James Justus: The Ecological Niche: A Case Study in Problematic Conceptual Indeterminacy
Perhaps no concept has been thought more important to ecological theorizing than the niche. Without it––its highly abstract definition by G. E. Hutchinson in particular–– technically sophisticated and well-regarded accounts of character displacement, ecological equivalence, limiting similarity, and others would seemingly never have been developed. The niche is also widely considered the centerpiece of the best candidate for a distinctively ecological law, the competitive exclusion principle. But the incongruous array and imprecise character of proposed definitions of the concept square poorly with its apparent scientific centrality. I argue this definitional diversity and imprecision reflects a problematic conceptual indeterminacy that challenges its putative indispensability in ecology. Recent attempts to integrate disparate definitions into a unified characterization fail to resolve the imprecision or remove the indeterminacy. As a case study these deficiencies provide a specific illustration of the compelling epistemic rationale for precision in Carnap’s explicative philosophical methodology.
Perhaps no concept has been thought more important to ecological theorizing than the niche. Without it––its highly abstract definition by G. E. Hutchinson in particular–– technically sophisticated and well-regarded accounts of character displacement, ecological equivalence, limiting similarity, and others would seemingly never have been developed. The niche is also widely considered the centerpiece of the best candidate for a distinctively ecological law, the competitive exclusion principle. But the incongruous array and imprecise character of proposed definitions of the concept square poorly with its apparent scientific centrality. I argue this definitional diversity and imprecision reflects a problematic conceptual indeterminacy that challenges its putative indispensability in ecology. Recent attempts to integrate disparate definitions into a unified characterization fail to resolve the imprecision or remove the indeterminacy. As a case study these deficiencies provide a specific illustration of the compelling epistemic rationale for precision in Carnap’s explicative philosophical methodology.