Diversity of researcher types and plurality of philosophical concepts in limnology – an essay

ABSTRACT

Scientific research in limnology is intricately linked to philosophical aspects via research methodology, reasoning, ontology, and epistemology. However, the potential plurality of scientific approaches, and hence philosophical directions in our discipline, has seldom been discussed, possibly because philosophy and history in our discipline are only occasionally part of the curricula in limnology and ecology. Therefore, many researchers may not be aware of the fundamental philosophical basis of doing science. Here, I construct a set of 7 researcher types that reflect my perception of colleagues I have met during my career. I link these 7 types with philosophical concepts and streams in ontology, epistemology, and science philosophy to demonstrate that diversity of researcher types can be related to a plurality of philosophical thinking. I argue that the plurality of approaches is a precondition for successful scientific research that aims to address global challenges and to help understand the world. Therefore, fairly appreciating the contributions from all researchers involved in scientific work beyond first-author publications in general journals is mandatory; otherwise, scientific research and education might become funnelled into a subset of approaches too narrow to comprehend the world. Our International Society of Limnology (SIL), with its 100 years of history, must develop a framework and activities that unite researchers and their underlying philosophies to address global challenges for inland waters.

KEYWORDS:

• appreciation
• education
• epistemology
• ontology
• science methodology
• society

Introduction

One of the frequent small-talk questions during scientific meetings is whether we would classify ourselves as a limnologist or an aquatic ecologist. I find the deep convictions that one classification is superior to the other surprising. As the president of the International Society of Limnology (SIL), I wholeheartedly share the expression by Gene Likens that limnology is the Queen among the natural sciences (Likens 2022) because limnological research includes not only studies on the biology and ecology of aquatic organisms, but it also includes essential contributions from chemistry, physics, hydrology, geography, geology, and meteorology. When considering human interactions with freshwaters, psychology, sociology, and history must be added. Therefore, limnology can be considered a discipline that is intrinsically interdisciplinary or even transdisciplinary. This broad view of limnology as a bridging discipline was explicitly mentioned in the call to the foundation of SIL; “Limnology encompasses everything that refers to inland waters” (Naumann and Thienemann 1922). Accordingly, limnology can be seen as a discipline that is holistic and synthetic, with a strong focus on structure, function, and management of entire aquatic ecosystems. By contrast, researchers classifying themselves as aquatic ecologists highlight their rigorous approach towards mechanistic understanding of processes at individual, population, and community levels of aquatic organisms. The distinction between limnologists and ecologists is fluid in many aspects, but the explanations above do not focus on the content of the disciplines. Instead, researchers seem to choose either limnology or aquatic ecology as their preferred discipline according to differing methodological approaches and ultimately according to fundamentally philosophical aspects of research.

Given that the disciplinary distinction is related to science philosophy, one may ask whether a preference for a certain discipline is an (often) unconscious preference for a certain philosophical approach. The German philosopher Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1762–1814) is famously quoted for his statement that people chose their philosophy according to their personality. Hence, is it misleading that we tend to classify ourselves as based on the discipline that we study instead of expressing ourselves as persons with a particular mix of capabilities, approaches, and convictions by which we contribute to science and management of natural resources?

A fascinating example is the opposing researcher types of the founders of our society, Einar Naumann and August Thienemann. Thienemann was cultured with a deeply rooted intellectual heritage in philosophy, particularly of Goethe, and the classics. He was highly disciplined, balanced, and positive and possessed an extraordinary working capacity. Naumann, by contrast, was impulsive, energetic, and unpredictable yet highly original and insightful (Rodhe 1975). It may have been no coincidence that these 2 researchers became life-long friends and together founded one of the oldest international research societies, SIL. Furthermore, Thienemann and Naumann jointly developed lake typology (Seetypenlehre), a fundamentally new approach to classify lakes based on the studies of Naumann in the pelagic area of Swedish lakes and Thienemann’s studies on the profundal area of Eifel Mare (crater lakes; Rodhe 1975). By their work, they developed further the (at that time) young discipline of limnology, a term originally coined by the Swiss physician and scientist François-Alphonse Forel (1841–1912), who laid the foundation of the scientific study of lakes by his comprehensive investigation of Lake Geneva (Forel 1892, 1895, 1904) as a coupled physical-chemical-biotic-human system (Vincent and Bertola 2012).

