Reduction in Ecology

شهد قطاع التعليم المغربي عدة تغييرات شملت مجالات متنوعة إن على مستوى المنهاج أو إصلاح الفضاءات التعليمية أو تكوين المدرسين. ولعل مردّ ذلك هو الانفجار المعرفيّ المتزايد، والمكانة المتميّزة للتّربية والتّعليم، واهتمامات الدولة التي أصبحت مركزة على الظواهر المدرسية وفي علاقتها بتغيير المجتمع وارتباطها بالأسرة والمحيط، وتأثرها بالمرجعية الثقافية والدينية، وتفاعلها مع الظروف السياسية والاقتصادية انطلاقا من التيمات الكبرى التي أُنتِجت حول المدرسة من قبيل تصرفات المتعلم وسلوكياته داخل المدرسة، وعلاقات المدرسة بالآباء، وظاهرة العنف، والهدر المدرسي، ودراسة العلاقات التربوية، والأدوار (...) التربوية، والجماعات التربوية. وتأسيسا على ذلك، أصبح الاهتمام بالتّربية والتّعليم من الأولويات في المملكة المغربية، كما انصب الاهتمام بالمدرسة والتنشئة الاجتماعية، و تم التركيز على دراسة الأنظمة التربوية والظواهر المدرسية ودورها في تغيير المجتمع من خلال علاقتها مع الأسرة والمحيط، وتأثرها بالمرجعية الثقافية والدينية، وتفاعلها مع الظروف السياسية والاقتصادية إذ أُضيفت إلى المدرسة رسائل جديدة ومهمّات متجدّدة؛ لضمان المتعة الثّقافيّة والحضاريّة والمعرفيّة والقيميّة في عالم أضحى يعيش على إيقاع مفاهيم جديدة ليس أقلّها شأنا... مفهوم المواطنة الكونيّة أو العالميّة. و أضحت وظائفها تلامس مختلف جوانب الإنسان لتأهيله وجعله ذلك الكائن الذي يعرف ذاته أولا ثم يكتشف الآخر ثانيا. وإذا ما نظرنا إلى هذه الوظائف نجدها متعددة، نظرا لتعدد أغراض وأهداف الإنسان، فمنها ما هو تربوي وتعليمي ثم إداري، واجتماعي وأمني، وتكويني، ومنها ما هو إيديولوجي، وإرشادي وتوجيهي، وتواصلي، واقتصادي... وبذلك تؤثر على سلوك الأفراد تأثيرا منظما. والمدرسة من حيث هي كذلك، وباعتبارها الوجه الحقيقي للنظام التربوي ككل، تنصب وظيفتها الرئيسة على سلوك الناشئة، ويقاس مدى تحقيقها لوظائفها بمدى التغيير الذي تنجح في تحقيقه في سلوك أبنائها ومن ثم كان ضروريا أن ينظر إليها نظرة شمولية كنظرتنا نحو المجتمع برمته، وأن تكون في مقدمة وطليعة كل سياسة إصلاحية للمجتمع، وأن ينظر إليها كمرجعية لكل تغيير أو تغير قد تعرفه باقي القطاعات والجوانب الأخرى لحياة الفرد لأنها تستهدف تأهيله والرفع من قدرة فاعليته، بما يتوافق مع التغيرات والتطورات على المستويين المحلي والإقليمي والخارجي. فلا يمكن الحديث عن نظام تربوي ناجح في المستقبل، ما لم يتم استحضار التطور الحاصل في أدوار ووظائف وآليات اشتغال المدرسة، من خلال التعرف على سيرورات التحولات التي عرفتها المؤسسة التعليمية في الماضي والحاضر. (shrink)

Understanding community-level selection using Lewontin’s criteria requires both community-level inheritance and community-level heritability, and in the discipline of community and ecosystem genetics, these are often conflated. While there are existing studies that show the possibility of both, these studies impose community-level inheritance as a product of the experimental design. For this reason, these experiments provide only weak support for the existence of community-level selection in nature. By contrast, treating communities as interactors (in line with Hull’s replicator-interactor framework or Dawkins’s idea (...) of the “extended phenotype”) provides a more plausible and empirically supportable model for the role of ecological communities in the evolutionary process. (shrink)

The role of genetic relatedness in social evolution has recently come under critical attention. These arguments are here critically analyzed, both theoretically and empirically. It is argued that when the conceptual structure of the theory of natural selection is carefully taken into account, genetic relatedness can be seen to play an indispensable role in the evolution of both facultative and advanced eusociality. Although reviewing the empirical evidence concerning the evolution of eusociality reveals that relatedness does not play a role in (...) the initial appearance of helper phenotypes, this follows simply from the fact that natural selection – of which relatedness is a necessary component – does not play a causal role in the origin of any traits. Further, separating two logically distinct elements of causal explanation – necessity and sufficiency – explains why the debate lingers on: although relatedness plays a necessary role in the evolution of helping and advanced eusociality, relatedness alone is not sufficient for their appearance. Therefore, if the relatedness variable in a given data set is held at a uniformly high value, then it indeed may turn out that other factors occupy a more prominent role. However, this does not change the fact that high relatedness functions as a necessary background condition for the evolution of advanced eusociality. (shrink)

