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Vegetation as an Object of Study

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 March 2022

Frank E. Egler
Frank E. Egler*
Affiliation:
New York State College of Forestry, Syracuse, N. Y.
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Extract

The historical development of a field of human knowledge progresses like the solution of a jig-saw puzzle, the full extent of which is completely unknown. What begins as an ocean may become only a lake; what starts as a grove of trees may develop into a forest. As study advances through the decades, the situation is repeatedly surveyed and the interpretation of the whole is modified to accord with the added information. For these reasons, conceptions and generalizations periodically undergo alteration, as effectively stated and discussed by Cooper (1926). Universal conformity in such conceptions is of course hardly to be expected in matters that deal largely with speculation rather than with simple experimental data.

Type
Research Article
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 9 , Issue 3 , July 1942 , pp. 245 - 260
Copyright
Copyright © Philosophy of Science Association 1942

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Footnotes

1

Part of the material now presented was included in a paper entitled “Plant Ecology: the Two Uses of the Term,” presented at a meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and Associated Societies, Columbus, Ohio, December 29, 1939.

References

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