Natural philosophy concerns itself with the question of ‘why’ things work [1]. Natural science tries to work out ‘how’ [1]. Understanding the difference is fundamental to conservationWhy is animal conservation important? Animal conservation is important, because animals are the only mechanism to create biodiversity, which is the mechanism that creates a habitable planet for humans. Without animals, the energy from today’s plants (algae, trees, flowers etc) will eventually reach the atmosphere and ocean, much of it as carbon. The quantity of this plant-based waste is so More but is largely missing .
Natural philosophy has more in kin with ecological wisdom, such as the beliefs, cultures and traditions of first nations peoples all over the world. It embraces an understanding of the structures, patterns and behaviours that enable ecosystemsHow ecosystems function An ecosystem is a community of lifeforms that interact in such an optimal way that how ecosystems function best, is when all components (including humans and other animals) can persist and live alongside each other for the longest time possible. Ecosystems are fuelled by the energy created by plants (primary producers) that convert the Sun's heat energy More to function(Of an ecosystem). A subset of ecosystem processes and structures, where the ecosystem does something that provides an ecosystem service of value to people. More. First nations wisdom is a byproduct of survival, based on those systems. It wasn’t learnt, studied or adopted. Humans lived and survived, and culture became the way of doing things. It provides a set of guiding principles about how we can behave, in order to better survive.
Dealing with infinite complexity
When faced with infinitely complex systems, natural science alone cannot expect to find all the answers [2]. Ecosystems are simply too complex to describe in full. Further, the evidence from fully-functioning systems is a panacea, as we’ve degraded most wildlife populations. Since wildlife is the sole driver of all ecosystem function for human survival, we are only ever looking at part of the puzzle.
Natural science can’t come first
In modern society, we’ve made natural science the first step in decision-making. We appoint natural scientists to advise communities what to do, based on research. This is partly political. It’s easier to say something is 95% certain, than to accept that there is no certainty in any overall outcome.
As Walters and Hilborn wrote in 1978 [5]:
“… we observe disturbed systems … Along the way we waste a lot of time trying to understand how … residual [unpredictability] arises, forgetting that we usually cannot do anything about it … When we learn to treat the … whole management process as fundamentally experimental … then we may begin to talk about a science of ecological management.”
The great problem is that the work is often reductionist. That’s to say, it may deliberately choose to focus on only a certain part of the ecosystem. More often than not, however, that choice is made for us, as the ecosystem is missing key components e.g. wildlife. By studying incomplete ecosystems, we form conclusions that are often the opposite of what works holistically.
Holistic socio-ecological systems
Recently, scientists have begun to realise that trophic structure underpins all function and therefore, the stability of all ecosystems [3,4]. So, rather than describing ‘how’ things work, we can now identify ‘why.’
In doing so, we can discover parts of the trophic system that are out of balance with each other. These models, if they are made appropriately, include humans as part of a broader socio-ecological system (since we are also animals, and therefore, also part-and-parcel ecosystem).
Even without these models, it’s often quite obvious what’s missing. For instance, an animal that recently went locally extinct or is declining heavily.
The natural science role, therefore, becomes one of working out ‘how’ we change our own behaviour to enable systems to reform. Because now we know ‘why’ they work, even if we don’t know exactly ‘how’ we fit in.
Combining natural philosophy and natural science
In conservation therefore, it becomes a question of using both approaches but not putting natural science first.
Natural philosophy is often common sense. For example, it’s common sense to assume that a landscape without predators, cannot be stable. Yet we allow natural scientists to argue this, because one study might show that introducing predators meant prey numbers went down in one place.
But ecosystems have to have areas of both source populations and sink populations. Some animals have to decline for others to increase – or else one population becomes out of balance. The overall aim, therefore, is to create a fully self-sustaining system which requires predators moving across the whole landscape. This is because all ecosystems are regulated top-down … but throughout the food chainA single thread in a food web illustrating the chain of animals that eat each other. At the base of the food chain are small high-energy (fast metabolism) animals and at the other end large low metabolism animals. An example would be whales eating krill that eat plankton that eat algae. Or lions that eat gazelles that eat grass. More, not just from the top [6].
Conservationists and politicians have to learn to put natural philosophy first and accept ‘why’ things work, before employing natural scientists, to identify ‘how’ we can make things better for ourselves.
As Stanley Salthe says ‘the role of a nature philosopher is to ‘[make] scientific knowledge into an intelligible system’ – a kind of unity of science.’
References
- Salthe, S (2002) Becoming, Being and Passing: Our Myth from Science (the Second Law and Natural SelectionDarwin’s theory how species are formed, where those that stand in closest competition with those undergoing beneficial modification and improvement, will go extinct faster. Natural selection is by survival of the likeliest, not survival of the fittest. The fittest are only likely to survive because they happen to be most suited to the environment into which they are born. The More) https://www.nbi.dk/~natphil/salthe/
- Harte, J., ‘Maximum entropyThe degree of disorder or chaos in a system, most often used to describe thermodynamic energy but also used the behaviour of information. All else being equal, physics determines that all matter and energy moves towards chaos, therefore biological systems are in a continual state of battling against entropic forces in order to remain stable. The most stable ecosystem is More and ecology. A theory of abundance, distribution, and energetics’. 2011.
- Andersen, K., et al., Assumptions behind size-based ecosystem models are realistic. ICES Journal of Marine Science: Journal du Conseil, 2016. 73: p. fsv211.
- Blanchard, J.L., et al., From Bacteria to Whales: Using Functional Size Spectra to ModelThe process, either mathematically or in the human brain, of creating an internal version of something that we can refer to, to better understand how it functions and our place within. Scientific modelling is where we take the best knowledge we have and build a version of what will happen, if we assume certain parameters. For example, we might model More Marine Ecosystems. Trends in Ecology & Evolution, 2017. 32(3): p. 174-186.
- Walters, Carl & Hilborn, Ray. (1978). Ecological Optimization and Adaptive Management. Annual Review of Ecology and Systematics. 9. 157-188. 10.1146/annurev.es.09.110178.001105.
- Hammerschlag, Neil & Schmitz, Oswald & Flecker, Alexander & Lafferty, Kevin & Sih, Andrew & Atwood, Trisha & Gallagher, Austin & Irschick, Duncan & Skubel, Rachel & Cooke, Steven. (2019). Ecosystem Function and Services of Aquatic Predators in the Anthropocene. Trends in Ecology & Evolution. 34. 369-383. 10.1016/j.tree.2019.01.005.
