• Notes posted on-line

• Examples of Bio’s on-line• Email comments – this week (Mayr, Elliot and

Brook)

• Please don’t send as attachments

Ecological research today is undertaken to:

(class poll)

• To increase basic understanding of natural world and enable predictions (basic curiosity)

• To meet societal demands for answers to environmental problems

• To meet management needs

• To meet conservation needs

• To meet restoration needs

Ecological methods:

TheoreticalField observationField manipulationLab studies

Class poll?

How is Ecology done today? (Ives et al. Ecology 1996)

Roush 1995 Science

"The aim of science is to seek the simplest explanation of complex facts. ...Seek simplicity

and distrust it."

--A. N. Whitehead, The Concept of Nature

Definition of Ecology? (class)

Is Ecology like other sciences?

How does Ecology fit in with other sciences?

What is unique about Ecology?

"The purpose of science is to find order in the chaos of natural phenomena. Science attempts to represent

nature as simply and accurately as possible with natural laws.

--George Abell, Exploration of the Universe, 1969.

"The aim of science is to seek the simplest explanation of complex facts”

Why the search for simplicity?

Simplicity = generality

Consider:

The First Law of Thermodynamics (Conservation) = energy is always conserved, it cannot be created or destroyed.

Very powerful…

“Ecological Law” of Intermediate Disturbance = diversity in a community is always highest at intermediate levels of disturbance

Connell 1978

Hundreds of cases of support for this “law”…

But the “law” has to be more specific (less simple) to be “universally true”….either the systems it works in must be specified or exceptions listed… fire in the fynbos of S. Africa… or in dry forests (below) or….

Lack of simplicity renders law “explanatory” not predictive and much less powerful…

Are their “universal laws” in Ecology? A topic for later…

Ecology is NOT simple

How is ecological research done?

Scientific inquiry in general has been influenced by:

Ideasfrom Francis Bacon, Karl Popper and Thomas Kuhn…all wrote from the perspective of the Physical Sciences

Bacon – inductive method….accumulate lots of data/observations and generalize to theory of how nature works.

Popper – theory must precede observation

Must first have new theory to guide data collection which can potentially falsify old theory…

“Hypothetico-deductive” approach – Theory must make specific predictions that, if found to be not true, falsifies the theory.

“A thousand studies can never prove me right, but one can prove me wrong.”

Kuhn – recognized the role of bias (cultural and contextural) in science…

Paradigms – the accepted way science is done… “the coherent tradition” of science including methods, past data, concepts, theories, preconceptions, explanations.

Or…

A constellation of concepts, ideas, approaches, and principles shared and used by a scientific community to define research problems and solutions.

Working under the prevailing paradigm, science only provides details on how the world works…the paradigm determines what should be studied and how it is studied. Also defines how scientists are trained. This is “bias of context” …

Paradigms can constrain scientific progress…

Crisis state occurs when data accumulate that don’t fit the theory or concepts on which the paradigm is based.

Result?

New paradigms emerge, compete, and eventually one wins …and then its back to “normal science” providing details.

Process of “Scientific Revolutions”… where major advances are made…Many argue that Ecology doesn’t correspond to this pathway…

But some truth to this as well…much “back filling” in Ecology!

Darwin’s scientific approach was eclectic….but publicly he was a strong inductivist…(accepted mode at the time)

Paradigms in science can create “peer- pressure”…

“I patiently accumulated and reflected on all sorts of facts…After five years of work, I allowed myself to speculate…”

“I arrived at these principles only at the close of my observations…”

But Darwin wrote privately…

“Let theory guide your observations, but till your reputation is well established, be sparing in publishing your theory. It makes people doubt your observations.”

He actually used observation, theory, experimentation, induction and deduction in any number of sequences…

Progress in Ecology occurs though a combination of approaches – like most sciences

But there is no one “right” way to advance our understanding in the field of Ecology…

How does Ecology fit in with other sciences?

Naively simple formulations of “The Way To Do Science” are harmless in themselves, but have unfortunate consequences when they inspire doctrinal vigilantes to ride the boundaries of a discipline, culling the sinners. -- R.M. May 1981

“SCIENCE”

Logic & Math

Physics Chemistry Biology

Geology & Atm. Sci. & Hydrology (Earth Sciences)

Ecology

“Pure”Sciences

Core NaturalSciences “Messy”

“Derivative”Interdisciplinary

Sciences

“Ultimate”Interdisciplinary

Science

Note: arrows are,for the most part,

unidirectional

“All the sciences are connected, they lend each other material aid as parts of one great whole, each doing its own work, not for itself alone, but for the other parts.”

-Roger Bacon (1200’s)

What is unique about Ecology?

(and why it differs from Physics and Chemisty)

• Extremely interdisciplinary

• Focus on the observable (intermediate scale), even though some critical features (e.g. niche) are often unmeasurable

• Results from experiments are frequently non-repeatable

• Importance of history (and contingency)