Max Dresow (University of Minnesota, Twin Cities)
Ecology has long been in the grips of a discipline-wide inferiority complex. This can be characterized by three worries: that the subject matter of ecology fails to 'hang together' (the coherence worry), that the discipline lacks a theory to determine and delimit its subject matter (the control worry), and that the field has failed to progress. Attending to the structure of ecological problems provides a way of alleviating the coherence and control worries by revealing the organizational infrastructure of ecological knowledge and practice. In addition, it provides useful traction on the difficult topic of progress in ecology.