By reflecting on the collaboration between these 2 almost opposing characters, I developed the concept that the diversity of researcher types might be another dimension of diversity paramount for scientific progress and sustainable management of natural resources. I start this synthesis by describing a number of researcher types from meeting and working with them during my own scientific career. I use the term researcher here but include all persons involved in scientific research on, application to, and management of freshwater resources. I resist discussing researcher types in the context of defined personalities as a psychological concept, and hence the classification is my attempt to order people according to their broad similarity with respect to their varying working modes. Accordingly, colleagues would certainly define additional or alternative types. Correspondingly, I mix my personal classification of researcher types with (Western) philosophy, inspired by comprehensive and detailed overviews on the history of this discipline (Störig 2011, Precht 2017, 2019). The history of philosophy is male biased, but when addressing broader implications of philosophical plurality, I try to provide a fairer gender balance with respect to authors. My exploration of the potential correspondence between researcher types and philosophical thinking is entirely speculative and does not encompass “good” or “bad” researcher types, or “right” or “wrong” philosophical streams. It rather reflects end points of a multidimensional continuum, and several researchers may assign themselves into more than one type.

My motivation to link the diversity of researcher types with a plurality of philosophical thinking stems from the fact that philosophical concepts and theories are at the core of the activities we call science (De Haro 2020). However, I share the concern of others (De Haro 2020) that current limnological or ecological curricula no longer cover philosophy or history of the disciplines, although mutual understanding about our philosophical concepts is needed to facilitate interaction, in particular across disciplines (Eigenbrode et al. 2007). Learning how we create theories, which methods and methodologies we apply, and how we objectively interpret the results is essential for dialogue with colleagues. A good starting point for a short overview of the philosophy of science is Okasha (2016) and several essays on specific philosophical concepts in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (https://plato.stanford.edu/). Books published earlier but still relevant include Kosso (1992) and the more discipline-oriented discussions of scientific approaches in ecology and limnology included in Peters (1991), Rigler and Peters (1995), and Legendre (2004). Ultimately, I intend to make clear that the interactions between different people, their research styles, and their underlying philosophies is the greatest asset of doing limnological research, which I value even more highly than the enormous scientific potential of the multidisciplinary nature of the discipline. This perspective clearly does not rank limnology above any other research discipline because I propose that the diversity of researcher types is a characteristic of any modern discipline.

Researcher types and philosophical streams

Disciplinary specialists, universalists, operational managers, and method experts—objectivism in research

The first researcher type I select is the “disciplinary specialist,” often immediately recognized by the topic the researcher is representing and that she or he has studied over long periods of their careers. Disciplinary specialists are promoted into the top scientific positions because of being first or senior authors of numerous well-cited publications in their broader disciplines. Furthermore, they are often the leaders in large projects and possess an enormously large scientific network. Being part of these networks can fundamentally help promote the careers of younger researchers. The philosophical approach, which I link to the disciplinary specialist, is strict empiricism and trust that sensory experience is the primary origin of knowledge. In the dichotomy between holism and reductionism, the approach of the disciplinary specialists might be considered reductionist and analytical (Holling 1998). Reductionism here means that every natural phenomenon can be understood by studying the mechanisms at smaller subunits. Disciplinary specialists often argue in favor of strictly controlled experimentation, application of statistics, and mechanistic interpretation of phenomena. According to my personal and entirely subjective cognition, the success of this researcher type in competition for leading positions facilitates the impression that empirical reductionism is superior to other scientific approaches to understand real-world phenomena in freshwater ecosystems. The subsequent discussion shows that such a view is unbalanced.

The second researcher type I select is “universalist.” The last researcher who is said to have had a profound insight into all scientific achievements during his life was the German philosopher Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646–1716), one of the founders of the Berlin Academy of Sciences in 1700. Leibniz is primarily known as a philosopher, although he has also substantially contributed to the development of the differential and integral calculus (often exclusively ascribed to Isaac Newton), among other disciplines. Today, a complete overview about the science is impossible, and even a complete overview about a discipline such as limnology is no longer realistic. Thienemann may have been one of the last true universalists in limnology, with his research covering lake typology, speciation in fishes, taxonomy of chironomids, and water chemistry (Thienemann 1959), just to name a few.

However, I assume many of us have met a person during our education or professional life who may be considered a universalist, at least with respect to their attitude and broad multidisciplinary knowledge. This researcher type has an overview of the topical developments in the discipline and in many related fields, knows recent scientific trends, and understands the interdependencies of concepts and theories across (sub)disciplines. I assume universalists are often trained or genuinely interested in the history and philosophy of science, which gives the scientist a certain independence of thought (De Haro 2020). It is tempting but likely inappropriate to place the universalist strictly on the side of the holistic thinkers in the classical debate between holism and reductionism in ecology (Holling 1998). Holism here reflects the view that complex systems are more than the sum of their parts, and are characterized by emergent properties that can be explored (and potentially be understood) only by studying entire (eco)systems. However, methodological approaches of universalists might be integrative, broad, and exploratory more often than analytical approaches (Holling 1998).

