Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
species composition and the functioning of ecosystems.This makes envi-
ronmental problems “wicked” problems (Ludwig et al. 2001). In light of this,
ecologists must be careful about the way they conduct their science to en-
sure that they gain reliable understanding of the way environmental change
influences ecosystems.
Ecological Science: Gaining Reliable Knowledge
about Ecosystems
Ecologists conduct their science by asking functional questions about or-
ganisms, their relationship to each other, and their relationship to the envi-
ronment.Asking functional questions is a powerful way to study nature and
contribute to environmental problem solving because it forces one to think
about the root cause of a pattern or process. One way to begin deriving such
a causal understanding of nature is to ask “Why” certain natural processes
and patterns exist.Why questions, in a sense, are synonymous with func-
tional questions because we must come up with answers that have an ulti-
mate (cause-effect) basis, as opposed to a proximate (correlational) basis
(Mayr 1982).To illustrate this point, consider the following example.
Suppose that you woke up one morning with a high fever. Fever is often
a tell-tale sign that you have a disease.Technically, the fever is a disease symp-
tom, a
proximate
indication that you have contracted a disease. But, many
diseases can cause a fever—it is part of the body's normal immune re-
sponse—so we don't know what kind of infection (e.g., bacterial, viral)
caused that response. If the fever was severe enough, we might see a doctor
to solve the problem with medication.The doctor has two choices. She or
he could prescribe medication to reduce the severity of the fever. If this
were the case, the doctor would be treating the symptom of the disease, or
metaphorically, simply providing a
proximate
answer or solution to the prob-
lem. Prescribing medication such as antibiotics would be reasonable if the
fever was caused by a bacterial infec-
tion. It would be an egregious mis-
take, if not malpractice, to give you
the same prescription to treat viral
meningitis or smallpox. Indeed soci-
ety, through guidelines enforced by
professional medical societies and the
law, insists that doctors do not merely
treat disease symptoms, but rather
Asking functional questions is a
powerful way to study nature and
contribute to environmental prob-
lem solving because it forces one to
think about the root cause of a pat-
tern or process.
