JOEL B. HAGEN
teaching
ECOLOGY
DURING THE ENVIRONMENTAL AGE, 1965-1980
ABSTRACT
The period 1965-1980 was a time of dramatic change in the academic discipline of
ecology. Membership in the Ecological Society of America more than doubled. This
growth was accompanied by spirited debate over fundamental concepts and the
intellectual boundaries of ecology. As public awareness of environmental problems
grew, ecologists struggled to define their professional identity and their public role in
the burgeoning popular environmental movement. The resulting tensions within
professional ecology were strikingly evident in the way different ecologists presented
the conceptual framework, norms, and goals of their discipline to students through
competing college textbooks. This paper explores how the dominant textbook of the
1960s, Eugene Odum’s Fundamentals of Ecology, was challenged by a new breed of
textbooks, beginning in the early 1970s. Odum’s textbook was notable for its emphasis
on applied ecology and its presentation of ecologists as expert environmental
problem-solvers. The newer textbooks differed from Fundamentals of Ecology both
in their strong evolutionary perspectives and their ambivalence toward environmental
biology. Ironically, as environmentalism gained increasing public support during the
1970s, many ecologists turned away from teaching environmental issues.
TEXTBOOKS MAY BE a pedestrian form of literature, but they play a critical role
in the training of neophyte scientists.1 Unlike the humanities, where students
often are introduced to the primary literature from the very beginning, science
students typically learn the rudiments of their subject by reading textbooks.
Through this sometimes distorted lens students not only are exposed to wellaccepted facts and theories, but also the norms and goals of the discipline.
Examined in retrospect, textbooks can, therefore, provide a historical window
into important intellectual and social changes within disciplines. Such is the case
in ecology, which changed significantly beginning in the late 1960s and
Joel B. Hagen, “Teaching Ecology during the Environmental Age, 1965-1980,” Environmental History
13 (October 2008): 704-723.
TEACHING ECOLOGY
continuing through the 1970s. This period was marked by a spirited debate over
fundamental concepts and the intellectual boundaries of ecology. At the same
time, ecologists struggled to define their professional identity and their public
role in the emerging environmental movement. All of this occurred during a period
of unprecedented growth and specialization in ecology, as the Ecological Society
of America saw its numbers more than double between 1965-1975.2
During the early part of this period the dominant college textbook was Eugene
Odum’s Fundamentals of Ecology. First published in 1953, the book quickly
displaced competitors, eventually went through five editions, and became the
most widely used textbook of ecology during the 1960s and early 1970s.3 A recent
survey suggests that the book profoundly shaped the outlook of a generation of
ecologists trained during this period.4 Odum also condensed his ideas in several
shorter books written for nonscientific audiences, thus providing the core
concepts for a popular science of the environment.
For both admirers and later critics, Odum became indelibly linked to ecological
pedagogy and particularly to the ecosystem concept. Largely due to his promotion
of the idea, the ecosystem became part of everyday speech and was widely used
by the popular press to discuss environmental problems. A professional specialty
of ecosystem ecology had gradually established itself during the decades following
World War II. By the 1960s, Odum and other advocates boldly claimed that the
ecosystem concept could now serve as the central, unifying concept for a new
ecology.5 The concept unified plant and animal ecologies, which previously had
been quite separate specialties. It also directed attention to the importance of
bacteria, fungi, and other organisms that often had been ignored by earlier
ecologists. By joining the living community and the nonliving environment as a
single, interacting entity, the ecosystem concept provided a focus for studying
pollution, habitat destruction, overpopulation, and other pressing environmental
problems. Using the conceptual framework of energy flow and nutrient cycling,
the idea of an ecosystem was sufficiently abstract and flexible to explain the
operation of something as small as a spacecraft or as large as the entire biosphere.
Not surprisingly, “spaceship earth” became a compelling metaphor both for
ecosystem ecologists and for nonscientists concerned about an imperiled planet.6
Much of the success of this metaphor and the scientific concepts at its core
can be attributed to the way that Odum embedded these ideas in the progressive
social and political ideas descended from the New Deal. From this broad social
perspective ecologists were society’s expert problem-solvers, who used their
understanding of nature’s processes to cure or repair the environmental sideeffects of a growing population in a technologically advanced society. Odum
artfully combined cooperative metaphors drawn from the organic world of lichens
and corals with mechanical icons of a technologically sophisticated culture. Coral
reefs, human societies, spacecraft, and computers all could be understood as
complex wholes made up of interacting parts coordinated by intricate homeostatic
mechanisms.7
Odum’s ideas about organicism, cooperation, interdependence, and
progressive evolution both in nature and in human society were within the broad
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mainstream of American political, social, and biological thought throughout
much of his career. By the late 1960s, however, a strong reaction began against
this way of thinking, not only in biology, but also in politics and popular culture.
A self-conscious group of evolutionary ecologists argued the importance of
individual fitness and the improbability of the type of group adaptations that
were central to Odum’s thinking. Cooperation, which Odum took for granted as
an inherent characteristic of ecosystems and human societies, became highly
problematic. Evolutionary ecologists tended to dismiss it or downplay its
importance. In the new evolutionary theory cooperation was not the predictable
result of progressive evolution as Odum thought, but rather a strategy
occasionally employed by self-interested individuals to increase their
reproductive success. If the new evolutionary ecology undermined Odum’s claims
about cooperation in nature, the erosion of the liberal progressivism of the New
Deal also changed the way professional ecologists thought about their public roles
in the environmental movement. In contrast to Odum’s view of ecologists as expert
problem-solvers working within a cooperative political system, many younger
ecologists retreated into purely academic pursuits or viewed themselves as
detached social critics outside the established political order. In important ways,
the textbooks that began to replace Odum’s Fundamentals of Ecology during the
1970s reflected these changes.
BIOSOCIAL ROOTS OF FUNDAMENTALS OF ECOLOGY
FUNDAMENTALS OF ECOLOGY was a striking departure from other ecology
textbooks, both those that preceded it and those that later replaced it.8 Stung by
criticism that ecology was glorified natural history, Odum highlighted the
scientific foundations of the discipline. Each chapter began with a concise
statement of a fundamental ecological principle followed by explanation and
examples. This pedagogical style was accompanied by a holistic approach that
introduced students to ecosystems at the very beginning of the book. The
ecosystem concept permeated later chapters and was used as the primary
organizing principle for discussing other ecological topics. Equally striking was
the way that Odum presented ecology as a bridge between the natural and social
sciences. No other major ecology textbook has placed so much emphasis upon
applied ecology and the social role of ecologists as expert problem-solvers in a
complex, technological world. For Odum, professional ecology was more than an
academic discipline; it was also a field responsible for providing environmental
counsel and for training conservation workers, sanitary engineers, and other
applied ecologists.9 This view of ecology—which was widely rejected by later
textbook writers—was strongly influenced by Odum’s father, the sociologist
Howard Washington Odum. The elder Odum was an important role model for his
son. He strongly encouraged Eugene’s interest in textbook writing, and as we
shall see, his ideas provided an important foundation for Eugene’s thinking about
the relationship between science and society.10 Equally striking was the way the
father used his son’s earliest ecological writings in his own sociology textbooks.11
TEACHING ECOLOGY
This symbiotic blending of the natural and social sciences would become a
hallmark of Eugene Odum’s approach to teaching ecology.
