Article:

Zirkulationen des Kreises. Von der Regulation zur Adaption

The text examines the significance of the circle for the representation of cycles and circulations in the history of ecology up to about 1970. As a symbol, the circle links totality to completeness and endlessness. It binds opposing forces, graphically showing the overcoming of opposites, while also implying a regular recurrence in processual concatenation and thus explaining a connectedness in which a single factor would be ineffective without the influence of other factors. Ecology is part of a discursive formation that has its origins in Platonic ideas of harmony, which came under pressure with the beginning of modern science. This article argues that the fields of knowledge of ecology are a venue for this conflict. By referring to the diagrammatics of ecology, the text examines the historical-epistemological conditions and the aesthetic representations of this contradiction.