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Null Hypotheses in Ecology: Towards the Dissolution of a Controversy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  31 January 2023

Peter B. Sloep
Peter B. Sloep*
Affiliation:
State University of Groningen
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Extract

In present day ecology, competition is a subject typically generating controversies that pervade the whole field. Ecology is concerned with relations between organisms and their environment. As the environment of any organism has biotic besides physical components, relations between organisms are obviously important. Competition is one of them. According to many ecologists it crucially affects the fate of populations and species. Precisely this assumption has led to vigorous debates (cf. Lewin 1984).

I intend to show that elementary methodological analysis could easily dissolve the controversy. Methodology, indeed, has not always been brought to bear on biology as it should. This point is elaborated at the end of the paper.

Ecologists use a variety of descriptive units, beside individual organisms. Here the population - a group of individual organisms of the same species and the community - a group of populations are of special importance.

Type
Part V. Social Science
Information
PSA: Proceedings of the Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association , Volume 1986 , Issue 1: Volume One: Contributed Papers 1986 , 1986 , pp. 307 - 313
Copyright
Copyright © Philosophy of Science Association 1986

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Footnotes

1

I am grateful to John Beatty, Hans Reddingius, Michael Ruse and Wim van der Steen for their comments and encouragement.I thank Joke Poelstra for typing the manuscript. The investigations were supported by the Netherlands Organization for the Advancement of Pure Research (Z.W.O.).

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