Beginning in the 1930s, Howard Washington Odum became a leading
spokesman for regionalism, which he sharply contrasted with an older
sociological school of sectionalism. Unlike sectionalism, which emphasized
divisiveness and conflict, Odum’s regionalism emphasized cooperation and
interdependence among the various regions of the United States.12 According to
Odum, each region contributed to the national whole by bringing a unique set of
natural resources, economic opportunities, social structures, and cultural
characteristics. Regionalism was premised on the idea that progressive social
evolution leads to increasing equilibrium and harmony in the organic whole of
the nation.13 The Great Depression challenged this assumption, and Odum
emphasized the growing role of the federal government in planning and
coordinating social and economic progress through large regional projects such
as the Tennessee Valley Authority. However, Odum took pains to place the growth
of government within the context of traditional democratic ideals and to present
big government as a necessary part of the continuing evolution of American
society. His views reflected the progressive liberalism of the New Deal, to which
he was deeply committed. The Great Depression and the New Deal programs were
defining episodes in American history, and Odum believed that regionalism
provided the proper balance between the extreme individualism championed by
traditional political conservatives and the equally extreme totalitarianism
exemplified by the Soviet Union and Germany.14
Eugene Odum credited his father with introducing him to the idea of the
functional integration of parts into a larger whole, which he routinely applied to
both ecosystems and human societies. As he later wrote, “the concept that
uniquely different cultural units function together as wholes is, of course, parallel
to the ecologist’s concept of the ‘ecosystem.’”15 This central idea was reinforced
by other intellectual influences that Odum freely acknowledged. As a graduate
student, Odum came under the sway of Victor Shelford, an ecologist who was
deeply committed to holistic approaches and who stressed the social role of
ecologists in promoting conservation and environmental protection. There were
obvious parallels between Shelford’s idea of ecological regions (biomes) and the
sociological regions of Odum’s father. Odum later claimed that Shelford’s biome
concept was a forerunner of the ecosystem concept.16 Odum was also strongly
influenced by his brother, Howard Thomas, who wrote some of the chapters in
Fundamentals of Ecology, and spent his career trying to create a unified systems
approach to studying both ecosystems and human societies.17 H. T. also played an
important role in introducing his older brother to the early ecosystem research
of his mentor, G. Evelyn Hutchinson, and Hutchinson’s protégé, Raymond
Lindeman. As Fundamentals of Ecology evolved, Odum also was able to draw on
the expanding work of other ecosystem ecologists. Thus, during the 1960s, Eugene
Odum was not only a leader of the specialty, but also the primary synthesizer of
research on ecosystems.
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The idea that both ecosystems and societies evolve progressively toward
greater complexity, interdependence, and self-regulation was a core belief for
Odum. Indeed, he believed that humans could learn important sociological lessons
from richly cooperative ecosystems such as the coral reefs that he had studied in
the Marshall Islands.18 Even humble lichens provided a useful evolutionary model
for human behavior. Odum believed that in primitive lichens the fungus
parasitized its algal host, but in more advanced lichens a mutualistic relationship
evolved in which both the fungal and algal partners benefited from the
association.19
Learning from such natural examples provided practical benefits if humans
could avoid unwisely parasitizing their natural environments. By understanding
patterns of energy flow and biogeochemical cycles, humans could harvest useful
plants and animals so long as the ecosystem’s ability to reassemble new organisms
was not exceeded: “The aim of good conservation is to insure a continuous yield
of useful plants, animals, and materials, by establishing a balanced cycle of
harvest and renewal. Thus, a ‘no fishing’ sign on a pond may not be as good
conservation as a management plan which allows for removal of several hundred
pounds of fish per acre year after year.”20 Managing nature for human benefit
was the primary social responsibility of professional ecologists, and at times
Odum argued that all ecology was fundamentally “human ecology.”21
Odum’s human-centered ecology, his optimism about balancing the potential
harms and benefits of technology, and his belief in establishing a harmony
between humans and nature are evident in the contrasting positions that he took
on two of the most pressing environmental concerns of the 1960s and 1970s:
nuclear power and synthetic pesticides. Like many other ecosystem ecologists,
Odum had a stake in nuclear power because the Atomic Energy Commission
supported much of his research. He saw no contradiction between his commitment
to the environment and working with the agency.22 As Odum’s colleague, Frank
Golley later recalled, “At this time, before the rapid escalation of the Vietnam
War, many American ecologists were unconcerned that their studies were closely
linked to military activities. Rather, they tended to accept the cold war as a fact
of life and welcomed the opportunities military research made available.”23 In
return for the financial support, Odum believed that ecosystem ecologists
provided valuable guidance for preventing environmental damage from nuclear
wastes. Understanding the behavior and effects of radioactive substances that
were released from reactors or nuclear weapons required the knowledge of
biogeochemical cycles and food chains that were the heart of ecosystem theory.
These two concepts explained how minute quantities of radioactivity in cooling
water from a nuclear reactor might accumulate through biological magnification,
endangering the top carnivores of aquatic food chains. Given their expertise,
Odum argued that ecologists were in a unique position to provide technical advice
that the federal government needed to balance the potential benefits and harms
posed by nuclear technology. Odum’s own participation in the Atoms for Peace
program during the late 1950s also provided grounds for his optimism that
ecosystem ecologists were having a positive effect on public policy.24 Beginning
TEACHING ECOLOGY
with the second edition of Fundamentals of Ecology (1959), this became an
important example of Odum’s commitment to applied ecology.
In contrast, Odum was an early and persistent critic of synthetic pesticides
and the chemical industry that produced them. Beginning with the first edition
of Fundamentals of Ecology (1953) he argued that DDT and other powerful
insecticides often had unintended consequences on harmless or beneficial
species.25 According to Odum, biological control and other strategies were more
effective for curbing insect pests while still maintaining “healthy ecosystems.”
Thus in contrast to his belief that nuclear power was a necessary alternative to
fossil fuels, Odum believed that synthetic pesticides could be replaced with less
dangerous alternatives. He was highly critical of the chemical industry for
ignoring the warnings of ecologists and for profiting from dangerous products.
In contrast to the cooperative and mutually beneficial relationship that Odum
believed to exist between ecologists and the Atomic Energy Commission, there
was no such relationship between ecologists and chemical companies. Thus,
Odum’s attitude was much more adversarial toward an industry that he believed
was driven by economic self-interest rather than the public good.26
ENDANGERED PLANET: SPACESHIP OR LIFEBOAT?
