I think the common interpretation of "natural history" among ecologists could be called "descriptive ecology." It has the tacit hypotheses Matt Chew listed, but I don't think people associate natural history with explicit hypothesis-testing. It's about collecting and describing observations that seem meaningful, and the observations are not made in order to test a clear, explicit model.
While natural history is not explicitly hypothesis-driven, the observations collected in natural history are one basis for the formation of new hypotheses. Darwin didn't tromp around collecting barnacles to test the hypothesis of evolution by natural selection. He made and recorded careful observations, considered the patterns in those observations, and proposed his hypothesis to explain those patterns. Anyway, what distinguishes natural history from the rest of ecology is the lack of explicit hypotheses that the collected data are intended to address. Also, arguably, natural history extends to all fields of science; I would call a descriptive study of a nebula natural history, and Robert Hooke's study of cork cells was definitely natural history, but these studies would be in the fields of astronomy and plant anatomy, respectively. Jim Crants On Wed, Mar 2, 2011 at 12:27 PM, David L. McNeely <mcnee...@cox.net> wrote: > ---- Wayne Tyson <landr...@cox.net> wrote: > > Ecolog: > > > > What specifically distinguishes natural history from ecology? > > Wayne, Ernst Haeckel coined the term which became our modern term > "ecology." You probably knew this. Haeckel mistook the root of biological > science, natural history, for one of its branches, ecology. Ever since, we > have had this conundrum. > > Ecology is natural history dressed up to look better for those who have > difficulty accepting that science is old and was effective in the old days. > For those who have some sniffing hang-up about being natural historians, > there is no more honorable, nor more interesting, endeavor than trying to > figure out how nature works. And one doesn't have to be arrogant, or > attempt to dismiss other's efforts, to do it effectively. > > David McNeely, fish ecologist (ie., natural historian) >
