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  1. Methodological problems in evolutionary biology IV. Stress and stress tolerance, an excercise in definitions.Wim J. Van der Steen & Martin Scholten - 1985 - Acta Biotheoretica 34 (1):81-90.
    Grime in a recently developed theory distinguished three basic plant strategies: stress tolerance,ruderality and competition. He relates them to environments characterized in terms of stress and disturbance. Classifications of strategies and environments both are ultimately defined in terms of production. This tends to make the theory tautological. If the theory is to make sense, environments had better be defined in independent terms.
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  • The competition controversy in community ecology.Gregory Cooper - 1993 - Biology and Philosophy 8 (4):359-384.
    There is a long history of controversy in ecology over the role of competition in determining patterns of distribution and abundance, and over the significance of the mathematical modeling of competitive interactions. This paper examines the controversy. Three kinds of considerations have been involved at one time or another during the history of this debate. There has been dispute about the kinds of regularities ecologists can expect to find, about the significance of evolutionary considerations for ecological inquiry, and about the (...)
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  • Dialectics and reductionism in ecology.Richard Levins & Richard Lewontin - 1980 - Synthese 43 (1):47 - 78.
    Biology above the level of the individual organism ? population ecology and genetics, community ecology, biogeography and evolution ? requires the study of intrinsically complex systems. But the dominant philosophies of western science have proven to be inadequate for the study of complexity:(1)The reductionist myth of simplicity leads its advocates to isolate parts as completely as possible and study these parts. It underestimates the importance of interactions in theory, and its recommendations for practice (in agricultural programs or conservation and environmental (...)
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  • The Theory of Island Biogeography.Robert H. Macarthur & Edward O. Wilson - 2002 - Journal of the History of Biology 35 (1):178-179.
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  • Evolutionary ecology and the use of natural selection in ecological theory.James P. Collins - 1986 - Journal of the History of Biology 19 (2):257-288.
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  • Emergence of New Fields in Ecology: The Case of Life History Studies.K. J. Korfiatis & G. P. Stamou - 1994 - History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences 16 (1):97 - 116.
    We examine the emergence of the field of life-history strategies during the 1950s. (We consider a 'field' an area of scientific activity consisting of a theoretical core, a subject of research, a vocabulary and research tools). During the late 1940s and early 1950s, population ecology faced many problems, concerning its conceptual framework, its mathematical models, experimental deficiencies, etc. Research on life-history characteristics remained descriptive, lacking explanations about the causes and significance of phenomena. This was due to the deficiencies of the (...)
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  • Defining ecology: Ecological theories, mathematical models, and applied biology in the 1960s and 1970s.Paolo Palladino - 1991 - Journal of the History of Biology 24 (2):223 - 243.
    Ever since the early decades of this century, there have emerged a number of competing schools of ecology that have attempted to weave the concepts underlying natural resource management and natural-historical traditions into a formal theoretical framework. It was widely believed that the discovery of the fundamental mechanisms underlying ecological phenomena would allow ecologists to articulate mathematically rigorous statements whose validity was not predicated on contingent factors. The formulation of such statements would elevate ecology to the standing of a rigorous (...)
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  • Ecological Understanding: The Nature of Theory and the Theory of Nature.Steward T. A. Pickett, Jurek Kolasa & Clive G. Jones - 1994 - Academic Press.
    Ecology is an historical science in which theories can be as difficult to test as they are to devise. This volume, intended for ecologists and evolutionary biologists, reviews ecological theories, and how they are generated, evaluated, and categorized. Synthesizing a vast and sometimes labyrinthine literature, this book is a useful entry into the scientific philosophy of ecology and natural history. The need for integration of the contributions to theory made by different disciplines is a central theme of this book. The (...)
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  • Introduction: Between ecology and evolutionary biology.James P. Collins, John Beatty & Jane Maienschein - 1986 - Journal of the History of Biology 19 (2):169-180.
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  • On the semiotic dimension of ecological theory: The case of island biogeography. [REVIEW]Yrjö Haila - 1986 - Biology and Philosophy 1 (4):377-387.
    The Macarthur-Wilson equilibrium theory of island biogeography has had a contradictory role in ecology. As a lasting contribution, the theory has created a new way of viewing insular environments as dynamical systems. On the other hand, many of the applications of the theory have reduced to mere unimaginative curve-fitting. I analyze this paradox in semiotic terms: the theory was mainly equated with the simple species-area relationship which became a signifier of interesting island ecology. The theory is, however, better viewed as (...)
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  • Methodology revitalized?Peter B. Sloep - 1993 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 44 (2):231-249.
    Controversies in science have a tendency to be long-lasting. Moreover, they tend to wither rather than be solved by sorting out the arguments pro and con. Barring the sociological dimension, an important factor in the perpetuation of scientific controversies seems to be the contestants' passion for broad philosophical theses when it comes to defending their respective positions. In this paper one such controversy is analysed. It involves the alleged use of Popperian falsificationism to defend a position in (community) ecology some (...)
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  • On inference in ecology and evolutionary biology: The problem of multiple causes.Ray Hilborn & Stephen C. Stearns - 1982 - Acta Biotheoretica 31 (3):145-164.
    If one investigates a process that has several causes but assumes that it has only one cause, one risks ruling out important causal factors. Three mechanisms account for this mistake: either the significance of the single cause under test is masked by noise contributed by the unsuspected and uncontrolled factors, or the process appears only when two or more causes interact, or the process appears when there are present any of a number of sufficient causes which are not mutally exclusive. (...)
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  • The nature of evolutionary theory: The semantic challenge.Peter B. Sloep & Wim J. van der Steen - 1987 - Biology and Philosophy 2 (1):1-15.
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  • The nature of evolutionary theory: The semantic challenge. [REVIEW]Peter B. Sloep & Wim J. Steen - 1987 - Biology and Philosophy 2 (1):1-15.
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  • "strategic" Thought And The Development Of Life-history Strategy Models In Ecology: The "r-K Selection" Model.Kostas Korfiatis & Georgios Stamou - 1995 - Neusis 2:27-43.
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