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O conceito de função na ecologia contemporânea
Abstract
O discurso funcional é tanto ubíquo quanto central na ecologia contemporânea, principalmente no contexto das pesquisas sobre biodiversidade e funcionamento ecossistêmico, que emergiram nos anos 1990 em meio à crise da biodiversidade. Entretanto, a despeito dessa forte presença na ecologia, o discurso funcional ainda não tem sido investigado de maneira adequada nesta ciência (ou em sua filosofia), na medida em que muitos problemas fundamentais a respeito do tema ainda permanecem sem respostas claras. Por um lado, os ecólogos que lançam mão de explicações funcionais parecem simplesmente tomar como dado ou autoevidente o conceito de função. Contudo, ele nada tem de trivial, tendo em vista os problemas filosóficos suscitados pela linguagem funcional ou teleológica nas explicações biológicas, pelo menos desde Aristóteles. Por outro lado, poucos filósofos da ciência têm se mostrado especialmente interessados nos problemas epistemológicos associados ao discurso funcional em ecologia. Tomando essa situação como ponto de partida, nossa abordagem neste artigo se dá em três etapas. Inicialmente, procedemos a uma análise conceitual de função na ecologia atual, com ênfase nos estudos que relacionam a biodiversidade às propriedades ecossistêmicas. Esboçamos três significados principais do conceito, mostrando os pressupostos e as implicações associados a cada um deles. Num segundo momento, procedemos a uma análise das razões que levam a suspeitas ou objeções contra a linguagem funcional na ecologia. Por fim, num terceiro momento, lançamos algumas sugestões sobre como fundamentar ou dar mais clareza ao discurso funcional na ecologia contemporânea.
... Earth System Science, in particular, supports the thesis of a life-constrained world from the point of view of climatology and biogeochemistry, which offer a more global geological and ecological perspective on the interaction between living beings and their physicochemical environment (Lovelock 1979(Lovelock 2000Johnson et al. 1997;Kump et al. 1999;Jacobson et al. 2000;Lenton and van Oijen 2002;Nunes-Neto and El-Hani 2006). 3 Third, the Biodiversity and Ecosystem Functioning research program (hereafter, BEF; Naeem 2002; Cardinale et al. 2007Loreau 2010, which is mainstream in current ecological science, assumes that the functions of the organisms, populations and communities have an effect on the ecosystem properties, many of which are abiotic properties (like temperature, humidity, etc.) (see Nunes-Neto 2013;Nunes-Neto et al. 2013, 2016b. The BEF supports the general idea of a lifeconstrained world from the point of view of ecology, highlighting some aspects that are black-boxed in the above-mentioned approaches, such as the specific, microscale, mechanisms for the influence of biodiversity on the ecosystems (Naeem 2002;Loreau 2010). ...
This book offers to the international reader a collection of original articles of some of the most skillful historians and philosophers of biology currently working in Latin American universities. During the last decades, increasing attention has been paid in Latin America to the history and philosophy of biology, but since many local authors prefer to write in Spanish or in Portuguese, their ideas have barely crossed the boundaries of the continent. This volume aims to remedy this state of things, providing a good sample of this production to the English speaking readers, bringing together contributions from researchers working in Brazilian, Argentinean, Chilean, Colombian and Mexican universities.
The stress on the regional provenance of the authors is not intended to suggest the existence of something like a Latin American history and philosophy of biology, supposedly endowed with distinctive features. On the contrary, the editors firmly believe that advances in this field can be achieved only by stimulating the integration in the international debate. Based on this assumption, the book focuses on two topics, life and evolution, and presents a selection of contributions addressing issues such as the history of the concept of life, the philosophical reflection on life manipulation and life extension, the structure and development of evolutionary theory as well as human evolution.
Life and Evolution – Latin American Essays on the History and Philosophy of Biology will provide the international reader with a rather complete picture of the ongoing research in the history and philosophy of biology in Latin America, offering a snapshot of this dynamic community. It will also contribute to contextualize and develop the debate concerning life and evolution, and the relation between the two phenomena.
... Earth System Science, in particular, supports the thesis of a life-constrained world from the point of view of climatology and biogeochemistry, which offer a more global geological and ecological perspective on the interaction between living beings and their physicochemical environment (Lovelock 1979(Lovelock 2000Johnson et al. 1997;Kump et al. 1999;Jacobson et al. 2000;Lenton and van Oijen 2002;Nunes-Neto and El-Hani 2006). 3 Third, the Biodiversity and Ecosystem Functioning research program (hereafter, BEF; Naeem 2002; Cardinale et al. 2007Loreau 2010, which is mainstream in current ecological science, assumes that the functions of the organisms, populations and communities have an effect on the ecosystem properties, many of which are abiotic properties (like temperature, humidity, etc.) (see Nunes-Neto 2013;Nunes-Neto et al. 2013, 2016b. The BEF supports the general idea of a lifeconstrained world from the point of view of ecology, highlighting some aspects that are black-boxed in the above-mentioned approaches, such as the specific, microscale, mechanisms for the influence of biodiversity on the ecosystems (Naeem 2002;Loreau 2010). ...
