A metascientific framework that studies science as an ecological
system—a complex, interdependent network of organisms (scientists), populations (disciplines), communities (fields), and environments (institutions, funding landscapes, social contexts). The ecology of science examines how scientific niches emerge and evolve, how resources (funding,
attention, prestige) flow through the
system, how competition and cooperation shape
research agendas, how species (theories, methods, paradigms) adapt or
go extinct, and how disturbances (discoveries, scandals, funding shifts) ripple through the ecosystem. It reveals that scientific change is not just rational progress but ecological succession—driven by interactions between organisms and their environments, by adaptation and selection, by the same dynamics that shape any living system. The ecology of science
treats laboratories as habitats, journals as ecosystems, and scientific communities as biomes, each with its own internal dynamics and relationships to the larger environment.
Example: "Her ecology of science analysis showed how the rise of molecular
biology created a new niche that drew resources away from traditional organismal
biology—not because molecular
biology was better, but because it occupied a new ecological space that flourished in the changing funding environment."
