Wow, to be a law or principle it has to be perfect? I have a PhD in Physics
and thought that we had lots of laws, but they seldom pass that test. For
hundreds of years we talked about and taught Newton's Laws of Motion, but
then Einstein came along with examples of cases where they FAIL. As for
propping up, where do hypothetical particles like neutrinos and quarks come
from?
Do we really want ecology to be a much more rigid and philosophically pure
science than physics, astronomy and the rest? Or can we just focus on trying
to figure out how nature works?
Bill Silvert
-----Original Message-----
From: Wayne Tyson
Sent: Sunday, November 07, 2010 1:55 AM
To: ECOLOG-L@LISTSERV.UMD.EDU
Subject: Re: [ECOLOG-L] ECOLOGY Fundamentals Principles Laws Other
My original question was about whether or not the discipline of ecology (I
meant in the broadest sense) recognizes or should try to recognize, some
observations about how "things" function or work that amount to laws or
statements (hypotheses), when applied NEVER FAIL to prove valid--pass the
test for a law or a principle. (And, I might add, one [or more?] that needs
no propping up with qualifiers. (This, I will confess, is one issue I have
with the referenced paper, but the author might be right and I might be
wrong.)
