Towards an ecological mathematics

IF 16.4 1区化学 Q1 CHEMISTRY, MULTIDISCIPLINARY

Accounts of Chemical Research Pub Date : 2024-03-22 DOI:10.1177/03080188241232766

Siddharth Unnithan Kumar

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Abstract

Mathematics plays a fundamental role in ecological research, yet its uses remain strikingly separate from advances in the environmental social sciences and humanities. In this paper, I work to address this impasse and outline the motivation and scope for an ‘ecological mathematics’, an approach to doing mathematics in environmental research which foregrounds relationship, embodiment and human difference. I begin by tracing the historical emergence of mathematics in ecology, noting how life processes have been conceptualised in a way which forces them to fit the ideals of mathematical models transplanted from the physical sciences. I then investigate the cultural factors shaping the evolution of mathematical thought, eliciting a malleability in how mathematical knowledge relates to the more-than-human world. This provides a place from which to rethink the role of abstraction in ecological thought, and develop mathematical methods grounded in ecological concepts. Drawing on ethnographic and perceptual accounts of space and time, I work with topological concepts from both mathematics and the social sciences to suggest a new correspondence between these subjects, elaborating a way of employing mathematical techniques which enliven, rather than deaden, the ecologies under study. The paper concludes with important philosophical clarifications to the approach of an ecological mathematics.

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迈向生态数学

数学在生态研究中发挥着基础性作用，但数学的应用却与环境社会科学和人文科学的发展截然不同。在本文中，我致力于解决这一僵局，并概述了 "生态数学 "的动机和范围。"生态数学 "是一种在环境研究中应用数学的方法，它强调关系、体现和人类差异。我首先追溯了数学在生态学中出现的历史，注意到生命过程是如何被概念化的，从而迫使它们符合从物理科学移植过来的数学模型的理想。然后，我研究了影响数学思想演变的文化因素，引出了数学知识与超人类世界之间的可塑性。这为我们重新思考抽象在生态思想中的作用，以及发展以生态概念为基础的数学方法提供了基础。我借鉴人种学和感知学对空间和时间的描述，利用数学和社会科学中的拓扑概念，提出了这些学科之间的新对应关系，并阐述了一种运用数学技术的方法，这种方法能使所研究的生态环境生动活泼，而不是死气沉沉。本文最后对生态数学的方法进行了重要的哲学阐释。

本文章由计算机程序翻译，如有差异，请以英文原文为准。

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来源期刊

Accounts of Chemical Research 化学-化学综合

CiteScore

31.40

自引率

1.10%

发文量

312

审稿时长

2 months

期刊介绍： Accounts of Chemical Research presents short, concise and critical articles offering easy-to-read overviews of basic research and applications in all areas of chemistry and biochemistry. These short reviews focus on research from the author’s own laboratory and are designed to teach the reader about a research project. In addition, Accounts of Chemical Research publishes commentaries that give an informed opinion on a current research problem. Special Issues online are devoted to a single topic of unusual activity and significance. Accounts of Chemical Research replaces the traditional article abstract with an article "Conspectus." These entries synopsize the research affording the reader a closer look at the content and significance of an article. Through this provision of a more detailed description of the article contents, the Conspectus enhances the article's discoverability by search engines and the exposure for the research.