Living systems are never in equilibrium. They are inherently unstable. They may seem stable, but they’re not. Everything is moving and changing. In a sense, everything is on the edge of collapse.

Nothing remains the same from one moment to the next, you can’t step into the same river twice. Life – evolution – the whole universe of space/time, matter/energy – existence itself – is essentially change.

For example, in the science of ecology one learns that a human being is not an organism in an environment, but is an organism/environment, that is to say, a unified field of behavior. If you describe carefully the behavior of any organism you cannot do so without at the same time describing the behavior of the environment, and by that you know that what you are describing is the behavior of a unified field.

The thing the ecologically illiterate don't realise about an ecosystem is that it's a system. A system! A system maintains a certain fluid stability that can be destroyed by a misstep in just one niche. A system has order, flowing from point to point. If something dams that flow, order collapses. The untrained might miss that collapse until it was too late. That's why the highest function of ecology is the understanding of consequences.

Biologists often talk about the “ecology” of an organism: the tallest oak in the forest is the tallest not just because it grew from the hardiest acorn; it is the tallest also because no other trees blocked its sunlight, the soil around it was deep and rich, no rabbit chewed through its bark as a sapling, and no lumberjack cut it down before it matured. We all know that successful people come from hardy seeds. But do we know enough about the sunlight that warmed them, the soil in which they put down the roots, and the rabbits and lumberjacks they were lucky enough to avoid?

"Only within the 20th Century has biological thought been focused on ecology, or the relation of the living creature to its environment. Awareness of ecological relationships is — or should be — the basis of modern conservation programs, for it is useless to attempt to preserve a living species unless the kind of land or water it requires is also preserved. So delicately interwoven are the relationships that when we disturb one thread of the community fabric we alter it all — perhaps almost imperceptibly, perhaps so drastically that destruction follows."

<i>Essay on the Biological Sciences</i>, in: <i>Good Reading</i> (1958)

There is nothing so stable as change.

Nothing can stay the same forever, in business or in life, and counting on the status quo can only lead to grief.

the process of evolution does not necessarily mean elevation, enhancement, strengthening.

In the real world there is no nature vs. nurture argument, only an infinitely complex and moment-by-moment interaction between genetic and environmental effects

The Only Thing That Is Constant Is Change

There is nothing constant in the universe. All ebb and flow, and every shape that's born, bears in its womb the seeds of change.

The only thing constant in life is change

That's it on the maps; nature doesn't acknowledge frontiers. Neither can ecology... Where to begin to understand what we've only got a computerspeak label for, <i>ecosystem</i>? Where to decide it begins.