History
See also: History of ecologyTheoretical ecology draws on pioneering work done by G. Evelyn Hutchinson and his students. Brothers H.T. Odum and E.P. Odum are generally recognised as the founders of modern theoretical ecology. Robert MacArthur brought theory to community ecology. Daniel Simberloff was the student of E.O. Wilson, with whom MacArthur collaborated on The Theory of Island Biogeography, a seminal work in the development of theoretical ecology.
Simberloff added statistical rigour to experimental ecology and was a key figure in the SLOSS debate, about whether it is preferable to protect a single large or several small reserves. This resulted in the supporters of Jared Diamond's community assembly rules defending their ideas through Neutral Model Analysis. Simberloff also played a key role in the (still ongoing) debate on the utility of corridors for connecting isolated reserves.
Stephen Hubbell and Michael Rosenzweig combined theoretical and practical elements into works that extended MacArthur and Wilson's Island Biogeography Theory - Hubbell with his Unified Neutral Theory of Biodiversity and Biogeography and Rosenzweig with his Species Diversity in Space and Time.
Read more about this topic: Ecological Theories
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“Most events recorded in history are more remarkable than important, like eclipses of the sun and moon, by which all are attracted, but whose effects no one takes the trouble to calculate.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“In history an additional result is commonly produced by human actions beyond that which they aim at and obtain—that which they immediately recognize and desire. They gratify their own interest; but something further is thereby accomplished, latent in the actions in question, though not present to their consciousness, and not included in their design.”
—Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831)
“The basic idea which runs right through modern history and modern liberalism is that the public has got to be marginalized. The general public are viewed as no more than ignorant and meddlesome outsiders, a bewildered herd.”
—Noam Chomsky (b. 1928)