Theoretical ecology as etiological from the start

• Discusses the conceptual evolution leading to the development of modern theoretical ecology.
• Tracks early ecologists’ shift away from teleological metaphysics.
• Elucidates a heuristic role of teleological metaphor via analysis of Hutchinson’s “Circular Causal Systems in Ecology” (1948).
• Challenges enduring literalist construals of teleological characterizations employed in contemporary ecological literature.
• Endorses a deflationary, ‘etiological,’ interpretation of teleological characterizations in ecology.

The world's leading environmental advisory institutions look to ecological theory and research as an objective guide for policy and resource management decision-making. In addition to the theoretical and broadly philosophical merits of doing so, it is therefore practically significant to clear up confusions about ecology's conceptual foundations and to clarify the basic workings of inferential methods used in the science. Through discussion of key moments in the genesis of the theoretical branch of ecology, this essay elucidates a general heuristic role of teleological metaphors in ecological research and defuses certain enduring confusions about work in ecology.