Historians of science generally consider that Darwinism has played an important part in the birth of scientific ecology. Now most 19th century seminal works of the new discipline have been elaborated within a Lamarckian framework. The source of this paradox lies in the double-content of the adaptation concept, considered as a static phenomenon by the ecologists and as a dynamic process by the evolutionists. Although closely related nowadays, as shown by modern evolutionary ecology, the problematics of the fields of research (...) at issue were initially separated. (shrink)

Science in the twentieth century has relied on enormous financial investment for its survival. Once departed from an amateur pursuit, industry, charity and government have ploughed huge resources into it, supplying the professional occupation of science with a complex of institutional facilities – full-time posts, research laboratories, students and journals. Financial support, however, has always been a limited resource and has gone most generously to those areas of research which appear particularly novel, innovative or promising, that is to the ‘leading (...) edges’. To secure the funds necessary to maintain their life-style, then, scientists have had to make their activities scientifically and economically attractive to the funding bodies. Historians and sociologists of twentieth-century science have tended to follow these priorities and have concentrated on the leading edges. We have studied at length the acquisition of new knowledge through research, the creation of the institutional complex and the furtherance of science through innovation, specialty and discipline formation, part and parcel of which is the gathering of the necessary funds. The competition for funds has been investigated in analyses of controversy between competing groups within a research area, which has provided important models for the social and conceptual development of science. This emphasis, however, may have missed a great deal of what happens in science. (shrink)

This article focuses on early British vegetation science, in particular on the British Vegetation Committee. In earlier histories of (plant) ecology, the period of the Committee's life, 1904-1913, renowned for its surveys and its maps, was depicted as a brief prelude to British plant ecology. This article traces the course of "survey" and "ecology" within the Committee, demonstrating that survey and ecology were both distinct and intertwined within the Committee. The Committee adhered to two lines of research, one analyzing relatively (...) large areas of vegetation on a small scale (few details), and the other, relatively small areas on a large scale (great detail). When the Committee was founded, vegetation research of relatively large areas dominated, but the balance gradually swung towards research on small areas. Two prominent Committee members, Smith and Tansley, furthermore advocated two research plans, a national survey plan and an ecological research plan. These diverging ideals however co-existed peacefully and uncontroversially, in contrast to a survey and ecology dichotomy suggested in earlier accounts. An analysis demonstrates the intertwinement of survey and ecology in the period of the Committee's existence. The "ecological expeditions" also mapped vegetation, and the scale of the "survey work" moreover increased in the Committee's early years. Only by acknowledging their intertwinement can the fate of a particular kind of "survey-research" be understood. My analysis shows that this kind of vegetation research did not survive the Committee because of its ecological orientation. This conclusion contradicts the impression prevailing from earlier historical accounts, viz. that British survey work failed because it was insufficiently ecological. (shrink)