The first edition of Toward a Unified Ecology was ahead of its time.
For the second edition, the authors present a new synthesis of their
core ideas on evaluating communities, organisms, populations, biomes,
models, and management. The book now places greater emphasis on
post-normal critiques, cognizant of ever-present observer values in the
system. The problem it addresses is how to work holistically on complex
things that cannot be defined, and this book continues to build an
approach to the problem of scaling in ecosystems. Provoked by complexity
theory, the authors add a whole new chapter on the central role of
narrative in science and how models improve them. The book takes data
and modeling seriously, with a sophisticated philosophy of science.