BEYOND THE MATERIAL AND THE MECHANICAL - OCCAMS-RAZOR IS A DOUBLE-EDGED BLADE

To confine scientific narrative to only material and mechanical causes is to ensure incomplete and at times contrived descriptions of phenom ena. In the life sciences, and particularly in the field of ecology, c ausality takes on qualitatively distinct forms at different hierarchic al levels. The notion of formal cause provides for entirely natural an d quantitative explanations of ecosystem behavior.