title: When logic fails ecology.
abstract: Ecology plays an important role in society, informing policy and management decisions across a variety of issues. As such, regularities in processes would indicate higher levels of predictive outcomes and would reduce the amount of research required for specific issues that policy makers need addressed. Scientific laws are considered the pinnacle of success and usefulness in addressing regularities or universal truths. Ecology studies complex interactions of individuals with unique behaviors, making the identification of laws problematic. Two equations, Malthusian growth and the logistic equation, continue to receive attention and are frequently cited as exemplar laws in ecology. However, an understanding of scientific laws shows that neither are good candidates for law status. In this paper, I will discuss why ecology is not well structured for scientific laws, as they are currently understood. Finally, I will consider alternative proposals for the role of laws in ecology and alternate forms of laws that may be applicable.
authors.affiliation: Biology Department, Program for Interdisciplinary Mathematics, Ecology and Statistics, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, Colorado 80521, USA. DALE.LOCKWOOD@COLOSTATE.EDU
authors.forename: Dale R
authors.initials: DR
authors.lastname: Lockwood
mesh_terms: D004463:Ecology / Q000379:methods*; D006801:Humans; D008128:Logic; D012942:Social Sciences