Against Lawton’s Contingency Thesis; or, Why the Reported Demise of Community Ecology Is Greatly Exaggerated

Linquist, Stefan

doi:10.1086/684024

Cited by 10 publications

(8 citation statements)

References 18 publications

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“…However, it is metatheoretical structuralism that has produced the greatest number of analyses of particular theories belonging to the biological sciences. Just to mention a few, in the field of evolutionary biology, we can see the analyses of the structure of P. Lorenzano and M. A. Díaz Author's personal copy the theory of evolution by natural selection made by , Ginnobili & Blanco (2017), Díez & Lorenzano (2013, 2015, as well as of the theory of common descent made by Blanco (2012); in the field of inheritance and genetic theories (classical, molecular and population genetics), the works of Balzer & Dawe (1986, 1990, Balzer & Lorenzano (2000), Casanueva (1997), Casanueva & Méndez (2005) and Lorenzano (1995Lorenzano ( , 2000Lorenzano ( , 2014; cellular and tissue theories have been the object of structuralist analysis by Asúa & Klimovsky (1987, 1990, as has the theory of excitable membranes by Müller & Pilatus (1982), and of neuroendocrinology by Bernabé (2019).…”

Section: The Concept Of Theory From the Point Of View Of Metatheoretimentioning

confidence: 99%

Laws, Models, and Theories in Biology: A Unifying Interpretation

Lorenzano

Díaz

2020

History, Philosophy and Theory of the Life Sciences

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Author's personal copy 164 scientific practice (Achinstein 1968; Hesse 1966; Harré 1970), as well as investigating what role analogies and metaphors play in the construction of models (Black 1962; Hesse 1966) or of other components, linked to these, raised by historicist philosophers, such as exemplars (Kuhn 1970). At the present time, the importance of models in scientific practice is being emphasized. The semantic view-which deals with the subject matter of models within the framework of a general conception of scientific theories-is being imposed as an alternative to the classical and historicist views of scientific theories, 1 and model views of science are being developed-which deal with questions of the relationship between models and experience and between models and general theories independently of a general metatheory of science (

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Section: The Concept Of Theory From the Point Of View Of Metatheoretimentioning

confidence: 99%

Laws, Models, and Theories in Biology: A Unifying Interpretation

Lorenzano

Díaz

2020

History, Philosophy and Theory of the Life Sciences

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“…These relaxed standards, of what counts as a law, have been perceived as a reply to skeptics of general laws in ecology (e.g., Lawton 1999;Peters 1991;McCoy 1990, 1993). I pay attention to the work of Stefan Linquist (2015;Linquist et al 2016), who has developed a comprehensive recent assessment of the prospect of laws in ecology.…”

Section: Invariance In Ecological Explanationmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…-Colyvan and Ginzburg 2003, 651 1. INTRODUCTION The question of whether there are laws of nature in ecology has developed substantially in the last 20 years (Colyvan and Ginzburg 2003;Ginzburg and Colyvan 2004;Lange 2005;Linquist 2015). There is a new focus on the robust and resilient generalizations that ecological science produces (Linquist et al 2016).…”

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confidence: 99%

General Unificatory Theories in Community Ecology

Lean¹

2019

Philosophical Topics

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The question of whether there are laws of nature in ecology has developed substantially in the last 20 years. Many have attempted to rehabilitate ecology’s lawlike status through establishing that ecology possesses laws that robustly appear across many different ecological systems. I argue that there is still something missing, which explains why so many have been skeptical of ecology’s lawlike status. Community ecology has struggled to establish what I call a General Unificatory Theory (GUT). The lack of a GUT causes problems for explanation as there are no guidelines for how to integrate the lower-level mathematical and causal models into a larger theory of how ecological assemblages are formed. I turn to a promising modern attempt to provide a unified higher-level explanation in ecology, presented by ecologist Mark Vellend, and advocate for philosophical engagement with its prospects for aiding ecological explanation.

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“…It is also 34 important to view this project from multiple perspectives in order to tackle the inherent 35 complexity and provide a unified or coherent picture among theories for a more unified 36 conception of community ecology. There have been many attempts to do so, and the 37 importance of these efforts has been recognized, [9,11,14,20,[26][27][28][29][30][31], though conditioned 38 on some skepticism about the possibility of finding well-supported law-like regularities 39 in community ecology [19,[32][33][34].…”

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confidence: 99%

Can constraint closure provide a generalized understanding of community dynamics in ecosystems?

Peck

Heiss

2020

Preprint

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Since the inception of the discipline, understanding causal complexity in ecological communities has been a challenge. Here we draw insights from recent work on constraint closure that suggests ways of grappling with ecological complexity that yield generalizable theoretical insights. Using a set of evolutionary constraints on species flow through ecological communities, which include: selection, species drift, dispersal, and speciation, combined with multispecies interactions such as mutualistic interactions, and abiotic constraints, we demonstrate how constraint closure allows communities to emerge as semi-autonomous structures. Through agent-based modeling, we articulate ways that ecological pattern formation, viewed through the lens of constraint closure, informs questions about stability and turnover in community ecology. 12Currently, there does not seem to be a unified body of theory and practice that 13 explains most features of community structure. The hunt for generality has also been 14 fraught (See (Elliott-Graves Manuscript in Review) for a detailed overview). Theories in 15 the discipline often seem a piecemeal confederation of contingent ideas that carve nature 16 mid-bone, as it were, often focused on specific natural systems that provide only limited 17 empirical and theoretical support among other differently structured ecological 18 communities. It is clear that the theoretical constructions used by ecologists have been 19 crucially instrumental in the development of research programs and have allowed 20 progress in understanding community ecology. However, even basic concepts in the 21 discipline are often viewed differently by different research groups that are often divided 22March 10, 2020 1/20 into different camps, often to the point that there are even debates about the usefulness 23 of the concept of community ecology. For example, the following questions are still 24 being debated. Are they individuals [5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14]? Which ecological theories best describe the 25 dynamics of their structure, maintenance, and development [8,9,11,13,14]? Do they 26 have boundaries [5,15]? Are they stable [16]? How are communities assembled, and are 27 they so contingent that each community must be examined as an individual case 28 study [17][18][19][20][21][22][23]? Are ecosystems even real entities [24,25]? 29These questions are all interrelated, yet the abundant theories used to tame and 30 understand these ecological systems rarely provide a unified or coherent picture among 31 theories. Moreover, in order to make progress in the idea of an ecological community, it 32 seems essential to discover generalities that hold across the numerous possible biotic 33 configurations that comprise these individual community assemblages. It is also 34 important to view this project from multiple perspectives in order to tackle the inherent 35 complexity and provide a unified or coherent picture among theories for a more unified 36 conception of community ecology. There have been many attempts to...

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Against Lawton’s Contingency Thesis; or, Why the Reported Demise of Community Ecology Is Greatly Exaggerated

Cited by 10 publications

References 18 publications

Laws, Models, and Theories in Biology: A Unifying Interpretation

Laws, Models, and Theories in Biology: A Unifying Interpretation

General Unificatory Theories in Community Ecology

Can constraint closure provide a generalized understanding of community dynamics in ecosystems?

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