Abstract

The article considers the process of expanding the subject and methods of research in modern environmental science. It is shown how, following the traditional biological science of ecology, new directions of ecological knowledge arise under the influence of research activities: social ecology, anthropoecology. Knowledge about a human being is achieved through the use of both natural and human sciences. A great step in expanding the subject of modern ecology was the intensive formation of human ecology in recent years, in which the need for the formation of a unity of natural science and socio-humanitarian research methods was reflected most clearly. In contrast to biological ecology, in which the main focus of research was the principles of natural science research, in social ecology, socio-humanitarian issues become dominant, and in human ecology-the synthesis of natural science and socio-humanitarian approaches. It's time to abandon the progressive illusions of the past and move on to the awareness of the specifics of sustainable civilizational development at the present stage. This sustainable development presupposes the co-evolution of society and nature, such a co-development of society and nature, in which both components of this single system do not oppose each other, do not conflict, but organically presuppose each other in their combined, harmonious development. Thus, now acting as a unified science that studies the interaction of the central coreof the system and its environment, ecology sets new guidelines for understanding the organization of scientific knowledge, the mood of the modern world picture is falling. A promising way for ecology is to grow into a modern universal organizational science. But this is a distant prospect. However, even now, such a renewed ecology can provide much for Russia’s search for its modern civilizational path, clarifying the organization of scientific knowledge, specifying the contours of the modern scientific picture of the world.