Philosophers of science have examined The Theory of Island Biogeography by Robert MacArthur and E. O. Wilson (1967) mainly due to its important contribution to modeling in ecology, but they have not examined it as a representative case of ecological explanation. In this paper, I scrutinize the type of explanation used in this paradigmatic work of ecology. I describe the philosophy of science of MacArthur and Wilson and show that it is mechanistic. Based on this account and in light of (...) contributions to the mechanistic conception of explanation due to Craver (2007), and Bechtel and Richardson (1993), I argue that MacArthur and Wilson use a mechanistic approach to explain the species-area relationship. In light of this examination, I formulate a normative account of mechanistic explanation in ecology. Furthermore, I argue that it offers a basis for methodological unification of ecology and solves a dispute on the nature of ecology. Lastly, I show that proposals for a new paradigm of biogeography appear to maintain the norms of mechanistic explanation implicit in The Theory of Island Biogeography. (shrink)

In 1966, island biogeographer Sherwin Carlquist published a list of 24 principles governing long-distance dispersal and evolution on islands. The 24 principles describe many aspects of island biology, from long-distance dispersal and establishment to community change and assemblage. Although this was an active period for island biogeography, other models and research garnered much more attention than did Carlquist’s. In this review, over 40 years of support for or against Carlquist’s principles is presented. Recent work has supported most of the 24 (...) principles, and improved methodologies have generally substantiated his initial claims. However, Carlquist’s original work and ideas remain relatively under-represented in the biogeographic literature. Use of philosophical model domains provides one explanation as to why Carlquist’s work has received little attention. Carlquist’s principles are largely natural history tests, and don’t translate well into the theoretical, design of preserves, or the experimental domains—whereas other competing models do well in such domains. (shrink)

“Scientific theories are maps of the natural world.” This metaphor is often used as part of a deflationary argument for a weak but relatively global version of scientific realism, a version that recognizes the place of conventions, goals, and contingencies in scientific representations, while maintaining that they are typically true in a clear and literal sense. By examining, in a naturalistic way, some relationships between maps and what they map, we question the scope and value of realist construals of maps—and (...) by extension of scientific representations. Deflationary philosophy of science requires more variegated stances. (shrink)