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30 For a discussion of Spencer’s Universal Law of Evolution, its grounding in Great Chain of Being theodicy and its stark difference from Darwin’s much more limited view, see: Corning, Peter. 1995. “Synergy and self-organization in the evolution of complex systems.” Systems Research. 12(2): 89-121.; For a statement of Spencer’s a priori theory of universal biological self-organization and development, see: Spencer, Herbert. 1852. “The development hypothesis.” Essays: Scientific, Political and Speculative. Appleton, New York, 1892.

31 Glacken, C. J. 1967. Traces on the Rhodian Shore. Berkeley: University of California Press. 243.

32 Pope, Alexander. 1751. “Essay on Man.”

33 Lovejoy, Arthur O. 1936. The Great Chain of Being. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1971.

34 For discussion, see: Kingsland, Sharon. 1995. Modeling Nature, Episodes in the History of Population Ecology, 2nd edition. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 14.

35 Forbes, Stephen A. 1887. “The Lake as a Microcosm.” reprinted in the Bulletin of the Illinois State Natural History Survey, 1925. 15: 537-550.

36 Paleoecological research has demonstrated the ephemeral nature of the kinds of places Forbes visited. According to Stephen Hubbell: “For example, the fossil pollen record from eastern North America and Europe reveals that many pre-Holocene, full glacial, and previous interglacial plant communities are very different from modern communities.” Hubbell, S. P. 2001. The unified neutral theory of biodiversity and biogeography. New Jersey: Princeton University Press. See also: Davis, Margaret B. 1986. “Climatic instability, time lags, and community disequilibrium.” in Jared Diamond and T.J. Case, eds., Community Ecology. New York: Harper and Row.; Overpeck, J., Webb, R., Webb, T. III. 1992. “Mapping eastern North American vegetation change of the past 18 ka: No-analogs and the future.” Geology. 20: 1071-1074.

37 Forbes, Stephen A. 1887. “The Lake as a Microcosm.” reprinted in the Bulletin of the Illinois State Natural History Survey, 1925. 15: 537-550.

38 Hubbell, S. P. 2001. “Chapter 1.” The unified neutral theory of biodiversity and biogeography. New Jersey: Princeton University Press.

39 "Wherever we seek to find constancy, we discover change," ecologist Dan Botkin has observed. We find that "that nature undisturbed is not constant in form, structure, or proportion, but changes at every scale of time and space." Botkin, D.B. 1990. Discordant Harmonies: A New Ecology for the Twenty-First Century. New York: Oxford University Press. 62. Donald Worster summarized, “Nature should be regarded as a landscape of patches, big and little, patches of all textures and colors, a patchwork quilt of living things, changing continually through time and space, responding to an unceasing barrage of perturbations. The stitches in that quilt never hold for long." He wrote, “Many have begun to believe [that nature] is fundamentally erratic, discontinuous, and unpredictable. It is full of seemingly random events that elude our models of how things are supposed to work.” Worster, Donald. 1990.“The Ecology of Order and Chaos.” Environmental History Review. Spring/Summer:13.

40 Lawton, J. H. 1999. “Are there general laws in ecology?” Oikos. 84: 177-192. For an excellent discussion of the absence of general principles or rules in ecology, see: Lange, Marc. 2005. “Ecological Laws: What Would They Be and Why Would They Matter?” Oikos. 110(2): 394–403.

41 The clearest statement Gleason gave to this view is found in: Gleason, Henry A. 1926. “The Individualistic Concept of the Plant Association.” Bulletin of the Torrey Botanical Club. 53: 7-26.

42 Simberloff, Daniel. 2010. “Invasion of plant communities: More of the same, something very different, or both?” American Midland Naturalist. 163(1): 220-233. 221.

43 Simberloff, Daniel. 2004. “Community ecology: is it time to move on?” American Naturalist. 163: 787–799. 787.

44 Drury, W.H. 1998. Chance and Change: Ecology for Conservationists. Berkeley: University of California Press. 23. Similarly, conservation