The possibility of deep naturalism: a philosophy for ecology

ABSTRACT

This article presents a philosophy of science for ecology – deep naturalism – based on Roy Bhaskar’s transcendental realism. It includes a model of the emergence of ecosystems, analogous to the Transformational Model of Social Activity, that I call the Emergence Model of Ecosystem Resilience. It also proposes the following definition of ecosystem resilience: the process by which the internal complexity of an ecosystem and its coherence as a whole – stemming from the relative ‘richness’ or ‘modularity’ of emergent structures and behaviours/growth/life-history of species – results in the inter-dependencies of its components or their binding as totalities such that the identity of the ecosystem tends to remain intact, despite intrinsic and/or extrinsic entropic forces. This definition is significantly different from mainstream, empiricist definitions.

KEYWORDS:

• Philosophy of science
• ecology
• resilience
• emergence model of ecological resilience
• transformational model of social activity

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Lene Nyhus and Trond Gansmo Jakobsen for their encouragement and helpful comments.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Leigh Price pursued M.Sc. in Tropical Resource Ecology (University of Zimbabwe) and Ph.D. in Education (Rhodes University). Her early ecological research focused on plant-insect relationships. This was followed by her research on tree planting strategies among Zimbabwean smallholders. Most recently, she has focused on the role of education in ameliorating resource management issues in water-stressed contexts in South Africa.

Notes

1. Biosphere 1 is the earth itself. Biosphere 2 was built in Arizona at a cost of US$150 million. It was only used twice as a closed-system experiment: once from 1991 to 1993, and a second time for seven months in 1994. Both attempts suffered problems that included low amounts of food and oxygen (Brown, Harris, and Russell 1996; Avise 1994).