ecology - environmental...

JOEL B. HAGEN

ECOLOGYteaching

Joel B. Hagen, “Teaching Ecology during the Environmental Age, 1965-1980,” Environmental History13 (October 2008): 704-723.

ABSTRACTThe period 1965-1980 was a time of dramatic change in the academic discipline ofecology. Membership in the Ecological Society of America more than doubled. Thisgrowth was accompanied by spirited debate over fundamental concepts and theintellectual boundaries of ecology. As public awareness of environmental problemsgrew, ecologists struggled to define their professional identity and their public role inthe burgeoning popular environmental movement. The resulting tensions withinprofessional ecology were strikingly evident in the way different ecologists presentedthe conceptual framework, norms, and goals of their discipline to students throughcompeting college textbooks. This paper explores how the dominant textbook of the1960s, Eugene Odum’s Fundamentals of Ecology, was challenged by a new breed oftextbooks, beginning in the early 1970s. Odum’s textbook was notable for its emphasison applied ecology and its presentation of ecologists as expert environmentalproblem-solvers. The newer textbooks differed from Fundamentals of Ecology bothin their strong evolutionary perspectives and their ambivalence toward environmentalbiology. Ironically, as environmentalism gained increasing public support during the1970s, many ecologists turned away from teaching environmental issues.

TEXTBOOKS MAY BE a pedestrian form of literature, but they play a critical rolein the training of neophyte scientists.1 Unlike the humanities, where studentsoften are introduced to the primary literature from the very beginning, sciencestudents typically learn the rudiments of their subject by reading textbooks.Through this sometimes distorted lens students not only are exposed to well-accepted facts and theories, but also the norms and goals of the discipline.Examined in retrospect, textbooks can, therefore, provide a historical windowinto important intellectual and social changes within disciplines. Such is the casein ecology, which changed significantly beginning in the late 1960s and

DURING THE ENVIRONMENTAL AGE, 1965-1980

T E A C H I N G E C O L O G Y | 7 0 5

continuing through the 1970s. This period was marked by a spirited debate overfundamental concepts and the intellectual boundaries of ecology. At the sametime, ecologists struggled to define their professional identity and their publicrole in the emerging environmental movement. All of this occurred during a periodof unprecedented growth and specialization in ecology, as the Ecological Societyof America saw its numbers more than double between 1965-1975.2

During the early part of this period the dominant college textbook was EugeneOdum’s Fundamentals of Ecology. First published in 1953, the book quicklydisplaced competitors, eventually went through five editions, and became themost widely used textbook of ecology during the 1960s and early 1970s.3 A recentsurvey suggests that the book profoundly shaped the outlook of a generation ofecologists trained during this period.4 Odum also condensed his ideas in severalshorter books written for nonscientific audiences, thus providing the coreconcepts for a popular science of the environment.

For both admirers and later critics, Odum became indelibly linked to ecologicalpedagogy and particularly to the ecosystem concept. Largely due to his promotionof the idea, the ecosystem became part of everyday speech and was widely usedby the popular press to discuss environmental problems. A professional specialtyof ecosystem ecology had gradually established itself during the decades followingWorld War II. By the 1960s, Odum and other advocates boldly claimed that theecosystem concept could now serve as the central, unifying concept for a newecology.5 The concept unified plant and animal ecologies, which previously hadbeen quite separate specialties. It also directed attention to the importance ofbacteria, fungi, and other organisms that often had been ignored by earlierecologists. By joining the living community and the nonliving environment as asingle, interacting entity, the ecosystem concept provided a focus for studyingpollution, habitat destruction, overpopulation, and other pressing environmentalproblems. Using the conceptual framework of energy flow and nutrient cycling,the idea of an ecosystem was sufficiently abstract and flexible to explain theoperation of something as small as a spacecraft or as large as the entire biosphere.Not surprisingly, “spaceship earth” became a compelling metaphor both forecosystem ecologists and for nonscientists concerned about an imperiled planet.6

Much of the success of this metaphor and the scientific concepts at its corecan be attributed to the way that Odum embedded these ideas in the progressivesocial and political ideas descended from the New Deal. From this broad socialperspective ecologists were society’s expert problem-solvers, who used theirunderstanding of nature’s processes to cure or repair the environmental side-effects of a growing population in a technologically advanced society. Odumartfully combined cooperative metaphors drawn from the organic world of lichensand corals with mechanical icons of a technologically sophisticated culture. Coralreefs, human societies, spacecraft, and computers all could be understood ascomplex wholes made up of interacting parts coordinated by intricate homeostaticmechanisms.7

Odum’s ideas about organicism, cooperation, interdependence, andprogressive evolution both in nature and in human society were within the broad

7 0 6 | E N V I R O N M E N T A L H I S T O R Y 1 3 ( O C T O B E R 2 0 0 8 )

mainstream of American political, social, and biological thought throughoutmuch of his career. By the late 1960s, however, a strong reaction began againstthis way of thinking, not only in biology, but also in politics and popular culture.A self-conscious group of evolutionary ecologists argued the importance ofindividual fitness and the improbability of the type of group adaptations thatwere central to Odum’s thinking. Cooperation, which Odum took for granted asan inherent characteristic of ecosystems and human societies, became highlyproblematic. Evolutionary ecologists tended to dismiss it or downplay itsimportance. In the new evolutionary theory cooperation was not the predictableresult of progressive evolution as Odum thought, but rather a strategyoccasionally employed by self-interested individuals to increase theirreproductive success. If the new evolutionary ecology undermined Odum’s claimsabout cooperation in nature, the erosion of the liberal progressivism of the NewDeal also changed the way professional ecologists thought about their public rolesin the environmental movement. In contrast to Odum’s view of ecologists as expertproblem-solvers working within a cooperative political system, many youngerecologists retreated into purely academic pursuits or viewed themselves asdetached social critics outside the established political order. In important ways,the textbooks that began to replace Odum’s Fundamentals of Ecology during the1970s reflected these changes.

BIOSOCIAL ROOTS OF FUNDAMENTALS OF ECOLOGYFUNDAMENTALS OF ECOLOGY was a striking departure from other ecologytextbooks, both those that preceded it and those that later replaced it.8 Stung bycriticism that ecology was glorified natural history, Odum highlighted thescientific foundations of the discipline. Each chapter began with a concisestatement of a fundamental ecological principle followed by explanation andexamples. This pedagogical style was accompanied by a holistic approach thatintroduced students to ecosystems at the very beginning of the book. Theecosystem concept permeated later chapters and was used as the primaryorganizing principle for discussing other ecological topics. Equally striking wasthe way that Odum presented ecology as a bridge between the natural and socialsciences. No other major ecology textbook has placed so much emphasis uponapplied ecology and the social role of ecologists as expert problem-solvers in acomplex, technological world. For Odum, professional ecology was more than anacademic discipline; it was also a field responsible for providing environmentalcounsel and for training conservation workers, sanitary engineers, and otherapplied ecologists.9 This view of ecology—which was widely rejected by latertextbook writers—was strongly influenced by Odum’s father, the sociologistHoward Washington Odum. The elder Odum was an important role model for hisson. He strongly encouraged Eugene’s interest in textbook writing, and as weshall see, his ideas provided an important foundation for Eugene’s thinking aboutthe relationship between science and society.10 Equally striking was the way thefather used his son’s earliest ecological writings in his own sociology textbooks.11


This symbiotic blending of the natural and social sciences would become ahallmark of Eugene Odum’s approach to teaching ecology.

