Competition, pragmatism and comparison

Abstract

The opening sentence of Geographical Ecology (MacArthur, 1972) begins, “To do science is to search for repeated patterns, not simply to accumulate facts...”. As ecologists, we are faced with the problem of finding patterns when there is a large number of species, an even larger number of possible pairwise interactions, and when these are dispersed across a bewildering array of habitat Types. How do we look for general patterns in nature? This is not a new problem. Early this century, J. B. S. Haldane wrote: “In ecology... we are at present often lost in detail” but, he added that we are constantly finding general factors, such as soil acidity, that predict the occurrence of entire communities. The American philosopher Henry James, whose work is also rooted in the study of human psychology, proposed the pragmatic method that has much to say about the design of ecological work to permit us to find useful patterns and we will return to his work in section 10.1.1. More recently, R. H. Peters has discussed the uneasy alliance of natural history with general empirical models. Geographical Ecology has, therefore, been but one of many voices addressing pattern and generality. Perhaps we have been too hasty in passing over MacArthur’s opening sentence.

It is astonishing how many philosophical disputes collapse into insignificance the moment you subject then to this simple test of tracing a concrete consequence. W. James (1907)

...the better competitor may exclude the other species even though in a habitat where both normally co-exist an observer might only witness severe competition 1 year in 20. This is the reason most evidence for competition is from biogeographers. R. H. MacArthur (1972)

...ecologists are unusual among scientists in that they deny the need for empirical science. F. H. Rigler (1982)