The concept of levels of organization, despite its widespread scientific currency, has recently been criticized by a number of philosophers of science. This paper diagnoses the main source of problems facing theories of levels. On this basis, the problems with the usual criteria for distinguishing levels are evaluated: compositional relations, organizational types, and spatial scales. Drawing on some work on hierarchies in ecology, I argue in favor of an alternative conception of levels defined by the criterion of rates or time (...) scales of processes. (shrink)

New mechanistic philosophy has not examined explanations in ecology although they are based extensively on describing mechanisms responsible for phenomena under scrutiny. This chapter uses the example of research on the shrub Lonicera maackii (Amur honeysuckle) to scrutinize individual-level mechanisms that are generally accepted and used in ecology and confronts them with the minimal account of mechanisms. Individual-level mechanisms are for a phenomenon, are hierarchical, and absent entities play a role in their functioning. They are distinguished by the role played (...) by properties in determining activities and organization. The chapter also considers the experimental methods for discovery of individual-level mechanisms, the possibility of group-level mechanisms in ecology, and suggests further research problems. (shrink)

Considerable variation exists not only in the kinds of transposable elements (TEs) occurring within the genomes of different species, but also in their abundance and distribution. Noting a similarity to the assortment of organisms among ecosystems, some researchers have called for an ecological approach to the study of transposon dynamics. However, there are several ways to adopt such an approach, and it is sometimes unclear what an ecological perspective will add to the existing co-evolutionary framework for explaining transposon-host interactions. This (...) review aims to clarify the conceptual foundations of transposon ecology in order to evaluate its explanatory prospects. We begin by identifying three unanswered questions regarding the abundance and distribution of TEs that potentially call for an ecological explanation. We then offer an operational distinction between evolutionary and ecological approaches to these questions. By determining the amount of variance in transposon abundance and distribution that is explained by ecological and evolutionary factors, respectively, it is possible empirically to assess the prospects for each of these explanatory frameworks. To illustrate how this methodology applies to a concrete example, we analyzed whole-genome data for one set of distantly related mammals and another more closely related group of arthropods. Our expectation was that ecological factors are most informative for explaining differences among individual TE lineages, rather than TE families, and for explaining their distribution among closely related as opposed to distantly related host genomes. We found that, in these data sets, ecological factors do in fact explain most of the variation in TE abundance and distribution among TE lineages across less distantly related host organisms. Evolutionary factors were not significant at these levels. However, the explanatory roles of evolution and ecology become inverted at the level of TE families or among more distantly related genomes. Not only does this example demonstrate the utility of our distinction between ecological and evolutionary perspectives, it further suggests an appropriate explanatory domain for the burgeoning discipline of transposon ecology. The fact that ecological processes appear to be impacting TE lineages over relatively short time scales further raises the possibility that transposons might serve as useful model systems for testing more general hypotheses in ecology. (shrink)

The concept of hierarchical organization is commonplace in science. Subatomic particles compose atoms, which compose molecules; cells compose tissues, which compose organs, which compose organisms; etc. Hierarchical organization is particularly prominent in ecology, a field of research explicitly arranged around levels of ecological organization. The concept of levels of organization is also central to a variety of debates in philosophy of science. Yet many difficulties plague the concept of discrete hierarchical levels. In this paper, we show how these difficulties undermine (...) various implications ascribed to hierarchical organization, and we suggest the concept of scale as a promising alternative to levels. Investigating causal processes at different scales offers a way to retain a notion of quasi-levels that avoids the difficulties inherent in the classic concept of hierarchical levels of organization. Throughout, our focus is on ecology, but the results generalize to other invocations of hierarchy in science and philosophy of science. (shrink)

The classical holism-reductionism debate, which has been of major importance to the development of ecological theory and methodology, is an epistemological patchwork. At any moment, there is a risk of it slipping into an incoherent, chaotic Tower of Babel. Yet philosophy, like the sciences, requires that words and their correlative concepts be used rigorously and univocally. The prevalent use of everyday language in the holism-reductionism issue may give a false impression regarding its underlying clarity and coherence. In reality, the conceptual (...) categories underlying the debate have yet to be accurately defined and consistently used. There is a need to map out a clear conceptual, logical and epistemological framework. To this end, we propose a minimalist epistemological foundation. The issue is easier to grasp if we keep in mind that holism generally represents the ontological background of emergentism, but does not necessarily coincide with it. We therefore speak in very loose terms of the “holism-reductionism” debate, although it would really be better characterised by the terms emergentism and reductionism. The confrontation between these antagonistic paradigms unfolds at various semantic and operational levels. In definitional terms, there is not just emergentism and reductionism, but various kinds of emergentisms and reductionisms. (shrink)

