The founders of the Ecological Society of America have left us with a disarmingly low-key creation story for the Society. Victor Shelford's (1917) account (reprinted in this issue) partly reiterates a circular letter that Henry C. Cowles (1915a) sent to colleagues soliciting their views about whether a society was a good idea. These sources explain that it all began when Shelford and Robert H. Wolcott, zoologist at the University of Nebraska, observed that plant and animal ecologists had no opportunity to meet together, and that it would be valuable to have summer field meetings in addition to the usual winter meetings. Their exchange prompted a group of about 20 men to discuss the idea of forming an ecological society at the AAAS meeting in Philadelphia on 30 December 1914. They voted to call a conference at the next AAAS meeting in Columbus, Ohio, in December 1915, and appointed a committee to present an organizational plan at that meeting. Cowles, as secretary of the committee, later sent out a circular letter, also published in Science and Torreya, to find out if “working ecologists” supported the idea, and how many would be able to come to Columbus (Cowles 1915a,b). Cowles noted that the Philadelphia group had been “practically unanimous” in thinking that the time was ripe to organize an ecological society. About 50 people attended the Columbus conference, and nearly all expressed enthusiasm about forming a society (Shelford 1917). Cowles had >50 letters from interested people who were unable to attend. On 28 December 1915, those attending officially formed the Ecological Society of America, chose officers for 1916, selecting Shelford as their first president, and made plans for the first annual meeting in New York in December 1916. By January 1917 the new Society boasted 307 members. This unassuming narrative begs the question: why did that first group think that the time was ripe for an ecological society in 1914? This is the question I would like to pose now. Understanding the Society's origins requires looking beyond the proximate causes—letters and meetings—and considering the changes in biology that were occurring both in America and abroad in the early twentieth century. The time appeared ripe because ecology itself was ripening as a new subject, and was in 1914 very different from what it had been just a decade earlier. Cowles and Shelford, both remarkable ecological visionaries, were important for this transformation, but other causes operated to create a robust ecological community with stronger international connections by the 1910s. These changes helped American ecology to stand on its own as a new discipline, justifying the formation of a new society. Here we will explore just a few important events occurring in the decade prior to 1914. For deeper analysis of the growing interest in ecology over a longer time period, readers should consult Eugene Cittadino's (1980, 1993) analysis of the history of plant ecology, and the work of Henry Cowles, Robert Croker's (1991) biography of Victor Shelford, and Gregg Mitman's (1992) study of the Chicago school of animal ecology. One clue as to the nature of the transformation underway between the early 20th century and 1914 lies in the questionnaire that charter members filled out when they enrolled in the Society (Shelford 1917, 1918). Their answers were collected in the first handbook of the Ecological Society of America published in the Bulletin in 1917 (Handbook of the Ecological Society of America 1917). The first questions were straightforward: what topics did people study, in what regions did they work, and on what taxonomic groups did they focus? The final two questions, however, were less obvious and were not answered by all respondents: “With what experimental methods have you had the most experience?” and “With what field instruments have you worked?” The fact that this information was considered important indicates that ecology's status as a science depended on its claim to be adopting experimental methods and making precise measurements. The legitimacy of ecology as an experimental science was in fact a central concern to Cowles and Shelford. For the elder Cowles (1909a), who had been promoting ecology as a credible science since the late 19th century, the survival of the science depended on its practitioners adopting a mechanistic experimental outlook. A decade earlier at the AAAS meeting in St. Louis in December 1903, Cowles (1904a) had been asked to deliver a summary of ecological work in that year. His exasperated response was to declare his reluctance to undertake this difficult task, but he nonetheless complied. At that time he found the field of ecology to be “chaos,” impossible to define or delimit. But Cowles pointed toward signs of progress. Translations of important foreign texts, such as Andreas Schimper's Plant Geography upon a Physiological Basis (1903), were making modern European ideas about ecology available to English-speaking audiences. The great value of this book was its emphasis on experimental methods and on the union of physiology and ecology. Cowles also identified several research programs in the United States and Europe that involved experimental fieldwork, often conducted over several years. He noted that tropical laboratories and new field stations were all “steps in the right direction.” In short, ecology was poised to advance because it was becoming an experimental science, and most importantly, because the experiments