Advances in Ecological Understanding: By Kuhnian Revolution or Conceptual Evolution?

Ecology, although a rapidly evolving science, has experienced few if any paradigm shifts or revolutions in the sense of Thomas Kuhn because it is a pluralistic, multiple-causation discipline. Instead, what appears to characterize conceptual development are fads or “bandwagons,” favored themes, or transient foci of interest, that wax, wane, and even recover in popularity. These are often centered on characteristics of the real world which cannot be denied. I identify and discuss two: postlarval recruitment to an established population and physical disturbance to an intertidal assemblage. The richness of ecological thought has been broadened immeasurably by acceptance of the following themes: the necessity to distinguish open from closed systems, that equilibrium may exist only in an abstract sense, and that controlled manipulation can reveal hitherto unanticipated dynamics. These findings have expanded our understanding of nature's complexity (a conceptual evolution) rather than relegated most prior generalizations to the dustbin of history (a paradigm shift).