Uncertainty and complementarity principles in ecological models

Literature about models and modelling is very extensive, but the linguistic aspect of ecological models is not so popular. In this paper, the authors develop a linguistic theory of ecological models from the mathematical ling uistic theory and its semantic background. From the equivalence relationshi p defined upon the language L(M), which describes an ecological model in ma thematical terms, it will be possible to statistically determine the semant ic component associated to each sentence. The authors also propose an uncer tainty principle for the equations (called flow equations) that are used to model ecological processes. The following hypothesis will be considered: a ) The first-order vocabulary associated to a variable, a transformed functi on, is a sememe; b) The flow equation is a complex sentence; c) There is a synonymy relationship among sentences that describe the same process; d) Th e synonymy relationship forms classes of equivalence. The following results will be reported: a) The cardinal of each class of equivalence is a dimens ion of the process complexity; b) Each sentence can be defined through a pa ir of numbers (r, m) is an element of R, 0 less than or equal to r less tha n or equal to 1, 0 less than or equal to m less than or equal to 1, where r defines the coefficient of determination and, m the emotional component of meaning (semantics) of the equation; c) The meaning m can be calculated ap proximately by statistical methods; d) An uncertainty principle (Delta r.De lta m less than or equal to 0) and a semantic complementarity principle are proposed.