ABSTRACT
This chapter concerns the philosophy of ecology, the problems about explanation discerned to those cases that represent answers to specifically ecological 'why' questions. Some work in ecology has certainly guided by appropriate deference to the ideals of testability and falsiflability, that the awareness of these aspects of scientific methodology seems fairly widespread these days. But ignorance of that in which a phenomenon consists has never been a deterrent to discussing it either in philosophy or in the sciences. The chapter discusses ecological explanation, along with the nature of the concepts and entities that figure in such explanations. It presents that recognition of the category of equilibrium explanations is not enough to reduce the impact of the challenge to Sober's view. It declares that there are non-causal explanations of a biologically interesting kind, to be given at population and community levels. This declaration, it should now be clear, is both similar to, but importantly different from, Sober's.
