Abstract
Sound definitions of its basic concepts are fundamental to every scientific discipline. In some instances, like in the case of the ecosystem concept, the question arises if we can define such concepts at all. And if we can define them, how should we choose from the multiple definitions available? And what are the preconditions for a scientifically sound and useful definition? On the basis of the ecosystem concept, this paper illustrates a major, often neglected distinction in the definition of ecological concepts, namely that between defining criteria and additional descriptive statements connected to those definitions. As is demonstrated by examples from the literature, mixing up these categories leads to false inferences about the properties of physical objects (e.g. a particular forest) subsumed by the concept (e.g. the ecosystem). As a further consequence, this inference becomes problematic in terms of theory development and/or the application of ecological concepts for management decisions.
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Notes
As a third “procedure, which is likewise adumbrated in the vague traditional notion of real definition” Hempel (1952, p. 11) names explications. Explications deal with expressions which are rather vague and/or ambiguous and provide new and more precise meanings to them (see Stegmüller 1989, p. 374 ff.).
Translation K.J. The first sentence is the slightly modified reproduction of the popular ecosystem definition of Ellenberg (1973), p. 1.
I have chosen this rather old example, because it demonstrates in a very clear and explicit way the points I want to make. A special advantage of this example is also that the different papers relate directly to each other, while mostly such arguments are carried out only verbally and thus are not documented. The question of an ecosystem as being a “cybernetic system” might today be rephrased e.g. as discussions about ecosystems as being “self-organized systems” or “self-sustained systems”.
For example: “Either the ecosystem is orderly in the way we have described, or its lack of chaos just happened to develop from unregulated Darwinian struggles between competing populations, all alone and uninfluenced except by each other, on a neutral stage of life. The latter seems implausible to us.” (Patten and Odum 1981, p. 891) and “If ecosystems are not cybernetic, then by what other means could the perceived harmony of the biosphere have evolved?” (op. cit. p. 894)
The first object to which Tansley’s ecosystem concept was explicitly applied was in fact also a (senescent) lake (Lindeman 1942).
The distinction of meaning, model and metaphor as three dimensions of the use of the ecosystem concept made by Pickett and Cadenasso (2002) does not match completely with the distinction between “object” and “perspective” which I make here. While their “model” coincides largely with what I describe as the use of “ecosystem” in the sense of an object, some of the examples they give for the metaphorical dimensions of the ecosystem may well be understood as a special kind of (implicit) definition of an object. Thus I would consider the use of the expression “marsh ecosystem” not as “spatial metaphor” (Pickett and Cadenasso 2002, p. 6) but as an expression of either a physiognomic perception of “ecosystem”—and thus an object—or as a classification scheme. Likewise, their “meaning”, which they also call the basic definition of the ecosystem, is what I would call a generic definition, being in fact a kind of (scientific) perspective organizing and inspiring ecological research, because it is not possible to unambiguously delimit a specific spatial object by it.
Aber and Mellilo (2001, p. 10 f.) also describe watershed and stand (the latter corresponding to what I call “physiognomic ecosystem”) as two common and useful ways of delimiting ecosystems.
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Acknowledgements
I would like to thank Volker Grimm, Leipzig, two anonymous reviewers, and the journal editor for constructive comments on earlier versions of this paper.
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Jax, K. Can We Define Ecosystems? On the Confusion Between Definition and Description of Ecological Concepts. Acta Biotheor 55, 341–355 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10441-007-9024-7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10441-007-9024-7