Unfortunately, and surprisingly, the universalist seems to be disappearing more and more from positions central in research and education (university professors, heads of institutes and departments) and is being replaced by disciplinary specialists, possibly because universalists sometimes do not have the long and impressive publication lists expected for top positions. Universalists may be motivated to express their own opinions, which are not necessarily always shared by their groups, and hence they may have published fewer papers, but often as first or single author, even later in their career. However, truly independent thinkers sometimes may also abstain from applying for leading positions because they value their individual independence from the imposed performance pressure more than the benefits of the position.

Both universalists and disciplinary specialists seek conceptual advances in their disciplines. Advancement here is considered the generation of new hypotheses or predictions and often involves unusual recombinations of pre-existing knowledge. However, science that is expected to generate societal impact also needs validation, here considered research that reevaluates and verifies the results obtained from the advancements. Because conceptual advances and validation both benefit society, investment in either strategy can be considered a game for public goods (Dubois and Peres-Neto 2022). Novelty can be claimed only by those individuals or groups who made the advancement first. All competing groups may lose the race for priority and hence must bear the costs of investments into advancement research without receiving the rewards from a novel leading publication. Therefore, individual gains decline with increasing numbers of researchers focusing on advancement strategies, and the value of conceptual advances can be maximized only when some researchers play the validation strategy (Dubois and Peres-Neto 2022). This game should motivate individual researchers to play a mixed strategy, combining advancement and validation, or motivate other researchers in validation studies.

Implementation of advancement research and its validation is likely contributed by 2 other researcher types: the “operational manager” and the “method expert.” Operational managers are the eternal deputies. They may feel a moral imperative to carry out their duties in the sense of Immanuel Kant’s (1724–1804) moral philosophy and hence are often sought to take on collaborative tasks that nobody else likes. The contributions to research by operational managers are often overshadowed by the visible achievements of the advancement researcher types. Operational managers may repeat experiments, reanalyze data from fresh perspectives, review the knowledge on a certain topic, and organize interactions and collaborations within and among teams. In addition, they often take care of the basic everyday detail of scientific work and can therefore be considered the engines of the normal scientific business.

The other researcher type, the method expert, is indispensable to scientific progress. Vast knowledge of methodological detail, exceptional expertise in taxonomy, outstanding statistical, analytical, modelling or graphing skills, eagerness to apply the most recent equipment and method, and endurance to overcome the numerous hurdles in this process are characteristic for these researchers. They are often key in bringing scientific novelty into visible practice, although their contribution tends to be undervalued in teams led by universalists or disciplinary specialists. I propose that the researchers who contribute to larger teams with their theoretical and modelling expertise have intrinsically strong contributions to research methodology and confirmation – genuinely philosophical aspects of collaborative science (Eigenbrode et al. 2007, Rossberg et al. 2019).

I earlier referred to the distinction between advancement and validation research. A similar differentiation has been made between paradigmatic (“normal”) and revolutionary science by Thomas S. Kuhn (1970). In normal science, all details of a given paradigm are explored and worked out, whereas in revolutionary science, establishment of radically new ideas and paradigm changes are central characteristics. Although one may classify universalists and disciplinary specialists into researchers driving revolutionary science while operational managers and method experts are the main actors in normal science, the distinction is less clear cut. In a recent essay (De Haro 2020), a letter by Albert Einstein is quoted in which he distinguished researchers who can see the forest (“seekers after truth”) from the master craftspeople who see all the trees but not the forest. Einstein emphasized that knowledge of the historical and philosophical background gives independence from prejudices by which the seekers after truth are enabled to see the forest (De Haro 2020) and hence may advance science substantially. Therefore, researcher type alone does not determine who may be driving scientific revolutions. I am convinced that understanding the philosophical aspects of research contributes fundamentally to break-throughs in scientific concepts.

In my view, the 4 researcher types mentioned earlier resemble in their working approaches a philosophy called objectivism, which assumes an objective reality outside the human mind, that an objective truth can be discovered, and that predictions and explanations for objective phenomena can be found (Moon et al. 2019). Although distinct in their contributions to teams and to collaborations among disciplines, mutual understanding can exist among these 4 researcher types about methodology and reasoning in scientific research. This mutual understanding is further facilitated by the fact that the 4 researcher types would likely classify themselves as doing fundamental research, in contrast to the researcher types I describe next, for whom science application is more relevant.

