It was quite exciting to learn that our presentation was accepted at an important, international history of science conference held in Oxford this summer, Scientiae2016. These conferences are about the "disciplines of knowing" in the pivotal period of 1400 up to the end of the 18th century.
More ecologists, especially those interested in hindcasting and re-building past dynamics of ecological interactions, should take the time to cross the disciplinary divide to attend meetings like these. They are incredibly valuable opportunities to exchange directly with philosophers and historians of science about the historical contingencies of different topics. For myself I am interested in how the notion of scientific laws evolved within the scientific practice of the 'lawless' disciplines of ecology and biology.
The results discussed in the presentation constitute a chapter in my dissertation.
The usual view of the hierarchy of disciplines, in terms of their mathematical content of course! From xkcd Comics, permanent link, https://xkcd.com/435/
citation
Coston-Guarini, J., Guarini, J-M, and Chauvaud, L. "Doing lawless science: evidence for the origins of the current crisis in ecological scientific practice from Buffon's Histoire Naturelle. " Presentation. Scientiae2016, Oxford, 5-7 July 2016.
Conference Abstract
Ecological ideas about the relationships between organisms and their environment can be identified in many early works on natural history, economics and agriculture. However, the 44 volumes of Buffon's Histoire Naturelle are something of a monument among these works. Besides attempting to present a unified system of thought about the natural world, this text appeared just as new scientific disciplines, like chemistry, geology and biology, were separating from natural history. The work was initially received with mixed reviews, yet continued to circulate in innumerable re-editions for more than a century afterwards and is also one of the rare works of natural history to have remained widely accessible.
Many authors have already discussed the origins of ecology in natural history. However, one of the particularities of ecology (and biology) is the absence of a law-based scientific practice like that in physics and chemistry. Ecologists have frequently worried about its status as an autonomous science and several (e.g. GF Gause 1910-1986) have even consciously attempted to emulate law-based scientific practice in their studies.
Buffon's work constitutes a unique resource for examining the roots of scientific practice in ecology. By studying how scientific laws are treated in Histoire Naturelle we suggest that the concept of "law" functions as a rhetorical crutch to strengthen phenomenological based conclusions. It is used to imply strong evidence of self-evident governance in place of providing actual proof. Ecological practice, as a direct descendent of natural history approaches and the ideas of Darwin, continued to transmit this argumentation style in which theories are discussed that reach far beyond the technical results needed to provide proof. We suggest that this early, fundamental disconnect between observation, experimentation and theory accounts for the state of scientific practice in ecology today.
Image source: Gallica (Bibliothèque de France) Dessin en crayon, De Seve, 1749. No. P158716. Illustration intended but never used in the first volumes of the Histoire Naturelle.