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Correspondence
Nature 408, 768 (14 December 2000) | doi:10.1038/35048759
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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.
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