I’m still looking for a few more speakers interested in this topic to fill
out an Organized Oral Session proposal for the 2015 ESA meeting. See the
description below. If you are interested in making a presentation, either
in this session or perhaps a related session if there is enough interest,
please email me your tentative title ASAP, ideally by Wednesday, since the
proposals are due this Thursday.
Michael Huston
Environmental Influences on Ecological Theory: The Effects of Climatic,
Geological, Historical, Social, Political, and Economic Conditions
A organized oral session proposed for the 100th Anniversary Meeting of
The
Ecological Society of American, developed by Michael Huston and others
Description:
The relatively short history of the field of Ecology is full of
conflicting
paradigms, paradigm shifts, and vigorous arguments between leading
ecologists and “schools” of ecology. Although ecological hypotheses are
developed and tested using the time-honored processes of the scientific
method, multiple alternative, and sometimes conflicting, hypotheses are
often proposed as explanations for a particular phenomenon or class of
phenomena. Ecologists work on all of the major continents and all of the
world’s oceans, each of which has its own unique geological, climatic,
biogeographical, and in most cases, political history. Furthermore,
ecologists typically work out of an academic institution or governmental
agency in a specific country, with different institutions, agencies, and
countries having different missions and political and social values, as well
as differing funding structures and overall financial resources. Could
these different and often contrasting social, economic, political, and
environmental settings influence the hypotheses that are developed to
address ecological phenomena? To what extent might conflicting hypotheses
and clashing paradigms be the inevitable results of concepts that are
developed, tested, and elaborated under differing social, political,
economic, and presumably environmental conditions?
Speakers in this half-day session of organized oral presentations will
present case studies that examine some of the well-known and less-well-known
examples of how environmental conditions, defined broadly, have influenced
the types of ecological questions that are asked and the types of hypotheses
that have been developed, as well as the conflicts that alternative
theoretical perspectives have generated. Examples could include such topics
as 1) the influence of social conditions in England on the development of
Thomas Malthus’ influential ideas, and their subsequent influence on Charles
Darwin and many others; 2) the effect of the contrasting geological
histories and environmental drivers of Australia and North America on
hypotheses about the regulation of species abundance and diversity; 3)
differences in the types of questions asked and the types of hypotheses
developed at institutions with an applied versus a basic science focus; 4)
the influence of historical literary and artistic movements on concepts
about how “nature” operates; and 5) the effect of political-economic systems
on the types of hypotheses that are developed (and funded). Related
examples could potentially be found in research done in eutrophic verus
oligotrophic systems, in plants versus animals, at high latitudes versus low
latitudes, or in different biomes.
Speakers will explore the ways in which these conflicting theories could
potentially contribute to more inclusive and broadly applicable theories in
ecology.
