Ecol. Res.

6: 129-138, 1991

ECOLOGICAL RESEARCH
9 by the Ecological Society of Japan 1991

The Ecosystem Concept: A Search for Order

Frank B. GOLLEY
Institute of Ecology, University of Georgia, Athens, Georgia, USA 30602

Abstract

The development of the ecosystem concept illustrates the search for order in science
and shows how individuals and the social-cultural environment of the science influence
concept evolution. Ecosystem was coined in 1935 and replaced a variety of inappropriate
terms which all referred to a system of biotic and inorganic interactions in nature. It was
popularized after the second World War and became a dominant paradigm in ecology
world wide. As such, it dominated the development of productivity studies within the
International Biological Program. The ecosystem concept became mature when it was
realized that the ecosystem was an object that could be studied directly, using conven-
tional scientific methods. Currently the ecosystem concept exists along side a variety of
ecological concepts which represent the guiding research foci of ecological subfields.

Key words: Concept; Ecosystem; History; Paradigm; Philosophy.

Introduction

The science of ecology studies the interactions between the biological system and the en-
vironment. O d u m (1953) and Evans (1956) suggest that this interacting biotic element and
environment form an ecological system. The study of such systems constitutes the essence
of scientific ecology. The purpose of this essay is to explore the development o f the concept
of the ecological system in a brief way (a book-length study is in progress) and to show
how this process represents a social-cultural controlled search for natural order, in a world
that seems increasingly chaotic. My conclusion is that science is a social-cultural activity
and reflects the themes or events o f a particular time and place in its concepts and methods.
Saying this another way, the search for order is continuous since it is a biological imperative
characteristic of all living organisms but it is shaped by the unique, specific features of
human concerns.

Development of the Ecosystem Concept

Before the second World War and before the development of systems theory, cybernetics,
computers and their appropriate mathematics, forms of order were usually described ver-
bally or diagramatically. Each scholar was inclined to coin a new name or definition to
represent his or her unique idea. The problem with this procedure is that the new concept
must be presented in words or forms that already have meaning attached to them. A listener
may become confused between the new and the older, familiar meaning. For this reason,
ecologists advancing new concepts often have presented their ideas in constructed words
that had never been used before.. Ernst Haeckel's " e c o l o g y " is such a word.
130 Frank B. Gol.l.l.iY

Ecologists long have observed that plants and animals are arranged in recurring patterns
in space and time. Some ecologists, such as Warming, might emphasize the role of the
environment in defining these patterns, while others, such as Kerner, might emphasize the
physiognomy of the biota. While the membership of these groupings changes seasonally
and annually and the boundaries between one group and another are unclear, most ecolo-
gists have agreed that there is a biogeographic order in nature. In English these groupings
have been termed communities because, like human communities, they occupy a particular
space and incorporate within them a variety of biotic species.
Among the least ambiguous natural systems, where the boundaries are clearest, are lakes
and ponds. August Forel's study of Lake Geneva, Switzerland, which was published serially
in 1892, 1895 and 1904, was one of the first studies o f an entire lake. In these aquatic
habitats the interaction of the biota and the aquatic environment is a dominant fact. While
the terrestrial botanist or zoologist may entertain the fiction that organisms act without an
environment, t h e aquatic biologist is forced to consider ecological relationships directly.
Karl Mobius noted the relationship between the benthic biota and its environment in his
1877 report on the oyster beds of the Baltic Sea. Mobius coined the term biocenosis to
define the biotic grouping in this habitat. Stephen A. Forbes, of Illinois, in 1878 described
a lake as a microcosm.
Limnological studies expanded world-wide in those countries where abundant post-
glacial lakes provided many opportunities for studies. Especially important work was car-
ried out in Germany by August Thienemann and in Sweden by Einer Naumann. In the
United States E. A. Birge of Wisconsin and Paul Welch of Michigan were active initiators
o f lake studies.
At the same time, numerous studies of terrestrial communities were being carried out by
botanists and zoologists. In addition to descriptive studies of species composition, phenol-
ogy and relation to soil or climate, theoreticians were applying the discoveries made in phys-
ics and chemistry to ecology and interpreting the ecological patterns being described by
others in terms of the laws of thermodynamics, biogeochemistry, and the concept o f
productivity. The Russian scientists Vladimir I. Vernadsky and Vladamir V. Stanchinski
were prominant in this theoretical work in the 1920's and 1930's, as were August
Thienemann, Charles Elton, E. A. Birge and Chancey Juday. A consequence of their work
was the application of many special names to communities and their environments. These
names included biocenosis, microcosm, holocoen, ecotope and many others. Ecosystem
was one o f the latest inventions.
Ecologists interpreted their findings in a variety of ways. A dominant metaphor used in
the first 50 yr of the twentieth century was the organism. The organism can be contrasted
to earlier metaphors such as the clock. An extreme form of the use of the organic metaphor
was Frederic Clements' superorganism. By this term Clements meant that communities had
a birth, growth and death, like an organism.
Wholism was a cultural icon of even wider significance. In Germany the concept of
wholism was consistent with cultural patterns from Goethe, through Haeckel, to
Thieneman and other German ecologists between the World Wars. The concept was
expropriated by the National Socialists and used to justify their political philosophy. As
a consequence it was rejected strongly by some German biologists both before and after
the second World War. Jan Christian Smuts, the Premier of South Africa who was also a
distinguished military officer and a philosopher, advanced the concept of wholism in his
book of that title. Smuts proposed a progressive synthesis from physical matter, organisms,
minds to personality. Jonathan Rose, a student of the post Victorian Edwardian era in
England comments that wholeness, oneness, ~unity were cardinal virtues of the period.
 The ecosystem concept 131

