Abstract
Ecology has often been characterized as an “immature” scientific discipline. This paper explores some of the sources of this alleged immaturity. I argue that the perception of immaturity results primarily from the fact that historically ecologists have based their work upon two very different approaches to research.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
Bibliography
Allee, W. C., A. E. Emerson, O. Park, and K. P. Schmidt: 1949, Principles of Animal Ecology, Saunders, Philadelphia.
Allen, G. E.: 1985, ‘T. H. Morgan and the Split Between Embryology and Genetics, 1910–1935’, in T. J. Horder, J. A. Witkowski, and C. C. Wylie (eds.), A History of Embryology, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
Boucher, D. H.: 1985, ‘The idea of Mutualism, Past and future’, in: D. H. Boucher (ed.), The Biology of Mutualism, Oxford University Press, New York.
Boucher, D.H., S. Jones, and K. H. Keeler: 1982, ‘The Ecology of Mutualism’, Annual Review of Ecology and Systematics 13, 315–347.
Burgess, R. L.: 1977, ‘The Ecological Society of America: Historical Data and some Preliminary Analysis’, in: History of American Ecology, Arno, New York.
Burgess, R. L.: 1981, ‘United States’, in: E. J. Kormondy and J. F. McCormick (eds.), Handbook of Contemporary Developments in World Ecology, Greenwood, Westport, CT.
Cannon,W. B.: 1932, The Wisdom of the Body, Norton, New York.
Cittadino, E.: 1980, ‘Ecology and the Professionalization of Botany in America, 1890–1905’, Studies in History of Biology 4, 171–198.
Clements, F. E.: 1905, Research Methods in Ecology, University Printing Co., Lincoln, NE.
Clements, F. E.: 1916, Plant Succession: An Analysis of the Development of Vegetation, Carnegie Institution of Washington (C.I.W. Publication no. 242).
Cole, L. C.: 1957, ‘Sketches of General and Comparative Demography’, Cold Springs Harbor Symposium on Quantitative Biology 22, 1–15.
Collins, J. P.: 1986, ‘Evolutionary Ecology and the Use of Natural Selection in Ecological Theory’, Journal of the History of Biology 19, 257–288.
Cummins, R.: 1984, ‘Functional Analysis’, in: E, Sober (ed.), Conceptual Issues in Evolutionary Biology, M.I.T Press, Cambridge.
Diamond, J. and T. J. Case (eds.): 1986, Community Ecology, Harper & Row, New York.
Dobzhansky, T.: 1951, Genetics and the Origin of Species, 3rd ed., Columbia University Press, New York.
Egerton, F. E.: 1973, ‘Changing Concepts of the Balance of Natuire’, Quarterly Review of Biology 48, 322–350.
Elton, C.: 1927, Animal Ecology, Sidgwick & Jackson, London.
Emlen, J. M.: 1973, Ecology: An Evolutionary Approach, Addison-Wesley, Reading, MA.
Engelberg, J. and L. L. Boyarsky: 1979, ‘The Noncybernetic Nature of Ecosystems’, American Naturalist 114, 317–324.
Fretwell, S.: 1981, ‘Bringing Ecology to Scientific Maturity’, American Naturalist 118, 306.
Futuyma, D. J.: 1979, Evolutionary Biology, Sinauer, Sunderland, MA.
Futuyma, D. J.: 1986, ‘Reflections on Reflections: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology’, Journal of the History of Biology 19, 303–312.
Futuyma, D. J. and M. Slatkin (eds.): 1983, Coevolution, Sinauer, Sunderland, MA.
Gause, G. F.: 1934, The Struggle for Existence, Hafner, New York.
Gleason, H. A.: 1926, ‘The Individualistic Concept of the Plant Association’, Bulletin of the Torrey Botanical Club 53, 7–26.
Gleason, H. A.: 1939, ‘The Individualistic Concept of the Plant Association’, American Midland Naturalist 21, 92–110.
Hagen, J.: 1988, ‘Organism and Environment: Frederic Clements's Vision of a Unified Physiological Ecology’, in: R. Rainger, K. Benson, and J. Maienschein (eds.), The American Development of Biology, University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia.