ODUM NEVER LOST his optimism about technology and the ability of humans to
solve environmental problems, but by 1971, when the third edition of his textbook
was published, environmental degradation was a major public issue. To some
observers, environmental problems were an intractable result of too many people
on a crowded planet. In the earlier editions of his book, Odum had discussed
overpopulation primarily as a local problem particularly in urban areas. He had
acknowledged that there was the potential for global overpopulation, but
emphasized the disagreement among scientists about the seriousness of the
problem. Paul Ehrlich’s ominously titled book, The Population Bomb (1968),
challenged this assumption and captured the sense that human population
growth was not only dangerously out of control but also the root cause of other
environmental problems.27 By 1971, Odum admitted that there was a broad
scientific consensus supporting this position. In his revised textbook, Odum
called for an end to all restrictions on family planning including birth control
and abortion. On a global scale he placed these technological solutions to
population growth within a broader framework of social justice for the poor,
especially in underdeveloped countries.28 He called for a broad program of “total
ecosystem management” that included not only incentives for reversing
population growth, but also a greater emphasis on consumer protection,
environmental regulation, environmental education, and tax reforms to promote
sustainable economies. Odum’s management plan was premised on the federal
government using the expert advice of ecologists to implement these broad
programmatic goals. He echoed the economist Kenneth Boulding, who called for
replacing a “cowboy economy” with a more frugal “spaceship economy.” For both
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Odum and Boulding, economics needed to emphasize quality of life rather than
maximizing production and consumption.29
The idea of spaceship earth was a metaphor that neatly encapsulated Odum’s
habit of equating nature, society, and mechanical devices. He unpacked this
metaphor in a variety of ways. The famous “Earthrise” photograph taken by Apollo 8
astronauts was part of the frontispiece of Odum’s 1971 textbook, and like other
environmentalists, he used this iconic image of the earth to highlight the
uniqueness of the biosphere. Juxtaposed with “Earthrise” were other images taken
from space that illustrated how ecologists could use satellite images and other
forms of remote photography to survey ecological units ranging from populations
to ecosystems. Odum viewed the NASA space program as another example of the
mutualistic relationship between ecologists and the federal government. NASA
provided new tools and funding opportunities for scientists, including ecologists.
Ecologists, so Odum believed, had valuable expertise to provide in return. With
the possibility of extended space travel, ecologists could contribute to the space
program by designing space vehicles as artificial ecosystems capable of recycling
carbon dioxide and oxygen. A new chapter on the ecology of space travel in Odum’s
1971 textbook highlighted the experimental microcosms that ecologists already
were building for NASA to simulate these ecosystem processes. Later, after the
ill-fated Apollo 13 voyage, Odum employed the spaceship metaphor in two other
ways. Unlike the fragile Apollo 13 command module that relied on stored oxygen
to support its astronauts, spaceship earth was a robust, self-contained life-support
system regulated by numerous negative feedback systems.30 However, despite it
robustness, the integrity of the biosphere was capable of being destroyed by
misguided human activities. If that happened, spaceship earth would be like a
crippled space capsule adrift in a hostile universe.
The idea of spaceship earth did not hold universal appeal. Garrett Hardin
dismissed it as a dangerously misguided metaphor promoted by liberal
environmentalists and policy makers.31 According to Hardin, a spaceship requires
a commander with absolute authority. Because there is no world government,
Hardin claimed that the earth was much more like a few crowded lifeboats adrift
in an ocean teeming with drowning swimmers. Each boat had limited space and
scarce resources. To take on more passengers would be suicidal for the fortunate
few already in the boats. The implications of Hardin’s lifeboat ethics were obvious.
Global population growth was an imminent catastrophe that was probably out of
human control. Well-intentioned but misguided foreign policies made the
situation worse by promoting food aid to poor countries where most of the
population growth was occurring. Based on his stark Malthusian view of the
world, Hardin called for strict immigration control and an end to foreign aid.
If cooperation between rich and poor nations was misguided, Hardin was also
deeply skeptical of cooperation among the fortunate few inside the lifeboats. In
his most famous essay, “The Tragedy of the Commons,” Hardin argued that the
inherent selfishness of individuals undercuts efforts to promote the public good.32
Hardin compared the earth to a pasture held in common by a group of shepherds.
TEACHING ECOLOGY
Short-term, self-interest always tempted individuals to exploit the pasture by
adding more animals to their private flocks, even though this ultimately led to
overgrazing and the destruction of the common resources. Thus, for Hardin, the
threat to the environment came not only from immigration and runaway
population growth, but also from individual greed. Hardin held out the vague
hope for “mutual coercion mutually agreed upon” to enforce environmental
protection, but how this mutual agreement might be implemented in a world so
thoroughly based on self-interest was not clear. Hardin offered no concrete social
or political proposals for bringing this about.
Although he never mentioned him by name, Hardin had little use for Odum’s
idea of a total ecosystem management program. In marked contrast to Odum’s
belief in a benign, activist government, Hardin viewed government as a cause of
environmental problems, not a reliable source of solutions. This mistrust of the
government’s role in protecting the environment was widely shared even by
Hardin’s sharpest critics, who rejected both his libertarian politics and his
hostility toward developing nations. Barry Commoner, perhaps the leading
environmentalist of the day, accused Hardin of promoting a new barbarism that
would dehumanize both the wealthy and the poor, but he too rejected the belief in
a partnership between government and ecologists.33 Unlike Odum, who continued
to use nuclear power as an example of how ecologists cooperated with the
government to promote the common good, Commoner used nuclear power as a
prime example of how an arrogant and misguided government ignored science,
consequently endangering both the environment and the lives of its citizens.34
Despite his many critics, Hardin’s essays were enormously popular during the
1970s. “The Tragedy of the Commons” was repeatedly republished throughout
the decade, and it was probably the most widely read environmental essay of the
period.35 Hardin clearly recognized the power of a compelling metaphor, and he
effectively employed the ominous images of lifeboats and degraded commons to
highlight important environmental problems that deeply concerned his readers.
Critics complained that he misrepresented the way pastoral societies actually
function.36 Nonetheless, Hardin’s idea of selfish individuals exploiting the
commons captured an underlying characteristic of environmental problems
ranging from air pollution to overfishing. His contempt for bureaucracy and his
pessimism about governmental solutions to environmental problems were widely
shared and transcended a simple liberal-conservative dichotomy. Hardin’s
assumption that humans are basically selfish and his skepticism about
individuals being able to rise above selfishness to act cooperatively reflected both
scientific and popular views of human nature that became increasingly prevalent
during the 1970s.