Indeed, Sherlock Holmes, the fictional Edwardian detective, states in A Study in Scarlet
that "all life is a great chain, the nature of which is known whenever we are shown a single
link of it."
The wholistic concept of ecological order was attractive to m a n y ecologists. A m o n g these
was the plant ecologist John Phillips, Professor of Botany at Witwatersrand University,
South Africa. Phillips was a member of Smuts' circle of younger men who were attracted
to his philosophical and political ideas. He was also an enthusiastic admirer of Frederic
Clements, who he had visited in America. Phillips published three papers in the British
Journal of Ecology in 1931, 1934 and 1935, in which he promoted the concept of wholism
and applied it to ecological communities. His papers were polemical, in that they presented
different points of view but then came to a conclusion arbitrarily, and they took an extreme
position in defense of the wholistic, organismic conceptions of ecology. Thus, they height-
ened differences of opinion about the nature o f ecological communities within ecology and
provided further evidence for nonecological biologists that the subject was devoted to idle
theorizing.
A distinguished British ecologist, Arthur George Tansley, was motivated to present
a rebuttal to Phillips. His paper, published in 1935 in the American journal Ecology,
was titled The Use and Abuse of Vegetational Concepts and Terms. In this paper Tansley
advanced the concept of ecosystem as an alternative to other terms and concepts. Tansley's
ecosystem was composed of an interacting complex of the biotic community and the
environment. Tansley claimed that ecosystems were the basic unit of nature on the earth.
Ecosystems were a part of the hierarchy of systems from the universe to the atom and they
involved the constant interchange between not only the biotic parts but also between the
organic and inorganic parts of the system. Like Frederic Clements, who was a personal
friend, Tansley thought that ecosystems develop toward a state of equilibrium. But he dis-
tanced himself from Clements' more extreme ideas.
Tansley's ecosystem represented a modern, objective scientific concept which was based
on more than 50 yr of ecological study. It was designed to link the various different ecologi-
cal opinions together and to provide ecologists a concept that would be respected by none-
cologists. Metaphorically, it emphasized the scientific concept of a system. System was a
well established term in the English language which was used within the sciences to refer
to a complex, in which the parts interacted to create a recognizable distinct order or pattern.
The term was widely used and Tansley had employed it in his botanical textbooks. It was
modern, technical, and culturally appropriate. The contraction of ecological system,
ecosystem, was also useful and conventional. Its contrast to alternative ecological jargon,
such as biogeocenosis, holocen, or ecotope, was obvious.
Tansley's ecosystem was soon applied by ecologists in research.~The first instance where
the concept was explored explicitly and expanded theoretically was in a study by Raymond
Laurel Lindeman of Cedar Bog Lake, Minnesota, in 1938 to 1941. This was Lindeman's
doctoral thesis and it was focused on a small senescent lake formed during retreat of the
ice sheet. Cedar Bog Lake was only one meter deep and had an area of 14, 480 square
meters. Lindeman considered the species composition of the lake, the food cycles of the
biota, and the relation of these biotic activities to the processes of ecological succession.
U p o n completion of his degree Lindeman was awarded a fellowship to work with
G. Evelyn Hutchinson at Yale University, Connecticut. While at Yale Lindeman worked to
bring a paper on the trophic dynamics of Cedar Bog Lake to completion. In this paper he
organized the biota and the physical substrate into an ecosystem diagram, with ooze, or the
unconsolidated b o t t o m sediment, as a central element. He also applied energy theory to
the transfer of food and energy between the taxa, arranged in food groups or trophic
132 Frank B. GOI.I.EY