Beginning in the 1930s, Howard Washington Odum became a leadingspokesman for regionalism, which he sharply contrasted with an oldersociological school of sectionalism. Unlike sectionalism, which emphasizeddivisiveness and conflict, Odum’s regionalism emphasized cooperation andinterdependence among the various regions of the United States.12 According toOdum, each region contributed to the national whole by bringing a unique set ofnatural resources, economic opportunities, social structures, and culturalcharacteristics. Regionalism was premised on the idea that progressive socialevolution leads to increasing equilibrium and harmony in the organic whole ofthe nation.13 The Great Depression challenged this assumption, and Odumemphasized the growing role of the federal government in planning andcoordinating social and economic progress through large regional projects suchas the Tennessee Valley Authority. However, Odum took pains to place the growthof government within the context of traditional democratic ideals and to presentbig government as a necessary part of the continuing evolution of Americansociety. His views reflected the progressive liberalism of the New Deal, to whichhe was deeply committed. The Great Depression and the New Deal programs weredefining episodes in American history, and Odum believed that regionalismprovided the proper balance between the extreme individualism championed bytraditional political conservatives and the equally extreme totalitarianismexemplified by the Soviet Union and Germany.14

Eugene Odum credited his father with introducing him to the idea of thefunctional integration of parts into a larger whole, which he routinely applied toboth ecosystems and human societies. As he later wrote, “the concept thatuniquely different cultural units function together as wholes is, of course, parallelto the ecologist’s concept of the ‘ecosystem.’”15 This central idea was reinforcedby other intellectual influences that Odum freely acknowledged. As a graduatestudent, Odum came under the sway of Victor Shelford, an ecologist who wasdeeply committed to holistic approaches and who stressed the social role ofecologists in promoting conservation and environmental protection. There wereobvious parallels between Shelford’s idea of ecological regions (biomes) and thesociological regions of Odum’s father. Odum later claimed that Shelford’s biomeconcept was a forerunner of the ecosystem concept.16 Odum was also stronglyinfluenced by his brother, Howard Thomas, who wrote some of the chapters inFundamentals of Ecology, and spent his career trying to create a unified systemsapproach to studying both ecosystems and human societies.17 H. T. also played animportant role in introducing his older brother to the early ecosystem researchof his mentor, G. Evelyn Hutchinson, and Hutchinson’s protégé, RaymondLindeman. As Fundamentals of Ecology evolved, Odum also was able to draw onthe expanding work of other ecosystem ecologists. Thus, during the 1960s, EugeneOdum was not only a leader of the specialty, but also the primary synthesizer ofresearch on ecosystems.


The idea that both ecosystems and societies evolve progressively towardgreater complexity, interdependence, and self-regulation was a core belief forOdum. Indeed, he believed that humans could learn important sociological lessonsfrom richly cooperative ecosystems such as the coral reefs that he had studied inthe Marshall Islands.18 Even humble lichens provided a useful evolutionary modelfor human behavior. Odum believed that in primitive lichens the fungusparasitized its algal host, but in more advanced lichens a mutualistic relationshipevolved in which both the fungal and algal partners benefited from theassociation.19

Learning from such natural examples provided practical benefits if humanscould avoid unwisely parasitizing their natural environments. By understandingpatterns of energy flow and biogeochemical cycles, humans could harvest usefulplants and animals so long as the ecosystem’s ability to reassemble new organismswas not exceeded: “The aim of good conservation is to insure a continuous yieldof useful plants, animals, and materials, by establishing a balanced cycle ofharvest and renewal. Thus, a ‘no fishing’ sign on a pond may not be as goodconservation as a management plan which allows for removal of several hundredpounds of fish per acre year after year.”20 Managing nature for human benefitwas the primary social responsibility of professional ecologists, and at timesOdum argued that all ecology was fundamentally “human ecology.”21

Odum’s human-centered ecology, his optimism about balancing the potentialharms and benefits of technology, and his belief in establishing a harmonybetween humans and nature are evident in the contrasting positions that he tookon two of the most pressing environmental concerns of the 1960s and 1970s:nuclear power and synthetic pesticides. Like many other ecosystem ecologists,Odum had a stake in nuclear power because the Atomic Energy Commissionsupported much of his research. He saw no contradiction between his commitmentto the environment and working with the agency.22 As Odum’s colleague, FrankGolley later recalled, “At this time, before the rapid escalation of the VietnamWar, many American ecologists were unconcerned that their studies were closelylinked to military activities. Rather, they tended to accept the cold war as a factof life and welcomed the opportunities military research made available.”23 Inreturn for the financial support, Odum believed that ecosystem ecologistsprovided valuable guidance for preventing environmental damage from nuclearwastes. Understanding the behavior and effects of radioactive substances thatwere released from reactors or nuclear weapons required the knowledge ofbiogeochemical cycles and food chains that were the heart of ecosystem theory.These two concepts explained how minute quantities of radioactivity in coolingwater from a nuclear reactor might accumulate through biological magnification,endangering the top carnivores of aquatic food chains. Given their expertise,Odum argued that ecologists were in a unique position to provide technical advicethat the federal government needed to balance the potential benefits and harmsposed by nuclear technology. Odum’s own participation in the Atoms for Peaceprogram during the late 1950s also provided grounds for his optimism thatecosystem ecologists were having a positive effect on public policy.24 Beginning


with the second edition of Fundamentals of Ecology (1959), this became animportant example of Odum’s commitment to applied ecology.

