Philosophy of Ecology: Overview

K deLaplante, Iowa State University, Ames, IA, USA

r 2008 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Introduction

At its most general level, the philosophy of ecology is the philosophical study of (1) ecological phenomena and (2) those
disciplines that study ecological phenomena.
This definition has certain virtues, but it lacks content until we specify what we mean by `ecological phenomena' and what sorts
of disciplines study such phenomena. The task is complicated by the fact that the term `ecology' is used in different ways in
different contexts.
Ecology is of course a science, but ecology is also identified with a broader philosophical and ethical worldview that in
various respects predates modern ecological science. In the `romantic ecology' of the nineteenth century associated with
writers like Wordsworth, Thoreau, and Emerson, it was associated with a rejection of mechanistic, atomistic, and reduc-
tionistic science and philosophy that was believed to be responsible for a variety of human and natural ills. This conception
carried over into the `ecology movement' of the 1960s, an environmental movement tied to broader sociocultural
movements of that decade (women's liberation, civil rights, and a range of anticonsumerist, anticapitalist, and anti-
militarist movements). In recent decades the term has been appropriated by a number of sociopolitical movements and
philosophies that seek to diagnose and ameliorate humanity's dysfunctional relationship with nature (deep ecology, social
ecology, socialist ecology, ecofeminism, etc.). Do all of these philosophies count as philosophies of ecology? Are they all
branches of the philosophy of ecology?
Within academic philosophy, the most common approach to this question tries to draw a distinction between ecological
science and the ethical, social, and broader philosophical uses of the term. Proponents of this approach reserve the term `phi-
losophy of ecology' for the philosophical study of ecological science qua science, with a focus on conceptual issues in fields like
behavioral ecology, population ecology, community ecology, evolutionary ecology, and ecosystem ecology. On this view, ecology
is conceived as a branch of the natural, biological sciences, and the philosophy of ecology as a specialization within the philo-
sophy of science. Though they may occasionally appeal to the ecological sciences for intellectual support for their various
philosophical positions, deep ecology, social ecology, and other radical ecophilosophies are regarded as branches of social theory
or environmental philosophy, not the philosophy of ecology.
The approach just described has much to recommend it, but the conception of the philosophy of ecology that will be
developed in this article takes a somewhat different tack, one that endorses a broader conception of both the domain of ecology
and the philosophy of ecology than is commonly found in the literature. This approach views ecology as a discipline that spans
both the natural and social/behavioral sciences. Once this broader conception of ecological science is acknowledged, it becomes
increasingly difficult to draw sharp lines between philosophical issues raised by ecological science and philosophical issues raised
by a broader ecological worldview.

Ecology: The Study of Ecological Phenomena

Ecology is, at its most general level, the study of `ecological phenomena'. This simple definition is more useful than it appears.
First, though it may initially seem vacuous, the definition acquires content when we specify what it is for a phenomenon to be
`ecological'. It is a useful exercise because it forces us to consider the `object' of ecological theorizing rather than the specific
techniques, theories, or methodologies that characterize particular forms of ecological science. We want to know what it is about a
given subject matter that suggests to the investigator that ecological concepts may be appropriately or usefully applied to it in the
first place.
Second, the definition allows us to distinguish ecological `science' from other forms of ecological inquiry simply by defining
ecological science as `the scientific study of ecological phenomena'. It is important to keep the issue of the scientific status of
different forms of ecological inquiry separate from the question of what it is about some phenomenon that motivates an
ecological inquiry in the first place.
Third, we can now give a correspondingly straightforward definition of a `philosophy of ecology'. If ecology is the study of
ecological phenomena, then a philosophy of ecology is `the ``philosophical'' study of ecological phenomena'. However, this
definition fails to capture the second-order character of much philosophical theorizing (thinking about thinking about X); we will
also want to talk about the philosophical study `of the study' of ecological phenomena, that is, the philosophical study
of `ecology'.
For the remainder of this article we will interpret ecology as ecological science and the philosophy of ecology as the philosophy
of ecological science.

