though the issues began to be raised a decade (or more) before then – for instance, Aldo Leopold’s Sand County Almanac first came out in 1949.
I recall a latye 1960’s-early1970’s comic strip by Jimmy Hatlo commenting about how you never hear certain words, then suddenly they’re everywhere.
The word he used to illustrate this was “ecology”.
I also have a Time/Life book from the late 1960s /early 1970s entitled simply “Ecology”.
All of this squares pretty much with my own experience – I think I may first have encountered the word at a museum, but it started becoming a popular word with the back-to-nature hippie stuff, and got a big boost from Earth Day.
I like science fiction a great deal, but I doubt if “Dune” had a big impact on the general public. I note that, although the stories appeared in Analog throughout the 1960s, Chilton published it circa 1968, and the paperback (which was much more widely read) came out about 1969. (That’s when I got my 95 cent copy).
All of which adds up to circa 1970 for the popularization od the word, and in 1953 it wouldn’t have been at all unusual for even an educated person not to be aware of it.
Some early book titles:
• Ecology (1903), by L. H. Pammel.
• The ecology of the Skokie Marsh area (1910), by Frank Collins Baker.
• Ecology and physiology of the red mangrove (1917), by H.H.M. Bowman.
• Ecology of the Murray Island coral reef (1918), by Alfred Goldsborough Mayer.
Ecology was first used in U.S. by Thoreau. Don’t remember the year.
What drives me up the wall is the misuse of the word. So often I hear people talk about “the ecology” when they mean “the environment.” Ah, well…
If the word was used by Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862), that would contradict the claim above that the word was coined by Ernst Haeckel in 1866.
If the word was used by Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862), that would contradict the claim above that the word was coined by Ernst Haeckel in 1866.