I have a big announcement to make: I’m writing a book for University of Chicago Press, and last week I gave the publisher the first draft!
There’s still a long ways to go until the book is actually finished (so no, you can’t pre-order it yet). But finishing the first draft definitely feels like a big milestone. I started this book seven years ago, but only made progress in fits and starts. I didn’t make any progress at all during the pandemic. A year ago, at the start of a year-long sabbatical, and with the book only half-written 6 years after I started it, I promised myself that I would either finish the book or abandon it. It feels very satisfying to have kept that promise to myself.
Now I just need to decide what to call it. Maybe you can help!
The book is about harnessing diversity of goals, ideas, and approaches in ecology. The book is structured around an analogy between scientific research, and biodiversity-ecosystem function relationships. Just as higher biodiversity can promote improved ecosystem function via selection effects, complementarity effects, and other mechanisms, diversity of ecologists’ research goals, ideas, and approaches can promote scientific progress via selection effects, complementarity effects, and other mechanisms. Here’s the draft table of contents, to give you the flavor:
Introduction: Ecologists disagree on what ecology is and how to do it. Good.
Chapter 1: The diversity of ecology
Chapter 2: The value of diversity, in nature and in ecology
Chapter 3: Complementarity
Chapter 4: Selection
Chapter 5: Different tools for different jobs
Chapter 6: Fighting lack of diversity: the value of contrarians
Chapter 7: Tying it all together: the many roads to generality in ecology
Chapter 8: The downsides of diversity
Chapter 9: It’s not just ecology
Chapter 10: The hedgehog and the fox
One way to think of the book is as a guided tour of ecology. Like any good city tour guide, I know the “city” of ecology very well, and I like showing people around. Like any good tour guide, I’m opinionated. I want to show people my favorite parts of the city, and help them avoid the tourist traps. Obviously you’d get a very different tour of the city of ecology from a different guide–equally good, just different. Which is fine; like any big city, the field of ecology is too big for anyone to give you a comprehensive tour of it.
Another way to think of the book is as a popular science book, but aimed at academic ecologists. If that makes any sense. I tried to write it in an entertaining, non-technical style, similar to the style of my blog posts.
Here’s what the book is not. It’s not a collection of blog posts, although many bits of it grew out of blog posts (while many other bits did not). It’s a proper book with a structure and connecting threads. It’s not a textbook, although like a textbook it talks about many different examples, the vast majority of which are from other people’s research, not my own. It’s not a critique of ecology a la Robert Peters, although there are some critical bits (which are outnumbered by non-critical bits).
The target audience is academic ecologists and ecology grad students, though it’s possible the book will be of interest to others as well. Basically, the same target audience as this blog.
Now I just need to decide what to call it.
The working title is Dynamic Ecology: Harnessing Diversity of Ideas and Approaches In Ecological Research. Calling the book Dynamic Ecology has some advantages for marketing purposes. But it risks misleading prospective buyers into thinking it’s a collection of blog posts. And the title Dynamic Ecology doesn’t really convey anything about what the book is about; the subtitle does all the work on that score.
Another possible title would be some sort of play on the idea of foxes. In the final chapter, I summarize the argument of the book by suggesting that ecologists need to be “foxes” in the sense of Isiah Berlin’s famous essay “The hedgehog and the fox.” “Fox” here means a intellectual generalist, someone who takes ideas and inspiration wherever they can be found. So, maybe something like Foxy Ecology: Harnessing Diversity of Ideas and Approaches In Ecological Research. But I worry that a title that’s also a pun on my name would come off as…I dunno, arrogant or cocky or something. As if I was arguing that ecologists should all follow my lead, research-wise (which is very much not the book’s argument).
Any suggestions you have would be very welcome!
Finally, thank you to everyone for reading and commenting over the years. The book isn’t a collection of blog posts, but it wouldn’t exist without this blog, or this blog’s readers. It’s through writing this blog, and through conversations with readers, that the idea for this book took shape.