Pré-Publication, Document De Travail Année : 2025

The diversity of general laws in ecology and evolution and why it matters

Résumé

There have been many debates about the existence and nature of general laws in ecology and evolution. In these fields, variability, diversity of mechanisms and contingency would preclude the existence of general laws, whereas in physics general laws are well recognised. Contrary to this common view, we argue that in ecology and evolution, as in all natural sciences, exists a rich diversity of laws, but that this richness has been underestimated because of the misconception that general laws should be exceptionless and make precise quantitative predictions. We therefore propose that in ecology and evolution there is a gradient between highly general laws (often based on purely logical and mathematical arguments or on experiments in controlled conditions) and less general laws (based on real-world experiments and observations). We propose a classification for this gradient of laws and about thirty identified laws to show the relevance of this classification: (1) ultimate laws, (2) fundamental laws, (3) transplanetary laws, (4) terrestrial laws, (5) conditional laws, (6) trends. Finally, we discuss the implications of our work for facilitating the grounding of ecology and evolution in a set of laws, combining theoretical and empirical work. We also suggest that this would also require an explicit articulation of these laws with the different ontologies specific to the different levels of organization.

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hal-05033623 , version 1 (14-04-2025)

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  • HAL Id : hal-05033623 , version 1

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Sébastien Barot, Franck Varenne. The diversity of general laws in ecology and evolution and why it matters. 2025. ⟨hal-05033623⟩
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