Book Review

The Perfect Way to Write a Truly Disappointing Book The Balance of Nature: Ecology’s Enduring Myth John Kricher Princeton, Princeton University Press, 2009 (252 pp; $24.95 hbk; ISBN 978-0-691-13898-5)

Julien Delord CERES-ERTI, Ecole Normale Sup´erieure, Paris, France [email protected]

Writing a truly disappointing book is not so easy as one may think. It is not enough to give a sketchy view of the topic, to rest on a shaky plan, to make some perilous intellectual connections, or to drop a few irritatingly stupid puns while you present important ideas. You also need a little help from your reader’s expectations; the greater they were at the start, the bigger the frustration at the end. And this is exactly the case with Kricher’s masterpiece. At a time where major disruptions of the global climate, the world’s biodiversity, and ecosystems functioning threaten the maintenance of appropriate living conditions for humanity, the subject of the book is of huge historical, philosophical, and social significance. The notion of “balance of nature” could be godsent for ecologists who could invoke it to urge people and decision makers to compensate or reverse contemporary environmental damages in order to return to the sacrosanct natural “equilibrium.” Nevertheless, ecologists doing this would be considered shamelessly hypocritical by their colleagues. As every serious scientist confronted with experimental and modeling data in the field of ecology knows, in nature “nothing endures but change,” to use Kricher’s favorite expression. To disguise the myth of nature’s equilibrium into a pseudo-scientific theory in order to push forward a political agenda (no matter how well intended it is) is simply fraudulent and morally unacceptable. Therefore, Kricher’s project to debunk this “enduring myth” of ecology is both intellectually very healthy and politically courageous. Moreover, it is remarkable that the author is a practicing scientific ecologist and not a philosopher or a historian—the kind of scholar capable

of formulating a perfect theoretical critique of the concept but unable to support it with up-to-date ecological science and to show its shortcomings in real conservation examples. Unfortunately, what to expect from an ecologist who writes, “Gypsy moth, Lymantria dispar, is an invasive species [so far, so good]. Like many invasive species, the insect is not native to North America [sic]” (p. 110). By definition, an “invasive” species is not “native”! Well, only expect simple (poor?) reflections on the topic. Bluntly said, a preface where it is stated that “the concept of balance is . . . often in the eye of the beholder” (p. ix); about 10 chapters, each concluding on more or less the same motto, viz., “the balance of nature does not exist”; and a final chapter with a conclusion that has left me dumbfounded, namely, “the balance of nature . . . is our choice, and, I would argue, our moral responsibility” (p. 201). This unexpected final reversal is worth the best crime novels. It is all the more regrettable that a scientific or philosophical essay tries to destabilize the reader by an argumentative U-turn instead of enlightening her or him with clear ideas, examples, and arguments on a difficult topic. To be honest, arguing that the balance of nature could be our choice, even if it does not exist per se, is perfectly valid. It is a normative choice, and norms don’t have to be natural, since what ought to be from a moral perspective does not depend on what is, scientifically speaking, as Kricher recognizes himself following Hume’s legacy. If humans decide that nature should always be in equilibrium and are ready to manage it accordingly, this is fine. Furthermore, Kricher could have underlined that a myth such as the “balance of nature,” beyond the question of its factual truth, possesses the regulative power of an ideal and the capacity to arouse collective imagination; but Kricher missed the opportunity to analyze such a fundamental aspect of the myth. More problematically, his strange conclusion directly contradicts another of his favorite hobbyhorses—the strong anthropocentric smell of the concept of balance. Indeed, all historians agree that this myth rests on deep teleological assumptions—that the balance of nature is the reflection of nature’s benevolence toward humankind, so that the latter could come into existence and flourish on Earth. As a

c 2010 Konrad Lorenz Institute for Evolution and Cognition Research Biological Theory 4(3) 2009, 309–310. 

