Talk:Environment
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Which sense of the word?
a definition I've heard used is that "environment = ecology + society"
Not sure if it's easily attributed.
Let's not use it then. I thought "environment" just meant "nature" -- emphasizing the aspect of its relation to human beings (we take care of the environment so we will be healthy) or animals (the environment of the snail darter was threatened by development of a 2,000 acre shopping mall).
If there's an unusual usage, readers will be glad to know who coined it -- or what context it's used in.
The colloquial use is close to what you mean - but our bodies are part of nature too - immersed in it - made out of air, water, genes, bacteria, etc..
It's the "human beings or animals" distinction that is questioned by most serious ecologists, anthropologist,s etc. - human beings *ARE* animals, but with a couple of exceptional capabilities - which mostly include altering the environment. It's our inability to psychologically accept things as they are which defines us as a species, some say - also our ability to make stuff up and build it ....
It isn't just about snail darters, it's about gut bacteria...
Your own definition acknowledges the social aspect of 'surroundings' indirectly. Another way to say is that a city is just another ecoregion where humans happen to have overlaid a lot more infrastructural capital on the natural capital (sewers on top of watersheds to improve the filtration etc.)
IT's not simple. But it's not a matter of some thing that stops at your skin or at your city limits. That's only the way we see it with some senses...
I do not have a personal definition of "environment" or any other word. Unlike Humpty Dumpty, I do not declare that "a word means what I chose it to mean" -- he had to pay them extra for this, a luxury I cannot afford, since I am poor.
Etymology
Is it true that "environment" comes from Latin? (I mean, directly?) To me it sounds like a French word, like "milieu". Jorge Stolfi 20:34, 27 Mar 2004 (UTC)
Made into disamb page
I have reformatted it to resemble a standard disamb page (plus a "general meaning" introductory paragraph). I am also in the process of moving some deleted phrases, that were specific to the ecology and environmentalism senses, to more specific pages. Several of the broken links are just placeholders, which I hope to fix soon. Help will be most appreciated...
Here is the deleted text, for the record:
- " ... humans, with particular reference to damage done by humankind, or impact of this damage on Environmentalism consists of the efforts to reduce this impact--such as reducing pollution, advocating lower consumption of petroleum, and switching to renewable energy. "
- " This is in contrast to ecology, which consists of the operations and cycles of life in the natural world, without reference to humankind except as observer. When used politically, the term "ecology" refers more to preservation of natural capital for sustainable use, and the right of other species to exist for their own sake and not suffer extinction, as opposed to being part of a human environment. "
Jorge Stolfi 21:47, 27 Mar 2004 (UTC)
Environment in Unix
In Unix-like computer systems, "the environment" of a process is defined as a set of predefined variables given to that process, nothing more. Documentation often says things like "X inherits the environment of the parent process", "X expects X to be defined in the environment", "deletes variable X from the environment", "tis command prints the environment", etc. etc. If one only defined "environment variable", it would not be clear what these sentences meant (the environment could be something complicated that had variables but other things too). That is why I reverted that particular sense to its former version.
Jorge Stolfi 16:54, 20 May 2004 (UTC)
- I have issues with predefined here. The environment in unix is dynamic, you can add variables at any time. For windows, this is even more true. To me, predefined implies they're all listed in the docs, you can't add any. The rest of my rephasing was to move the keyword closer to the start of the sentence. Other than removing the incorrect predefined I'm not sure what meaning was lost. How can we compromise here? --ssd 12:01, 21 May 2004 (UTC)
- I have checked with unix documentation on several platforms, as well as checked google:define:environment (http://www.google.com/search?q=define%3Aenvironment) and merged the definitions. None of these sources mention predefined. I don't understand what you mean by variables but other things too, this is pretty clear it only is variables. Also, they are not provided by the system in unix--they are provided by the parent process. Your defintion is essentially wrong for both windows and unix. Anyway ,the shading of implementation between unix and windows does not much change how it is used, and belongs in the environment variable page where it is already clearly stated, not in this disambiguation page. --ssd 14:26, 22 May 2004 (UTC)
I think that the entry is OK as it stands now. My objection to the previous version was that it defined only "environment variable" but not "the environment of a process".
Jorge Stolfi 01:36, 23 May 2004 (UTC)
Environment in functional programming
The phrase "In other words, everything with non-local scope" is not clear; either way I read it, it seems wrong. Consider the functions
var m = 10;
function f(z)
{ var u;
function g (x)
{ u = x; return z*x; }
function h (y)
{ u = y; return y/z; }
...
}
The only identifiers here which "have non-local scope" are m and f, but the environment of g includes z and u as well. On the other
hand y is "not local to g", but it is not part of its environment.
Jorge Stolfi 01:50, 23 May 2004 (UTC)
- Actually, while u is local to f it is not local to g. Local variables are only visible within function that includes them, and u is clearly outside of g, so can not be local go g. u is a heirarchal part of g's environment. Also to consider are (in C++) things in class or member scope or inherited, which are also not local, and in lisp closure symbols in addition to heirarchal symbols similar to C++ inherited symbols. Examples for these are already in wikipedia. --ssd 20:43, 23 May 2004 (UTC)
Dear ssd, Please read my text carefully. I never claimed that u is local to g.
But, once again, the reason I deleted the sentence had nothing to do with the definition of "scope" or "local". We both know very well what those words mean. The problem is one of English semantics and ambiguity, and I still think that the page would be slightly better without the "explanation" than with it.
But what the heck, this is already more than enough heat for so few bytes...
All the best,
Jorge Stolfi 01:45, 24 May 2004 (UTC)
- Then you should fix my semantics (do those 3 words make you feel better?) rather than delete the missing target of disambiguation in a disambiguation page. --ssd 02:54, 24 May 2004 (UTC)