Hellman, W. D.: 1982, ‘Norbert Wiener and the Growth of Negative Feedback in Scientific Explanation; With a Proposed Research Program in Cybernetic Analysis’, Ph.D. thesis, Oregon State University.
Horn, H. S.: 1975, ‘Markovian Properties of Forest Succession’, in: M. L. Cody and J. M. Diamond (eds.), Ecology and Evolution of Communities, Harvard University Press, Cambridge.
Hutchinson, G. E.: 1940, Book Review of Bio-Ecology, Ecology 21, 267–268.
Hutchinson, G. E.: 1941, ‘Limnological Studies in Connecticut. IV. Mechanism of Intermediary Metabolism in Stratified Lakes’, Ecological Monographs 11, 21–60.
Hutchinson, G. E.: 1948, ‘Circular Causal Systems in Ecology’, Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences 50, 221–246.
Hutchinson, G. E.: 1978, An Introduction to Population Ecology, Yale University Press, New Haven.
Hutchinson, G. E. and A. Wollack: 1940, ‘Studies on Connecticut Lake Sediments II. Chemical Analyses of a Core from Linsley Pond, North Branford’, American Journal of Science 238, 493–517.
Huxley, T. H.: 1873, ‘The Genealogy of Animals’, in: T. H. Huxley, Critiques and Addresses, Appleton, New York.
Jordan, C. F.: 1981, ‘Do Ecosystems Exist?’, American Naturalist 118, 284–287.
Kimler, W. C.: 1986, ‘Advantage, Adaptiveness, and Evolutionary Ecology’, Journal of the History of Biology 19, 215–234.
Kingsland, S. E.: 1985, Modeling Nature: Episodes in the History of Population Ecology, University of Chicago Press, Chicago.
Knight, R. L. and D. P. Swaney: 1981, ‘In Defense of Ecosystems’, American Naturalist 117, 991–992.
Laudan, L.: 1977, Progress and Its Problems, University of California Press, Berkeley.
Lindeman, R. L.: 1942, ‘The Trophic-Dynamic Aspect of Ecology’, Ecology 23, 399–418.
MacArthur, R. H.: 1958, ‘Population Ecology of some Warblers of Northeastern Coniferous Forests’, Ecology 39, 599–619.
Maienschein, J.: 1985, ‘Preformation or New Formation — or Neither or Both’, in: T. J. Horder, J. A. Witkowski, and C. C. Wylie (eds.), A History of Embryology, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
Mayr, E.: 1961, ‘Cause and Effect in Biology’, Science 134, 1501–1506.
McIntosh, R. P.: 1975, ‘H. A. Gleason, “Individualistic Ecologist,” 1882–1975: His Contributions to Ecological Theory’, Bulletin of the Torrey Botanical Club 102, 253–273.
McIntosh, R. P.: 1985, The Background of Ecology: Concepts and Theory, Cambridge University Press, New York.
McNaughton, S. J. and M. B. Coughenour: 1981, ‘The Cybernetic Nature of Ecosystems’, American Naturalist 117, 985–990.
Moran, E. F.: 1984, ‘Limitations and Advances in Ecosystem Research’, in: E. Moran (ed.), The Ecosystem Concept in Anthropology, Westview Press, Boulder, CO.
Nagel, E.: 1961, The Structure of Science, Harcourt, Brace, & World, New York.
Nitecki, M. H. (ed.): 1983, Coevolution, University of Chicago, Chicago.
Odum, E. P.: 1939, ‘Variation in the Heart Rate of Birds: A Study in Physiological Ecology’, Ph.D. thesis, University of Illinois.
Odum, E. P.: 1959, Fundamentals of Ecology, 2nd ed., Saunders, Philadelphia.
Odum, E. P.: 1968, ‘Energy Flow in Ecosystems: A Historical Review’, American Zoologist 8, 11–18.
Odum, E. P.: 1983, Basic Ecology, Saunders, New York.
Odum, H. T.: 1957, ‘Trophic Structure and Productivity of Silver Springs, Florida’, Ecological Monographs 27, 55–112.
Odum, H. T.: 1971, Environment, Power, and Society, Wiley-Interscience, New York.
Odum, H. T. and E. P. Odum: 1955, ‘Trophic Structure and Productivity of a Windward Coral Reef Community on Eniwetok Atoll’, Ecological Monographs 25, 291–320.
