ECOLOGY

Ecology, before its name was stolen to denote a state of mind, was a respectable science, and one which was made accessible to laymen by some of the world's greatest scientists. This writer, as a young man, used to enjoy the writings of the Austrian zoologist Konrad Lorenz (b. 1903, awarded a Nobel prize in 1973) and British biologist J.B.S.

But as shown by progress, liberty, free market and aspirin, you can't put anything out of business just by stealing its name; and ecology, its name smeared or not, remains a respectable and exciting science. It deals with the interrelation of living things and their environment, and like all other sciences, it is bent on seeking truths in order to generalize them.

It is also a science in which energy plays a significant, though by no means a simple role; works like Morowitz's Energy Flow in Biology (1) need a hard and thorough knowledge of chemistry, mathematics and thermodynamics, and are in no way comparable to Mickey-Mouse texts called "Ecoscience." However, there are also popular books by genuine ecologists, such as Why Big Fierce AnimaLs Are Rare by P. Colinvaux(2), professor of zoology at Ohio State University. It starts out as it should: "Ecology is not the science of pollution, nor is it environmental science. Still less is it a science of doom..."

The reason for the rareness of big fierce animals, incidentally, is thermodynamic. A pound of biomass, whether plant tissue or animal flesh, is caloric fuel to the next animal up the food chain that eats it. The Second Law, as explained last month, would not allow all of the energy in the food to be absorbed; so even if nature were efficient (which it is not), and even if animals needed energy for no more than bodybuilding (and not for heat, motion, and other things), the bigger animals would still need more smaller animals to feed on than would correspond to mere multiples dictated by weight or volume. Less and less energy becomes available as it moves up the food chain.