levels, and presented a concept of the metabolism of the ecosystem. Further, he organized
these data in simple mathematical ratios, which suggested that there were organized pat-
terns of energy expenditure within the system. Finally, he related these concepts to ecologi-
cai succession.
Cook (1977) describes what happened to Lindeman's paper on trophic dynamics. It was
submitted to Ecology but was rejected as premature, too theoretical, and based on too small
a sample of lakes. The reviewers were two of the most distinguished limnologists o f
America, Chancey Juday and Paul Welch. It was only through the vigorous intervention
o f Hutchinson that the editor, Thomas Park, was influenced to submit it to a further
reviewer and to eventually accept and publish it. Tragically, Raymond Lindeman contracted
a fatal liver disease and died at 27 years of age. His classic paper, The Trophic-dynamic
Aspect of Ecology, was published in 1942, after his death, with an gracious addendum by
Hutchinson which explained part of the Lindeman story.
Following the second World War the Lindeman approach to ecosystem study was applied
by a number of American aquatic ecologists but it remained one approach to ecological
research among many. The ecosystem concept was propelled into prominence in 1953, when
Eugene P. Odum used it as an organizing principle for his textbook, Fundamentals of Ecol-
ogy. Odum's text was immediately successful. It was simple and straight forward, easy to
read and understand, it focused on general ecology, and it was current in applying the
popular systems concept to ecology.
Fundamentals of Ecology was Odum's attempt to identify the principles of ecology and
to present them in an organized scheme. In this task he was assisted by his brother, Howard
Thomas Odum, who at the time was a doctoral student of G. Evelyn Hutchinson. Tom
Odum interpreted Hutchinson's lectures and, adding his own theories of ecology, helped
Gene Odum organize his book, especially the chapters that concerned ecosystem functions,
such as biogeochemical cycling and energy flow. Thus, the insights of Lindeman were
transmitted to the ecological public through G. Evelyn Hutchinson, H. T. Odum and
E. P. Odum, with additions and alterations at each step.
Eugene Odum's textbook was published in three editions and his general viewpoint was
presented in three other ecology books. Fundamentals of Ecology was exceptionally
popular and almost an entire generation of American ecologists were trained from it or
were influenced by it. The book was also translated into a variety o f other languages and
influenced ecological science world-wide.
With the model of Lindeman's trophic dynamic approach to an entire lake before them,
ecologists were motivated to repeat and extend Lindeman's concepts. One of the most
active of these ecosystem ecologists was H. T. Odum, who initiated a study of Silver
Springs, Florida after he graduated from Yale. Silver Springs was an unusual situation
because Odum could monitor the water entering and leaving the spring ecosystem and
calculate the whole system balances of energy and materials. In most instances this is not
possible because the pathways into and out of a system are multiple and divided. H. T.
Odum's monographic study of Silver Springs in 1957 replaced Lindeman's Cedar Bog Lake
as the paradigmatic ecosystem report and his diagrams of energy flow through the spring
were widely republished in textbooks and research papers.
Ecosystem research expanded rapidly during the ten years from 1955 to 1965. It was espe-
cially active in the United States where it was stimulated by substantial government support
through the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC). On first sight, it seems peculiar that ecolo-
gy should be supported by the AEC. However, following the second World War a vigorous
program o f development of nuclear weapons and nuclear power was carried out by the
U. S. government. It was recognized that radioactive materials could be carried into
 The ecosystemconcept 133