In contrast, Odum was an early and persistent critic of synthetic pesticidesand the chemical industry that produced them. Beginning with the first editionof Fundamentals of Ecology (1953) he argued that DDT and other powerfulinsecticides often had unintended consequences on harmless or beneficialspecies.25 According to Odum, biological control and other strategies were moreeffective for curbing insect pests while still maintaining “healthy ecosystems.”Thus in contrast to his belief that nuclear power was a necessary alternative tofossil fuels, Odum believed that synthetic pesticides could be replaced with lessdangerous alternatives. He was highly critical of the chemical industry forignoring the warnings of ecologists and for profiting from dangerous products.In contrast to the cooperative and mutually beneficial relationship that Odumbelieved to exist between ecologists and the Atomic Energy Commission, therewas no such relationship between ecologists and chemical companies. Thus,Odum’s attitude was much more adversarial toward an industry that he believedwas driven by economic self-interest rather than the public good.26

ENDANGERED PLANET: SPACESHIP OR LIFEBOAT?ODUM NEVER LOST his optimism about technology and the ability of humans tosolve environmental problems, but by 1971, when the third edition of his textbookwas published, environmental degradation was a major public issue. To someobservers, environmental problems were an intractable result of too many peopleon a crowded planet. In the earlier editions of his book, Odum had discussedoverpopulation primarily as a local problem particularly in urban areas. He hadacknowledged that there was the potential for global overpopulation, butemphasized the disagreement among scientists about the seriousness of theproblem. Paul Ehrlich’s ominously titled book, The Population Bomb (1968),challenged this assumption and captured the sense that human populationgrowth was not only dangerously out of control but also the root cause of otherenvironmental problems.27 By 1971, Odum admitted that there was a broadscientific consensus supporting this position. In his revised textbook, Odumcalled for an end to all restrictions on family planning including birth controland abortion. On a global scale he placed these technological solutions topopulation growth within a broader framework of social justice for the poor,especially in underdeveloped countries.28 He called for a broad program of “totalecosystem management” that included not only incentives for reversingpopulation growth, but also a greater emphasis on consumer protection,environmental regulation, environmental education, and tax reforms to promotesustainable economies. Odum’s management plan was premised on the federalgovernment using the expert advice of ecologists to implement these broadprogrammatic goals. He echoed the economist Kenneth Boulding, who called forreplacing a “cowboy economy” with a more frugal “spaceship economy.” For both


Odum and Boulding, economics needed to emphasize quality of life rather thanmaximizing production and consumption.29

The idea of spaceship earth was a metaphor that neatly encapsulated Odum’shabit of equating nature, society, and mechanical devices. He unpacked thismetaphor in a variety of ways. The famous “Earthrise” photograph taken by Apollo 8astronauts was part of the frontispiece of Odum’s 1971 textbook, and like otherenvironmentalists, he used this iconic image of the earth to highlight theuniqueness of the biosphere. Juxtaposed with “Earthrise” were other images takenfrom space that illustrated how ecologists could use satellite images and otherforms of remote photography to survey ecological units ranging from populationsto ecosystems. Odum viewed the NASA space program as another example of themutualistic relationship between ecologists and the federal government. NASAprovided new tools and funding opportunities for scientists, including ecologists.Ecologists, so Odum believed, had valuable expertise to provide in return. Withthe possibility of extended space travel, ecologists could contribute to the spaceprogram by designing space vehicles as artificial ecosystems capable of recyclingcarbon dioxide and oxygen. A new chapter on the ecology of space travel in Odum’s1971 textbook highlighted the experimental microcosms that ecologists alreadywere building for NASA to simulate these ecosystem processes. Later, after theill-fated Apollo 13 voyage, Odum employed the spaceship metaphor in two otherways. Unlike the fragile Apollo 13 command module that relied on stored oxygento support its astronauts, spaceship earth was a robust, self-contained life-supportsystem regulated by numerous negative feedback systems.30 However, despite itrobustness, the integrity of the biosphere was capable of being destroyed bymisguided human activities. If that happened, spaceship earth would be like acrippled space capsule adrift in a hostile universe.

The idea of spaceship earth did not hold universal appeal. Garrett Hardindismissed it as a dangerously misguided metaphor promoted by liberalenvironmentalists and policy makers.31 According to Hardin, a spaceship requiresa commander with absolute authority. Because there is no world government,Hardin claimed that the earth was much more like a few crowded lifeboats adriftin an ocean teeming with drowning swimmers. Each boat had limited space andscarce resources. To take on more passengers would be suicidal for the fortunatefew already in the boats. The implications of Hardin’s lifeboat ethics were obvious.Global population growth was an imminent catastrophe that was probably out ofhuman control. Well-intentioned but misguided foreign policies made thesituation worse by promoting food aid to poor countries where most of thepopulation growth was occurring. Based on his stark Malthusian view of theworld, Hardin called for strict immigration control and an end to foreign aid.

If cooperation between rich and poor nations was misguided, Hardin was alsodeeply skeptical of cooperation among the fortunate few inside the lifeboats. Inhis most famous essay, “The Tragedy of the Commons,” Hardin argued that theinherent selfishness of individuals undercuts efforts to promote the public good.32

Hardin compared the earth to a pasture held in common by a group of shepherds.


Short-term, self-interest always tempted individuals to exploit the pasture byadding more animals to their private flocks, even though this ultimately led toovergrazing and the destruction of the common resources. Thus, for Hardin, thethreat to the environment came not only from immigration and runawaypopulation growth, but also from individual greed. Hardin held out the vaguehope for “mutual coercion mutually agreed upon” to enforce environmentalprotection, but how this mutual agreement might be implemented in a world sothoroughly based on self-interest was not clear. Hardin offered no concrete socialor political proposals for bringing this about.

Although he never mentioned him by name, Hardin had little use for Odum’sidea of a total ecosystem management program. In marked contrast to Odum’sbelief in a benign, activist government, Hardin viewed government as a cause ofenvironmental problems, not a reliable source of solutions. This mistrust of thegovernment’s role in protecting the environment was widely shared even byHardin’s sharpest critics, who rejected both his libertarian politics and hishostility toward developing nations. Barry Commoner, perhaps the leadingenvironmentalist of the day, accused Hardin of promoting a new barbarism thatwould dehumanize both the wealthy and the poor, but he too rejected the belief ina partnership between government and ecologists.33 Unlike Odum, who continuedto use nuclear power as an example of how ecologists cooperated with thegovernment to promote the common good, Commoner used nuclear power as aprime example of how an arrogant and misguided government ignored science,consequently endangering both the environment and the lives of its citizens.34

Despite his many critics, Hardin’s essays were enormously popular during the1970s. “The Tragedy of the Commons” was repeatedly republished throughoutthe decade, and it was probably the most widely read environmental essay of theperiod.35 Hardin clearly recognized the power of a compelling metaphor, and heeffectively employed the ominous images of lifeboats and degraded commons tohighlight important environmental problems that deeply concerned his readers.Critics complained that he misrepresented the way pastoral societies actuallyfunction.36 Nonetheless, Hardin’s idea of selfish individuals exploiting thecommons captured an underlying characteristic of environmental problemsranging from air pollution to overfishing. His contempt for bureaucracy and hispessimism about governmental solutions to environmental problems were widelyshared and transcended a simple liberal-conservative dichotomy. Hardin’sassumption that humans are basically selfish and his skepticism aboutindividuals being able to rise above selfishness to act cooperatively reflected bothscientific and popular views of human nature that became increasingly prevalentduring the 1970s.