were being conducted not in laboratories but in the field. For Cowles (1909), one of the earliest missteps in the development of ecology had occurred back in 1893 at the annual meeting of the Botanical Society of America in Madison, Wisconsin. That meeting had been dominated by discussion of various problems involving terminology and nomenclature. It was there that botanists formally decided to adopt the term “ecology” to distinguish their interests in plant adaptation from narrower studies of plant physiology that were normally undertaken in the laboratory (Cittadino 1980). Differentiating between the narrow focus of laboratory studies and broader questions about plant origins and adaptations in nature was itself not a problem. Cowles, however, believed that the decision taken at this meeting had the unfortunate effect of creating an artificial barrier between the two fields, such that physiology was seen to be experimental while ecology was observational. Cowles's own vision of ecology was completely opposed to that kind of distinction. He believed that it was essential for ecologists to experiment, but he also urged physiologists to get out of the laboratory and into the field in order to understand the organism in its natural context. Botanists who worked in laboratories that were then poorly lit and contaminated by gases were studying plants under unnatural conditions. Those kinds of experiments, Cowles believed, could not possibly advance understanding of adaptation and evolution, the central problems of the day. Instead, Cowles urged biologists to get out of these artificial environments and take their experiments into the field, in effect making experimental ecology synonymous with field physiology. Unless physiologists went into the field, Cowles argued, they would never be able to engage “sanely with the great problems connected with the evolution of form and behavior” (Cowles 1909:357). Cowles was adamant that the ecologist “must experiment” just as the physiologist “must be a student of field conditions.” Cowles was sensitive to the accusation that ecology was a passing fad of little importance, so he was keen to draw attention to research showing that this was not the case. One of his best examples of a legitimate research enterprise was the Desert Botanical Laboratory of the Carnegie Institution of Washington (Cowles 1904b, 1909b). The laboratory was founded in 1903 outside of Tucson, acquired a permanent director and staff in 1906, and grew into an important research center for both plant physiology and desert ecology, including for long-term studies of vegetation and climate. Several of the people associated with the founding of the Ecological Society of America had either a long-term or short-term connection with the Desert Laboratory (Kingsland 2005). These included William A. Cannon, Frederic Clements, Frederick V. Coville, Ellsworth Huntington, Daniel MacDougal, Burton Livingston, Francis E. Lloyd, Forrest Shreve, and Edith Shreve. Huntington was the second president of the Ecological Society in 1917, and Forrest Shreve was its first secretary–treasurer and seventh president. Livingston and Shreve also chaired two of the first committees formed by ESA, the Committee on Climatic Conditions, and the Soil Temperature Committee, respectively. Finally the Desert Laboratory's own journal, Plant World, became the new Society's first journal, Ecology. This connection brings to the fore another reason behind the fairly rapid growth of American biological science in the early 20th century, namely the boost to research provided by patrons such as the Carnegie Institution of Washington. The Carnegie's first projects supported both the Tucson laboratory for botanical research and a station for experimental study of evolution at Cold Spring Harbor, New York. Both grew into major research communities. Considering, too, that Cowles's institution, the University of Chicago, was founded in 1890 with a donation from John D. Rockefeller, we can appreciate the link between the wealth produced by America's industrialization and the institutional growth that helped to sustain the early discipline of ecology. Another reason that Cowles feared ecology would be seen as a brief fad was the impression that it was easy to do, little more than “hasty gathering together of notes made in leisure moments during summer holidays” Cowles (1905:381). He therefore lauded new books that showed that true ecology required “the most arduous and long-continued work.” Such a text was Frederic Clements's Research Methods in Ecology (1905), which Cowles admired for its descriptions of precision instruments and discussion of how to express results intelligently. Cowles lavished praise on Clements for writing a book that would “prevent ecology from falling into a swift and merited disfavor” (Cowles 1905:382). Cowles himself would in 1912 write his own ecology textbook, which formed the second volume of the Chicago school's Textbook of Botany for Colleges and Universities (the first volume being written by John Merle Coulter, professor of morphology, and Charles Reid Barnes, professor of physiology). This textbook was the fruit of a decade of undergraduate teaching at Chicago. Its innovative approach was to organize botany into three main divisions: morphology, physiology, and ecology, with the volume on ecology being much longer than the two sections on morphology and physiology combined. Ecology would be indispensable to the undergraduate student's