the environment and be concentrated in the biota. Ecologists were asked to monitor these
processes and to carry out studies that might permit prediction of patterns of transport and
fate of radionuclides. The support of the AEC was used to build up teams of ecologists
at national laboratories and universities. Many of the active ecosystem researchers were
supported by the AEC during this period.
With hindsight, the research trends of this era can be divided to several categories. A
great deal of work was devoted world-wide to elucidating the structure of ecosystems. This
topic was closely linked to conventional ecological studies so that ecologists moved readily
from traditional analyses of communities and populations to measures of species diversity
and biomass. There was considerable disagreement about how these data were to be
arranged. Most ecologists used producer, consumer and decomposer trophic levels to
represent the system compartments, even though critics argued that this simple organiza-
tion ignored biological reality.
It was more difficult to study the function of ecosystems. Two major themes developed.
The first focused on the production of populations and trophic levels. These production
studies were exceptionally successful and provided the data for estimates of global produc-
tivity (e.g. in Riley, 1949; Lieth, 1962; Lieth and Whittaker, 1975). Theoretical developments
in production ecology, for example Monsi (1960), opened many questions for the
ecophysiologist. A close collaboration formed between ecophysiology and ecosystem
studies that continued to this day. The second theme focused on the energetics of popula-
tions and ecosystems. Here the Laws of Thermodynamics provided a sound physical basis
for ecological theory. It was exceptionally helpful to have a theory of ecological accounting,
in which inputs must balance outputs, especially since ecologists seldom could measure all
the inputs or outputs of a system directly. Further, the second law, requiring a constant
energy tax at each transfer, was used to explain the length of food chains and the properties
of producers, primary consumers and secondary consumers. H. T. Odum and R. Pinkerton
(1955) advanced their maximum power output theorem, which stated that systems survive
which maximize power flow. Maximum power flow is accomplished at low energy efficien-
cy. H. T. Odum used this concept to develop a much expanded theory of energetics and
ecological engineering (Odum, 1971).
Advance in ecosystem theory during this period was limited by inadequate data, ill-
defined concepts, and the lack of a mechanism to organize and interpret the large quantity
of information used to specify ecosystem structure and function. While the trophic level
concept was an inaccurate tool to describe feeding and energy relationships, it was simple
enough so that ecologists could model it on the computers or calculators of the time
(Patten, 1959; H. T. Odum, 1960; Margalef, 1962; Olson, 1965). However, the science of
computing and systems analysis was expanding rapidly and ecologists were keeping up with
these trends. Stanley Auerbach, who directed the Environmental Division of OaK Ridge
National Laboratory, an AEC facility and one of the largest ecology programs in the Unit-
ed States, brought together Bernard Patten and George Van Dyne with Jerry Olson, who
was on his staff. These three ecologists created ecosystem analysis or modelling based on
the advanced digital computer. With this tool ecosystem science was poised for rapid
advance.
Since 1959 biologists had been discussing the organization of a program which would
be similar to the successful International Geophysical Year (1957 - 1958). The theme of the
biologists program was to be the biological basis of human welfare and it would include
sections on terrestrial, freshwater and marine productivity. The resulting International Bio-
logical Program (IBP) operated under the International Council of Scientific Union
(ICSU). This meant that is was managed through the academies of sciences of nations,
134 Frank B. GOHEY

