The Reduction Problem in Ecology

Abstract

In this second part of the book I discuss the reduction problem and the associated holism-reductionism dispute in ecology. Ecology is sometimes seen as the only truly holistic science, because it deals with relations between organisms mutually and with the environment, with interrelationships and connections in nature. On the one hand, given the definition of holism, there seems to be some truth in this. On the other hand, one of the main conclusions of part 1 was that the terms ‘holistic’ and ‘reductionistic’ are extremely relative and should always be related to some given level of organization. A theory (research programme, science) may be holistic with respect to some lower level of organization but at the same time reductionistic with respect to some higher level. Ecology as a whole may be holistic with respect to, for instance, physiology or molecular biology. However, several levels of organization are distinguished within ecology, to wit the levels of organisms, populations, communities and ecosystems, and ecological sub-disciplines have developed with respect to each of these levels. The relations between individual organisms and the environment are the domain of autecology. Population ecology deals with groups of organisms of the same (or at most two or a few interacting) species, community ecology with the interrelationships between groups of organisms of different species of plants, animals and/or micro-organisms. And systems ecology deals with the complex of relations between various groups of plants, animals and micro-organisms and the abiotic environment, which together make up an ecosystem. Apart from these, there is also landscape ecology, which studies the influences of structures and processes in landscapes on the distribution and abundance of species and communities, and global ecology which studies the flow of energy and matter through the various compartments of the biosphere as a whole. Autecology may be holistic with respect to, for example, physiology; it is certainly reductionistic with respect to the other ecological disciplines.