A Dynamic System: The Uncertainty Principle for Ecology

• Author: G. Tracy Mehan III
• Pages: 194-198

194 Best of the Books: Ref‌lections on Recent Literature

A Dynamic System:

The Uncertainty

Principle for Ecology

By G. Tracy Mehan III

The Moon in the Nautilu s Shell: Discordant Harmonies

Reconsidered, by Daniel B . Botkin. Oxford University Press. 424

pages.

Mind and Cosmos : Why the Materialist

Neo-D arwinian Concep tion of Nature

Is Almost Cer tainly False, by Thomas

Nagel. Oxford Universit y Press. 130 pages.

From the May/ June 2013 issue of The

Environmental For um.

In 1990 the noted ecologist Da niel B.

Botkin launched a thoughtful, sustained

critique of the ancient idea of a “ba lance

of nature” which assumed that the environ-

ment, undisturbed by human beings, achieves

a steady state or equilibrium, a kind of con-

stancy in terms of max imum biomass and

diversity. His landmark book Discordant Har-

monies: A New Ecology for the 21st Century

challenged the idea that nature maintains its

equilibrium indenitely as long as people just

leave it alone since they ca n only have nega-

tive eects on it whether it be in the form of

forests, elephants, or salmon.

In Botkin’s view human beings are part

of nature, a very active pa rt. ey have, for

millenn ia, shaped the landscape in ways both

benign and mal ign at least from their or ou r