not directly through government departments or ministries, except in those countries where
the academy or its equivalent was a governmental agency. This ICSU organization permit-
ted more flexibility in planning and management but it required special efforts to obtain
funding.
IBP progressed through two phases. The first phase from 1964 to 1967 was devoted to
planning meetings, preparation of methods handbooks, and some limited research. The
second phase was for research and commenced in 1967 and ended in 1974. In the discus-
sions that were required to design the programs there was substantial disagreement over an
emphasis on the application of ecology to solve h u m a n problems. The ecologists of the
USSR pressed hard for an applied program. Many ecologists from Western Europe and the
United States pressed for more emphasis on the development of theory and collection of
comparative data. Almost all the discussion occurred within the context of the ecosystem
paradigm. There was very little attempt to include the new and burgeoning interest in evolu-
tionary ecology and populations. Thus, the national programs had different orientations
depending on who was active and in charge and how funds were directed to research, but
they tended to be oriented to the ecosystemconcept.
In the United States interest in the IBP was slow to develop. Many biologists were unin-
terested in a collaborative international project. However, by 1965 subcommittees had been
formed and were planning projects. E. P. O d u m was appointed chairman of the terrestrial
productivity group and Arthur Hasler, of the University of Wisconsin, of the fresh water
productivity group. O d u m was anxious that the IBP be used to develop "new thinking at
the ecosystem level." He called for development of a "landscape ecology" which could
"provide a pure science basis for landscape planning in the future." Odum and Hasler
decided to combine their two committees and organize their IBP research on entire
watershed landscapes, with intergrated study of both the aquatic and terrestrial parts
together. The idea, according to Odum, came from Hasler, who had proposed such a study
at Madison, Wisconsin. The landscape context for these watershed projects was declared
to be the biome. Biome was a word coined by Frederic Clements in 1916 and meant the
combination of plants and animals in a community. Victor Shelford in 1932 used it to refer
to the community over large geographic regions, such as the tundra, boreal forest, temper-
ate forest, desert, grassland and tropical forest.
O d u m and Hasler presented their concept to an organizational meeting in 1966 and it
was enthusiatically received. The result was that the two committees were merged into a sin-
gle effort labelled "Analysis o f Ecosystems." The program statement declared that the
primary purpose of the IBP is the understanding of ecosystems. Frederick E. Smith,
University o f Michigan, was appointed director o f the Analysis of Ecosystems project. In
February, 1967 the U. S. National Committee approved these plans and a blizzard of meet-
ings began. By May funding was received from the National Science Foundation and an
office was established. It was decided that work should begin in the grassland biome, which
was a relatively simple system, well studied, and with scientists and universities interested
in ecosystem research in the grassland. The Pawnee Grassland site near Fort Collins,
Colorado was chosen as the focus for the grassland studies and George Van Dyne was
selected as the project director. After hearings before committees of the U. S. Congress, at
which ecologists testified to the potential value of the IBP Biome program, some ecologists
declared that ecology had finally become "big science." This was true in one sense. By De-
cember, 1967 Van Dyne sent the National Science Foundation a 370 page proposal, request-
ing almost 2 million dollars to support over 80 investigators on 60 research projects!
Within the U. S. IBP, biome projects were funded in the grassland, desert, western
coniferous forest, tundra and eastern hardwood forest biomes. Several attempts to
 The ecosystem concept 135

