Ecology transformed from obscure science to utopian battle cry within a decade.

Evidence

We like to think of it in parallel with the term “ecology.” Nowadays, that’s a term that invokes a whole universe of aspiration. It functions as a kind of shorthand for nothing less than a worldview, one that stresses interspecies connectedness, planetary limits, and environmental sustainability. How did seven letters come to bear such a heavy symbolic load? After all, the word was hardly known (outside an eccentric subset of zoologists) until about 1960! It had weird origins (in nineteenth-century Germany, among some slightly creepy dudes), and mostly dealt with technical ideas about predator-prey relationships. But by 1970, Ecology Now! was emblazoned on flags and T-shirts and became the battle cry of a youth culture committed to utopian revolution. The term had become a way of saying STOP DESTROYING THE PLANET! And it meant WE WANT SOMETHING BETTER FOR OURSELVES AND OUR CHILDREN! It had its origins in science, but it broke out as a slogan for participatory, radical renewal—across the domains of nature, culture, politics, and individual life. — The Friends of Attention, Attensity!, 483

Categorization

• XREF: The ecology→activism arc is the template for the book’s bet that attention can become an equivalent movement. — connects to: A technical scientific word can become a mass political slogan within a decade. — The Friends of Attention, Attensity!: A Manifesto of the…, 483
• QUESTION: Are the historical details (predator-prey origins, eccentric subset of zoologists, 1960 unknowability) accurate enough to lean on?