In sharp contrast to Odum’s optimism about human cooperation and his viewthat cooperation was pervasive in nature, the evolutionary theorists whoinfluenced Hardin’s more competitive view of nature were deeply skeptical aboutaltruism and cooperation.37 Robert Trivers, William Hamilton, George Williams,and (somewhat later) Richard Dawkins argued that many supposed examples ofcooperation were really selfishness in disguise. For example, herds or schools of


prey animals frequently form cohesive groups that repel predators. According toearlier theories of cooperative behavior, this was a good example of a groupadaptation that evolved because it benefited the group, even though individualson the periphery exposed themselves to danger.38 In an article aptly entitled“Geometry for the Selfish Herd,” Hamilton argued that this cohesiveness couldbe better explained by assuming that every member selfishly strives for the safetyof the center of the herd.39 On this view, those on the periphery are not altruists,but simply less successful at protecting themselves. Williams extended this lineof reasoning to argue that virtually all supposed examples of group adaptationscould be better understood as fortuitous side-effects of natural selection workingfor individual advantage.40 Among many examples of group selection thatWilliams effectively debunked with his individualistic arguments was the ideathat ecosystems evolve in a progressive way toward greater stability and self-regulation.

According to the new evolutionary perspective, one might expect self-sacrifice,altruism, or cooperation to evolve only under highly restricted conditions. It oftenoccurred in small family groups, because individuals indirectly increase theirown fitness by helping their close relatives. Hamilton developed a sophisticatedmathematical theory of kin selection based on inclusive fitness, the idea that anindividual’s total genetic contribution to the next generation includes both thegenes directly passed on to its offspring and the same genes passed on by closerelatives. Both Hamilton and Trivers demonstrated mathematically thatcooperation also could evolve through reciprocal altruism. Individuals might actaltruistically in situations where other individuals were likely to reciprocate. Ofcourse, as Trivers and others pointed out, this sort of tit-for-tat behavior was notaltruism in the traditional sense, but rather a form of pseudo-altruism ordisguised selfishness.41

Human behavior was not the primary focus of the new evolutionary thinkingabout altruism, but the implications for humans were never far below the surface.As an exemplar of the semi-popular evolutionary literature of the 1970s, RichardDawkins’s The Selfish Gene clearly reflected ambivalence toward selfish behavior.Based on the thinking of Trivers, Hamilton, and Williams, Dawkins continuedthe attack on group selection by reducing natural selection to the level ofindividual genes. Nonetheless, Dawkins attempted to draw a sharp distinctionbetween explanations for the evolution of behavior and a prescriptive moralitybased on selfishness. Still, the argument of The Selfish Gene could not have beenmore different from Odum’s idea of progressive evolution leading to greatercooperation. Dawkins wrote: “Be warned that if you wish, as I do, to build a societyin which individuals cooperate generously and unselfishly towards a commongood, you can expect little help from biological nature. Let us try to teachgenerosity and altruism, because we are born selfish.”42 What captured theimaginations of many of his readers, however, was not his call to teach altruism,but rather Dawkins’s frequent characterization of humans as “lumbering robots”and “gene machines.” Could nurture really overcome nature? The overall thrustof Dawkins’s argument made this seem unlikely. Some readers recalled that


reading Dawkins’s book was intellectually enlightening but psychologicallytraumatic.43 The depressing consequences of Hardin’s tragedy of the commonsappeared inevitable.

If the new biological thinking about selfishness and altruism underminedOdum’s claims about cooperation in nature, the decline of New Deal liberalismundercut Odum’s claims for a cooperative society and an activist government.This older form of liberalism largely disappeared as a force in American politicsand culture by the late 1960s.44 For very different reasons, both New Left radicalsand resurgent conservatives assailed New Deal models of government for beingoppressive and paternalistic. Ironically, despite the loss of confidence in anactivist federal government, environmental politics became both morebureaucratic and adversarial. Odum had always believed that as environmentalproblem-solvers, ecologists would play a central role in setting public policy onenvironmental issues. However, by the late 1960s, economic, political, and legalconcerns were at least as important as ecological issues in determiningenvironmental policies.45 Self-proclaimed environmental experts—many of whomhad little formal ecological training—competed for influence with professionalecologists. Fearing loss of autonomy as the term “ecologist” was appropriated bynonbiologists, disillusioned with big government, and skeptical that they couldsignificantly influence environmental policy, many younger ecologists retreatedto purely academic concerns or acted as detached environmental critics.46

Odum never wavered in his core beliefs. In his presidential address to theEcological Society of America published in 1969 he repeated his claims aboutprogressive evolution, cooperation, and homeostatic self-regulation both inecosystems and human societies.47 He also restated his belief that ecologists hada social responsibility to serve as environmental problem-solvers who workedcooperatively with governmental agencies. Finally, he repeated his call for ahuman ecology guided by the culture and values of liberal democracy. Thepresidential address became a Science Citation Classic and Odum used itextensively when he revised Fundamentals of Ecology for the third edition in1971.48 However, both the presidential address and textbook were running againstthe tide in modern evolutionary ecology, politics, and popular culture. Althoughthe revised textbook initially sold well, it soon was challenged by a new generationof books that took a very different perspective on professional ecology and itsrelationship to environmentalism.

ECOLOGY COMES OF AGE?THE INTELLECTUAL SHIFT that had begun in the late 1960s was strikinglyapparent in a new crop of ecology textbooks that challenged Odum’s dominanceof the college market during the early 1970s. Noting the arrival of these newtextbooks with approval, the evolutionary ecologist Gordon Orians wrote, “Untilrecently, the appropriate unit of measure of ecology textbooks was the odum, andthe problem of selection of a text for a course was a simple one.”49 In his sweepingbook review subtitled “Ecology Comes of Age,” Orians left little doubt that he


considered the new textbooks an improvement over Odum’s Fundamentals ofEcology. According to Orians the best of the new crop took a strong Darwinianperspective, avoided group selection, and emphasized the importance of naturalselection acting on individuals. He noted with approval that the new textbooksturned away from Odum’s claim that ecosystems evolved in a progressive mannerand instead emphasized that patterns in nature were the result of strategies usedby individuals to increase their fitness. Orians also approved of the way that thenew authors avoided the heavy emphasis on applied ecology that was such animportant part of Odum’s Fundamentals of Ecology. “Pressing environmentalproblems are discussed where appropriate,” Orians wrote, “but all the texts avoidgiving implications that ecology can be a savior for our society.” This was certainlyan understatement on Orians’s part, because the most successful of the newtextbooks placed very little emphasis on applied ecology at all. Thus, when Oriansconcluded that the new textbooks symbolized ecology’s coming of age, he clearlyimplied that the discipline had outgrown the intellectual foundations of Odum’secosystem ecology and the belief that ecologists should be expert environmentalproblem-solvers.

