December 5, 2010
by peter.taylor
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Multivariate statistical (or data analytic) techniques have long been descriptively used, especially in vegetation ecology, to cluster ecological sites into distinct communities (classification) or position them along continuous axes (ordination). The patterns exposed have also been used to generate hypotheses … Continue reading
December 4, 2010
by peter.taylor
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Constructionist and landscape views (Taylor 2005, Chapter 1, Part A) reinforce other currents that have undermined the aspirations of earlier decades for identifying general principles about systems and communities (Kingsland 1995, 213-251; Taylor and Haila 2001). Since the 1980s ecologists … Continue reading
December 3, 2010
by peter.taylor
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?A broad distinction can be made between community ecology, which emphasizes population sizes and inter-species interactions, and systems ecology, which emphasizes nutrient and energy flows between compartments (Hagen 1989). Nevertheless, community ecological theory also involves systems in the sense of … Continue reading
November 28, 2010
by peter.taylor
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David Hounshell characterizes Akera’s book Calculating a Natural World well when he says, as quoted on the book’s cover, that it “takes many of the familiar developments in the early history of digital electronic computing and recasts them so as … Continue reading
November 25, 2010
by peter.taylor
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In the late 1980s Roberto Mangabeira Unger laid out a “constructive social theory,” which centered on “institutional and imaginative frameworks of social life [that] supply the basis on which people define and reconcile interests, identify, and solve problems.” He went … Continue reading
November 12, 2010
by peter.taylor
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A line of research from England, initiated by the sociologists Brown and Harris in the late 1960s, has investigated how severe events and difficulties during people’s life course influence the onset of mental and physical illnesses (Harris 2000). This work … Continue reading
October 19, 2010
by peter.taylor
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“Troubled by Heterogeneity? Opportunities for Fresh Views on Long-standing and Recent Issues in Biology and Biomedicine,” was a talk I gave on 13 Oct. ’10 (abstract). I sketched a number of cases to get the audience thinking about my underlying … Continue reading
September 22, 2010
by peter.taylor
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In the third chapter of On the Origin of Species, Darwin introduced his concept of natural selection by noting that, given the struggle for existence, “any variation, however slight and from whatever cause proceeding, if it is in any degree … Continue reading
September 4, 2010
by peter.taylor
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Jordi Bascompte’s “Stucture and dynamics of ecological networks” (Science, 13 August 2010) cites Robert May’s theoretical work in the 1970s as showing that, because “the more complex a randomly built food web, the less stable it is… real networks must … Continue reading
September 1, 2010
by peter.taylor
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As a student and environmental activist in the 1970s I developed an interest, which continues to this day, in ecological complexity as a challenge to conventional scientific ways of knowing. Although ecological and environmental researchers partition complex situations into well-bounded … Continue reading