botanical education at Chicago. Ecology meant the explanation of the “origin, variation, and role of plant or animal structures” as well as the “origin and variation of plant and animal associations” (Cowles 1912, 485). Because Cowles's volume on ecology had to be connected to the preceding two sections on morphology and physiology, he emphasized the individual plant rather than plant communities or associations. His treatment of ecology therefore involved the problem of adaptation, or the explanation of the origin of adaptations. But here he ran up against a serious obstacle: evolutionists were in the habit of concocting likely stories of adaptive functions without seeking experimental support for their explanations. That practice had produced a distorted way of speaking and therefore necessitated a reform of language. Too many explanations were couched in teleological language of goal and purpose, Cowles explained, almost as though plants were imagined to have the power to choose a course of action. He criticized “old time ecologists” for using terms such as “hydrophile” or “heliophobe,” which implied that plants had emotions or desires (Cowles 1909; 1912:487). He also questioned the widespread use of metaphorical terms such as “struggle for existence” and “competition,” with their suggestion that plants acted like people. Ecology, he complained, had “suffered from the unrestricted use of anthropomorphic similes and teleological fantasies” (Cowles 1912:487). It was time to substitute a more neutral and precise language for these misleading terms. Cowles was using the textbook to redefine ecology as a more exact science: exact in its methods and exact in speech. As Charles Bessey (1912) noted in his review of the text, “This ‘ecology' is not the ‘ecology' of many other authors.” Cowles's approach, as Bessey explained, provided an alternative to the “vapid lectures on the general aspects of vegetational landscape” that were common in high school and college education. Cowles's views on language led one reviewer to characterize his text as being antagonistic to everything Darwinian (Ganong 1912), but this was an exaggeration. Cowles accepted that natural selection operated to eliminate the unfit and preserve the fit, but he thought that zealous Darwinians had gone beyond the evidence in invoking natural selection's power to account for the origin of new forms and structures. His criticism echoed that of his contemporaries: natural selection could account for the survival of the fit, but not the arrival of the fit. In other words, the cause of new variation was still unexplained and therefore it was not strictly correct to claim that natural selection explained the origin of species. Victor Shelford similarly thought that the key to progress in ecology was through experimental study. At Chicago where he obtained his Ph.D. in 1907, Shelford was mainly influenced by Charles Manning Child, a physiologist, and to a lesser extent by Charles Davenport and Charles O. Whitman, both of whom had interests in animal ecology and behavior. But he was also inspired by Cowles's ideas about ecological succession, based on his studies of the sand dunes along Lake Michigan. Shelford's dissertation on the tiger beetles living in the same sand dunes correlated the distribution of beetles with soil conditions in different plant communities in the successional series. Much like Cowles, Shelford believed that ecology was allied with physiology but that laboratory study should be conducted with reference to natural environments. Where he differed from Cowles was in focusing his attention on improvements in laboratory design to make it easier to do experimental ecology. While at Chicago, Shelford found that teaching field zoology courses posed quite a challenge, because there was no overarching framework that would guide the instructor. His book of 1913, Animal Communities in Temperate America, as Illustrated in the Chicago Region, although not strictly a textbook, was meant to provide a guide to teaching that was centered on ecology. Shelford defined ecology as a branch of physiology that studied the organism as a whole and also considered the organism in relation to its usual environment (Shelford 1913:1). He too championed a more systematic and experimental approach to the subject, and he also found that many explanations offered in evolutionary biology were speculative and would remain so until they could be tested experimentally (Mitman 1992). Natural selection was mentioned only once in his text, and only to argue that speculations about how natural selection might produce adaptations were of questionable value (Shelford 1913:25). In many ways his book was a zoological counterpart to Cowles's textbook. In writing these texts, in which ecology was conceived as central to how botany and zoology should be taught, Cowles and Shelford were transforming ecology into a true discipline—a subject learned through orderly instruction. Another important stimulus to the development of ecology was the idea of conducting ecological excursions of several weeks' duration and involving small groups of leading botanists from different countries. Europeans increasingly recognized such excursions to be important and had organized several in connection with various international congresses. Such excursions were a natural follow-up to vegetational surveys already underway. British ecologist Arthur Tansley (1904) for instance, had urged the formation of a British