Eric Pianka, a protégé of Orians at the University of Washington, credited hismentor with teaching him “selective thinking”—using natural selection in aconsistent and rigorous way to explain ecological phenomena.50 Pianka’sEvolutionary Ecology (1974) traced it intellectual lineage back through Orians tothe eminent population geneticist and evolutionary theorist R.A. Fisher.Emphasizing natural selection and evolution, Evolutionary Ecology became oneof the most successful ecology textbooks of the late twentieth century. Iteventually rivaled the longevity and popularity of Odum’s Fundamentals ofEcology, going through six editions by the end of the century.51 EvolutionaryEcology was a striking departure from Odum’s earlier book. In the introductionPianka drew a sharp distinction between ecology and environmentalism. Hecomplained that many students confused the two, and that they expected ecologycourses to deal primarily with human ecology and environmental problems.52

Unlike Odum, who interspersed examples of applied ecology throughout histextbook, Pianka restricted his discussion of human ecology and environmentalproblems to a single chapter at the end of the book—and even this chapter wasremoved when the textbook was revised for its second edition in 1978. For Odum,the fundamentals of ecology meant understanding ecosystems, and his entiretextbook was oriented around the ecosystem concept. In Pianka’s textbook therewere no chapters specifically devoted to the ecosystem, and although the termwas used occasionally, the discussion of ecosystem processes such as energy flowand biogeochemical cycling appeared in the chapter on community structure.Looking for the fundamentals of ecology, Pianka did not find them in ecosystemprocesses, but rather in natural selection acting on individuals.

This was not merely a difference in emphasis. It reflected strikingly differentperspectives on nature and humans’ relationship to it. Odum viewed nature inways that were fundamentally mechanical and organic. Each component specieshad its own particular function to play in the ecosystem. Species interacted with


one another and with the environment like the organs of a body or the parts of amachine. By understanding these normal functions and the pathologicalmalfunctions caused by human activities, the ecosystem ecologist could hope torepair damaged ecosystems or return them to health, much as a mechanic repaireda machine or a doctor healed a patient. From this human-centered perspective,ecosystems also could be modified and perhaps even improved. Pianka’s moreatomistic perspective on nature focused upon individuals facing challenges posedboth by other organisms and by the physical environment. Although these bioticand abiotic interactions were extraordinarily complex, they were allfundamentally matters of individual fitness. What Pianka found fascinatingabout ecology were the strategies that individuals used to survive and reproducein a complex world filled with competitors, predators, and a fluctuating physicalenvironment. This perspective was certainly not inimical to an environmentalethic, but it encouraged a much more detached view of nature indifferent tohuman welfare. As we shall see, Pianka was deeply skeptical about the future ofhumanity and the role of ecologists in protecting the environment.

The intellectual divide between Odum and Pianka is clearly illustrated bycontrasting how the two ecologists presented symbiosis. Rejecting what heconsidered to be the Darwinian overemphasis on “survival of the fittest,” Odumclaimed that mutualism was pervasive in nature and that there was anevolutionary tendency for primitive parasitic relationships to evolve into moreadvanced mutualistic partnerships.53 This way of thinking—based both on ideasof progressive evolution and group selection—was repudiated by Pianka, whofollowed Hamilton and Trivers in thinking that cooperative behavior had afundamental basis in selfishness. From this perspective cooperation was astrategy that could be adopted or abandoned depending upon how the situationmight affect reproductive success. According to Pianka, obligate mutualism wasuncommon, and there was a constantly shifting balance between parasitism andtransient forms of cooperation.

To illustrate this point Pianka described a complex set of interactions betweenpopulations of Giant Cowbirds and oriole-like birds called Oropendolas living inPanama.54 Female Cowbirds are brood parasites that lay their eggs in other birds’nests. Oropendolas typically guarded their nests against this parasitism, butunder certain environmental conditions they tolerated it. Brood parasitism wastolerated when Oropendola nests were infested by flesh-eating botflies, becausethe voracious Cowbird young ate both the flies and their larvae. Apparently, theOropendola’s fitness was reduced less by raising some Cowbirds than by havingits own nestlings infested by the parasitic insects. However, Oropendola nestsbuilt near wasp colonies seemed to be immune to botfly infestation, and here theOropendola’s vigilantly removed any Cowbird eggs from their nests. Cowbirdphysiology and behavior were apparently molded by the selective pressures ofthe particular biotic environment in which they lived. Where Oropendolastolerated brood parasites, the Cowbirds laid large numbers of eggs that poorlymimicked the host’s eggs. Where brood parasitism was not tolerated, femaleCowbirds stealthy laid a single egg that closely mimicked the Oropendola eggs.


For Pianka, the Cowbirds and Oropendolas illustrated the shifting boundarythat separated parasitism from mutualism. Contrary to Odum’s view, Piankadenied that there was a tendency for parasitism to evolve into mutualism. Instead,the Cowbirds and Oropendolas seemed locked in a continual duel of shiftingstrategies. The apparent mutualism that sometimes existed between Oropendolasand Cowbirds was more a case of mutual exploitation than the harmonious,cooperative relationship that Odum thought that he had found in lichens andcorals.

Despite his strikingly different perspective on the fundamental basis forsymbiosis, Pianka was just as willing as Odum to draw broad lessons about humanbehavior from what he observed in nature. In contrast to Odum’s cooperativehuman society, which mirrored the mutualism found in lichens and corals, Piankaviewed humanity from a much more individualistic, competitive perspective. Likeother organisms, natural selection had shaped human behavior to maximizereproductive success. Just as the behavior of Oropendolas and Cowbirds involvednothing more than strategies for increasing individual fitness, Pianka believed thathumans behaved primarily for short-term self-interest. Thus, like Garrett Hardin,Pianka believed that the ability of humans to work together toward long-range socialgoals such as protecting the environment was undercut by selfishness.

In the final chapter of his textbook Pianka described in vivid detail what hetermed “the rape of planet Earth.” The manifold problems of the environmentwere rooted in overpopulation, and that was the rub. Reducing the humanpopulation would require individuals to constrain reproduction, but this meantthat an individual would have to voluntarily reduce his or her fitness for thebenefit of the species (and other species, as well). This smacked of group selection,and Pianka denied that such a tendency for self-sacrifice could have evolved inhumans. Although he called for an “ethic of equilibrium” that would makeprotecting the environment a moral duty, he seemed pessimistic about its success.“The ethic of equilibrium requires that individuals restrain themselves fromreproducing maximally, which essentially requires a ‘group’ effort and wouldrequire group selection to evolve.”55 Because he believed that this could nothappen, the only alternative was for society to enforce the ethic of equilibrium.However, his dismissive attitude toward politicians and governments suggestedfew viable options for implementing an effective environmental policy on anational or international scale.

Like Hardin, Pianka was a detached social critic rather than a hands-onproblem-solver. Although he was alarmed at the destruction of the natural world,Pianka did not share Odum’s belief that ecologists had a social responsibility tosolve environmental problems. Doing applied research, or even training othersto so, was not an important priority for Pianka. Ecology was first and foremostan academic discipline focused upon explaining the living world in terms ofnatural selection. Humans inevitably would go extinct and, indeed, their demiseseemed imminent, but Pianka concluded his book by claiming that this was not acause for pessimism because after humans were gone natural selection wouldcontinue to produce new species.


