Tactics, Strategies and Templets

Abstract

land Writing in 1980, Professor Per Brinck drew attention to coherent system of ideas and approaches which is necessary to shape any branch of science. As he also pointed out in the same paper, the science of ecology has developed greatly over the last few decades, and recently many have sought theoretical concepts that would bring a coherence to our subject - to avoid, in Watt's (1971) words, being washed out to sea in an immense tide of unrelated information. The most modest role for theories is to provide a classification into which facts can be arranged serving, as T. H. Huxley pointed out (in the days before computers), as an aid to the memory. Such a function alone would only justify the description 'schema'; strictly a theory must permit predictions that can be tested and found true. There are many philosophical and methodological difficulties surrounding the application of what are perceived as strict