Preface

Summary

An attempt to write a general account of the origins, development and current problems of ecology, even within the constraints noted below, might well be thought foolhardy. Ecology built upon traditions of natural history beginning in classical antiquity but developed as a science in the context of late 19th-century biology, natural history surveys, and conservation. It became widely known to the general public, often in distorted forms, only in the 1960s. It has been called polymorphic because it appeared and continues in numerous and different forms appropriate to the enormous variability and complexity of the things studied by ecologists. Until recently, ecology has not excited the interest of historians of science, and detailed historical studies of ecology or biographical works about ecologists are few. This volume was not, however written to fill the need for careful historical analyses of ecology and its relation to biology and to environmental concerns, although it leans heavily on those now available. It is an attempt to provide an account of the background of ecology and suggest its relevance to current problems of ecology as a science. It has an underlying assumption that some of the difficulties and conflicts now manifest in ecology can be better resolved if ecologists, particularly younger ecologists, become familiar with what went before them and their mentors and outside their immediate interests.