Ecological Science as a Reflection of Social Theory?

by Sean P. Harvey

As a nascent science in the early twentieth century, ecology sought to understand the physical and biological environment holistically. Thinkers such as Frederic Clements and Henry Chandler Cowles posited a notion of an organismic environment and the orderly advancement of ecosystems into a penultimate ecological state of stability and community. However, the end of the twentieth century witnessed a dramatic shift in the way that ecologists perceived and understood nature. Ecologists in the 1980s and 1990s rejected the organismic model posited by Clements and instead offered a model of unpredictability, chaos and individualism. Daniel Botkin sought to repudiate the old order of ecological thinking by emphasizing fluctuations and individualism instead of communalism and stability:

“Wherever we seek to find constancy we discover change…we find nature undisturbed is not constant in form…Nature undisturbed by human influence seems more like a symphony whose harmonies arise from variation and change over every interval of time…always in flux, changing over many scales of time and space, changing with individual births and deaths, local disruptions and recoveries, larger scale responses to climate from one glacial age to another.”[1]

Botkin railed against the immutability of a holistic, climactic stage of nature and instead emphasized the constant variations of nature and man’s inevitable role in the manipulation of nature. Botkin averred that the communalism and immutability of nature espoused by Clements precluded society from utilizing technology to improve and intervene in nature. This new incarnation of ecology embraced the use of technology to rectify and improve nature, a radical departure from the ideal climax state that once guided the field.

The sea-change in ecological thinking has two very important implications for environmental science. First, Botkin’s emphasis on technology prevents the lay-public from becoming involved in the solutions to the world’s environmental problems. The reliance on advanced technological solutions empowers technocrats to devise methods that often cater to their own parochial, scientific interests. This can lead to unfeasible and oftentimes zany solutions that prove to be completely unworkable in real world. Furthermore, it undermines the democratic process and prevents everyday citizens from taking positive steps to curtail their own personal effects on the environment. Second, it suggests that the science of ecology may be motivated by more than just the scientific questions. In Nature’s Economy: A History of Ecological Ideas, prominent historian Donald Worster suggests that ecologists were apt to superimpose the popular economic or political ideology of the time onto the behavioral aspects of nature.[2] The infiltration of science by ideology negates the benefits of using objective inquiry and in managing the environment is negated. If ideology direct the avenues of scientific analysis, then the scientific enterprise becomes warped and a mere extension of the political sphere. This seems to beg the question: Is there an objective science and can we use it to more effectively manage the environment?

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[1] Daniel Botkin, Discordant Harmonies: A New Ecology for the Twenty-First Century, (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990), 62.

[2] Donald Worster, Nature’s Economy: A History of Ecological Ideas, (Cambridge UK: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 428.

Society in Science

by Random Student

The history and development of the field of ecology has reflected changes in economic theory, political and social evolution, and technological advancement. Ecology serves as our source of knowledge for understanding the way the various elements of nature come together, and serves as our tool in understanding our relationship with nature – and what that relationship should be. Since ecology gained momentum as a recognizable science in the late 19^th century, human society and events outside of science have affected its direction. Thus, these external forces have influenced our understanding of the natural world and how we should approach it.

An example of this phenomenon is that of conservation ecology of the early 20^th century in America. Such conservationists like Gifford Pinchot argued for a progressive approach to nature – one where man must manage, control, and regulate nature to maximize its productivity. But how and why did the direction of ecology take this turn? American society was responsible. Ecological historian, Donald Worster, remarked, “conservation was a major expression of the Progressive political movement (Worster, 262).” The Progressive Era in America featured political reform, increased regulation in the private sector, and support for renewed moral awareness. Trust busting, political accountability, and Prohibition were a result. But the Progressive period also included “efficient management of natural resources in the public domain (Worster, 262).” In an era of cleaning up politics and purifying American values, Pinchot in 1910 described his “Principles of Conservation” as “development, preservation, and the common good…(for) the development of resources, and the prevention of waste and loss, the protection of the public interests, by foresight, prudence, and ordinary business and home-making virtues (Pinchot, Principles, 3).” Conservationists like Pinchot aimed to apply the principles of human society to nature, hoping that the same reforms of society could reform and “fix” nature to make it more efficient public, and lasting. It seems that the conservation movement and ecology theory of the early 19^th century would never have existed without the dominating Progressive ideology.

Since the conservation movement, ecology has evolved. With technological advancement and two World Wars, ecologists lacked cohesion and disagreed as to what ecology stood for and what matters it should address. More recently, ecologists returned to the Darwinian conclusions that nature is not an efficient, self-regulating mechanical economy, but rather a chaotic, random, unpredictable unbalance. What is the next phase in ecology’s evolution? Will human events and outside institutions continue to skew its conclusions? Rarely has science and society changed roles – where science has fundamentally changed the direction of human society. Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution certainly transformed centuries of human purpose and direction. The splitting of atoms and the invention of nuclear weapons too affected public and economic policy. What the field of ecology must do now is join evolution and the A-bomb and convince society of the impending threat of global climate change. Will the political, economic, and social mindsets and values of today’s world curb the hard science and evidence of climate change before it is too late? Just as animals deemed as “varmints” and “predators” were victims of the conservation movement, will the ecosystems of our planet be the victims of our ignorance and delay? Pinchot hoped to preserve our natural resources for the benefit of many; we must now preserve the planet for the benefit of all.

Murdering to Dissect

by Sally

The years after World War II saw a movement in ecology toward a more quantitatively rigorous science. Ecologists sought to legitimize growing environmental concerns with mathematical equations about population dynamics and species interactions. In 1966, mathematician-biologist Daniel Simberloff and entomologist E.O. Wilson paired up to prove definitively that the number of different species an area of land could support was directly related to its size. They picked a few small mangrove islands off the coast of Florida as their test sites. They first documented the size and number of animal species, all of which were insects, then fumigated the islands, eliminating all animal life. They then monitored the recolonization of the islands by species from nearby islands and the mainland. They found that while species levels always returned to the same size after recolonization, they were not the same in content; that is, the same types of insects did not always repopulate the same islands. These experiments were aimed at providing scientific support for a campaign for larger wildlife preserves. They were meant to show how large, continuous tracts of land were necessary to maintain healthy levels of biodiversity.

Simberloff and Wilson’s experiments were well-intentioned, but their experiments raise some questions about the relationship between science and environmentalism. Science as it is practiced today is highly reductionist, seeking to answer big questions with small experiments. One has to ask whether killing all the bugs on a small mangrove island can really tell us anything helpful about how to not destroy our world. As Donald Worster puts it “how would all the elaborate mathematics help to preserve the earth from degredation?” However, I am inclined to think that despite their penchant for mathematical models, Simberloff and Wilson were not out of touch with the reality of nature. Indeed, they believed that by simulating mass-extinction, they could learn something about the current, real mass extinction that is now happening around us. They simply wanted to test established assumptions about population patterns, something that we certainly need to know more about if we are truly to understand how to protect wild species. A scientist who restricts himself to revering nature and who never tinkers with it is like a surgeon who refuses to dissect a body out of respect for the dead. Yes, they will never do any damage; but neither will they ever learn anything useful.

Watch Simberloff and Wilson talk about their experiment here.
Their segment begins at 34:50.