Access
To read this story in full you will need to login or make a payment (see right).
Correspondence
Nature 408, 768 (14 December 2000) | doi:10.1038/35048759
Open Innovation Challenges
-
Methods to Analyze Consumer Emotions
The Seeker is looking for methods to analyze consumer emotions. This Challenge requires only a writ...
-
Single-cell Analysis Platform
This Challenge is looking for novel approaches to analyzing changes at a single-cell level. This is...
- More Challenges
- Powered by:
nature jobs
Laboratory Technician (Pharmaceutical Analysis & Quality Control)
- Alliance Institute of Advanced Pharmacy and Health Sciences
- Hyderabad 500038 India
Faculty Position in Diabetes Research at the Child & Family Research Institute University of British Columbia & BC Children’s Hospital
- University of British Columbia
- Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
Ecology needs theory as well as practice
Brian A. Maurer1
- Department of Fisheries & Wildlife and Department of Geography, Michigan State University, East Lansing, Michigan 48824, USA
In his Millennium Essay (Nature 408, 293; 2000), Jim Smith proposes that ecological theory is generally untestable, and therefore that ecology should concentrate less on theoretical explanation and more on finding applied solutions to humankind's environmental problems.Although his concern for solving environmental problems is widely shared by theoretical and empirical ecologists alike, Smith's call for use of Robert Peters's 'predictive ecology' in place of a more conceptually grounded approach runs the risk of leading ecology into a dead end of blind empiricism.
To read this story in full you will need to login or make a payment (see right).
