Curtin & Allen – Complex Ecology

Charles Curtin and Timothy Allen – Complex Ecology – Foundational Approaches on Dynamic Approaches to Ecology and Conservation (2018)
[BL Friday 16th May 2025]

“Ecology” in the Green (Conservation, Sustainability) Sense

“Foundational Approaches” – not sciences, theories or methods

And – “Complex”

Many papers as far back as 1976, many contributors, grouped by subject areas & sub-groups / sub-headings: (With “literature cited” per main section.)

  • Aggregation – Hierarchy, Scale, and Complex Emergent Interactions
  • Diversity – functional complexity, self-organization, general patterns and intertidal landscapes.
  • Flows – order/disorder thermodynamics (entropy, Eddington), complementarity(?), estuaries.
  • Non-Linearity (natural, physical and social) – bifurcations and dynamic complexity, chaos, science AND complexity, non-equilibrium concepts, life-history, N:P Stoichiometry
  • Applied Implications and Subversive Science – Global Change Science, Conservation Biology, sustainability, resilience, post-normal science.

People already reference here:

  • Charles Curtin – science as an ethical venture
  • Tim Allen (from Jean Boulton)
  • Bob Ulanowicz
  • Silvio Funtowicz (and ZMM connection!)
  • Donella Meadows
  • Hank Shugart – we love of life, life is complex > love of complexity

References:

Humboldt – everything is connected, followed by Darwin

E O Wilson

Gerald Weinberg – Law of Medium Number – the messy unpredictable middle. mechanics of individual things, statistical patterns of large numbers, but …

Robert May – Nature IS complex. Even simple mathematical models can generate extraordinary complex dynamical behaviour, bifurcations not predictable by the models, even / often chaotic.

Donella Meadows – “intervention points” and the final caution (photo)