510 Encyclopedia of Ecology, 2nd edition, Volume 3 doi:10.1016/B978-0-444-63768-0.00247-X

 General Ecology: Philosophy of Ecology: Overview 511

Two Conceptions of the Domain of Ecology

What Exactly Is the Domain of Ecology?

Among ecologists and philosophers we can distinguish two schools of thought on this question, each motivated by a variety of
methodological, institutional, and social factors. There are those who defend a more `restrictive' view of the domain of ecology,
and those who endorse a more `expansive' view. The distinction is important as it imposes a corresponding distinction on ways of
understanding the philosophy of ecology.

The Restrictive View: Ecology as Natural Biological Science

The more restrictive view of ecological science is the one encountered today in most standard textbooks used to teach ecology, and
currently has the status of orthodoxy within academic ecology. This view was strongly influenced by the rise of evolutionary and
population ecology in the 1960s and 1970s, which reinforced an organism-centered conception of ecology that focused on
demographic properties of populations and communities. It also developed in response to the appropriation of the term `ecology'
by the environmental movement during the same period, which pressured ecologists to clarify how ecology differs from a general
concern for environmental welfare.
Supporters of the restrictive conception of ecology are inclined to agree with the following claims:

• Ecology is a pluralistic discipline with many subfields, but ultimately it should be understood as a natural (as opposed to
social), biological (as opposed to physical) science.
• The ultimate aim of ecology is to explain and predict patterns and changes in the distribution and abundance of organisms.
Ecology is, fundamentally, a science of demographic processes. Ecosystem processes acquire their ecological relevance indir-
ectly, in virtue of their impact on demographic properties of ecological systems.
• Ecology focuses on the natural world of plants and animals. Ecology does not study the root causes of human impacts on the
environment, or the social ramifications of such impacts. That is the job of the human social sciences and the humanities, and
interdisciplinary fields like environmental studies, which should be distinguished from the natural science of ecology.

The Expansive View: Ecology as Synthetic Systems Science

More expansive conceptions of ecology have also been popular, both within and outside academic ecology. Expansive conceptions
of ecology flourished during the heyday of ecosystem and systems ecology under the influence of Eugene and Howard Odum
(roughly 1950 to late 1970s). Though currently a minority view in mainstream academic ecology, expansionism has seen a
resurgence in certain branches of applied ecology (e.g., systems approaches in conservation ecology and ecosystem management),
and it has always been a foundational premise of ecological economics and those traditions of human ecology that claim a strong
kinship to scientific ecology.
Supporters of a more expansive conception of ecology are likely to agree with the following claims:

• Ecology is a pluralistic discipline with many subfields, and should be understood both as an interdisciplinary science that spans
the physical, biological, and social sciences, and as a synthetic science that has as one of its aims to integrate ecologically
relevant information from various different spatial and temporal scales and levels of organization, including human social
organization.
• The ultimate aim of ecology is to explain and predict properties of living systems (individuals, populations, communities) as
functions of their relationships to their various biotic and abiotic environments. These properties include, but are not restricted
to, demographic processes concerning abundance and distribution of organisms.
• Human beings are the most ecologically influential species on the planet and human ecology – the study of the ecological
dimensions of human nature and human behavior, including the root causes of environmental attitudes and practices – is an
important and legitimate branch of ecology.
Though there exists a set of research traditions in sociology that bear the name `human ecology', this expression is better
understood as a general umbrella term for a wide range of scientific disciplines that address different aspects of
human–environment relations. Human ecology would thus include fields like ecological economics, ecological anthropology,
ecological history, and ecological psychology.
The distinction between the restrictive and expansive conceptions of ecology outlined above induces a corresponding dis-
tinction between restrictive and expansive conceptions of the philosophy of ecology.

