This article is rewritten from the first draft. The following four points are changes I made to my article and they are listed for your convenience:
1. The title is changed so it is less ambiguous, although it is less specific on the other hand.
2. I change the word historical to sociological since what I what to discuss is fundamentally a sociological issue, although it will eventually resort to the knowledge of the history, e.g. history of manner formation in the middle age. In response to this change, I added few sentences to elaborate this idea in paragraph 1 and 3, which would be of help for people who never touched this issue before. Paragraph is largely left unmodified since I think this point is clear for most of you. The word civilization is also changed to civilizing, because the on-going process of civilizing is emphasized.
3. I modified the opening of the issue paper by removing sentences irrelevant to my issue, i.e. I was dropped out of school..., etc. Therefore paragraph 1 is almost all rewritten.
4. I have corrected all spelling error by spelling check function of my text editor.
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An examination of the use of horticulture from an biological and sociological perspective
I have begun to have the chance to look into this wonderful world more deeply after I finished my military service two years ago, where I am no longer placed under anyone but my parents' jurisdiction. From the observation spanning almost three years on the 'environmentally-friendly' and 'civilized' metropolitan city Taipei, I have noticed one intriguing practice of men, the use of horticulture, that seems to go hand in hand with the the formation of society, which in a broader sense, the process of civilizing. So, there came an idea, or an unanswered question that I have been turning over in my mind ever since, 'Is this pursuit in itself contradictory?' That is, the employment of horticulture does not bring us closer to a greener environment and chances are high that it does quite the opposite.
To elaborate this idea, examples have to be given. For instance, few people would know that planting more tree might has a harmful effects on the ecosystem. Let us ask why? What's the harm if we plant more trees, doesn't a forest provide a carbon deposit in terms of global warming? Yes, the answers to the above questions will be Yes; however, this world is never so easy as can be examined by such a dichotomy view. Whether the consequence resulting from planting more trees is good or bad depends on how many trees are planted, where they are planted and what species of trees are planted. In addition, the energy expenditure, pollution, and degradation of biodiversity that came with the nursery and plantation have to be taken into account. Are all negative effects offset by their positive counterparts? There is no answers to those questions, but I can, through this research, make out a clearer contour of this issue.
In this research, the practice of horticulture will be first described and the ill-effects brought about by horticulture from a biological and ecological aspect explained later. Then I will examine this issue from a sociological viewpoint, i.e. the changes we human society have taken on in the process of civilizing and its relationship with the use of horticulture. This is because, the change of human behavior toward how we restrict our 'natural functions' such as spitting and blowing noses, and the advancement of our threshold for shame, i.e. people are becoming sensitive for what we wouldn't before, does shed light on why we humans would adopt such, if contradictory, practices of horticulture to pursue a greener environment.
All in all, this research aims to deal with the long-accepted norm that the use of horticulture is good and making everything in order and neat is good also. I hope, that this research paper can bring forth a gradual awakening that using horticulture in the name of obtaining a greener environment is not environmentally sound and socially just.