Not all of the new authors shared Pianka’s fatalism. Robert Ricklefs, the authorof another highly successful textbook that challenged Odum’s Fundamentals ofEcology, was an avowed optimist who believed that scientists had a moralobligation to contribute to the society that supported them.56 Nonetheless,Ricklef’s ideas about what this social obligation entailed were quite different fromOdum’s view of ecologists as expert problem-solvers. In contrast, Ricklefscompared scientists to artists whose social responsibility was to create highculture. The achievements of Newton, Einstein, and Darwin were comparable tobuilding the cathedral at Chartres or painting the Mona Lisa. Both great art andgreat science were the cultural products of optimistic societies. In one senseRicklefs acknowledged that these achievements were luxuries, but in a deeperand more subtle way they were the defining features of Western civilization.57

According to Ricklefs ecology was “coming of age” as a new generation ofecologists developed theories and conducted experiments that were as rigorousand elegant as those of chemistry and physics. Like the laws of physics, ecologicalprinciples had practical applications. Indeed, Ricklefs claimed that existingecological principles could provide intellectual guidance for solvingenvironmental problems. Nonetheless, he denied that ecologists had anyparticular social responsibility to do applied research or to train appliedecologists. Whereas Odum had viewed ecologists as playing a leadership role insolving environmental problems, Ricklefs worried that society might haveunrealistic expectations of what ecologists could accomplish.58 In the long run,he believed that if ecologists continued pure research they would contribute moreto society than if they turned their attention to solving immediate, practicalproblems. As a result, Ricklef devoted even less space in his textbook toenvironmental problems than Pianka did in Evolutionary Ecology.

CONCLUSIONTHE THIRD EDITION of Odum’s Fundamentals of Ecology (1971) was remarkablysuccessful. It was translated into twelve languages and sold 42,000 copies in thefirst year of its release.59 However, this dominant position in the market rapidlyeroded during the 1970s as newer textbooks rose to challenge Odum’s textbook.The fact that several textbooks could now compete for adoption in college ecologycourses reflected the dramatic growth and specialization that occurred in ecologybeginning in the late 1960s, but it also reflected deep divisions within thediscipline. As the 1970s progressed, ecosystem ecologists and evolutionaryecologists increasingly ignored one another.60 Among professional ecologists,some continued to stress strong ties between their discipline and theenvironmental movement, but others minimized these connections. No singletextbook could hope to appeal to all groups.

Theoretical issues were certainly one major fault line dividing ecologists.Odum’s continued commitment to group selection and progressive evolution andhis belief that Darwinians overemphasized the “survival of the fittest”marginalized him among evolutionary biologists. It is unlikely that many


ecologists who emphasized evolution as the primary theme in their ecologycourses chose the third edition of Fundamentals of Ecology for a textbook afteralternatives arrived on the market. These ecologists rapidly gravitated towardnewer textbooks such as Pianka’s Evolutionary Ecology or Ricklefs’s Ecology whenthey appeared during the early 1970s.

Odum’s broad perspective on ecosystems and his emphasis on applied ecologycontinued to appeal to ecologists who saw strong ties between their disciplineand an emerging environmental biology. Some of these ecologists continued touse Odum’s textbooks for several more decades. However, the market inenvironmental studies was also invaded by a number of new textbooks. Some ofthese were written by professional ecologists who did not share Odum’s view thatthe ecosystem was the most important conceptual unit in ecology. For example,the central focus of Paul and Anne Ehrlich’s popular textbook was the populationand the problem of human population growth.61 Other textbooks took a broaderinterdisciplinary focus on environmental science and were written by teams ofauthors drawn from several different fields.62 These textbooks often emphasizedecosystems but they did not portray professional ecologists as taking theleadership role in solving environmental problems in the same way thatFundamentals of Ecology did.

The uneasy relationship between the academic discipline of ecology and therising environmental movement was also an important fault line dividingecologists. Historians have documented how the tension between academicscience and public activity has been a perennial problem for ecologists.63 A notableearlier example involved the establishment of the Nature Conservancy byecologists led by Victor Shelford when the Ecological Society of America refusedto support preservation efforts adequately. Shelford and his colleagues favoredlobbying Congress and other political activities to promote habitat preservation,but these initiatives met strong resistance from other professional ecologistswho did not want to become involved with politics.64 The situation during the1970s paralleled this earlier case in some important ways. Although Odum andsome other professional ecologists took leadership roles in the environmentalmovement, it was the microbiologist Barry Commoner who caught the public’sattention as “the Paul Revere of Ecology.”65 Many professional ecologistsdisdained the political activism that Commoner promoted, and they were unhappywith the public’s conflation of popular environmentalism with the academicdiscipline of ecology. 66

Reflected in their textbooks, these differences were partly generational andpartly rooted in the very different professional experiences of Odum and theyounger authors. Odum’s belief in the positive role that the federal governmentcould play in environmental protection grew out of the liberal progressivism ofthe New Deal. It was further reinforced by his close ties to the Atomic EnergyCommission, the big science projects of the International Biological Program,and his ability to use support from state and federal agencies to build a large,and successful ecological institute at the University of Georgia. Working withinthe political system he was able to effectively influence environmental policy;


for example, restricting coastal mining in his home state of Georgia.67 Both Piankaand Ricklefs were also highly successful ecologists, but their research interestsdid not lend themselves to a “big biology” model or to immediate applications toenvironmental problems.68 They were educated during the 1960s, when thepolitical ideals that shaped Odum’s attitudes toward government were beingvigorously challenged both by the New Left and a newly resurgent right. Giventhe temper of the time, one did not need to be a political activist to be skeptical ofthe federal government’s role in protecting the environment. Pianka’s cynicismtoward politics and Ricklefs’s ambivalence about environmental problem-solvingmirrored the attitudes of many younger ecologists for whom the idea of acooperative partnership with bureaucrats and elected officials appearedanomalous, if not perverse. Partly as a result, Pianka and Ricklefs presentedstudents with a perspective on ecology from which environmental problem-solvingplayed little part. Their textbooks were thus both the cause and effect of animportant shift in the way that many ecologists viewed their discipline and itsrelationship to the environment.

JJJJJoeoeoeoeoel Bl Bl Bl Bl B. H. H. H. H. Hagen agen agen agen agen does research on the history of recent intellectual developmentsin the fields of ecology, systematics, and evolutionary biology. He is the author ofAn Entangled Bank: The Origins of Ecosystem Ecology (Rutgers, 1992).

NOTES1. Thomas S. Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (Chicago: University of

Chicago Press, 1962), chapter 6; J. M. Ziman, Public Knowledge: An Essay Concerningthe Social Dimension of Science (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1968),chapter 4.