Issues in the Philosophy of Ecology: Restrictive Mode

Philosophy of ecology in its more restrictive mode focuses on philosophical issues in population, community, evolutionary, and
ecosystem ecology as these fields are ordinarily represented in the standard textbooks and journals. In this mode, the philosophy
512 General Ecology: Philosophy of Ecology: Overview

of ecology is generally understood as a specialization within the philosophy of the natural, biological sciences, alongside (and
overlapping with) other such specializations, such as the philosophy of evolutionary theory. For the most part, this is how the
subject matter of the philosophy of ecology is conceived within the tradition of Anglo-American philosophy of science.
Many of the philosophical issues studied within this mode are better understood by situating them within the context of the
broader intellectual debate that has served to structure much of the foundational discourse of ecology in the twentieth century.
This is the debate between `holistic' and `reductionistic' research traditions in ecology.
As the story is usually told, holists believe that ecological systems exhibit order, structure, and regularity at population,
community, and ecosystem levels of organization, with higher-level properties and regularities both emerging out of and con-
straining lower-level properties and regularities. Hence, holists believe the search for law-like generalizations governing the
behavior of populations, communities, and ecosystems is a reasonable and desirable goal of ecological research, and formal
investigations of community and ecosystem structure are a worthwhile – indeed, indispensable – activity. The ecosystem concept
has its home within this broadly holistic picture of ecological systems.
Reductionists, on the other hand (as the story goes), believe that ecological systems are nothing more than assemblages of
individual species populations whose behavior is determined largely by response to local environmental conditions (both biotic
and abiotic). There are no such things as `communities' or `ecosystems' with emergent causal properties of their own; any
properties they have are, at best, epiphenomenal statistical properties of the collection of species populations that compose them.
The ecological properties of species populations are best understood in evolutionary terms, as products of natural selection and
other evolutionary mechanisms. Consequently, reductionists eschew the search for general laws governing large classes of eco-
logical systems, for it is assumed there are none to discover; rather, their focus is on local, historically contingent, site-specific
investigations of population behaviors and environmental conditions.
This dualistic narrative, or some variant of it, has provided the motivating context for most of the writings on foundational
issues in ecology, from the early decades of the twentieth century through to the present (e.g., the Clements–Gleason debate over
the nature of communities and ecological succession). In this context, to engage in the philosophy of ecology is to take up and
defend a position on foundational issues that place one somewhere along the spectrum between extreme holism and extreme
reductionism.
One can characterize the core issues in the philosophy of ecology in terms of a set of metaphysical and epistemological
questions on a handful of key topics:
The metaphysical status of ecological entities. What is a population, a community, an ecosystem? Do ecological entities have
emergent properties that play a causal role in determining how ecological systems change over time? Is the concept of a com-
munity or an ecosystem even operationally meaningful?
Law-like regularity versus historical contingency. Does ecology have general laws? If so, what are the causal properties of ecological
systems that ground these regularities? Is the existence of such laws consistent with neo-Darwinian selection theory operating at
the level of individual organisms? At what levels of organization should we expect to see such laws?
The epistemology of modeling. What is the proper role of theoretical models and model-building in ecological science? If models
can only give approximate descriptions of real-world ecological systems, how should their predictions be tested and assessed?
Should we interpret theoretical models realistically or as mere tools for organizing, explaining, and predicting observable patterns
in ecological data?
Model-driven versus data-driven research traditions. Should ecological research focus on empirical case studies of particular
ecological systems rather than general model-building? How should we compare the results of controlled ecological experiments
with the results of comparative field studies of natural systems? What are the weaknesses and advantages of each approach?
Evolution and ecology. Is natural selection acting at the level of individual organisms sufficient to explain the organization and
structure of communities? Do ecosystems coevolve with their component species populations? How, in general, do evolutionary
and ecological mechanisms interact?
This list is incomplete, but the majority of philosophers of science who specialize in the philosophy of ecology have research
programs that bear directly on some subset of these questions.
Have any consensus views emerged with respect to any of these questions? As with any branch of philosophy it would be overly
optimistic to expect consensus on foundational questions. One can, however, identify historical and recent trends in how
ecologists and philosophers have viewed these issues. One can say, for example, that the 1950s and 1960s were dominated by
holistic approaches in ecology, and there was a high degree of optimism about the prospect of a mature ecological science that
could compare favorably with law-governed fields like physics. Opinion swung the other way in the 1970s and 1980s with the rise
to dominance of evolutionary and population approaches in ecology, during which period greater emphasis was placed on
historically contingent, site-specific features of ecological systems, along with an attending skepticism about laws in ecology and
criticism of holistic approaches in ecology generally. Professional philosophers of science have really only started looking at these
questions within the last 15 years, but recent work indicates that the pendulum is swinging back to a more intermediate position
between the holistic optimism of the 1950s and the reductionistic pessimism of the 1980s.
 General Ecology: Philosophy of Ecology: Overview 513

