Philosophy vs. Science

Ecologists tend to be very philosophical about what they do, which doesn't keep them from occasionally doing good science, but does tend to get in the way.

An example of this is the profound pronouncement by the late Rob Peters of McGill University that Gauss' Competitive Exclusion Principle is tautological, and therefore must be banished from the sacrosanct Halls of Science. The Competitive Exclusion Principle states that no two species can occupy exactly the same niche, and Peters pointed out that if you look hard enough you can always find some difference between any two objects, so the Principle is self-fulfilling and thus tautological.

This has nothing to do with whether the Principle is useful or not. There are those of us who ask nothing more of a scientific theory than that it be informative, that it helps us organise our knowledge and improve our understanding of how Nature works. The Competitive Exclusion Principle certainly does this. For example, David Lack tested the theory by trying to understand how three separate species of warbler could exist in the same types of trees, and he discovered that they fed at different heights in the trees. Thus he was able to use the Principle to discover vertical zonation in the forest environment. But to the philosophical purist this is not the point - he would have discovered something, so what he discovered is not important.

Developed and maintained by William Silvert.