organize a tropical biome project failed. Each biome was very different from the others.
The grassland program tried to implement the original concept which had two major
innovative features. First, a grassland system model of the central site would be developed.
This model was to be general enough so that it could ultimately be used to manage grass-
land. Second, this model would be modified by experience at a set of satellite sites, which
would represent the ecological variation within the grassland biome. The funds were never
sufficient to realize these objectives and it proved impossible to develop one model that was
satisfying to the biome researchers or to manage ecologists so that they worked as a single
team. All of the biomes eventually operated as a collective o f ecologists focused on an area
but carrying out research that was defined and interpreted by individuals or small groups
of colleagues. In other words, the conventional patterns of American academic ecological
research were continued through the U. S. IBP Biome projects.
While the U. S. IBP Biome program failed to meet all of the objectives set for it by the
organizing committees, it did accumulate an enormous set of new data and generate new
insights into the function of ecosystems. Further, it clarified the limits to organization of
ecologists. Internationally the IBP Biome project also had large impacts. Many other coun-
tries organized their IBP projects in a biome-format. These included Japan, with studies
which included the grassland and alpine coniferous forest ecosystems, the German Soiling
project, and French projects on beech forest, grazed pastures, Mediterranean forest and
tropical savannah in the Ivory Coast and Senegal. Indeed, E. B. Worthington, the Scientific
Director of the IBP, stated in 1975 that the ecosystem approach was what distinguished IBP
research from what had dominated ecology before. Further, he declared that the application
of systems analysis to biological systems was one of the major innovations o f the IBP.
At the same time as the IBP biome research was being developed another ecosystem
project was underway in the U. S. outside of the IBP program. Actually, this project was
initiated in 1962, but it was only brought to wide attention in 1967, through a report in the
scientific journal Science. The project was located at a U. S. Forest Service hydrological
research facilities at Hubbard Brook in the White Mountains of New Hampshire. The
project was organized by a forest ecologist, E Herbert Bormann, on the faculty of Dart-
mouth College in Hanover New Hampshire, who had become acquainted with watershed
research at the Coweeta Hydrologic Laboratory of the U. S. Forest Service near Franklin,
North Carolina. Bormann was joined by a recent graduate o f Arthur Hasler's program at
the University of Wisconsin, Gene E. Likens. Bormann and Likens were joined by a
geochemist from Dartmouth, Noye Johnson, and these three scientists wrote a proposal for
ecosystem research on the Hubbard Brook watersheds and on Mirror Lake. This proposal
was successful and w o r k commenced with two other associates, Robert Pierce, a Forest
Service hydrologist, and John Eaton, a forest ecologist.
The Hubbard Brook study represented the idea that Eugene Odum and Arthur Hasler
had presented as the objective of the Analysis of Ecosystem IBP program. It focused on
the interaction of the watershed biota with its physical-chemical terrestrial and aquatic en-
vironment. Because the Hubbard Brook area contained a variety of experimental
watersheds, it also took an experimental approach. However, the key point, and the most
important difference with the IBP biome program, was that Bormann and Likens
approached the ecosystem as an object which could be treated scientifically, like a cell,
individual, or a molecule. They established the patterns of ecosystem performance and then
experimentally developed mechanistic explanations of performance. Because of their
approach they were able to demonstrate the impacts of forest logging on biogeochemical
cycles and of acid rain on the integrity of forest function.
The success of the Hubbard Brook ecosystem project compared to the mixed results
136 Frank B. GOLLEY

from the IBP Analysis of Ecosystems program demonstrated clearly where the future of
ecosystem studies lay. Ecosystems should be treated as objects in nature and studied directly
using conventional scientific methods. By careful observation of patterns over a sufficiently
long time, and the development of mechanistic explanations for the observed patterns,
through the test of hypotheses using experiments and carefully designed observations, a
sound basis of ecosystem theory could be developed. In this case ecological modelling was
a tool used to organize data and suggest hypotheses that could be tested by field study. The
grand hope that a general ecosystem model could be created was abandoned by most
ecosystem ecologists.
By the end of IBP, in about 1975, ecosystem studies had become a mature subject. Hen-
ceforth, most of the research would be directed toward understanding processes in
ecosystems. In most countries the IBP ecosystem studies were finished and not carried fur-
ther. The United States was an exception. There the relatively large sums of money required
for the biome projects (about 57 million dollars) were reprogrammed within the National
Science Foundation, as a new program devoted to ecosystem studies. Thus, in the U. S.
ecosystem research became institutionalized within the government and work could be con-
tinued at many of the IBP sites.

