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Informative ecological models without ecological forces

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Abstract

Sagoff (Synthese 193:3003–3024, 2016) criticizes widely used “theoretical” methods in ecology; arguing that those methods employ models that rely on problematic metaphysical assumptions and are therefore uninformative and useless for practical decision-making. In this paper, I show that Sagoff misconstrues how such model-based methods work in practice, that the main threads of his argument are problematic, and that his substantive conclusions are consequently unfounded. Along the way, I illuminate several ways the model-based inferential methods he criticizes can be, and have been, usefully informative.

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Fig. 1

Adapted from Donhauser (2017)

Fig. 2

Adapted from Donhauser (2017)

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Notes

  1. I have put Sagoff’s phrase “approximately correct” in quotes, because it is unclear whether he is referring to predictive precision or predictive accuracy.

  2. I have not included units for b and d because their inclusion would complicate my discussion of LV-models unnecessarily; Odenbaugh (2005) provides a detailed analysis of LV-models and discusses how some sorts of calculations are done with them.

  3. Lotka’s (1925, pp. 92–93) discussion of these equations is exceptionally clear, and I encourage my reader to see his discussion for explanation of the rationale behind their construction.

  4. Lange does not mention ecological forces anywhere in his 2005 paper.

  5. A quick scholarly database search will show that talk of “ecological forces” is limited to rare instances where such phrases are synonymous with a specific cause of some ecological trend (e.g., describing the effects of asymmetric interspecific competition between particular populations as the ‘force of competition’).

  6. The 1980s and 1990s saw dozens of papers in mainstream philosophy of science journals that critically assess Sober’s discussion of biological forces; more recent reviews of the debate about forces in the philosophy of biology include Filler (2009), Stephens (2004) and Luque (2016).

  7. Though the constant can vary depending on the particular application of variations of (3), G often stands in for 6.673 × 10−11 N m2/kg2.

  8. Not only do some scientific principles and laws not deal with general forces, there is in fact a heterogeneity of kinds of scientific principles and laws; see Woodward (2002) and Schurz (2002).

  9. Hilborn and Mangel (1997) provide an informative survey of widely used model-fitting techniques.

  10. I do not know from where Sagoff pulled his quotation.

  11. Levins (1966) is the locus classicus discussion of tradeoffs in model-building.

  12. Many philosophers draw a distinction between processes of abstraction (removing empirical content) and idealization (adding false details) in model-building; see, for instance, Chakravartty (2007, pp. 229–230). I do not employ this distinction since there are many different ways in which scientists represent natural phenomena that do not all fit neatly into the abstraction/idealization categories; Godfrey-Smith (2009) discusses this.

  13. Although I think a more nuanced account of tradeoffs and model types is needed, I will simply work with Levins’ scheme for the purposes at hand.

  14. I exclude discussion of type-c models because Sagoff does not say anything about them.

  15. This is in fact Levins’ (1966) main point, and he explains the idea of tradeoffs in defense of it.

  16. Many textbooks and papers explain specific methods of doing this; Bender et al. (1984) is a nice example.

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Acknowledgements

I am indebted to Gillian Barker, Eric Desjardins, and two anonymous reviewers for helpful comments on earlier versions of this work. I would also like to thank numerous people in attendance at my talks at the 2017 Canadian Society for History and Philosophy of Science Congress 2017 and at the “Scientific Knowledge Under Pluralism” (Center for Philosophy of Science, University of Pittsburgh) 2017 conferences for helpful discussions.

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  1. Department of Philosophy, Bowling Green State University, 305 Shatzel Hall, Bowling Green, OH, 43403, USA

    Justin Donhauser

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Donhauser, J. Informative ecological models without ecological forces. Synthese 197, 2721–2743 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-018-1859-8

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