Odum, H. T. and R. C. Pinkerton: 1955, ‘Time's Speed Regulator: The Optimum Efficiency for Maximum Power Output in Physical and Biological Systems’, American Scientist 43, 331–343.
Orians, G. H.: 1975, ‘Diversity, Stability and Maturity in Natural Ecosystems’, in: W. H. van Dobben and R. H. Lowe-McConnell (eds.), Unifying Concepts in Ecology, Dr. W. Junk, Dordrecht.
Patten, B. C. and E. P. Odum: 1981, ‘The Cybernetic Nature of Ecosystems’, American Naturalist 118, 886–895.
Rapport, D. J., C. Thorpe, and H. A. Regier: 1979, ‘Ecosystem Medicine’, Bulletin of the Ecological Society of America 60 (4), 180–182.
Ruse, M.: 1973, The Philosophy of Biology, Hutchinson, London.
Simberloff, D.: 1980, ‘A Succession of Paradigms in Ecology: Essentialism to Materialism and Probabilism’, Synthese 43, 3–39.
Smith, E. A.: 1984, ‘Anthropology, Evolutionary Ecology, and the Limitations of the Ecosystem Concept’, in: E. Moran (ed.), The Ecosystem Concept in Anthropology, Westview Press, Boulder.
Strong, D. R.: 1980, ‘Null Hypotheses in Ecology’, Synthese 43, 271–285.
Strong, D. R., D. Simberloff, L. G. Abele, and A. B. Thistle: 1984, Preface, Ecological Communities: Conceptual Issues and the Evidence, Princeton University Press, Princeton.
Tansley, A. G.: 1947, ‘The Early History of Modern Plant Ecology in Britain’, Journal of Ecology 35, 130–137.
Taylor, P. J.: (in press), ‘Technocratic Optimism and the Partial Transformation of Ecological Metaphor after World War II’, Journal of the History of Biology.
Tobey, R.: 1981, Saving the Prairies: The Life Cycle of the Founding School of American Plant Ecology, 1895–1955, University of California Press, Berkeley.
Vandermeer, J.: 1984, ‘The Evolution of Mutualism’, in: B. Shorrocks (ed.), Evolutionary Ecology, Blackwell, Oxford.
Westman, W. E. and R. K. Peet: 1985, ‘Robert H. Whittaker (1920–1980): The Man and his Work’, in: R. K. Peet (ed.) Plant Community Ecology: Papers in Honor of Robert H. Whittaker, Dr. W. Junk, Dordrecht.
Whittaker, R. H.: 1948, ‘A Vegetation Analysis of the Great Smoky Mountains’, Ph.D. thesis, University of Illinois.
Whittaker, R. H.: 1970, Communities and Ecosystems, MacMillan, New York.
Whittaker, R. H.: 1972, ‘An Hypothesis Rejected: The Natural Distribution of Vegetation’, in: W. A. Jensen and F. B. Salisbury, Botany: An Ecological Approach, Wadsworth, Belmont, CA, pp. 689–691.
Wiener, N.: 1948, Cybernetics: or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine, John Wiley & Sons, New York.
Wiens, J. A. 1984, ‘On Understanding a Non-Equilibrium World: Myth and Reality in Community Patterns and Processes’, in: D. R. Strong, D. Simberloff, L. G. Abele, and A. B. Thistle (eds.) Ecological Communities: Conceptual Issues and the Evidence, Princeton University Press, Princeton.
Williams, G. C.: 1966, Adaptation and Natural Selection: A Critique of Some Current Evolutionary Thought, Princeton University Press, Princeton.
Wilson, D. S.: 1976, ‘Evolution on the Level of Communities’, Science 192, 1358–1360.
Wilson, D. S.: 1980, The Natural Selection of Populations & Communities, Cummings, Menlo Park, CA.
Wright, L.: 1984, ‘Functions’, in: E. Sober (ed.) Conceptual Issues in Evolutionary Biology, M.I.T. Press, Cambridge.
Wynne-Edwards, V. C.: 1962, Animal Dispersion in Relation to Social Behaviour, Oliver & Boyd, Edinburgh.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Hagen, J.B. Research perspectives and the anomalous status of modern ecology. Biol Philos 4, 433–455 (1989). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00162589
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00162589