Preface to plant succession: an analysis of the development of vegetation / Frederic E. Clements -- The individualistic concept of the plant association / Henry A. Gleason -- The use and abuse of vegetational concepts and terms / Arthur G. Tansley -- A succession of paradigms in ecology: essentialism to materialism and probabilism / Daniel Simberloff -- Life after Newton: an ecological metaphysic / Robert E. Ulanowicz -- An oyster bank is a biocönose, or a social community / Karl Möbius -- On the reasons for distinguishing niche, habitat, and ecotope / Robert H. Whittaker, Simon A. Levin, Richard B. Root -- Biological diversity in ecology / Ruth Patrick -- Stability in ecological communities / Andrew Redfearn, Stuart L. Pimm -- The bucket and the searchlight: two theories of knowledge / Karl R. Popper -- The role of theory in ecology / Robert M. May -- Community ecology, population biology, and the method of case studies / Kristin Shrader-Frechette, Earl D. McCoy -- Mechanistic approaches to ecology: a new reductionism? / Thomas W. Schoener -- The emergence of ecology as a new integrative discipline / Eugene P. Odum -- "Reductionist holism": an oxymoron or a philosophical chimera of Eugene Odum's systems ecology? / Donato Bergandi -- Dialectics and reductionism in ecology / Richard Levins, Richard C. Lewontin -- Hierarchy: perspectives for ecological complexity / T.F.H. Allen, Thomas B. Starr -- The metaphysics of evolution / David L. Hull -- The spandrels of San Marco and the panglossian paradigm: a critique of the adaptationist program / Stephen J. Gould, Richard C. Lewontin -- How to carry out the adaptationist program? / Ernst Mayr -- Evolutionary ecology and the use of natural selection in ecological theory / James P. Collins -- Evolution: the missing ingredient in systems ecology / Craig Loehle, Joseph H.K. Pechmann.