The debate about ecology, as we understand it here, has a specific history that separates it from the rather organicist discourse concerning the relationship of living beings with their environments (since the second half of the nineteenth century). Ecology deals with the environment, but here we look to a generalization and an abstraction of the concept that have been emerging more recently (since the fifties). We speak of general ecology. And we look for a sharper problematization of the idea of environment—not as a “given,” to which an organism or system must adapt, but as a multifaceted and flexible reference, which changes with the way it is observed and with the perspective of the observer.