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Book Review

matter of fact, if it is proven today that nature’s spontaneous processes are far from thermodynamic equilibrium and not in any sense oriented toward any human finality, why then argue that we can allow ourselves to act as if nature’s teleological balance was true? I understand that a seven-year-old girl who discovers that good old Santa Claus does not exist would pretend the contrary to her parents for fear of not receiving gifts anymore at Christmas, but I doubt that this childish psychological argument is of any relevance when we deal with moral reasoning about the future of humanity! From a philosopher’s point of view, this book is a long and winding road paved with tons of authoritative arguments, lacking clear links in the development of its argument, and not displaying a single original idea. However, philosophers are not among the targeted readership of this book, and, to be fair to the author, in a footnote he invites the interested reader to consult Daniel Botkin’s study Discordant Harmonies: A New Ecology for the Twenty-first Century (New York, Oxford University Press, 1990), which can (still) be considered a reference in debunking the myth of the balance of nature. What Kricher has to offer is a popularized and personal interpretation of natural processes in the light of scientific ecology in the large sense. I see his “balance of nature” criticism more as a broad encompassing theme focalizing his diverse intellectual interests (ranging from astrophysics to natural history and forest ecology) than as a systematic object of analysis. The goal of giving to a large readership the sense of an endlessly changing nature, always discovering unseen paths of evolution and adaptation, is a noble one. This is the kind of book young students of biology who are passionate about nature should crave. But writing a good piece of science popularization is difficult. It is not enough to be a good scientist; it also requires a writer’s talent. Moreover, in order to guide the lay reader from the simple to the complex and from the singular to the general a great deal of synthetic skills and imagination is clearly needed. English is not my mother tongue. I might not be well qualified to criticize some idiomatic expressions and cultural biases in the narrative. Nevertheless, I feel that many sentences miss the point. For instance, to give a personal or familiar example from which you can extrapolate or make a direct analogy to a complex theory or an abstract idea is a very efficient and easy way to explain difficult stuff. But when personal facts have only a personal significance and don’t help at all in the display of the narrative, there is nothing more exasperating; who cares about the song “Moon River” (p. 122)? Another irritating bias of the author is that he presupposes all his readers to be Americans: a pilgrim is actually an “American pilgrim,” the East Coast is actually the “American East Coast,” and so on. To sum up, when confronted with the fact that this book is neither a philosophical nor a historical essay, that it is poor as a piece of popularization, and that it leaves the reader puzzled by the avalanche of heterogeneous meanings Kricher gives 310

to “balance of nature” (mainly antonyms of: cosmological history, natural evolution, the cyclicality of nature, chaotic change in populations, ecosystem perturbations, anthropic disruptions, and a nonteleological universe), what should keep the potential reader from closing the book? I would say chapters 12 and 13. These tackle issues that have rarely been explained to the lay reader, and for once, Kricher shows how advisedly he can intertwine ecological theory and “down-to-earth” examples to advance an interesting critique of the “balance of nature” concept. In chapter 12 he discusses the nature of food web dynamics: are they regulated top-down (by predators) or bottom-up (by primary producers and hence energy)? Examples for each case abound and are connected to important concepts in ecology such as “keystone species” and “ecological meltdown.” Kricher clearly highlights what is at stake in these debates—reliable models for predicting the dynamics of infectious diseases such as Lyme disease borne by ticks or understanding the effect of bats on herbivorous insects in Panamanian coffee plantations, which “helps ensure your morning coffee fix” (p. 165). If there are common patterns that govern these food web dynamics, Kricher forcefully argues that the tensions between “up” and “down” forces make any potential equilibrium or balance unstable and vulnerable to alterations. Chapter 13 analyzes at a broader scale the impact of biodiversity on ecosystem functions. Kricher describes succinctly the emerging “biodiversity-ecosystem function” (BEF) paradigm and one of his main objectives—demonstrating the positive relationship between biodiversity and the stability of ecosystem functions. It eventually becomes clear that the balance of nature debate, which is now called the “BEF paradigm” (Shahid Naeem), is both fascinating and extremely complex. Kricher announces that in a recent publication more than “fifty different hypotheses about how loss of biodiversity would affect ecosystem functioning” (p. 179) were proposed. He recognizes himself quite cautiously that the results of his scientific research show a “positive correlation” between species diversity and ecosystem stability, but no “causal relationship.” The multiple challenges of the BEF research program are without doubt going to structure the ecological science of this century. It is all the more regretful that Kricher has missed the opportunity to conclude his book on the following findings, which impose themselves rather obviously after reading chapter 13: replace “myth” by “paradigm,” and replace “balance” by “stability,” and the BEF paradigm turns out to be nothing more than the actual offspring in ecology of the myth of the “balance of nature.” Of course, it offers a much more sophisticated, scientific, and pluralist set of hypotheses than the original myth, but “enduring myths” are very resistant species. They don’t vanish like dodos or passenger pigeons within a few years, but they keep on evolving and adapting themselves to new thought environments. In this regard, Kricher’s book is not going to put the “balance of nature” myth on any endangered list! Biological Theory 4(3) 2009