David Bourget (Western Ontario)
David Chalmers (ANU, NYU)
Rafael De Clercq
Jack Alan Reynolds
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Biology and Philosophy 6 (2):275-294 (1991)
Diagrams refer to the phenomena overtly represented, to analogous phenomena, and to previous pictures and their graphic conventions. The diagrams of ecologists Clarke, Hutchinson, and H.T. Odum reveal their search for physical analogies, building on the success of World War II science and the promise of cybernetics. H.T. Odum's energy circuit diagrams reveal also his aspirations for a universal and natural means of reducing complexity to guide the management of diverse ecological and social systems. Graphic conventions concerning framing and translation of ecological processes onto the flat printed page facilitate Odum's ability to act as if ecological relations were decomposable into systems and could be managed by analysts external to the system.
|Keywords||Analogy circuit convention diagram ecosystem energy H.T. Odum system universality|
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References found in this work BETA
Mary B. Hesse (1966). Models and Analogies in Science. University of Notre Dame Press.
George Lakoff (1980/2003). Metaphors We Live By. University of Chicago Press.
Michael Lynch (1988). The Externalized Retina: Selection and Mathematization in the Visual Documentation of Objects in the Life Sciences. [REVIEW] Human Studies 11 (2-3):201 - 234.
Peter J. Taylor (1988). Technocratic Optimism, H. T. Odum, and the Partial Transformation of Ecological Metaphor After World War II. Journal of the History of Biology 21 (2):213 - 244.
Citations of this work BETA
Ari Gross (2012). Pictures and Pedagogy: The Role of Diagrams in Feynman's Early Lectures. Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part B 43 (3):184-194.
Marilia Coutinho (1993). Continuous, Overlapping Gradients — Alternative Ecological Diagrams: A Comment on Taylor & Blum. Biology and Philosophy 8 (1):85-92.
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