In sharp contrast to Odum’s optimism about human cooperation and his view
that cooperation was pervasive in nature, the evolutionary theorists who
influenced Hardin’s more competitive view of nature were deeply skeptical about
altruism and cooperation.37 Robert Trivers, William Hamilton, George Williams,
and (somewhat later) Richard Dawkins argued that many supposed examples of
cooperation were really selfishness in disguise. For example, herds or schools of
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prey animals frequently form cohesive groups that repel predators. According to
earlier theories of cooperative behavior, this was a good example of a group
adaptation that evolved because it benefited the group, even though individuals
on the periphery exposed themselves to danger.38 In an article aptly entitled
“Geometry for the Selfish Herd,” Hamilton argued that this cohesiveness could
be better explained by assuming that every member selfishly strives for the safety
of the center of the herd.39 On this view, those on the periphery are not altruists,
but simply less successful at protecting themselves. Williams extended this line
of reasoning to argue that virtually all supposed examples of group adaptations
could be better understood as fortuitous side-effects of natural selection working
for individual advantage.40 Among many examples of group selection that
Williams effectively debunked with his individualistic arguments was the idea
that ecosystems evolve in a progressive way toward greater stability and selfregulation.
According to the new evolutionary perspective, one might expect self-sacrifice,
altruism, or cooperation to evolve only under highly restricted conditions. It often
occurred in small family groups, because individuals indirectly increase their
own fitness by helping their close relatives. Hamilton developed a sophisticated
mathematical theory of kin selection based on inclusive fitness, the idea that an
individual’s total genetic contribution to the next generation includes both the
genes directly passed on to its offspring and the same genes passed on by close
relatives. Both Hamilton and Trivers demonstrated mathematically that
cooperation also could evolve through reciprocal altruism. Individuals might act
altruistically in situations where other individuals were likely to reciprocate. Of
course, as Trivers and others pointed out, this sort of tit-for-tat behavior was not
altruism in the traditional sense, but rather a form of pseudo-altruism or
disguised selfishness.41
Human behavior was not the primary focus of the new evolutionary thinking
about altruism, but the implications for humans were never far below the surface.
As an exemplar of the semi-popular evolutionary literature of the 1970s, Richard
Dawkins’s The Selfish Gene clearly reflected ambivalence toward selfish behavior.
Based on the thinking of Trivers, Hamilton, and Williams, Dawkins continued
the attack on group selection by reducing natural selection to the level of
individual genes. Nonetheless, Dawkins attempted to draw a sharp distinction
between explanations for the evolution of behavior and a prescriptive morality
based on selfishness. Still, the argument of The Selfish Gene could not have been
more different from Odum’s idea of progressive evolution leading to greater
cooperation. Dawkins wrote: “Be warned that if you wish, as I do, to build a society
in which individuals cooperate generously and unselfishly towards a common
good, you can expect little help from biological nature. Let us try to teach
generosity and altruism, because we are born selfish.”42 What captured the
imaginations of many of his readers, however, was not his call to teach altruism,
but rather Dawkins’s frequent characterization of humans as “lumbering robots”
and “gene machines.” Could nurture really overcome nature? The overall thrust
of Dawkins’s argument made this seem unlikely. Some readers recalled that
TEACHING ECOLOGY
reading Dawkins’s book was intellectually enlightening but psychologically
traumatic.43 The depressing consequences of Hardin’s tragedy of the commons
appeared inevitable.
If the new biological thinking about selfishness and altruism undermined
Odum’s claims about cooperation in nature, the decline of New Deal liberalism
undercut Odum’s claims for a cooperative society and an activist government.
This older form of liberalism largely disappeared as a force in American politics
and culture by the late 1960s.44 For very different reasons, both New Left radicals
and resurgent conservatives assailed New Deal models of government for being
oppressive and paternalistic. Ironically, despite the loss of confidence in an
activist federal government, environmental politics became both more
bureaucratic and adversarial. Odum had always believed that as environmental
problem-solvers, ecologists would play a central role in setting public policy on
environmental issues. However, by the late 1960s, economic, political, and legal
concerns were at least as important as ecological issues in determining
environmental policies.45 Self-proclaimed environmental experts—many of whom
had little formal ecological training—competed for influence with professional
ecologists. Fearing loss of autonomy as the term “ecologist” was appropriated by
nonbiologists, disillusioned with big government, and skeptical that they could
significantly influence environmental policy, many younger ecologists retreated
to purely academic concerns or acted as detached environmental critics.46
Odum never wavered in his core beliefs. In his presidential address to the
Ecological Society of America published in 1969 he repeated his claims about
progressive evolution, cooperation, and homeostatic self-regulation both in
ecosystems and human societies.47 He also restated his belief that ecologists had
a social responsibility to serve as environmental problem-solvers who worked
cooperatively with governmental agencies. Finally, he repeated his call for a
human ecology guided by the culture and values of liberal democracy. The
presidential address became a Science Citation Classic and Odum used it
extensively when he revised Fundamentals of Ecology for the third edition in
1971.48 However, both the presidential address and textbook were running against
the tide in modern evolutionary ecology, politics, and popular culture. Although
the revised textbook initially sold well, it soon was challenged by a new generation
of books that took a very different perspective on professional ecology and its
relationship to environmentalism.
ECOLOGY COMES OF AGE?
THE INTELLECTUAL SHIFT that had begun in the late 1960s was strikingly
apparent in a new crop of ecology textbooks that challenged Odum’s dominance
of the college market during the early 1970s. Noting the arrival of these new
textbooks with approval, the evolutionary ecologist Gordon Orians wrote, “Until
recently, the appropriate unit of measure of ecology textbooks was the odum, and
the problem of selection of a text for a course was a simple one.”49 In his sweeping
book review subtitled “Ecology Comes of Age,” Orians left little doubt that he
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considered the new textbooks an improvement over Odum’s Fundamentals of
Ecology. According to Orians the best of the new crop took a strong Darwinian
perspective, avoided group selection, and emphasized the importance of natural
selection acting on individuals. He noted with approval that the new textbooks
turned away from Odum’s claim that ecosystems evolved in a progressive manner
and instead emphasized that patterns in nature were the result of strategies used
by individuals to increase their fitness. Orians also approved of the way that the
new authors avoided the heavy emphasis on applied ecology that was such an
important part of Odum’s Fundamentals of Ecology. “Pressing environmental
problems are discussed where appropriate,” Orians wrote, “but all the texts avoid
giving implications that ecology can be a savior for our society.” This was certainly
an understatement on Orians’s part, because the most successful of the new
textbooks placed very little emphasis on applied ecology at all. Thus, when Orians
concluded that the new textbooks symbolized ecology’s coming of age, he clearly
implied that the discipline had outgrown the intellectual foundations of Odum’s
ecosystem ecology and the belief that ecologists should be expert environmental
problem-solvers.
Eric Pianka, a protégé of Orians at the University of Washington, credited his
mentor with teaching him “selective thinking”—using natural selection in a
consistent and rigorous way to explain ecological phenomena. 50 Pianka’s
Evolutionary Ecology (1974) traced it intellectual lineage back through Orians to
the eminent population geneticist and evolutionary theorist R.A. Fisher.