During the last decades, increasing attention has been paid in Latin America to the history and philosophy of biology. As attested by the creation and growth of many specialized journals, many scholars have actively engaged in this field, producing high-quality research. Although several authors regularly publish in English, most of them still prefer to write in Spanish or in Portuguese, and, for this reason, their ideas have barely crossed the boundaries of the continent. This book aims to remedy this state of affairs, by offering to the international reader a collection of original articles by some of the most skillful historians and philosophers of biology currently working in Latin American universities.
... Earth System Science, in particular, supports the thesis of a life-constrained world from the point of view of climatology and biogeochemistry, which offer a more global geological and ecological perspective on the interaction between living beings and their physicochemical environment (Lovelock 1979(Lovelock 2000Johnson et al. 1997;Kump et al. 1999;Jacobson et al. 2000;Lenton and van Oijen 2002;Nunes-Neto and El-Hani 2006). 3 Third, the Biodiversity and Ecosystem Functioning research program (hereafter, BEF; Naeem 2002; Cardinale et al. 2007Loreau 2010, which is mainstream in current ecological science, assumes that the functions of the organisms, populations and communities have an effect on the ecosystem properties, many of which are abiotic properties (like temperature, humidity, etc.) (see Nunes-Neto 2013;Nunes-Neto et al. 2013, 2016b. The BEF supports the general idea of a lifeconstrained world from the point of view of ecology, highlighting some aspects that are black-boxed in the above-mentioned approaches, such as the specific, microscale, mechanisms for the influence of biodiversity on the ecosystems (Naeem 2002;Loreau 2010). ...
Can evolutionary theory be properly characterised as a “theory of forces,” like Newtonian mechanics? One common criticism to this claim concerns the possibility to conceive genetic drift as a causal process endowed by a specific magnitude and direction. In this chapter, we aim to offer an original response to this criticism by pointing out a connection between the notion of force and the notion of explanatory depth, as depicted in Hitchcock and Woodward’s manipulationist account of causal explanation. In a nutshell, our argument is that since force-explanations can be consistently reframed as deep explanations and vice versa and the notion of drift can be characterised in manipulationist terms as constitutively intervening in evolutionary deep explanations, then drift-explanations can be consistently reframed as force-explanations, and drift can be properly considered as a force of evolution. Insofar as similar considerations may be extended also to other evolutionary factors – chiefly selection – our analysis offers an important support to the claim that evolutionary theory is a theory of forces.
... Earth System Science, in particular, supports the thesis of a life-constrained world from the point of view of climatology and biogeochemistry, which offer a more global geological and ecological perspective on the interaction between living beings and their physicochemical environment (Lovelock 1979(Lovelock 2000Johnson et al. 1997;Kump et al. 1999;Jacobson et al. 2000;Lenton and van Oijen 2002;Nunes-Neto and El-Hani 2006). 3 Third, the Biodiversity and Ecosystem Functioning research program (hereafter, BEF; Naeem 2002; Cardinale et al. 2007Loreau 2010, which is mainstream in current ecological science, assumes that the functions of the organisms, populations and communities have an effect on the ecosystem properties, many of which are abiotic properties (like temperature, humidity, etc.) (see Nunes-Neto 2013;Nunes-Neto et al. 2013, 2016b. The BEF supports the general idea of a lifeconstrained world from the point of view of ecology, highlighting some aspects that are black-boxed in the above-mentioned approaches, such as the specific, microscale, mechanisms for the influence of biodiversity on the ecosystems (Naeem 2002;Loreau 2010). ...
