Growth and Development

"e;What in the ever-loving blue-eyed world do these [U1ano- wicz's] innocuous comments on thermodynamics have to do with ecology!"e; Anonymous manuscript reviewer The American Naturalist, 1979 "e;The germ of the idea grows very slowly into something recognizable. It may all start with the mere desire to have an idea in the first place. "e; Walt Kelly Ten Ever-Lovin' Blue-Eyed Years with Pogo, 1959 "e;It all seems extremely interesting, but for the life of me it sounds as if you pulled it out of the air,"e; my good friend Ray Lassiter exclaimed to me after enduring about 20 minutes of my enthusiasm for the newly formu- lated concept of "e;ascendency"e; in ecosystems. "e;It wasn't,"e; I replied, "e;but it would take a book to show you where it came from. "e; If such was the reaction of someone usually sympathetic to my manner of thinking, what could I expect from those who viewed biological devel- opment in the traditional way? After all, I was suggesting that it is possi- ble to quantify the growth and development of an entire ecosystem. Fur- thermore, I was maintaining that this development was not entirely determined by events and entities at smaller scales, and yet could influ- ence these component processes and structures. To be sure, mine was only the latest of many challenges to straight reductionism, but, like everyone else with a new idea, I thought mine was special.