As a result of the complexity inherent in some natural systems, mathematical models employed in ecology are often governed by a large number of variables. For instance, in the study of population dynamics we often find multiregional models for structured populations in which individuals are classified regarding their age and their spatial location. Dealing with such structured populations leads to high dimensional models. Moreover, in many instances the dynamics of the system is controlled by processes whose time scales are very (...) different from each other. For example, in multiregional models migration is often a fast process in comparison to the growth of the population.Approximate reduction techniques take advantage of the presence of different time scales in a system to introduce approximations that allow one to transform the original system into a simpler low dimensional system. In this way, the dynamics of the original system can be approximated in terms of that of the reduced system. This work deals with the study of that approximation. In particular, we work with a non-autonomous discrete time model previously presented in the literature and obtain different bounds for the error we incur when we describe the dynamics of the original system in terms of the reduced one. (shrink)

Long-term vegetation dynamics based on paleo-pollen data display transient behaviour, often alternating in phase between predominant determinism and predominant 'turbulence', when viewed as a trajectory in a multivariate phase space. Given this, the metaphor of vegetation dynamics as a 'flowing stream', first introduced by Cooper in his classic 1926 paper entitled "The fundamentals of vegetation change", is re-examined and revealed to be not only useful, but strikingly realistic. Vegetation dynamic theory is reviewed and classic theories are found to reflect reality (...) poorly. It is suggested that vegetation dynamics is a far from equilibrium system, and that the application of nonequilibrium thermodynamic theory is appropriate. (shrink)

Considers that in ecosystem, landscape and global ecology, an energetics reading of ecological systems is an expression of a cybernetic, systemic and holistic approach. In ecosystem ecology, the Odumian paradigm emphasizes the concept of emergence, but it has not been accompanied by the creation of a method that fully respects the complexity of the objects studied. In landscape ecology, although the emergentist, multi-level, triadic methodology of J.K. Feibleman and D.T. Campbell has gained acceptance, the importance of emergent properties is still (...) undervalued. In global ecology, the Gaia hypothesis is an expression of an organicist metaphor, while the emergentist terminology used is incongruent with the underlying physicalist cybernetics. More generally, an analytico-additional methodology and the reduction of the properties of ecosystems to the laws of physical chemistry render purely formal any assertion about the emergentist and holistic nature of the ecological systems studied. (shrink)

Habitat templets are graphical-qualitative models which describe the development of life-history strategies in specific environmental conditions. In the context of the previous models of life-history strategies, life-history theorists focused on the density-dependent factors as the factors determining life-history strategies. With the use of habitat templets, the focus is oriented towards the environmental causal factors, considering density-dependent phenomena as by-products of the environmental impact. This implies an important shift in causality as well as in the worldview of life-history theorists: population is (...) not considered as a closed system isolated from the environment. The object of study is the organism-in-its-environment, as a complex multilevel system. This shift has also methodological consequences: Life-history theory combines holistic and reductionistic insights, using a variety of heuristic models. This imposes a new conception of generality as well as of the structure of scientific theories. (shrink)

Over the last few decades, historians of scientific ecology have brought to light the role of the European scientists who have laid the basic cornerstones of modern ecology between the end of the eighteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth century. The foundations of geobotany were laid by Alexander von Humboldt (1769-1859), Augustin-Pyramus de Candolle (1778-1841), Alphonse Jules Dureau de la Malle (1777-1857), Gaston Bonnier (1853-1922) and Charles Flahault (1852-1935); biocenotics, by Erasmus Darwin (1731-1802), Charles Lyell (1797-1875), Pierre-François Verhulst (...) (1804-1849), Charles Darwin (1809-1882), Karl Moebius (1825-1908), Charles Valentine-Riley (1843-1895), and François-Alphonse Forel (1841-1912); agrochemistry and microbiology by Justus von Liebig (1803-1873), Jean-Baptiste Boussingault (1802-1887), and Stanislas Winogradski (1856-1953); the taxonomy of communities by August Heinrich Grisebach (1813-1879), Anton Kerner von Marilaün (1831-1898), Alphonse de Candolle (1806-1893), and Charles Flahault; and anthropogeography by Karl Ritter (1779-1859), Elisée Reclus (1830-1905), and Friederich Ratzel (1844-1904). Together, they created the conditions that, with Eugenius Warming (1841-1924), gave birth to the autonomous discipline of scientific ecology, thirty years after the German biologist Ernst Haeckel (1834-1919) had christened this new branch of biology. Up to now, the writings of these scientists have been scattered in various publications that were often not accessible, which made a comparative study almost impossible. There was thus a need to bring together the primary sources in their original form, pagination, and language (whenever possible, a version of the text has been made available in a second language as well). They are gathered here in two volumes, in an analytical framework that aids in understanding their relevant historical context and significance. To deal with the complex multidisciplinary roots of the history of ecology, Pascal Acot has brought together a group of historians with authoritative knowledge of the field's various sub-branches, without ever losing sight of ecology's relationship to the broader history of biology and the environmental sciences. (shrink)