Issues in the Philosophy of Ecology: Expansive Mode

Those who endorse a more expansive conception of ecological science believe that ecological concepts and theories may be
usefully applied to a broader range of phenomena than do defenders of the more restrictive conception. In this section we review
two sources of motivation for the expansive conception, and introduce a set of issues for the philosophy of ecology pertaining to
each source.

Systems Ecology
One of the sources of motivation for the expansive conception of ecology is reflection on the domain of systems ecology. Systems
ecologists use a variety of formal techniques – network theory, information theory, dynamical systems theory, etc. – to describe the
structural and dynamical properties of whole ecosystems. But why should systems ecology be associated with the expansive
conception of ecology? Is systems ecology not commonly viewed as a branch of traditional ecosystem ecology?
To answer this question it may be useful to distinguish three related types of ecological properties or phenomena:

1. properties of `biological entities' that depend on or make essential reference to relations to environments;
2. properties of `environments' that depend on or make essential reference to relations to biological entities; and
3. properties of the `relations' that obtain `between' biological entities and their environments.

Different research traditions in ecology can be distinguished in part by which of these three categories of ecological phenomena
are the main focus of study. Population and community ecology, for example, are organism-centered branches of ecological
science that focus on phenomena of type (1). The magnitude and rate of change of properties like population size and density and
community composition all depend in various ways on the relationships that the component populations have to their biotic and
abiotic environments.
Empirically oriented forms of ecosystem ecology (i.e., biogeochemistry and ecological stoichiometry) tend to focus on phe-
nomena of type (2) involving stocks and flows of biologically relevant elements, nutrients, and minerals. For example, the
standing stock of phosphorus in a lake ecosystem is a property of the environment of the lake's biotic community, but its
properties depend in part on the biotic activities of this community.
Systems ecology, by contrast, focuses on phenomena of type (3). The nodes of an abstractly defined ecological network are
meant to correspond to functionally defined ecological types (predators, filter feeders, deposited detritus, microbiota, etc.), but for
the most part the phenomena of interest to systems ecologists are the `network' or `organizational' properties of such systems (e.g.,
connectance, cycling indices, throughputs, and other measures of network structure and function). Systems ecologists are perhaps
better described as `complex systems' ecologists; they seek to describe and explain macro-level patterns in the structure and
behavior of ecosystems – patterns, for example, associated with self-organizing processes – that may be characteristic of certain
generic classes of complex systems.
A striking feature of such complex systems patterns is that they can often be realized in systems of different kinds (physical,
chemical, biological, ecological, etc.). To give just two examples: (1) the same critical point phenomena observed in phase
transitions in gases and fluids can be observed in the transition from ferromagnetic to paramagnetic state in magnetic materials;
and (2) the same `period-doubling route' to chaotic dynamics has been observed in systems as diverse as fluids, chemical clocks,
electrical circuits, lasers, and acoustic systems. These and other complex systems behaviors have the following generic features:

1. The details of the system (those details that would feature in a complete causal-mechanical explanation of the system's
behavior) are largely irrelevant for describing the behavior of interest.
2. Many different systems with completely different `micro' details will exhibit identical behavior.

