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Philosophical Issues in Ecology

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The Philosophy of Biology

Part of the book series: History, Philosophy and Theory of the Life Sciences ((HPTL,volume 1))

Abstract

Ecology endeavors to explain significant portions of the living world. The sophisticated experimental tests and mathematical theories developed to do so deserve much more attention from philosophers of science. This paper describes some of the main contours of the newly emerging field of philosophy of ecology: how an ecological perspective shaped Darwin’s theory, particularly the niche concept and the idea that there is a “balance of nature”; the character and metaphysical status of biological communities; whether there are laws of ecology; and the concept of ecological stability. As these topics illustrate, ecology concerns a diverse conceptual terrain and an interesting set of theoretical and methodological issues that provide rich grist for philosophy.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    See Kohn (2009) for further analysis of Darwin’s conceptualization of this metaphor.

  2. 2.

    Elton’s (1927) niche concept seems to also allow vacant niches, but with a very different sense. Vacant Eltonian niches would be unfilled nodes in the causal nexus of interactions between species.

  3. 3.

    See Eliot (2011a) for a historically engaging and conceptually rich account of this debate, one that locates the divergence more in methodological disagreements about how ecological research should be conducted than contrasting ontological commitments.

  4. 4.

    Marc Lange’s (2005) recent analysis of what biological laws could be seems vulnerable to Beatty’s first horn (see also Lange this volume).

  5. 5.

    Ginzburg and Colyvan (2004) note that the Kleiber allometry is the most empirically well supported, and that the generation time and Fenchel allometries are likely based on it.

  6. 6.

    In the following, ‘ecological stability’ designates stability of a biological community unless otherwise specified, though most of the discussion also applies to the stability of a biological population or an ecosystem.

  7. 7.

    To illustrate the partial dependence of M on R, notice that the species referred to in R must be part of the system description M.

  8. 8.

    As noted above, different quantitative measures of resistance, resilience, and tolerance may be incompatible. This does not establish, however, that the corresponding concepts are incompatible.

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Acknowledgements

Interactions with students in a Spring 2012 graduate seminar devoted to philosophy of ecology at FSU helped shape and improve this piece. Besides those students, thanks to Kostas Kampourakis, Roberta Millstein, Jay Odenbaugh, and Carl Salk for very helpful comments.

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  1. Department of Philosophy, History and Philosophy of Science Program, Florida State University, Tallahassee, FL, 32306, USA

    James Justus

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  1. Educational Research & Development, Geitonas School, Vari Attikis, Athens, 1234, Attiki, Greece

    Kostas Kampourakis

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Justus, J. (2013). Philosophical Issues in Ecology. In: Kampourakis, K. (eds) The Philosophy of Biology. History, Philosophy and Theory of the Life Sciences, vol 1. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-6537-5_17

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