Ecology of Fear: Arrangement

I chose to read and analyze the excerpt, “Living in a Landscape of Fear” by Cristina Eisenberg. Using Gross’s chapter from The Rhetoric of Science, “The Arrangement of the Scientific Paper,” Eisenberg’s piece can definitely be classified as acting scientific. The excerpt contains several aspects of the experimental paper such as hypothesis, methods and materials, and the discussion of prior experiments that led to the field study in question, and a conclusion. I would not go so far in saying that the article is an experimental paper since it definitely ignores some aspects of the sequence of sections and includes several descriptions of personal experiences.

Since Eisenberg’s piece is an excerpt from a book, we hardly expect that it would follow the rigid standards of an scientific journal article, but nonetheless, many elements which Gross identifies as essential in an experimental or descriptive paper are found in her piece. Gross states that an introduction must indicate the experiments it will relate to and draw from, and where the current experiment fits into these prior studies (Gross 87). Eisenberg does exactly that in her second section, “The Green World Hypothesis.” She begins by summarizing the the first theory by HSS, that “that vegetation patterns are determined primarily by patterns of food consumption by herbivores,” and then by describing the methods and conclusion the first test of this hypothesis by Robert Paine. Paine observed a species of carnivorous sea star that preyed on an herbivorous mussel in a rocky intertidal zone. She describes Paine’s results as being exhibiting “concomitant variation”, which in this case means they were directly related (Gross 88). When Paine removed the carnivorous sea star from the habitat, the mussels would multiply and eat all the vegetation, whereas if he left the sea star species to rule, the vegetation would grow abundantly. The next two sections can also be seen as a continuation of the introduction since they include further theories and counter arguments, which stemmed from Paines experiment, and are important to positioning Eisenberg’s study.

The section entitled, “The Ecology of Fear” can be seen as a methods and materials section. A methods and materials section must detail the methods and materials used by the experimenter, so that anyone who so pleases can easily replicate the experiment. (Gross 87.) Eisenberg does this writing she put “in 57 miles of track transects (materials) in Glacier National Park” in order to track all occurrences of elk, deer, moose” and their numerous predators. Through monitoring the movements of both predators and prey she could find out whether the elk and deer were avoiding certain areas where there were no escape routes. Later in the same section Eisenberg writes that she was, “Using yet another method to determine whether elk fear wolves,” but she did not describe or detail her methods or materials.

Eisenberg does even more positioning of her experiments within the broader scale of research when she describes the journals of Aldo Leopold, which first recounted the negative of effects that the lack of predatation had on his land. He noted that in the absence of wolves, deer were destroying seed and grass saplings. Then Eisenberg herself went in and observed the same land herself to see if much had changed in the 70-80 years since Aldo had recorded his findings.
There is no real one place that Eisenberg lays out her conclusion/discussion. Conclusions are found throughout the paper because she recounts several of her studies/experiments throughout. The main thing that makes this a paper with scientific elements rather than a scientific paper is its organization. Eisenberg goes from describing another researcher’s experiment in depth to recounting how the weather felt on one of her expeditions. The paper does not follow the arrangement layed out by Gross, but I’m sure many of the experiments she described within the paper did.

In observing the nature of how Eisenberg kept relating her research to experiments done in the past, I was reminded of the concept of intertextuality. This study of the shaping of texts by other texts strikes me as very similar to how Bacon describes experimental science; ”A double scale or ladder, ascendant and descendent’ ascending from experiments to the invention of causes, and descending from causes to the invention of new experiments” (Gross 86.) In this way scientific experiments and the writings that go with them, are very similar to all other types of writing in that their impetus is the writing of others.