Emphasizing natural selection and evolution, Evolutionary Ecology became one
of the most successful ecology textbooks of the late twentieth century. It
eventually rivaled the longevity and popularity of Odum’s Fundamentals of
Ecology, going through six editions by the end of the century.51 Evolutionary
Ecology was a striking departure from Odum’s earlier book. In the introduction
Pianka drew a sharp distinction between ecology and environmentalism. He
complained that many students confused the two, and that they expected ecology
courses to deal primarily with human ecology and environmental problems.52
Unlike Odum, who interspersed examples of applied ecology throughout his
textbook, Pianka restricted his discussion of human ecology and environmental
problems to a single chapter at the end of the book—and even this chapter was
removed when the textbook was revised for its second edition in 1978. For Odum,
the fundamentals of ecology meant understanding ecosystems, and his entire
textbook was oriented around the ecosystem concept. In Pianka’s textbook there
were no chapters specifically devoted to the ecosystem, and although the term
was used occasionally, the discussion of ecosystem processes such as energy flow
and biogeochemical cycling appeared in the chapter on community structure.
Looking for the fundamentals of ecology, Pianka did not find them in ecosystem
processes, but rather in natural selection acting on individuals.
This was not merely a difference in emphasis. It reflected strikingly different
perspectives on nature and humans’ relationship to it. Odum viewed nature in
ways that were fundamentally mechanical and organic. Each component species
had its own particular function to play in the ecosystem. Species interacted with
TEACHING ECOLOGY
one another and with the environment like the organs of a body or the parts of a
machine. By understanding these normal functions and the pathological
malfunctions caused by human activities, the ecosystem ecologist could hope to
repair damaged ecosystems or return them to health, much as a mechanic repaired
a machine or a doctor healed a patient. From this human-centered perspective,
ecosystems also could be modified and perhaps even improved. Pianka’s more
atomistic perspective on nature focused upon individuals facing challenges posed
both by other organisms and by the physical environment. Although these biotic
and abiotic interactions were extraordinarily complex, they were all
fundamentally matters of individual fitness. What Pianka found fascinating
about ecology were the strategies that individuals used to survive and reproduce
in a complex world filled with competitors, predators, and a fluctuating physical
environment. This perspective was certainly not inimical to an environmental
ethic, but it encouraged a much more detached view of nature indifferent to
human welfare. As we shall see, Pianka was deeply skeptical about the future of
humanity and the role of ecologists in protecting the environment.
The intellectual divide between Odum and Pianka is clearly illustrated by
contrasting how the two ecologists presented symbiosis. Rejecting what he
considered to be the Darwinian overemphasis on “survival of the fittest,” Odum
claimed that mutualism was pervasive in nature and that there was an
evolutionary tendency for primitive parasitic relationships to evolve into more
advanced mutualistic partnerships.53 This way of thinking—based both on ideas
of progressive evolution and group selection—was repudiated by Pianka, who
followed Hamilton and Trivers in thinking that cooperative behavior had a
fundamental basis in selfishness. From this perspective cooperation was a
strategy that could be adopted or abandoned depending upon how the situation
might affect reproductive success. According to Pianka, obligate mutualism was
uncommon, and there was a constantly shifting balance between parasitism and
transient forms of cooperation.
To illustrate this point Pianka described a complex set of interactions between
populations of Giant Cowbirds and oriole-like birds called Oropendolas living in
Panama.54 Female Cowbirds are brood parasites that lay their eggs in other birds’
nests. Oropendolas typically guarded their nests against this parasitism, but
under certain environmental conditions they tolerated it. Brood parasitism was
tolerated when Oropendola nests were infested by flesh-eating botflies, because
the voracious Cowbird young ate both the flies and their larvae. Apparently, the
Oropendola’s fitness was reduced less by raising some Cowbirds than by having
its own nestlings infested by the parasitic insects. However, Oropendola nests
built near wasp colonies seemed to be immune to botfly infestation, and here the
Oropendola’s vigilantly removed any Cowbird eggs from their nests. Cowbird
physiology and behavior were apparently molded by the selective pressures of
the particular biotic environment in which they lived. Where Oropendolas
tolerated brood parasites, the Cowbirds laid large numbers of eggs that poorly
mimicked the host’s eggs. Where brood parasitism was not tolerated, female
Cowbirds stealthy laid a single egg that closely mimicked the Oropendola eggs.
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For Pianka, the Cowbirds and Oropendolas illustrated the shifting boundary
that separated parasitism from mutualism. Contrary to Odum’s view, Pianka
denied that there was a tendency for parasitism to evolve into mutualism. Instead,
the Cowbirds and Oropendolas seemed locked in a continual duel of shifting
strategies. The apparent mutualism that sometimes existed between Oropendolas
and Cowbirds was more a case of mutual exploitation than the harmonious,
cooperative relationship that Odum thought that he had found in lichens and
corals.
Despite his strikingly different perspective on the fundamental basis for
symbiosis, Pianka was just as willing as Odum to draw broad lessons about human
behavior from what he observed in nature. In contrast to Odum’s cooperative
human society, which mirrored the mutualism found in lichens and corals, Pianka
viewed humanity from a much more individualistic, competitive perspective. Like
other organisms, natural selection had shaped human behavior to maximize
reproductive success. Just as the behavior of Oropendolas and Cowbirds involved
nothing more than strategies for increasing individual fitness, Pianka believed that
humans behaved primarily for short-term self-interest. Thus, like Garrett Hardin,
Pianka believed that the ability of humans to work together toward long-range social
goals such as protecting the environment was undercut by selfishness.
In the final chapter of his textbook Pianka described in vivid detail what he
termed “the rape of planet Earth.” The manifold problems of the environment
were rooted in overpopulation, and that was the rub. Reducing the human
population would require individuals to constrain reproduction, but this meant
that an individual would have to voluntarily reduce his or her fitness for the
benefit of the species (and other species, as well). This smacked of group selection,
and Pianka denied that such a tendency for self-sacrifice could have evolved in
humans. Although he called for an “ethic of equilibrium” that would make
protecting the environment a moral duty, he seemed pessimistic about its success.
“The ethic of equilibrium requires that individuals restrain themselves from
reproducing maximally, which essentially requires a ‘group’ effort and would
require group selection to evolve.”55 Because he believed that this could not
happen, the only alternative was for society to enforce the ethic of equilibrium.
However, his dismissive attitude toward politicians and governments suggested
few viable options for implementing an effective environmental policy on a
national or international scale.
Like Hardin, Pianka was a detached social critic rather than a hands-on
problem-solver. Although he was alarmed at the destruction of the natural world,
Pianka did not share Odum’s belief that ecologists had a social responsibility to
solve environmental problems. Doing applied research, or even training others
to so, was not an important priority for Pianka. Ecology was first and foremost
an academic discipline focused upon explaining the living world in terms of
natural selection. Humans inevitably would go extinct and, indeed, their demise
seemed imminent, but Pianka concluded his book by claiming that this was not a
cause for pessimism because after humans were gone natural selection would
continue to produce new species.
