Meeting 14: Ecological Diversity and Biodiversity (4/29)

Reading:

• Mikkelson, “Ecological Kinds and Ecological Laws” [PDF]
• Sarkar, “Defining ‘Biodiversity’; Assessing Biodiversity” [PDF]

No presentations

This week will be our last with any appreciable reading. All the remaining presentations will be done in our final meeting on 5/6 — to be described in a future post. First, I’d like to spend around 30 minutes or so finishing up our discussion of Lange (2004) — in particular, whether you think that he offers a compelling response to Rosenberg (2001) and whether he offers an attractive picture of natural laws in general. If you find that you are interested in this topic, I’d strongly recommend you pick up a copy of his forthcoming Laws and Lawmakers (I was fortunate enough to read a draft of it). It’s fascinating but still digestible reading.

We’ll then turn to Mikkelson’s essay, which will throw us back to our talk about natural kinds and continue the thread about biological laws. History is often regarded as the dominant “influence” in biology: Mikkelson suggests that its preeminence may be exaggerated. This may be the case, but does he succeed in carving out enough room for ecological laws? I suggest we think about Mikkelson’s paper in the context of Lange’s Nomic Preservation framework.
Finally, we’ll turn to Sahotra Sarkar’s essay on biodiversity. What is it? How should we measure and define it? And how does these choices influence our policy decisions. Sarkar focuses on the first questions, but we see immediately that things in conservation biology are not nearly as simple as one might have naively expected.

Speaking of Professor Sarkar, I remind you that his lecture in the History and Philosophy of Science Lecture series will occur the day after class, Thursday 4/30 at 2:30PM in the Whitewater room (Idaho Commons) on “Heredity before Genetics: The Significance of the Environment”. I hope to see many of you there, as I expect this lecture to connect with much of what we’ve been on about in this course so far. He will also be speaking at the INPC on Saturday at 3PM (on “Environmental Decisions: The Limits of Homo economicus”) in the Aurora room, I believe. In general, there are many excellent philosophers of biology and of the environment coming to town for the INPC (here’s the program). You are all welcome to attend. If you think you’ll be around for several sessions, I can even get you a name tag (fancy!).

Study Questions

• What is the difference between the ideographic and nomothetic aspects of ecology? Why might one regard ecology to be in tension between these two modes of investigation?
• On what grounds does Mikkelson contend that law-like generalizations often explain what he calls historical generalizations?
• What’s the deal with the Sonoran desert studies? What are their significance to Mikkelson?
• What is the “being dropped in a random spot on earth” thought experiment supposed to show? Do you think it successfully shows it?
• Sarkar suggests that there is an analogy between biodiversity and health. How far do you reckon this analogy may be extended?
• Why is “place” important and difficult for conservation biology?
• Sarkar suggests that the attempt to limit the definition of ‘biodiversity’ to a subset of biological entities fails to capture something important about the diversity of biological phenomena. How so?
• Describe the “surrogacy” problem.
• What is the difference between species richness and species diversity? Why does Sarkar think that we should not use species richness to prioritize places?
• Why does Sarkar suppose that there are in fact many different concepts of ‘biodiversity’ at stake in conservation biology?