Matt,
This is a very interesting article about ecological economics. Four points.
1. I suppose one could write a similarly trenchant piece about
mainstream economics, given its stellar performance these past four years.
2. The article's coverage of theoretical ecology is rather selective
and superficial. Theoretical ecology was hardly a unified cabal and
its internal critics and self critics were quite vigorous, even
vicious. Some of the simplicity the article complains about was
because equations had to be solved by hand and this was before data
loggers, laptops, civilian satellite use, and GIS, making it hard to
test theory at interesting scales.
3. Why do ecologists continually think they are rediscovering people
are parts of ecosystems? Anthropologists have been studying this for
years and of course non-western peoples have made it their life work.
4. How does one do science without theory?
Cheers,
David
At 05:31 AM 2/14/2012, Matt Chew wrote:
Mark Sagoff provides another perspective on this in THE *RISE AND FALL OF
ECOLOGICAL
ECONOMICS*<http://breakthroughjournal.org/content/authors/mark-sagoff/the-rise-and-fall-of-ecologica.shtml>(
http://breakthroughjournal.org/content/authors/mark-sagoff/the-rise-and-fall-of-ecologica.shtml).
Matthew K Chew
Assistant Research Professor
Arizona State University School of Life Sciences
ASU Center for Biology & Society
PO Box 873301
Tempe, AZ 85287-3301 USA
Tel 480.965.8422
Fax 480.965.8330
[email protected] or [email protected]
http://cbs.asu.edu/people/profiles/chew.php
http://asu.academia.edu/MattChew
David Cameron Duffy
Professor of Botany and Unit Leader
Pacific Cooperative Studies Unit (PCSU)
University of Hawai`i
3190 Maile Way St. John 410
Honolulu, HI 96822-2279
(808) 956-8218 phone
(808) 956-4710 fax / (808) 956-3923 (backup fax)
email address: [email protected]
