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Ecological Explanation and the Population-Growth Thesis

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 February 2022

Kristin Shrader-Frechette
Kristin Shrader-Frechette*
Affiliation:
University of South Florida
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Extract

Many ecologists have questioned the status of proposed ecological “laws,” charging that they are devoid of empirical content and predictive power or that they are tautological, trivial, circular, or nontestable (Peters 1976, 1978,1991; Simberloff 1983, 1984; Simberloff and Boecklen 1981; Strong and Simberloff 1981; Strong and Levin 1979; see also Williams 1970; Ferguson 1976; Rosenberg 1978; Stebbins 1978; Caplan 1978; and Shrader-Frechette and McCoy 1990). As a result, a number of ecologists have urged their colleagues instead to “study … real organisms,” rather than worry about untestable theories and laws (Van Valen and Pitelka 1974, 925; Mclntosh 1982, 23).

In this essay we investigate the epistemological status of a prominent “ecological law” in order to gain insights about the characteristics of ecological explanation.

Type
Part I. Philosophy of Biology
Information
PSA: Proceedings of the Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association , Volume 1994 , Issue 1: Volume One: Contributed Papers 1994 , 1994 , pp. 34 - 45
Copyright
Copyright © 1994 by the Philosophy of Science Association

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Footnotes

1

The author is grateful to biologists E. D. McCoy and Peter Taylor and philosopher Bruce Silver for constructive criticisms of an earlier version of this essay. Thanks also to the National Science Foundation for Grant DIR-91-12445, “Laws and Explanation in Community Ecology,” that supported work on this project. Remaining errors are the responsibility of the author.

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