Evaluation

This summary of the chronological history of development of the ecosystem concept tells
us what happened but not why it happened. An explanation is necessarily complex and
multifaceted. The role of individual personalities were important. Developments within the
science of ecology influenced concept evolution. And the social-cultural environment of
ecology also was significant. All of these factors interact so that it is difficult to tease apart
the casual threads.
It is clear that the term ecosystem was technically and metaphorically appropriate for
the time. The popularization of the concept and its placement as the central idea in Fun-
damentals of Ecology, seems almost a chance relationship of E. P. Odum and his brother
H. T. Odum, with G. E. Hutchinson and R. L. Lindeman. Nevertheless, widespread use
of the ecosystem concept as a guiding concept in research over more than a decade, funded
liberally by the U. S. government, created a scientific paradigm, in the sense of Thomas
Kuhn. The ecosystem paradigm then became the guiding idea in the organization of the
U. S. Analysis of Ecosystem program, which was widely copied in other countries. At this
point there were two potential pathways to study of ecosystems. First, an mathematical
model could be used to organize and integrate the ecology of all of the many trophic
groups, populations and individuals present in the system. Second, the ecosystem could be
treated as an object in nature. Questions about the behavior or origin of the ecosystem-
object would then be answered through conventional scientific approaches. Comparison of
the results of the IBP projects and an independent project at Hubbard Brook, New Hamp-
shire showed that the second approach was more efficient and produced more understand-
ing. With this social experiment, the direction of future studies was clear. Within America
ecosystem research became institutionalized and the concept became mature. At the same
time a number of other ecological concepts were developed, so that ecology was no longer
one subject ruled by a single paradigm but was a number of subjects all existing under a
single title.
Thus, from the perspective of scientific development, the ecosystem concept is an exam-
ple of an orderly social process. We can identify its origin, when a collection of complex
 The ecosystem concept 137

ideas and terms comes into focus through a particularly appropriate metaphor. This con-
cept then attracts attention, it is incorporated into research, begins to organize research and
scientists and emerges as a paradigm. As a paradigm it creates a research environment and
culture. At this point the concept becomes mature and is institutionalized in organizations.
If Kuhn is correct, we expect that future ecosystem research will eventually reveal problems
with the current concept and that a revolution will overthrow the concept and replace it
with another which will fit that period more appropriately.
It is interesting that the science of ecology does not have a single paradigm guiding its
current research. The ecosystem concept came under strong criticism during its period of
rapid development and during the IBP era but it was impervious to the criticisms of other
ecological subfields, for example evolutionary ecology, because these other ecologies were
not within ecosystem science and their comments were not relevant to the problems being
addressed by ecosystem researchers. Contrary to those who saw ecology as a warring camp
in which only one paradigm would survive and dominate the field, I conclude that ecology
is a syncretic discipline which appears to be able to tolerate a variety of paradigms all exist-
ing contemporaneously. This has been especially true in the United States. However, in
some other countries, such as Sweden according to Soderqvist (1986), the variety of ecolo-
gists is much less and ecosystem studies may have died out. This seems especially true where
the population of researchers is small, the academic or governmental structure is rigid and
hierarchical and funding for science is very limited.
Ecosystem ecologists have also been involved with the study of natural order. They have
discovered communities of interacting organisms which are linked to the inorganic environ-
ment, have a predictable structure and history, and exhibit a dynamic equilibrium unless
perturbed by extreme environmental disturbances. In their concept of a balanced, harmoni-
ous natural system ecosystem ecologists have contributed to the scientific foundation for
a wide-spread Western intellectual tradition and popular culture. For this reason ecosystem
ecology has been widely appreciated by the public, who frequently declare it to be common
sense. Further, ecosystem studies are highly practical. Most environmental problems involve
specific ecosystems, such as a lake or a forest, or landscapes. The information on such
ecosystems can be directly applied to problem solving. For this reason the word ecosystem
appears in governmental laws and regulations and agencies advertise for ecosystem scien-
tists to employ in environmental assessment and management. For these reasons, ecosystem
studies could be viewed as conservative and deeply committed to reform environmentalism.
On the other hand, extension of the ecosystem concept to agroecology, urban ecology
and human ecology generally raises serious questions about modern industrial society. The
ecosystem concept informs ecological economics, environmental engineering, environmen-
tal and social energy analysis (including emergy analysis), social ecology, cultural ecology
and environmental ethics. The central idea in all of these applications is the organized net-
work of interacting systems which produce sustainable, stable, and harmonious living sys-
tems, in which human well being is enhanced and non-human nature is understood to be
an essential and valued element in the web of relationships.

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