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."
