Towards a pragmatic view of theories in ecology

Ecology has received many criticisms concerning its theoretical maturity, often on the grounds that it lacks laws and, therefore, a clear and unified theoretical background. We argue that the search for laws to understand ecological theory was prompted by the (perhaps inadvertent) adoption of an axiomatic perspective that traces back to syntactic and some semantic views of theory. We present examples showing how these views have a common logical structure, in which axioms can be interpreted as laws, even though there are semantic views that assume a more flexible perspective on theories. We then present, as an alternative, more pluralistic and process‐based approaches that fall under the umbrella of pragmatic views of theories. Under this view, a theory is an ever‐changing, context‐dependent, collective construct, and thus does not necessarily fit into pre‐defined logical structures such as those adopted by axiomatic views. We show that the diversity of models and structures found in ecological theories, as well as the way knowledge is produced within this field of science, makes ecology an exemplary candidate to be approached from a pragmatic perspective. Based on ecological succession theory as a case study, we illustrate how assuming a pragmatic view allows for new analyses that may foster our understanding of the theoretical structure and consequently further our understanding of ecological phenomena.