This letter is associated with the following article:
Letters
Tuesday, July 7, 2009 12:00 AM

Life is out of whack

It may drive ecologists crazy to talk about a balance in nature. But it's more necessary than ever

Read other letters about this article

  • Monday, July 6, 2009 07:32 PM

    You make the case against yourself

    Your article illustrates pretty neatly why professional ecologists are so annoyed by the "balance of nature" fantasy. That theory about Orca's eating the seals and causing a trophic cascade is a very lovely story and was a very clever hypothesis when it was proposed, but it has since been shown to be demonstrably false. Of course, the fact that it never actually happened has not prevented you, or many others, from repeating it as fact. In the history of Ecology, there have been a lot of theories that survived way past their expiration dates largely because they fit into the "balance of nature" worldview. As a scientist, I believe that it is far more useful to understand how nature actually works than to pretend that nature is a simple and moral.

Most Active Letters Threads

740

The commendably missing element from Obama's speech

There was no pretense that human rights is our goal, or the likely outcome, in escalating the war
371

America's regression

It's almost impossible to find a nation with as many torture advocates as the U.S. has.
333

Do Obama officials know what his Afghanistan plan is?

What explains the completely contradictory statements from key aides on a central plank of the war strategy?
278

Palin: Birthers have "fair question" about Obama

Of Obama birth, the ex-governor says, "the public is still, rightfully, making it an issue" (Updated)
211

The poster boy for progressive self-delusion

Read Hayden's 2008 Obama endorsement to remember the way the left sold our centrist president to itself

View all »

Letters Help

Currently in Salon