Article ID: CBB000770758

Method and Metaphysics in Clements's and Gleason's Ecological Explanations (2007)

unapi

To generate explanatory theory, ecologists must wrestle with how to represent the extremely many, diverse causes behind phenomena in their domain. Early twentieth-century plant ecologists Frederic E. Clements and Henry A. Gleason provide a textbook example of different approaches to explaining vegetation, with Clements allegedly committed, despite abundant exceptions, to a law of vegetation, and Gleason denying the law in favor of less organized phenomena. However, examining Clements's approach to explanation reveals him not to be expressing a law, and instead to be developing an explanatory structure without laws, capable of progressively integrating causal complexity. Moreover, Clements and Gleason largely agree on the causes of vegetation; but, since causal understanding here underdetermines representation, they differ on how to integrate recognized causes into general theory---that is, in their methodologies. Observers of the case may have mistakenly assumed that scientific representation across the disciplines typically aims at laws like Newton's, and that representations always reveal scientists' metaphysical commitments. Ironically, in the present case, this assumption seems to have been made even by observers who regard Clements as nave for his alleged commitment to an ecological law.

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Authors & Contributors
da Rocha Brando Fernandez, Fernanda
Colwell, Mary
Kirchhoff, Thomas
Güttler, Nils
Slusarczyk, J. M.
Sinha, Jagdish N.
Concepts
Ecology
Environmental sciences
Plant ecology
Botany
Plants
Conservation of natural resources
Time Periods
20th century, early
19th century
20th century
Places
United States
Europe
Maine (U.S.)
Tatra Mountains (Slovakia and Poland)
Tanzania (Tanganyika, Zanzibar)
Russia
Institutions
Glacier National Park
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