ABSTRACT
In ecology, metaphysical or philosophical holism was totally supplanted after World War II by a methodological or pragmatic holism. Whereas philosophical holism was based on a realistic perspective and strove to design an overall world-view, pragmatic holism opts for a nominalist approach in which the ‘whole’ merely serves as a scientific working hypothesis and a methodologically useful construct (Küppers et al., 1978, p. 76). It is this pragmatic type of holism that underlies systems ecology, which has enjoyed growing popularity since the 1960s. However, systems ecologywhich can to some extent be regarded as the successor to pre-war ecology-has not had the field all to itself. Its main rival is evolutionary ecology, which can be traced back to the individualistic concept of association proposed by Henry Allan Gleason, a concept which did not stand a ghost of a chance in the pre-war climate.