What do fluids, chemical systems, electrical circuits, lasers, and acoustic systems have in common that would explain their
common period-doubling route to chaotic dynamics? Whatever it is, it cannot have much to do with the specific material
properties of the components that make up these systems. Any explanation must refer to the relational or structural features that
the systems have in common – in short, it must abstract away from the `matter' to identify the underlying `form' that is common to
all the systems in question.
Theoretical systems ecology looks to discover properties of this type that describe ecological systems, but due to their formal
character, they may equally describe properties of neural networks in the brain or human socioeconomic networks. It should not
be surprising, then, that systems ecologists have a tendency to speculate on the implications of their work for phenomena in other
branches of natural and social science.
Philosophers of ecology have largely ignored systems ecology, an unfortunate situation given the number of interesting
philosophical questions that the field raises. For example,

• What precisely does it mean to say that a real-world ecosystem instantiates or exemplifies the organizational properties of a
formal ecosystem model?
• How do we know when a real-world system actually instantiates a particular formal model? How can such claims be tested?
What evidence would bear on them?
514 General Ecology: Philosophy of Ecology: Overview

• How do the formal properties of ecological systems (the properties that might be instantiated in many different kinds of
systems) interact with the material properties of ecological systems (the properties that are particular to the material con-
stitution of the system in question), to generate observed structural and behavioral patterns?
• Does the existence of formal properties of ecosystems demand a holistic view of ecosystems, or is it compatible with a
reductionistic view whereby the properties of the whole are determined by the properties of the component parts?

Human Ecological Sciences

We have already noted a second motivation for an expansive conception of ecological science, namely, the fact that there already
exists a variety of ecological sciences that deal with human–environment relations.
There are subdisciplines within traditional ecology, such as human paleoecology and human paleobiology, that focus on
human–environment relations in the evolutionary past. These disciplines are components of human origins research, an inter-
disciplinary field that draws on expertise in anthropology, archeology, and linguistics as well as traditional ecology and biology.
Philosophers have taken great interest in human origins research. The field is foundational for human sociobiology and evolu-
tionary psychology, which in turn are foundational for naturalistic theories of cultural evolution, and for a variety of positions in
the philosophy of mind, language, and ethics.
There also exist a variety of ecological disciplines that study human–environment relations in the present, such as ecological
economics, ecological psychology, ecological anthropology, and ecological sociology. Those who work in these fields usually have
disciplinary affiliations in economics, psychology, anthropology, or sociology, rather than biology or ecology, yet it is typical for
workers in these nontraditional ecological disciplines to view their field as continuous with a general ecological science of
organism–environment relationships.
Note that acknowledging these disciplines as ecological sciences does not imply that they all employ the same scientific
methods nor that they are all equally successful as sciences. It implies only that at some level they are part of a common scientific
enterprise.
It should be obvious that a philosophy of ecology that includes all these human ecological sciences within its scope will have a
correspondingly broader sweep than its more restrictive counterpart, since it self-consciously includes philosophical issues relating
to the ecological dimensions of human cognition, human social organization, and human–environment relations more broadly.
In this mode, the philosophy of ecology naturally spans both the natural and social sciences, and reaches deeper into the domain
of sociopolitical philosophy and ethics than it does in its more restrictive mode.
Consider, for example, philosophical issues in ecological economics. One goal of ecological economics is to devise methods of
economic valuation and organization that promote the goals of long-term ecological and economic sustainability. A fundamental
challenge of this goal is to provide a meaningful definition of `sustainable' that applies to ecological and economic systems.
Research on this question has shown that the concept of sustainability is inherently value-laden, and that one cannot properly
address the issue without considering the ethical and sociopolitical consequences of public policies that would operationalize the
concept. Evaluating these consequences is, naturally, a task for ethics and sociopolitical philosophy. But if ecological economics is
a branch of ecology, and the foundational issues of ecological economics belong to the philosophy of ecology, then the challenge
of evaluating the ethical and sociopolitical dimensions of the concept of sustainability also belongs to the philosophy of ecology.
Similar reasoning applies to the foundational problems of all the human ecological sciences noted above.

