Growth and Development: Ecosystems Phenomenology (Ulanowicz, 2000)

Growth and Development: Ecosystems Phenomenology (Ulanowicz, 2000)

The author's vision is that the concepts of growth and development apply in a rigorous way to ecosystems, as well as to organisms. He describes ecosystems in terms of their networks of "who eats whom", and, using the pattern of connections and the strengths of the interactions, derives indices that quantify both system growth and development. The result is what is called the "principle of increasing ecosystem ascendency", which provides a preferred direction for system development, in stark contrast to the conventional neo-Darwinian theory of evolution.

p.2 growth and development remain enigmatic... The enigma only deepens when one considers that growth and development are not confined to ontology. Ecosystems, economic communities, social structures, cultural movements, and even meteorological and galactic forms are perceived to undergo what is commonly regarded as growth and development.

p.5 Phenomenology is the description of the formal structure of the objects of awareness in abstraction from any claims concerning existence... growth and development... are characterized by a new, quantitative formalism of increasing "ascendency." The observable drives of living systems towards coherency, efficiency, specialization and self-containment are argued to be implicit in the "principle" of optimal ascendency.

p.6 the acceptability of new ideas is often judged by how much more coherent the corpus of science becomes after the new concept has been added.

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