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Functions and Functioning in Aldo Leopold’s Land Ethic and in Ecology

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2022

Roberta L. Millstein
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Abstract

I examine the use of the term function in Aldo Leopold’s land ethic, invoked as (1) the healthy functioning of the land community, which is dependent on (2) the maintenance of the characteristic functions of populations that are parts of the land community. The latter can be understood as referring to interactions between species that are the products of coevolution (such as parasite-host, predator-prey) and, thus, in terms of the “selected effect” account of function. The performance of these functions under certain conditions maintain what Leopold took to be the healthy functioning of a land community.

Type
Research Article
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 87 , Issue 5: PSA 2018 - Proceedings of the 2018 biennial meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association. Part II Symposia Papers , December 2020 , pp. 1107 - 1118
Copyright
Copyright © The Philosophy of Science Association

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Footnotes

†

Thanks to Antoine Dussault, Justin Garson, Andrew Inkpen, Chris Lean, Maureen O’Malley, and the Griesemer/Millstein Lab for helpful comments at various stages of this project.

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