TEACHING ECOLOGY
Not all of the new authors shared Pianka’s fatalism. Robert Ricklefs, the author
of another highly successful textbook that challenged Odum’s Fundamentals of
Ecology, was an avowed optimist who believed that scientists had a moral
obligation to contribute to the society that supported them.56 Nonetheless,
Ricklef’s ideas about what this social obligation entailed were quite different from
Odum’s view of ecologists as expert problem-solvers. In contrast, Ricklefs
compared scientists to artists whose social responsibility was to create high
culture. The achievements of Newton, Einstein, and Darwin were comparable to
building the cathedral at Chartres or painting the Mona Lisa. Both great art and
great science were the cultural products of optimistic societies. In one sense
Ricklefs acknowledged that these achievements were luxuries, but in a deeper
and more subtle way they were the defining features of Western civilization.57
According to Ricklefs ecology was “coming of age” as a new generation of
ecologists developed theories and conducted experiments that were as rigorous
and elegant as those of chemistry and physics. Like the laws of physics, ecological
principles had practical applications. Indeed, Ricklefs claimed that existing
ecological principles could provide intellectual guidance for solving
environmental problems. Nonetheless, he denied that ecologists had any
particular social responsibility to do applied research or to train applied
ecologists. Whereas Odum had viewed ecologists as playing a leadership role in
solving environmental problems, Ricklefs worried that society might have
unrealistic expectations of what ecologists could accomplish.58 In the long run,
he believed that if ecologists continued pure research they would contribute more
to society than if they turned their attention to solving immediate, practical
problems. As a result, Ricklef devoted even less space in his textbook to
environmental problems than Pianka did in Evolutionary Ecology.
CONCLUSION
THE THIRD EDITION of Odum’s Fundamentals of Ecology (1971) was remarkably
successful. It was translated into twelve languages and sold 42,000 copies in the
first year of its release.59 However, this dominant position in the market rapidly
eroded during the 1970s as newer textbooks rose to challenge Odum’s textbook.
The fact that several textbooks could now compete for adoption in college ecology
courses reflected the dramatic growth and specialization that occurred in ecology
beginning in the late 1960s, but it also reflected deep divisions within the
discipline. As the 1970s progressed, ecosystem ecologists and evolutionary
ecologists increasingly ignored one another.60 Among professional ecologists,
some continued to stress strong ties between their discipline and the
environmental movement, but others minimized these connections. No single
textbook could hope to appeal to all groups.
Theoretical issues were certainly one major fault line dividing ecologists.
Odum’s continued commitment to group selection and progressive evolution and
his belief that Darwinians overemphasized the “survival of the fittest”
marginalized him among evolutionary biologists. It is unlikely that many
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ecologists who emphasized evolution as the primary theme in their ecology
courses chose the third edition of Fundamentals of Ecology for a textbook after
alternatives arrived on the market. These ecologists rapidly gravitated toward
newer textbooks such as Pianka’s Evolutionary Ecology or Ricklefs’s Ecology when
they appeared during the early 1970s.
Odum’s broad perspective on ecosystems and his emphasis on applied ecology
continued to appeal to ecologists who saw strong ties between their discipline
and an emerging environmental biology. Some of these ecologists continued to
use Odum’s textbooks for several more decades. However, the market in
environmental studies was also invaded by a number of new textbooks. Some of
these were written by professional ecologists who did not share Odum’s view that
the ecosystem was the most important conceptual unit in ecology. For example,
the central focus of Paul and Anne Ehrlich’s popular textbook was the population
and the problem of human population growth.61 Other textbooks took a broader
interdisciplinary focus on environmental science and were written by teams of
authors drawn from several different fields.62 These textbooks often emphasized
ecosystems but they did not portray professional ecologists as taking the
leadership role in solving environmental problems in the same way that
Fundamentals of Ecology did.
The uneasy relationship between the academic discipline of ecology and the
rising environmental movement was also an important fault line dividing
ecologists. Historians have documented how the tension between academic
science and public activity has been a perennial problem for ecologists.63 A notable
earlier example involved the establishment of the Nature Conservancy by
ecologists led by Victor Shelford when the Ecological Society of America refused
to support preservation efforts adequately. Shelford and his colleagues favored
lobbying Congress and other political activities to promote habitat preservation,
but these initiatives met strong resistance from other professional ecologists
who did not want to become involved with politics.64 The situation during the
1970s paralleled this earlier case in some important ways. Although Odum and
some other professional ecologists took leadership roles in the environmental
movement, it was the microbiologist Barry Commoner who caught the public’s
attention as “the Paul Revere of Ecology.”65 Many professional ecologists
disdained the political activism that Commoner promoted, and they were unhappy
with the public’s conflation of popular environmentalism with the academic
discipline of ecology. 66
Reflected in their textbooks, these differences were partly generational and
partly rooted in the very different professional experiences of Odum and the
younger authors. Odum’s belief in the positive role that the federal government
could play in environmental protection grew out of the liberal progressivism of
the New Deal. It was further reinforced by his close ties to the Atomic Energy
Commission, the big science projects of the International Biological Program,
and his ability to use support from state and federal agencies to build a large,
and successful ecological institute at the University of Georgia. Working within
the political system he was able to effectively influence environmental policy;
TEACHING ECOLOGY
for example, restricting coastal mining in his home state of Georgia.67 Both Pianka
and Ricklefs were also highly successful ecologists, but their research interests
did not lend themselves to a “big biology” model or to immediate applications to
environmental problems.68 They were educated during the 1960s, when the
political ideals that shaped Odum’s attitudes toward government were being
vigorously challenged both by the New Left and a newly resurgent right. Given
the temper of the time, one did not need to be a political activist to be skeptical of
the federal government’s role in protecting the environment. Pianka’s cynicism
toward politics and Ricklefs’s ambivalence about environmental problem-solving
mirrored the attitudes of many younger ecologists for whom the idea of a
cooperative partnership with bureaucrats and elected officials appeared
anomalous, if not perverse. Partly as a result, Pianka and Ricklefs presented
students with a perspective on ecology from which environmental problem-solving
played little part. Their textbooks were thus both the cause and effect of an
important shift in the way that many ecologists viewed their discipline and its
relationship to the environment.
Joe
agen does research on the history of recent intellectual developments
oell B
B.. H
Hagen
in the fields of ecology, systematics, and evolutionary biology. He is the author of
An Entangled Bank: The Origins of Ecosystem Ecology (Rutgers, 1992).
NOTES
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
Thomas S. Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1962), chapter 6; J. M. Ziman, Public Knowledge: An Essay Concerning
the Social Dimension of Science (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1968),
chapter 4.
Robert L. Burgess, “The Ecological Society of America: Historical Data and Some
Preliminary Analysis,” in History of American Ecology, ed. Frank N. Egerton (New York:
Arno Press, 1977), 1-24.
