摘要:

We examine the last half-century of natural science, with special reference to its ethos and to changing public attitudes to the autonomy and accountability of the scientific community. The content of soil science places it uneasily between natural science on the one hand and the world of professional practice on the other. Very different attitudes to personal responsibility at the two ends of the continuum make for potential conflict. In recent decades the computer/modeling symbiosis has burst upon the scene. Current modeling practice fits more readily into the professional segment of the continuum than into the natural science segment. A disturbing aspect is that computer modeling has largely supplanted laboratory experimentation and field observation as the research activity of students. The future of soil science is contingent on how everyone's perceptions of natural science and of model validation evolve; it is the perceptions of soil scientists themselves which are most important.

ISSN:0038-075X    

出版商:OVID    

年代:1991

数据来源: OVID

摘要:

Landscapes and their soils often are studied and described by theclorptequation of the state factor theory. It links properties of animals, plants, and soils to the factors climate (cl), organism (o), topography (r), parent material (p) and time (t) or age of an ecosystem. Humans are implicitly contained in the organism factoro, and this study attempts to conceptualize explicitly the role of humans as a state factor in ecosystem study.After a brief exposition of state factors and their sequences, humans are symbolized by their inheritable attributes, their genotypes,oh, and their external phenotype expressions h. Humans possess culture, c, defined as “products of human work or thought.” When humans enter an emerging ecosystem they bring along a cultural inheritance,ci. Bothohandciare treated as independent state factors, whereas h and culture elements c are considered being dependent onoh,ci,cl,o,r,p,t, … The concepts are probed for Pacific island cultures, for cultures of Indian hunting tribes of the Great Plains, for midwestern rural trends, and for soil cultivation and plant growth experiments.Golden Gate Park in San Francisco comprises three consecutive chronosequences differing in the human state factor.

ISSN:0038-075X    

出版商:OVID    

年代:1991

数据来源: OVID

ISSN:0038-075X    

出版商:OVID    

年代:1991

数据来源: OVID