- Title
- A return to common-sense: why ecology needs transcendental realism
- Creator
- Price, Leigh
- Subject
- To be catalogued
- Date Issued
- 2019
- Date
- 2019
- Type
- text
- Type
- article
- Identifier
- http://hdl.handle.net/10962/390324
- Identifier
- vital:68538
- Identifier
- xlink:href="https://doi.org/10.1080/14767430.2019.1580178"
- Description
- Empirical realist ecologists, such as C. S. Holling, face significant methodological contradictions; for instance, they must cope with the problem that ecological models and theories of climate change, resilience and succession cannot make predictions in open systems. Generally, they respond to this problem by supplementing their empirical realism with transcendental idealism: they therefore say that their models are simply metaphorical or heuristic, that is, 'not true' in that they are not empirical. Thus, they explicitly deny an ontology for what their models are about. Nevertheless, in their practice, ecologists act as if their theories do have an ontology and thus tell us something truthful about the real world. This discrepancy leaves ecology vulnerable to unnecessary critique, such as that climate science is not real science. Transcendental realism offers a solution because it releases ecologists from the requirement to make predictions; but it does so without denying ontology. This provides several advantages to ecologists.
- Format
- computer
- Format
- online resource
- Format
- application/pdf
- Format
- 1 online resource (14 pages)
- Format
- Publisher
- Taylor and Francis Online
- Language
- English
- Relation
- Journal of Critical Realism
- Relation
- Price, L., 2019. A return to common-sense: why ecology needs transcendental realism. Journal of Critical Realism, 18(1), pp.31-44
- Relation
- Journal of Critical Realism volume 18 number 1 p. 31 2019 1572-5138
- Rights
- Publisher
- Rights
- Use of this resource is governed by the terms and conditions of the Taylor and Francis Online Terms and Conditions Statement (https://www.tandfonline.com/terms-and-conditions)
- Rights
- Closed Access
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RU DST/NRF SARChI for Global Change Social Learning Systems Development: Transformative Learning and Green Skills Learning (ELRC)
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| Thumbnail | File | Description | Size | Format | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| View Details Download | SOURCE1 | A return to common-sense.pdf | 749 KB | Adobe Acrobat PDF | View Details Download |