Eugene P. Odum, Fundamentals of Ecology (Philadephia: W.B. Saunders, 1953; 2nd
ed., 1959; 3rd ed., 1971; 4th ed., 1983, 5th ed., 2005). The fourth edition was described
as an updated and abbreviated version of the textbook and was entitled Basic Ecology.
The posthumous fifth edition returned to the original title and was coauthored with
Gary W. Barrett. For a discussion of the writing and impact of Fundamentals of Ecology,
see Betty Jean Craige, Eugene Odum: Ecosystem Ecologist & Environmentalist (Athens:
University of Georgia Press, 2001), 37-42.
Gary W. Barrett and Karen E. Mabry, “Twentieth-Century Classic Books and Benchmark
Publications in Biology,” BioScience 52 (2002): 282-85.
Francis C. Evans claimed that the ecosystem was as fundamental to ecology as the
species concept was to systematics; see “Ecosystem as the Basic Unit of Ecology,”
Science 123 (1956): 1127-28. Eugene P. Odum claimed that “Ecologists can rally around
the ecosystem as their basic unit just as molecular biologists now rally around the
cell”: see “The New Ecology,” BioScience 14 (1964): 14-16. Ramon Margalef defined
ecology as “the biology of ecosystems” in his Perspectives on Ecological Theory
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1968), 4. For an insider’s account of the
development of the concept and its place in modern ecology, see Frank Golley, A History
of the Ecosystem Concept in Ecology: More than the Sum of the Parts (New Haven:
Yale University Press, 1993).
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6. Joel B. Hagen, An Entangled Bank: The Origins of Ecosystem Ecology (New Brunswick,
NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1992), Epilogue.
7. Odum’s syncretism was heavily influenced by the “systems ecology” of his brother,
Howard T. Odum: see Peter J. Taylor, “Technocratic Optimism, H. T. Odum, and the
Partial Transformation of Ecological Metaphor after World War II,” Journal of the
History of Biology 21 (1988): 213-44.
8. For accounts of the origins of Odum’s textbook, see Golley, History of the Ecosystem
Concept, 65-69; and Craige, Eugene Odum, 37-45.
9. The relationship between professional ecology and applied ecology (including
environmental preservation) has been a perennial issue among ecologists. For various
perspectives on this problem see Sharon Kingsland, The Evolution of American
Ecology, 1890-2000 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2005); Dorothy Nelkin,
“Scientists and Professional Responsibility: The Experience of American Ecologists,”
Social Studies of Science 7 (1977): 75-95; Stephen J. Bocking, Ecologists and
Environmental Politics: A History of Contemporary Ecology (New Haven: Yale
University Press, 1997); Robert McIntosh, The Background of Ecology: Concept and
Theory (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), chapter 8, and Abby J. Kinchy,
“On the Borders of Post-War Ecology: Struggles over the Ecological Society of America’s
Preservation Committee, 1917-1945,” Science as Culture 15 (2006): 23-44.
10. Craige, Eugene Odum, 22, 38.
11. Howard W. Odum and Harry Estill Moore, American Regionalism: A Cultural-Historical
Approach to National Integration (New York: Henry Holt, 1938). Much of the chapter
on human ecology and ecological approaches to regionalism was based on an
unpublished manuscript written by Eugene when he was still a graduate student at
the University of Illinois.
12. Ibid., chapter 2; see also Howard W. Odum et al., American Democracy Anew (New York:
Henry Holt, 1940), 51-52.
13. Odum and Moore, American Regionalism, 43.
14. Howard W. Odum, American Social Problems: An Introduction to the Study of People
and Their Dilemmas (New York: Henry Holt), 1939, chapter 19. For Odum’s retrospective
account of how the New Deal and the concept of regionalism had met the challenges
of the Great Depression and World War II, see Howard W. Odum, “The Promise of
Regionalism,” in Regionalism in America, ed. Merrill Jensen (Madison: University of
Wisconsin Press, 1951), 395-425.
15. Odum, Fundamentals of Ecology, 3rd. ed., 512.
16. Robert A. Croker, Pioneer Ecologist: The Life and Works of Victor Ernest Shelford,
1877-1968 (Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1991), 101. Shelford’s
perspective reflected older ideas on cooperation in nature and society developed by
ecologists at the University of Chicago earlier in the twentieth century. For this episode
in the history of ecology, see Gregg Mitman, The State of Nature: Ecology, Community,
and American Social Thought, 1900-1950 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992).
17. Hagen, Entangled Bank, 123-26; Taylor, “Technocratic Optimism.”
18. Howard T. Odum and Eugene P. Odum, “Trophic Structure and Productivity of a
Windward Coral Reef Community on Eniwetok Atoll, Ecological Monographs 25 (1955):
291-320. The idea that humans can learn important lessons about social stability from
studying natural ecosystems is clearly stated in the introduction of this seminal article.
19. Odum, Fundamentals of Ecology, 1st ed., 180. Although Odum repeated and embellished
this claim in his later writings, there now appears to be little empirical support for
this kind of progressive evolution. Mutualism seems to have evolved independently
in various lineages of lichens sporadically: see Andrea Gargas et al., “Multiple Origins
of Lichen Symbioses in Fungi Suggested by SSU rDNA Phylogeny,” Science 268 (1995):
1492-94.
TEACHING ECOLOGY
20. Odum, Fundamentals of Ecology, 1st ed., 317. The quotation is also found in the 2nd
edition (421) and 3rd edition (408) of the textbook.
21. Odum, Fundamentals of Ecology, 3rd ed., 406.
22. Craige, Eugene Odum; Hagen, Entangled Bank, chapter 6; Bocking, Ecologists and
Environmental Politics, chapters 4 and 5; Golley, History of the Ecosystem Concept,
73-76.
23. Golley, History of the Ecosystem Concept, 73.
24. Craige, Eugene Odum, 66-73.
25. Odum, Fundamentals of Ecology, 1st ed., 319-20.
26. Ibid. In later editions of the textbook Odum’s criticism became more intense, and he
expanded the discussion of the ecological effects of pesticides. These changes reflect
both the influence of Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring and the fact that Odum’s son was
conducting research on the biogeochemical cycling of DDT. For a discussion of Odum’s
views on the conflict between the public good versus corporate profits, see Craige,
Eugene Odum, 98-102.
27. Paul R. Ehrlich, The Population Bomb (New York: Ballantine, 1968).
28. Odum, Fundamentals of Ecology, 3rd. ed., 411-13, 442-44, 516.
29. Kenneth Boulding, “The Economics of the Coming Spaceship Earth,” in Environmental
Quality in a Growing Economy, ed. Henry Jarrett (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University
Press, 1966), 3-14; Odum, Fundamentals of Ecology, 3rd. ed., 516.
