Quantifying nature: ideological representations in the concept of diversity

The conflicts around the scientific status of the concept of diversity are considered here as symptoms of hidden, socially originated, ideological representations inherent in the theoretical context of western ecology. Species diversity was coined in the 1940s, as a constant in the statistical models that described the distribution of individuals into different species and, therefore, as the expression of all the parameters that determine ecologically this distribution. The assumption of such a regular distribution is attributed to the influence of organicism and the correlated presuppositions of harmony and homeostasis. Nevertheless, as species diversity was the only unknown parameter in these models, it reversed the direction of the functions and established itself as the main variable under question. After the 1950s, the concept of species diversity was empowered by the strong impact of cybernetics and systems theories; in this context, diversity was considered as a self-regulating mechanism that assures overall stability. Diversity emerges as a natural and one-dimensional measure of community complexity, maturity, and stability. In the perspective of the arising ecological crisis, diversity--because of its property to compare and evaluate--arises as the nodal point of the new scientific/ideological fields of nature conservation and ecosystem management.