Ekologia: o dom dla człowieka
Oikos: a household for a human person

Summary/Abstract: At present the notion of ecology is connected mainly with problems regarding threats to the natural environment. The word “eco” presumptively signifies the natural environment. To appreciate the significance of this prefix, “eco,” one should observe its origin in the Greek language. However, the Greek oikos primarily signified the human environment, and less the natural environment. For the Greeks, oikos referred to the organized household, a possession of land and dwelling, implying family and a way of life penetrated by sacrum. In other words, for the Greeks oikos was not reduced to a biological category. Instead, it mainly signified culture, a fact which should be remembered given that Greek culture is a fountainhead of Western Civilization. This background has been marginalized in the modern effort to turn ecology into an ideology (implicit with materialism, evolutionism, dehumanization, and atheism), reducing ecology to a subject of biology. Education will be well-served by restoring a sense of this classical meaning, especially since it implies the study of reasons to foster families. “Oikology” should overtake “ecology.”

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