30. Hagen, Entangled Bank, Epilogue.
31. Garrett Hardin, “Lifeboat Ethics: The Case Against Helping the Poor,” Psychology Today
8 (September 1974): 38-43, 123-26. This famous essay was republished in slightly
modified form as “Living in a Lifeboat,” Bioscience (1974): 36-47. Hardin specifically
attacked Adlai Stevenson’s use of the spaceship metaphor in his essay, “Ethical
Implications of Carrying Capacity,” in Managing the Commons, ed. Garrett Hardin
and John Baden (San Francisco: W.H. Freeman, 1977), 112-25.
32. Garrett Hardin, “The Tragedy of the Commons,” Science 162 (1968): 1243-48.
33. Barry Commoner, The Closing Circle: Nature, Man, and Technology (New York: Knopf,
1971), 296-97.
34. Ibid., 58.
35. Susan Jane Buck Cox, “No Tragedy of the Commons,” Environmental Ethics 7 (1985):
49-61; Barrett and Mabry, “Classic Books and Benchmark Publications.”
36. Cox, “No Tragedy of the Commons”; Peter Taylor, “Nonstandard Lessons from the
‘Tragedy of the Commons,’” in Encountering Global Environmental Politics: Teaching,
Learning, and Empowering Knowledge, ed. Michael Maniates (Lanham, MD: Rowman
and Littlefield, 2003), 87-105.
37. Garrett Hardin, “An Operational Analysis of ‘Responsibility,’ in Managing the
Commons, ed. Hardin and Baden, 66-75. A concise history of the development of new
ideas about selfishness and altruism is provided by Lee Alan Dugatkin, The Altruism
Equation: Seven Scientists Search for the Origins of Goodness (Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 2006).
38. Dugatkin, Altruism Equation. The development of earlier ecological ideas about
altruism and cooperation is explored in depth by Mitman, The State of Nature.
39. W. D. Hamilton, “Geometry for the Selfish Herd,” Journal of Theoretical Biology 31
(1971): 295-311.
40. George C. Williams, Adaptation and Natural Selection: A Critique of Some Current
Evolutionary Thought (Princeton: Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1966).
41. Eric R. Pianka, Evolutionary Ecology (New York: Harper and Row, 1974), 126-28; Richard
Dawkins, The Selfish Gene (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1976), chapter 1.
42. Dawkins, Selfish Gene, 3; emphasis in original document.
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43. Randolph M. Nesse, “Why a Lot of People with Selfish Genes are Pretty Nice Except
for their Hatred of The Selfish Gene,” in Richard Dawkins: How a Scientist Changed
the Way We Think, ed. Alan Grafen and Mark Ridley (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
2006), 203-12.
44. For example, according to Jonathan Rieder, “The New Deal collapsed in the 1960s.
Baldly put, in need of qualification, this is the key truth, the essential condition, of
our recent political life.” Jonathan Rieder, “The Rise of the ‘Silent’ Majority,” in The
Rise and Fall of the New Deal Order, 1930-1980, ed. Steve Fraser and Gary Gerstle
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989), 243-68, 43. For a variety of assessments
of this collapse, see Todd Gitlin, The Sixties: Years of Hope, Days of Rage (New York:
Bantam, 1987); Allen J. Matusow, The Unraveling of America: A History of Liberalism
in the 1960s (New York: Harper & Row, 1984); Harvey C. Mansfield, “The Legacy of the
Late Sixties,” and Sheldon Wolin, “The Destructive Sixties and Postmodern
Conservatism,” both of which appear in Reassessing the Sixties: Debating the Political
and Cultural Legacy, ed. Stephen Macedo (New York: Norton, 1997), 21-45 and 129-56.
45. Bocking, Ecologists and Environmental Politics, 193-202.
46. Nelkin, “Scientists and Professional Responsibility.”
47. Eugene P. Odum, “The Strategy of Ecosystem Development,” Science 164 (1964): 26270.
48. Craige, Eugene Odum, 85-88; Hagen, Entangled Bank, 142-45.
49. Gordon H. Orians, “A Diversity of Textbooks: Ecology Comes of Age,” Science 181 (1973):
1238-39.
50. Pianka, Evolutionary Ecology, 1st ed., Acknowledgements, xi.
51. Eric R. Pianka, Evolutionary Ecology, 6th ed. (San Francisco: Addison-Wesley, 2000).
52. Pianka, Evolutionary Ecology, 1st ed., 2.
53. Odum, Fundamentals of Ecology, 3rd ed., 228-33.
54. Neal Griffith Smith, “The Advantage of Being Parasitized,” Nature 219 (1968): 690-94.
Smith’s clever experimental techniques caught the imagination of evolutionary
ecologists and the case study was used both by Pianka and by Robert Ricklefs, Ecology,
(Portland, OR: Chiron Press, 1973). Both Pianka and Ricklefs removed the case study
from later editions of their textbooks perhaps because the generality of Smith’s
conclusions was being called into question; for example, see Michael S. Webster,
“Interspecific Brood Parasitism of Montezuma Oropendolas by Giant Cowbirds:
Parasitism or Mutualism?” The Condor 96 (1994): 794-98.
55. Pianka, Evolutionary Ecology, 1st ed., 296.
56. Ricklefs, Ecology, 3-4. Ricklef’s textbook went through four editions during the late
twentieth century and remains one of the standard college textbooks in the field.
57. Ibid., 5-6.
58. Ibid., 779.
59. Craige, Eugene Odum, xiii, 113.
60. Hagen, Entangled Bank, chapter 8.
61. Paul R. Ehrlich and Anne E. Ehrlich, Population, Resources, Environment: Issues in
Human Ecology (San Francisco: Freeman, 1970).
62. Amos Turk, Jonathan Turk, and Janet T. Wittes, Ecology, Pollution, Environment
(Philadelphia: Saunders, 1972); Amos Turk, Jonathan Turk, Janet T. Wittes, Robert
Wittes, Environmental Science (Philadelphia: Saunders, 1974); Jonathan Turk, Janet
T. Wittes, Robert Wittes, and Amos Turk, Ecosystems, Energy, Population (Philadelphia:
Saunders, 1975). This prolific textbook writing team was made up of a chemist,
naturalist, statistician, and physician.
63. Kingsland, Evolution of Ecology.
64. Croker, Pioneer Ecologist, 145-46, 152-53; Kinchy, “On the Borders of Post-war Ecology.”
TEACHING ECOLOGY
65. “Fighting to Save the Earth from Man,” Time, February 2, 1972, 56-65. Commoner
appeared on the cover of this issue of Time.
66. Nelkin, “Scientists and Professional Responsibility.” One conclusion that Nelkin drew
was that the problems faced by ecologists were similar to boundary disputes faced by
other professional groups whose memberships include both academic and more
applied practitioners.
67. Craige, Eugene Odum, 98-102.
68. For a general discussion of this aspect of the controversy between ecosystem ecologists
and evolutionary ecologists, see Hagen, Entangled Bank, chapter 9.
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