Ecology, the Ascendent Perspective ― Robert E. Ulanowicz

Ecology, the Ascendent Perspective provides an entirely fresh view of the origins of organization in living systems. Writing for theoretical ecologists, biologists, and philosophers of science, Robert Ulanowicz mounts a powerful challenge to prevailing mechanistic paradigms of ecology. Ecology, Ulanowicz argues, needs a more robust central paradigm, and this book presents one derived from current work in information theory, ecosystem energetics, and complexity theory; the result is a theoretical and empirical tool kit better able to measure the developmental status of any living community. Ranging widely to explore critical issues in the history of science - order, causality, progress, laws - the book sets forth a coherent theoretical framework for ecology. A challenge to existing Newtonian and Darwinian paradigms, Ecology, the Ascendent Perspective demonstrates that a theoretically reshaped science of ecology, better suited to portraying the dynamics of the natural world, can be a more effective means of ensuring its health.

Robert E. Ulanowicz is professor of theoretical ecology at the University of Maryland's Chesapeake Biological Laboratory.