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Ecology: An Idiosyncratic Overview

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Book cover Mathematical Ecology

Part of the book series: Biomathematics ((BIOMATHEMATICS,volume 17))

Abstract

The word “ecology” conjures up disparate images. It is part of the rhetoric of political parties, cries for salvation of dwindling species, attempts to increase utilization of renewable resources, determined efforts of scientists to understand our natural world, and blatant commercialization of products from laundry detergents to oil rigs. Aside from its use as an adjective to modify virtually every scientific research field, the jargon “ecologically sound” is used to justify a plethora of so-called development schemes. In daily usage, ecology is regularly confused with environmentalism, and to those in the business community an ecologist may well be considered automatically an obstructionist. Despite all this lack of agreement about definitions, ecology has had a major impact during the past two decades on changing the attitudes of humanity towards our world. Photographs of our glowingly beautiful orb as viewed from the moon notwithstanding, our conscious acceptance of the finiteness and interdependence of processes on this planet is only slowly developing.

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Authors
  1. Louis J. Gross
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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Mathematics and Program in Ecology, University of Tennessee, 37996-1300, Knoxville, TN, USA

    Thomas G. Hallam

  2. Section of Ecology & Systematics and Ecosystems Research Center, Cornell University, 14853-0239, Ithaca, NY, USA

    Simon A. Levin

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© 1986 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

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Gross, L.J. (1986). Ecology: An Idiosyncratic Overview. In: Hallam, T.G., Levin, S.A. (eds) Mathematical Ecology. Biomathematics, vol 17. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-69888-0_1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-69888-0_1

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-642-69890-3

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-642-69888-0

  • eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive

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