2. Robert L. Burgess, “The Ecological Society of America: Historical Data and SomePreliminary Analysis,” in History of American Ecology, ed. Frank N. Egerton (New York:Arno Press, 1977), 1-24.

3. Eugene P. Odum, Fundamentals of Ecology (Philadephia: W.B. Saunders, 1953; 2nded., 1959; 3rd ed., 1971; 4th ed., 1983, 5th ed., 2005). The fourth edition was describedas an updated and abbreviated version of the textbook and was entitled Basic Ecology.The posthumous fifth edition returned to the original title and was coauthored withGary W. Barrett. For a discussion of the writing and impact of Fundamentals of Ecology,see Betty Jean Craige, Eugene Odum: Ecosystem Ecologist & Environmentalist (Athens:University of Georgia Press, 2001), 37-42.

4. Gary W. Barrett and Karen E. Mabry, “Twentieth-Century Classic Books and BenchmarkPublications in Biology,” BioScience 52 (2002): 282-85.

5. Francis C. Evans claimed that the ecosystem was as fundamental to ecology as thespecies concept was to systematics; see “Ecosystem as the Basic Unit of Ecology,”Science 123 (1956): 1127-28. Eugene P. Odum claimed that “Ecologists can rally aroundthe ecosystem as their basic unit just as molecular biologists now rally around thecell”: see “The New Ecology,” BioScience 14 (1964): 14-16. Ramon Margalef definedecology as “the biology of ecosystems” in his Perspectives on Ecological Theory(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1968), 4. For an insider’s account of thedevelopment of the concept and its place in modern ecology, see Frank Golley, A Historyof the Ecosystem Concept in Ecology: More than the Sum of the Parts (New Haven:Yale University Press, 1993).


6. Joel B. Hagen, An Entangled Bank: The Origins of Ecosystem Ecology (New Brunswick,NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1992), Epilogue.

7. Odum’s syncretism was heavily influenced by the “systems ecology” of his brother,Howard T. Odum: see Peter J. Taylor, “Technocratic Optimism, H. T. Odum, and thePartial Transformation of Ecological Metaphor after World War II,” Journal of theHistory of Biology 21 (1988): 213-44.

8. For accounts of the origins of Odum’s textbook, see Golley, History of the EcosystemConcept, 65-69; and Craige, Eugene Odum, 37-45.

9. The relationship between professional ecology and applied ecology (includingenvironmental preservation) has been a perennial issue among ecologists. For variousperspectives on this problem see Sharon Kingsland, The Evolution of AmericanEcology, 1890-2000 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2005); Dorothy Nelkin,“Scientists and Professional Responsibility: The Experience of American Ecologists,”Social Studies of Science 7 (1977): 75-95; Stephen J. Bocking, Ecologists andEnvironmental Politics: A History of Contemporary Ecology (New Haven: YaleUniversity Press, 1997); Robert McIntosh, The Background of Ecology: Concept andTheory (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), chapter 8, and Abby J. Kinchy,“On the Borders of Post-War Ecology: Struggles over the Ecological Society of America’sPreservation Committee, 1917-1945,” Science as Culture 15 (2006): 23-44.

10. Craige, Eugene Odum, 22, 38.11. Howard W. Odum and Harry Estill Moore, American Regionalism: A Cultural-Historical

Approach to National Integration (New York: Henry Holt, 1938). Much of the chapteron human ecology and ecological approaches to regionalism was based on anunpublished manuscript written by Eugene when he was still a graduate student atthe University of Illinois.

12. Ibid., chapter 2; see also Howard W. Odum et al., American Democracy Anew (New York:Henry Holt, 1940), 51-52.

13. Odum and Moore, American Regionalism, 43.14. Howard W. Odum, American Social Problems: An Introduction to the Study of People

and Their Dilemmas (New York: Henry Holt), 1939, chapter 19. For Odum’s retrospectiveaccount of how the New Deal and the concept of regionalism had met the challengesof the Great Depression and World War II, see Howard W. Odum, “The Promise ofRegionalism,” in Regionalism in America, ed. Merrill Jensen (Madison: University ofWisconsin Press, 1951), 395-425.

15. Odum, Fundamentals of Ecology, 3rd. ed., 512.16. Robert A. Croker, Pioneer Ecologist: The Life and Works of Victor Ernest Shelford,

1877-1968 (Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1991), 101. Shelford’sperspective reflected older ideas on cooperation in nature and society developed byecologists at the University of Chicago earlier in the twentieth century. For this episodein the history of ecology, see Gregg Mitman, The State of Nature: Ecology, Community,and American Social Thought, 1900-1950 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992).

17. Hagen, Entangled Bank, 123-26; Taylor, “Technocratic Optimism.”18. Howard T. Odum and Eugene P. Odum, “Trophic Structure and Productivity of a

Windward Coral Reef Community on Eniwetok Atoll, Ecological Monographs 25 (1955):291-320. The idea that humans can learn important lessons about social stability fromstudying natural ecosystems is clearly stated in the introduction of this seminal article.

19. Odum, Fundamentals of Ecology, 1st ed., 180. Although Odum repeated and embellishedthis claim in his later writings, there now appears to be little empirical support forthis kind of progressive evolution. Mutualism seems to have evolved independentlyin various lineages of lichens sporadically: see Andrea Gargas et al., “Multiple Originsof Lichen Symbioses in Fungi Suggested by SSU rDNA Phylogeny,” Science 268 (1995):1492-94.


20. Odum, Fundamentals of Ecology, 1st ed., 317. The quotation is also found in the 2ndedition (421) and 3rd edition (408) of the textbook.

21. Odum, Fundamentals of Ecology, 3rd ed., 406.22. Craige, Eugene Odum; Hagen, Entangled Bank, chapter 6; Bocking, Ecologists and

Environmental Politics, chapters 4 and 5; Golley, History of the Ecosystem Concept,73-76.

23. Golley, History of the Ecosystem Concept, 73.24. Craige, Eugene Odum, 66-73.25. Odum, Fundamentals of Ecology, 1st ed., 319-20.26. Ibid. In later editions of the textbook Odum’s criticism became more intense, and he

expanded the discussion of the ecological effects of pesticides. These changes reflectboth the influence of Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring and the fact that Odum’s son wasconducting research on the biogeochemical cycling of DDT. For a discussion of Odum’sviews on the conflict between the public good versus corporate profits, see Craige,Eugene Odum, 98-102.

27. Paul R. Ehrlich, The Population Bomb (New York: Ballantine, 1968).28. Odum, Fundamentals of Ecology, 3rd. ed., 411-13, 442-44, 516.29. Kenneth Boulding, “The Economics of the Coming Spaceship Earth,” in Environmental

Quality in a Growing Economy, ed. Henry Jarrett (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UniversityPress, 1966), 3-14; Odum, Fundamentals of Ecology, 3rd. ed., 516.

