Carnap and ‘Ecosystem’

Abstract

How one defines the term ‘ecosystem’ is of central importance in arriving at good policy decisions regarding ecosystem management, so guidelines are needed on how to adequately introduce the term ‘ecosystem’ in scientific and policy discourse.  My goal in this paper is to outline how one might approach this matter from the perspective of Rudolf Carnap’s ‘principle of tolerance’.  I begin by outlining two interpretations of what Carnap means by being tolerant in introducing a scientific term – what I call ‘conditional’ and ‘absolute’ interpretations – and then apply these interpretations to the case of introducing the term ‘ecosystem’.  Specifically, I reconstruct the development of the ecosystem concept, starting from notions of a biotic community proposed in the mid-19^th century, and working up to Eugene Odum’s present-day authoritative definition of an ‘ecosystem’.  Reflection on this developmental history of the ecosystem concept reveals a number of empirical obstacles in arriving at an adequate definition of ‘ecosystem’, obstacles that have led some ecosystem scientists to resort to pragmatic approaches in defining ecosystems.  What I show is that this presumed reliance on pragmatics is best handled if one interprets the introduction of the term ‘ecosystem’ along the lines of a conditional approach to Carnapian tolerance.