vegetational survey in 1904, in order to advance ecology through a more coordinated surveying and mapping effort. In 1908 he recommended to the British Vegetation Committee that it also organize an international excursion of the British Isles (Tansley 1911). Tansley's idea was to improve communication between botanists working in different environments. Published descriptions, even with photographs, did not adequately convey the ecological conditions that were being studied. Ecologists did not use terms the same way and botanists often misunderstood one another. One way to lessen these disagreements was to arrange for botanists, guided by local experts, to visit the locations under study. The British excursion was organized in August 1911 and included Cowles, Clements, and their wives. Cowles (1912b) found that spending time with foreign scientists fostered better understanding of opposing views, which he hoped would curb polemical disputes in ecology. He found it useful not only to talk to opponents, but to see the landscapes they were studying and to understand what terms such as “heath” and “moor” actually meant. Buoyed by the success of the British excursion, Cowles and Clements decided to organize an international excursion in the United States in August and September of 1913. Cowles ended up doing most of the work. That excursion began in New York with visits to botanical institutions, notably the New York Botanical Garden, which was becoming one of the leading botanical gardens in the world. In fact the botanical garden, because it combined work in systematics with experimental botany, was also a nurturing ground for ecology in the early 20th century (Kingsland 2005). Many of the botanists who later worked at the Carnegie's Desert Laboratory originally came from the New York Botanical Garden. Tansley missed the New York and New Jersey portions of the expedition but joined the rest of the group in Chicago, where they explored the sand dunes on the eastern and southern shores of Lake Michigan under Cowles's guidance. When the group reached Carmel, California, Daniel MacDougal, head of the Carnegie's botany department and director of its Tucson laboratory, took charge of the excursion during the second half of September, guiding the scientists through the diverse regions being studied by the Carnegie botanists. Tansley (1914) came away from the trip impressed by the “earnestness and single-mindedness of American science,” especially in the pursuit of ecology. By that time, the British Vegetation Committee had evolved into the British Ecological Society, with Tansley serving as its first president. The British Society held its inaugural meeting in April 1913, coinciding with the launch of its Journal of Ecology. Cowles (1914) praised the Journal for its international scope, which increased its value to ecologists outside the British Isles. The great success of the American excursion, coupled with the example of the British society and journal, must have added to the impression that the time was ripe for a similar undertaking in America. These are just some of the events and ideas that made 1914 an auspicious time for the formation of the Ecological Society of America. A new university in Chicago, founded by an oil baron, became a center for teaching ecology as a foundation for both botany and zoology. As ecology became a subject that was formally taught, it also became a discipline. Visionary thinkers struggled to make their science rigorous both through experiment and by avoiding topics—including traditional evolutionary subjects—that were too speculative. The wealth produced by the nation's industrialization gave rise to new forms of scientific patronage, such as the Carnegie Institution of Washington, whose field station near Tucson became a mecca for botanists with interests in a wide range of ecological problems. Ecological excursions prompted by a desire to improve scientific communication and resolve disputes promoted fellowship among ecologists. Such excursions also underscored American commitment to the science of ecology. The British Ecological Society and its new journal provided leadership in cooperative ecological activity with an international outlook. That the pioneers of ecology—people like Cowles, Shelford, and Tansley—should have recognized the importance of ecology, not just as a subject to be studied, but also as a discipline to be taught, may seem surprising in these early years when the science was in its infancy. What they appear to have understood was that biological study that was balkanized was inadequate. Systematics conducted in the museum and divorced from the field was impoverished. Physiology conducted in the laboratory and divorced from the field was equally impoverished. Evolutionary theory, which might have unified biology, had accumulated too many stories about adaptation without the check of experiment. Ecology, made rigorous by adopting experimental methods, was the way to understand the link between form and function. With its focus on whole organisms and not just organs, and mindful about placing those organisms in context, ecology could advance science. As Cowles (1909a:358) remarked, “There are reasons for believing that the ecologists are now closer to the problems of to-morrow than many of the other biologists.” The very meaning and role of ecology was being redefined, and ecologists felt themselves to be on the frontiers of science. And that was why the time seemed ripe.