The man–environment paradigm and its paradoxes

A paradigm is any structure of ideas, scientific and philosophical, that we take for granted in order to do research. Because we must take some such structure for granted, paradigmatic ideas tend to become invisible. We forget that they are there, and regard them as natural. Only occasionally are they brought into question and perhaps replaced. The related notions of ?organism' and 'environment' constitute such a paradigm base. Translated into the sciences of man they become the 'man-environment paradigm', which is much more problematic than it appears at first sight. In fact if contains anomalies, which appear in research as unresolvable paradoxes. In a profound sense, the concept of environment itself obstructs the development of a relevant theory for environmental analysis.