Natural Kinds, Natural History and Ecology

Abstract

What are the objects of study in ecology and where do we get them? The answers to these questions are important both for the understanding of how ecology is currently functioning as a science and for the acquisition of a view of how ecology may progress and develop into a more mature science.

The confusion of the times, and the scarcity of authentic memorials, oppose equal difficulties to the historian, who attempts to preserve a clear and unbroken thread of narration. Surrounded with imperfect fragments, always concise, often obscure, and sometimes contradictory, he is reduced to collect, to compare, and to conjecture: and though he ought never to place his conjectures in the rank of facts, yet the knowledge of human nature, and of the sure operation of its fierce and unrestrained passions, might, on some occasions supply the want of historical materials.

Edward Gibbon

I wish to thank James Griesemer for helpful comments on the manuscript and Warren Goldfarb and Peter Hylton for discussion on this and related topics.