Exceptions make the rules: The role of disturbing conditions in ecological theorizing.

详细信息   

• 作者：Eliot ; Christopher Hobson.
• 学历：Doctor
• 年：2004
• 导师：Waters, C. Kenneth
• 毕业院校：University of Minnesota
• 专业：Biology, Ecology.;Philosophy.;History of Science.
• ISBN：9780496135684
• CBH：3152843
• Country：USA
• 语种：English
• FileSize：11072363
• Pages：196

文摘

This dissertation considers the role of what have been called "disturbing conditions" in scientific theories, and in ecology in particular. Disturbing conditions are causal factors which influence the phenomena described by a theory, but which are excluded from consideration within the theory at some point in its development. Ecologists, who develop theory in the branch of biology concerned with relationships among organisms and their environments, try to construct explanatory and predictive theories in a domain where relevant causal factors are extremely numerous and diverse. Their theories inevitably face disturbing conditions. Philosophers of science considering such domains have developed a number of arguments to the effect that general theory therein must be impossible or severely compromised. A main reason is the likelihood that disturbing conditions pose exceptions to any potential general laws, falsifying them. In response to this concern, I consider here whether ecologists do face problems due to disturbing conditions, and how they handle them, if so. I focus the role of disturbing conditions in the development of theories of ecological succession---theories about how the species composition of an area changes naturally over time---with a focus on two major theories of vegetation, Frederic Clements's early theory, and David Tilman's recent one. The major finding is that their theories do not face exceptions (nor therefore also the philosophers' problems) because they neither assert nor aim to assert law-like generalizations. I discuss their strategies for handling the remaining problem of how to explain vegetation despite disturbing conditions.