Ecology-the-Science and Ecology-the-Worldview

In the introduction we noted two senses of the term `ecology', one associated with ecology as a natural biological science and the
other associated with ecology as a philosophical worldview concerned with human–environment relations in the broadest sense.
The dominant tradition in the philosophy of ecology tries to separate these senses as much as possible, restricting the philosophy
of ecology to the investigation of foundational issues in ecological science and relegating the ethical, political, and more spec-
ulative metaphysical dimensions of the broader ecological worldview to other branches of philosophy. This approach has its
merits; it is consistent with the way most professional ecologists understand ecology and it makes more efficient use of the
professional division of labor among philosophers.
We also noted, however, that there has been disagreement among ecologists over how to understand the domain of ecology.
Some argue for a more restrictive conception of ecology that identifies it with the traditional ecological disciplines taught in
natural science departments. Others argue for a more expansive conception that includes the study of human–environment
relations. We saw how this expansive conception of ecology draws support from two sources: first, a consideration of the
distinctive character of systems ecology; and second, the existence of a variety of human ecological sciences.
If we accept an expansive conception of ecology, do we lose the sharp distinction between ecology-the-science and ecology-the-
worldview that was such an attractive feature of the restrictive conception? Yes and no. On the one hand, the philosophy of
ecology in its expansive mode will inevitably include questions that address metaphysical, epistemological, and normative issues
that are also addressed in more speculative ecological and environmental philosophies. The domains of the philosophy of ecology
and environmental philosophy will necessarily overlap.
 General Ecology: Philosophy of Ecology: Overview 515

On the other hand, in demanding that ecology operates as a science that is beholden to the epistemological standards of the
scientific disciplines that it encompasses, and not to the presuppositions of any particular philosophical worldview, then ecolo-
gical science will retain its autonomy and identity as a science. Though their domains may overlap, the methods of empirical
science distinguish ecology-the-science from ecology-the-worldview.

Further Reading

Allen, T.F.H., Hoekstra, T.W., 1992. Toward a Unified Ecology. New York: Columbia University Press.
Brennan, A., 1988. Thinking About Nature: An Investigation of Nature, Value and Ecology. Athens: University of Georgia Press.
Cooper, G.J., 2003. The Science of the Struggle for Existence: On the Foundations of Ecology. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Cuddington, K., Beisner, B. (Eds.), 2005. Ecological Paradigms Lost: Routes of Theory Change. London: Elsevier Academic Press.
deLaplante, K., 2004. Toward a more expansive conception of ecological science. Biology and Philosophy 19, 263–281.
Ginzburg, L., Colyvan, M., 2004. Ecological Orbits: How Planets Move and Populations Grow. New York: Oxford University Press.
Gunderson, L.H., Holling, C.S. (Eds.), 2002. Panarchy: Understanding Transformations in Human and Natural Systems. Washington: Island Press.
Keller, D.R., Golley, F.B. (Eds.), 2000. The Philosophy of Ecology: From Science to Synthesis. Athens: University of Georgia Press.
Mikkelson, G.M., 2003. Ecological kinds and ecological laws. Philosophy of Science 70, 1390–1400.
Odenbaugh, J., 2003. Complex systems, trade-offs and mathematical modeling: A response to Sober and Orzack. Philosophy of Science 70, 1496–1507.
Peters, R., 1991. A Critique for Ecology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Real, L.A., Brown, J.H. (Eds.), 1991. Foundations of Ecology: Classic Papers with Commentaries. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Sarkar, S., 2005. Biodiversity and Environmental Philosophy: An Introduction. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Schrader-Frechette, K.S., McCoy, E.D., 1993. Method in Ecology: Strategies for Conservation. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Taylor, P.J., 2005. Unruly Complexity: Ecology, Interpretation, Engagement. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.