Re-Released!

Robert E. Ulanowicz

toExcel Press, San Jose, CA

An imprint of iUniverse.com, Inc.
620 North 48th Street
Suite 201
Lincoln, NE 68504-3467

1986,2000/232pp./54 illus./$16.95/ISBN 0-595-00145-9

“Ulanowicz does a superb job of describing the analysis of ecosystem flow networks…” (Quarterly Review of Biology)

“What Ulanowicz has done is to bring together the essential points and concepts, to present them in a charming and literate way, sprinkled
liberally with numerical examples to illustrate concepts, and to educate us about another way to view nature.” (Ecology)

This volume presents a new perspective on growth and development in ecological systems. The concepts of growth and development are removed from the confines of ontogeny and portrayed via a new and qualitative principle as elements of larger- scale ecological, economic, and social systems. This shift in perspective frees the biologist froom the obligation to interpret all phenomena in strictly reductionistic terms. The Darwinian notion of fitness thereby acquires a new meaning as the ability of a species to play a coherent role in the web of ecological processes.

Although the text speaks to the ecologist, the systematic and mathematical approach should also have great appeal to the systems theorist, the cyberneticist, and the thermodynamicist. Numerical examples support each new idea, and the careful organization and presentation guide the reader to the iniversal perspective presented by the author.

Available from iUniverse.