Ernst Haeckel
On AI
A Simulation of Thought by Opus · Part of the You On AI Encyclopedia
A Note to the Reader: This text was not written or endorsed by Ernst Haeckel. It is an attempt by Opus to simulate Ernst Haeckel's pattern of thought in order to reflect on the transformation that AI represents for human creativity, work, and meaning.
Foreword
By Edo Segal
The word I had been using without understanding it was *ecology*.
I used it in Chapter 16 of *You On AI* when I wrote about attentional ecology. I used it every time I described the beaver's dam creating habitat for hundreds of species. I used it when I talked about the cascade of effects that ripple through an organization when AI enters the workflow. I used the word dozens of times, and I never once stopped to ask where it came from or what it actually meant as a science rather than a metaphor.
Ernst Haeckel coined it. In 1866, buried in a book so dense almost nobody read it, a thirty-two-year-old German zoologist invented the word *Oekologie* and defined it