The holism-reductionism debate, one of the classic subjects of study in the philosopy of science, is currently at the heart of epistemological concerns in ecology. Yet the division between holism and reductionism does not always stand out clearly in this field. In particular, almost all work in ecosystem ecology and landscape ecology presents itself as holistic and emergentist. Nonetheless, the operational approaches used rely on conventional reductionist methodology.From an emergentist epistemological perspective, a set of general 'transactional' principles inspired by the (...) work of J. Dewey and J.K. Feibleman are proposed in an effort to develop a coherent ontological and methodological semantics. (shrink)

The contrast between the strategies of research employed in reductionism and holism masks a radical contradiction between two different scientific philosophies. We concentrate in particular on an analysis of the key philosophical issues which give structure to holistic thought. A first (non-exhaustive) analysis of the philosophical tradition will dwell upon: a) the theory of emergence: each level of organisation is characterised by properties whose laws cannot be deduced from the laws of the inferior levels of organisation (Engels, Morgan); b) clarification (...) of the relations between the “whole” and the “parts” (Woodger, Needham); c) the ontological or epistemological nature of the emergent properties; are they a phenomenological reality or solely an artefact of the state of our knowledge? (Pepper, Henle, Hempel and Oppenheim); d) the proposition of the holistic theoretical and methodological model ( Novikoff, Feibleman). I then go on to examine the differences that exist between the reductionist and the holistic approaches at various levels of analysis: that is to say, the differences which affect their ontologies, methodologies and epistemologies respectively. I attempt to understand the spirit of a holistic approach to ecology by analyzing the major work of E.P. Odum Fundamentals of ecology (1953, 1959, 1971). I set forward what might be meant by the “holistic approach”, which is implicated in all the different levels of organisation at which the problem of “complexity” is debated. Ecology presents itself as an “holistic science” and Odum’s book offers a vision of the world which dates far back in the history of philosophy. By looking at the three different editions of this fundamental text on ecology, we may become aware of the evolution of Odum’s thought. In fact, only in the third and last edition is there a conscious appropriation of the holistic approach (by using the theoretical models of Feibleman who, for his part, refers to Novikoff). However, even when formally referring to the theory of emergence (that is to say the ontological nucleus of every holistic approach), Odum’s systemic analysis presents the same logical errors, which push him back into the reductionist domain. Above all, in his examination of the main concepts of “population”, “community” and “ecosystem”, there is a misunderstanding of the profound difference between “collective properties” and “emergent properties”. Moreover, the cybernetic models of Odum’s systemic analysis (introduced into ecology by Margalef), allowed him to vastly oversimplify his methodological task: in fact, neither how many levels nor which levels of organization are fundamental for the study of each individual level is clearly marked. Finally, Odum analyses the ecosystem as composed of energetic flux and cycles of matter, referring to the trophic-dynamic vision of Lindeman. That is to say, in my opinion, he juxtaposes a reductionistic methodology and epistemology to an holistic ontology. (shrink)

Although ecology is neither a universal nor foundational science, it has metaphysical implications because it profoundly alters traditional Western concepts of terrestrial nature and human being. I briefly sketch the received metaphysical foundations of the modem world view, set out a historical outline of an emerging ecological world view, and identify its principal metaphysical implications. Among these the most salient are a field ontology, the ontological subordination of matter to energy, internal relations, and systemic (as opposed to oceanic) holism. I (...) treat moral psychology as a special case of the metaphysical implications of ecology. Ecology undermines the concept of a separable ego or social atom and thus renders obsolete any ethics which involves the concepts of “self” and “other” as primitive terms. (shrink)

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 (...) protection) are typically thwarted by the power of indirect and unanticipated causes rather than by error in the detailed description of their own objects of study.(2)Reductionism ignores properties of complex wholes; the effects of these properties are therefore seen only as noise; this randomness is elevated into an ontological principle which leads to the blocking of investigation and the reification of statistics, so that data reduction and statistical prediction often pass for explanation.(3)The faith in the atomistic nature of the world makes the allocation of relative weights to separate causes the main object of science, and makes it more difficult to study the nature of interconnectedness. (shrink)