Ecological Thinking in Science and Public

Abstract

This chapter traces a broad history of ecological thinking, starting with the early proto-ecological natural scientists in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. After laying out some of these early conceptions of ecology, we then turn to the social sciences and humanities, exploring how ecological thinking influenced sociology, anthropology, psychology, ethnography, and philosophy. From this foundation, we suggest that ecological thinking can be used to revisit the concept of ecological validity, originally developed in the mid-twentieth century by psychologists Egon Brunswik and Kurt Lewin. This chapter concludes by explaining how ecological validity and ecological thinking in general provide public engagement with science both concrete guidelines for better research and heuristics for evaluating the strengths and weaknesses of competing engagement methods.