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R E Ulanowicz

Publications and source records attributed to R E Ulanowicz.

7 recordsLinked to original sources
PubMed2001

Information theory in ecology.

The application of information theory (IT) to ecology has occurred along two separate lines: (1) it has been used to quantify the distribution of stocks and numbers of organisms; and (2) it has been employed to quantify the pattern of interactions of trophic processes. By and large, the first endeavor has resulted in relatively few insights into ecosystem dynamics and has generated much ambiguity and disappointment, so that most ecologists remain highly skeptical about the advisability of applying IT to ecology. By contrast, the second, and less well-known application has shed light on the possibility that ecosystem behavior is the most palpable example of a purely natural 'infodynamics' that transcends classical dynamics, but remains well within the realm of quantitative description.

Ecology↗
PubMed1999

Life after Newton: an ecological metaphysic.

Ecology may indeed be 'deep', as some have maintained, but perhaps much of the mystery surrounding it owes more simply to the dissonance between ecological notions and the fundamentals of the modern synthesis. Comparison of the axioms supporting the Newtonian world view with those underlying the organicist and stochastic metaphors that motivate much of ecosystems science reveals strong disagreements--especially regarding the nature of the causes of events and the scalar domains over which these causes can operate. The late Karl Popper held that the causal closure forced by our mechanical perspective on nature frustrates our attempts to achieve an 'evolutionary theory of knowledge.' He suggested that the Newtonian concept of 'force' must be generalized to encompass the contingencies that arise in evolutionary processes. His reformulation of force as 'propensity' leads quite naturally to a generalization of Newton's laws for ecology. The revised tenets appear, however, to exhibit more scope and allow for change to arise from within a system. Although Newton's laws survive (albeit in altered form) within a coalescing ecological metaphysic, the axioms that Enlightenment thinkers appended to Newton's work seem ill-suited for ecology and perhaps should yield to a new and coherent set of assumptions on how to view the processes of nature.

Ecology↗
PubMed1991

Ecosystem flow networks: loaded dice?

An information-theoretic comparison of the topologies of observed ecosystem transfers and randomly constructed networks reveals that it is not easy to separate the members of the two sets. The distribution of ecosystem flow magnitudes, however, is seen to differ markedly from ordinary probability functions and to resemble the Cauchy or Pareto distributions. The agencies that impart such structure to ecological flow networks are not obvious, but one strong possibility is that autocatalysis, or indirect mutualism, promotes certain pathways at the expense of others, thereby enlarging the tail of the distribution of flow magnitudes.

Ecology↗