The systemic approach to function proposes to ground every use of functional language in biology in a systemic analysis. A systemic analysis is a kind of explanation or procedure that parts from a capacity of a system and shows how this capacity is exercised by the system by decomposing it into other sub-capacities that are implemented in the (parts of the) system. Our goal in this work is to examine the adequacy of this proposal. We provide a formal reconstruction of systemic analysis based on the structuralist metatheory. This will help us clarify its structure and explicate its key concepts, which will be useful for a fine-grained conceptual discussion in the two sections following it. After this, we examine the question of whether systemic analysis can account for every use of functional language in biology. We argue that, in order to be biologically significant (to avoid the charges of “promiscuity” frequently raised against it), systemic analysis as a whole requires that there exist some criteria for distinguishing biological functions that are independent from it. In order to better discuss the relationship between systemic analysis and functional explanation, we focus on the issue of the explanandum of functional systemic explanations. We argue that in systemic analyses that have biological functions as their top-level capacities, these functions explain the structure of the traits that exercise them, as is usual in functional explanations. We show that this fact has not been appreciated for two reasons. Firstly, because the order of determination is reversed from the usual cases, in the paradigmatic examples that systemic proponents had in mind (i.e. in the neurosciences, one typically first has access to the function and then seeks the traits that implement it) and, secondly, because the proponents refer to the top-level capacity as the “explanandum capacity” (since the components and sub-capacities also explain how it is exercised).
... Earth System Science, in particular, supports the thesis of a life-constrained world from the point of view of climatology and biogeochemistry, which offer a more global geological and ecological perspective on the interaction between living beings and their physicochemical environment (Lovelock 1979(Lovelock 2000Johnson et al. 1997;Kump et al. 1999;Jacobson et al. 2000;Lenton and van Oijen 2002;Nunes-Neto and El-Hani 2006). 3 Third, the Biodiversity and Ecosystem Functioning research program (hereafter, BEF; Naeem 2002; Cardinale et al. 2007Loreau 2010, which is mainstream in current ecological science, assumes that the functions of the organisms, populations and communities have an effect on the ecosystem properties, many of which are abiotic properties (like temperature, humidity, etc.) (see Nunes-Neto 2013;Nunes-Neto et al. 2013, 2014, 2016b. The BEF supports the general idea of a lifeconstrained world from the point of view of ecology, highlighting some aspects that are black-boxed in the above-mentioned approaches, such as the specific, microscale, mechanisms for the influence of biodiversity on the ecosystems (Naeem 2002;Loreau 2010). ...
We address in this chapter the problem of how the transition from a physicochemical to a life-constrained world occurred. We assume an organizational view of ecological systems, according to which this transition can be conceptualized in terms of the passage from a closure of processes to a closure of constraints in the ecological realm. This perspective offers a consistent interpretation of the transition from an abiotic ecological system to a “life-constrained” ecological system. We develop this idea by applying it to the studies on the relationship between algae, clouds and the climate. Finally, we hold that different and independent approaches, including the organizational ones, propose the same general idea, although with different emphases or domains of application, namely, that life influences physicochemical conditions in a way that ultimately contributes to its self-maintenance.
Ao longo da história humana, diversas visões de mundo e concepções de natureza vêm sendo construídas, consolidando a base a partir da qual os grupos estabelecem suas relações sociais e formas de interagir com o ambiente. Na contemporaneidade, a visão de separação entre sociedade e natureza vem contribuindo para um processo contínuo de agravamento dos problemas socioambientais, em uma crise de escala planetária que envolve diversas facetas e a perda da conexão com uma dimensão mais profunda da vida. Por outro lado, também se perpetuam sistemas de crenças e modos de vida vinculados a uma profunda sabedoria da natureza – especialmente entre povos indígenas e outros grupos tradicionais – alicerçados em cosmovisões onde todos os aspectos estão interligados. Eles que vêm apoiando a emergência de novos paradigmas estruturantes da humanidade, onde os elementos naturais traduzem múltiplos significados espirituais, representados tanto no plano material quanto imaterial. Nesse processo, uma nova temática vem adquirindo visibilidade crescente em fóruns mundiais sobre políticas de conservação da natureza – os sítios naturais sagrados, considerados elos entre a diversidade biológica e cultural. Como abordado nesse capítulo, eles são elementos chave de um movimento global crescente, que vê a espiritualidade como força motriz para o despertar de uma nova consciência ecológica, a partir do resgate de um sentimento de unidade e comunhão com a natureza, conjugado à ideia de reencantamento e reconexão.
Ecuador is characterized by its high cultural and biological diversity, determining a relationship between ethnic richness and ancestral wisdom with nature. In the national territory there are almost 8,000 plant species with potential for use and they are a library of genetic resources. By investigating sacred plants to treat cultural syndromes from 1987 to 2021, a good example is presented in human wellness. In the Coast, Andean Highlands and Amazon region it was identified traditional markets, native people and key collaborators. The stakeholders recognized as healers can treat seven cultural syndromes and handle a therapeutic arsenal of 73 sacred plants, so each one was validated with: participatory observation, scientific literature and data noted in herbaria collections. Today, the overlapping of millenary ancestral wisdom with scientific knowledge is projected as a firm step for science and humanity, because it can save a life.
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