30. Hagen, Entangled Bank, Epilogue.31. Garrett Hardin, “Lifeboat Ethics: The Case Against Helping the Poor,” Psychology Today

8 (September 1974): 38-43, 123-26. This famous essay was republished in slightlymodified form as “Living in a Lifeboat,” Bioscience (1974): 36-47. Hardin specificallyattacked Adlai Stevenson’s use of the spaceship metaphor in his essay, “EthicalImplications of Carrying Capacity,” in Managing the Commons, ed. Garrett Hardinand John Baden (San Francisco: W.H. Freeman, 1977), 112-25.

32. Garrett Hardin, “The Tragedy of the Commons,” Science 162 (1968): 1243-48.33. Barry Commoner, The Closing Circle: Nature, Man, and Technology (New York: Knopf,

1971), 296-97.34. Ibid., 58.35. Susan Jane Buck Cox, “No Tragedy of the Commons,” Environmental Ethics 7 (1985):

49-61; Barrett and Mabry, “Classic Books and Benchmark Publications.”36. Cox, “No Tragedy of the Commons”; Peter Taylor, “Nonstandard Lessons from the

‘Tragedy of the Commons,’” in Encountering Global Environmental Politics: Teaching,Learning, and Empowering Knowledge, ed. Michael Maniates (Lanham, MD: Rowmanand Littlefield, 2003), 87-105.

37. Garrett Hardin, “An Operational Analysis of ‘Responsibility,’ in Managing theCommons, ed. Hardin and Baden, 66-75. A concise history of the development of newideas about selfishness and altruism is provided by Lee Alan Dugatkin, The AltruismEquation: Seven Scientists Search for the Origins of Goodness (Princeton: PrincetonUniversity Press, 2006).

38. Dugatkin, Altruism Equation. The development of earlier ecological ideas aboutaltruism and cooperation is explored in depth by Mitman, The State of Nature.

39. W. D. Hamilton, “Geometry for the Selfish Herd,” Journal of Theoretical Biology 31(1971): 295-311.

40. George C. Williams, Adaptation and Natural Selection: A Critique of Some CurrentEvolutionary Thought (Princeton: Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1966).

41. Eric R. Pianka, Evolutionary Ecology (New York: Harper and Row, 1974), 126-28; RichardDawkins, The Selfish Gene (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1976), chapter 1.

42. Dawkins, Selfish Gene, 3; emphasis in original document.


43. Randolph M. Nesse, “Why a Lot of People with Selfish Genes are Pretty Nice Exceptfor their Hatred of The Selfish Gene,” in Richard Dawkins: How a Scientist Changedthe Way We Think, ed. Alan Grafen and Mark Ridley (Oxford: Oxford University Press,2006), 203-12.

44. For example, according to Jonathan Rieder, “The New Deal collapsed in the 1960s.Baldly put, in need of qualification, this is the key truth, the essential condition, ofour recent political life.” Jonathan Rieder, “The Rise of the ‘Silent’ Majority,” in TheRise and Fall of the New Deal Order, 1930-1980, ed. Steve Fraser and Gary Gerstle(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989), 243-68, 43. For a variety of assessmentsof this collapse, see Todd Gitlin, The Sixties: Years of Hope, Days of Rage (New York:Bantam, 1987); Allen J. Matusow, The Unraveling of America: A History of Liberalismin the 1960s (New York: Harper & Row, 1984); Harvey C. Mansfield, “The Legacy of theLate Sixties,” and Sheldon Wolin, “The Destructive Sixties and PostmodernConservatism,” both of which appear in Reassessing the Sixties: Debating the Politicaland Cultural Legacy, ed. Stephen Macedo (New York: Norton, 1997), 21-45 and 129-56.

45. Bocking, Ecologists and Environmental Politics, 193-202.46. Nelkin, “Scientists and Professional Responsibility.”47. Eugene P. Odum, “The Strategy of Ecosystem Development,” Science 164 (1964): 262-

70.48. Craige, Eugene Odum, 85-88; Hagen, Entangled Bank, 142-45.49. Gordon H. Orians, “A Diversity of Textbooks: Ecology Comes of Age,” Science 181 (1973):

1238-39.50. Pianka, Evolutionary Ecology, 1st ed., Acknowledgements, xi.51. Eric R. Pianka, Evolutionary Ecology, 6th ed. (San Francisco: Addison-Wesley, 2000).52. Pianka, Evolutionary Ecology, 1st ed., 2.53. Odum, Fundamentals of Ecology, 3rd ed., 228-33.54. Neal Griffith Smith, “The Advantage of Being Parasitized,” Nature 219 (1968): 690-94.

Smith’s clever experimental techniques caught the imagination of evolutionaryecologists and the case study was used both by Pianka and by Robert Ricklefs, Ecology,(Portland, OR: Chiron Press, 1973). Both Pianka and Ricklefs removed the case studyfrom later editions of their textbooks perhaps because the generality of Smith’sconclusions was being called into question; for example, see Michael S. Webster,“Interspecific Brood Parasitism of Montezuma Oropendolas by Giant Cowbirds:Parasitism or Mutualism?” The Condor 96 (1994): 794-98.

55. Pianka, Evolutionary Ecology, 1st ed., 296.56. Ricklefs, Ecology, 3-4. Ricklef’s textbook went through four editions during the late

twentieth century and remains one of the standard college textbooks in the field.57. Ibid., 5-6.58. Ibid., 779.59. Craige, Eugene Odum, xiii, 113.60. Hagen, Entangled Bank, chapter 8.61. Paul R. Ehrlich and Anne E. Ehrlich, Population, Resources, Environment: Issues in

Human Ecology (San Francisco: Freeman, 1970).62. Amos Turk, Jonathan Turk, and Janet T. Wittes, Ecology, Pollution, Environment

(Philadelphia: Saunders, 1972); Amos Turk, Jonathan Turk, Janet T. Wittes, RobertWittes, Environmental Science (Philadelphia: Saunders, 1974); Jonathan Turk, JanetT. Wittes, Robert Wittes, and Amos Turk, Ecosystems, Energy, Population (Philadelphia:Saunders, 1975). This prolific textbook writing team was made up of a chemist,naturalist, statistician, and physician.

63. Kingsland, Evolution of Ecology.64. Croker, Pioneer Ecologist, 145-46, 152-53; Kinchy, “On the Borders of Post-war Ecology.”


65. “Fighting to Save the Earth from Man,” Time, February 2, 1972, 56-65. Commonerappeared on the cover of this issue of Time.

66. Nelkin, “Scientists and Professional Responsibility.” One conclusion that Nelkin drewwas that the problems faced by ecologists were similar to boundary disputes faced byother professional groups whose memberships include both academic and moreapplied practitioners.

67. Craige, Eugene Odum, 98-102.68. For a general discussion of this aspect of the controversy between ecosystem ecologists

and evolutionary ecologists, see Hagen, Entangled Bank, chapter 9.

ecology - environmental...

Documents