OCR
§ Fauna and zoocoenosis | 15 If we want to order the collected material of an area using coenological characteristics, taxonomy will be the least suitable approach, and we cannot be satisfied with establishing the quantitative characteristics, because we need not only this facet, but to decide what roles the individual populations perform in the community. In other words: we arrange the collected population groups according to their roles in the zoocoenosis, as we attempt to do below. § THE SYSTEM OF BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES We have seen that, from a cognitive point of view, the smallest unit of all biological systems is the semaphoront, and practically all scientific research relates to its representation as an individuum. According to our view, this is the unit where all biological disciplines meet; at the two component parts of bio-ontology, idiobiology and synbiology (Dudich, 1938). These are constructed by two views of the semaphoront: a) as part of an individual organism (species), and; b) as a member of a group of organisms (population). From these standpoints, directions of study, research methods, and aims are formed. The unavoidable condition of the undisturbed development of community biology is that it be free of idiobiological considerations. We can only avoid this if we consistently view the semaphoront not as a species but as a member of the community, and frame all our research questions accordingly. Both the individual and the community approach meet at three points, with consequent additional divisions for both the idio- and the synbiology. All semaphoronts are material realities, taking a given form, and this material reality relates to space, time and the semaphoront itself in some way. The same holds for communities, which are also material entities, of a given form, and, again, relate to space, time and the communities themselves. These three “dimensions” correspond to the individual disciplines for both idio- and synbiology, which are, naturally, not sharply separated. The name of the individual discipline means that the problems of the given discipline center around questions reflected in that name, but they have bordering areas where these problems are in contact, may overlap, and, also link semaphoront and community more fully (Plate I). On Plate I, the appropriate arrows symbolise these interdependencies. We should not forget that the material-form relationship is intimately linked, and cannot be separated from each other, and this means that the research emphasis shifts in one or the other direction. Therefore, it is natural that the fields of science with such a research emphasis form a uniform whole, and are manifested as idio- or synbiology. When the semaphoront is treated as an individual, or as a member of a species, we cultivate idiobiology. When the research direction aims to clarify relationships of form and shape, this branch of research should be called morphology (structural studies, biontostatics (which has, as components,