Instructors and problem solvers—constructivism in research

An opposing philosophy to objectivism is constructivism, formulated for example by Gaston Bachelard (1884–1962) and further developed by Jean Piaget (1896–1980), which maintains that scientific knowledge is a set of mental constructs by the scientific community to explain sensory experience and measurements (Eigenbrode et al. 2007). The distinction to objectivism is important because it relates to objectivity in science. If, for example, moral, aesthetic, or cultural values are imposed by the investigators (as constructivism assumes) instead of being part of the objective reality (as objectivism assumes), the investigators must be aware of and acknowledge their own values and the implications for doing and teaching science. The philosopher Wilhelm Dilthey (1833–1911) made the distinction that explaining natural phenomena from cause and effect would be the task of the natural sciences while humanities would instead aim to understand or comprehend (“Verstehen” in the German original) how parts can be related to the whole. Therefore, diversity of methods and methodology from both natural sciences and humanities is a central characteristic in constructivism science and is particularly relevant in transdisciplinary work in which researchers from natural sciences collaborate with researchers from humanities, but also with stakeholders from the general public (Moon et al. 2019).

The Catalan philosopher Ramon Llull (1232–1315) first suggested that the world must be discovered within, not outside, ourselves. This change in perspective culminated in Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason (Kant 1781) in which he claimed that space and time and conceptual principles and processes prestructure our experience, whereas the thing in itself (das Ding an sich) is unknowable. Although today strict philosophies of consciousness seem to no longer be modern, we must be aware that scientific results may not show how the world really is, but instead may reflect how an individual researcher perceives and interprets the world. Human consciousness is most likely the product of evolution, and hence the human life can be characterized as a permanent problem-solving process. That humans have survived over longer periods of geological time indicates that their knowledge over the world is in part true, in the sense of matching the objective reality. This thinking links constructivism with the philosophical movement of pragmatism, originally developed by Charles Sanders Peirce (1839–1914) and William James (1842–1910). For pragmatists, scientific concepts and theories should be evaluated by how effectively they explain and predict phenomena as opposed to how accurately they describe objective reality. Therefore, reality and truth are qualities assigned to the things by the researcher community.

I assume some researcher types have pragmatist and constructivist concepts that consciously or unconsciously contribute to their research methodology. The first type is the “instructor,” including teachers, science communicators, educators, and mentors who ideally help to achieve effective thinking instead of exclusively teaching facts. I like to include all researchers here who serve as referees and editors and ideally likewise play the role of mentors in these activities. A primary attribute I see is that instructors often invest much effort into service to other researchers. Interestingly, modern constructivist education sees the teacher or mentor in the role of a facilitator who helps the learner understand a theory or a method based on the provided objective facts. Therefore, facilitators are in constant dialogue with their learners and provide an environment and guidelines that motivate learners to develop their own conclusions. In this constructivist approach to teaching, the learners have prior knowledge and experiences and construct new knowledge from these experiences while teachers likewise learn from their learners. By contrast, the classical didactic teacher covers the objective facts of the discipline according to a set curriculum, most often in the form of a monologue to mostly passive learners.

Being appropriately educated in science by facilitators may become an elemental asset in the portfolio of another researcher type, the “problem solver.” This researcher type conducts scientific research with the purpose of practical applications to resolve problems that normally do not originate in science but in the living world. Problem solvers are driven by their motivation to contribute to solutions for these problems by best scientific practice, but in close interaction with people from outside science who are affected by the problem. Hence, problem solvers are often deeply involved in developing management strategies for certain ecosystems and engage intensely in stakeholder interactions. In this approach to resolving problems, understanding that all stakeholders contribute experience and values to an environmental problem is imperative. Many conflicts that arise in this process are actually caused by mutual misunderstandings of concepts, values, and beliefs but not by disagreement about scientific facts. Therefore, engaging in stakeholder participation approaches requires that the researcher accepts and understands the differences between stakeholders and engages them in a participatory way instead of lecturing scientific facts. Therefore, it would benefit problem solvers to be educated by the same constructivist approaches. Philosophically, problem solvers may also be influenced by utilitarianism, a philosophical stream founded by Jeremy Bentham (1747–1832) and further developed by John Stuart Mill (1806–1873). Utilitarianism is a version of consequentialism, which states that the consequences of any action are most important to evaluate whether the activity is right and wrong. Activities that result in the greatest happiness of the greatest number of people are considered the best actions; therefore, individual utility functions are unsurprisingly part of schemes to organize the access to environmental goods, such as in fisheries management (Fenichel et al. 2013).

The coupling of social and natural systems and the roles of humans in sustaining biodiversity and nature contributions to people (i.e., ecosystem services) indicates that the methodological portfolio should be broadened to resolve problems in the living world and educate people properly. As an example, while conservation science was long dominated by biological approaches and almost exclusively quantitative in its analytical techniques, the new conservation science frequently uses qualitative approaches from the social sciences to gather information or determine why and how decisions are made (Sutherland et al. 2018, Moon et al. 2019). The consideration of qualitative approaches from social sciences also implies that researchers and evaluators must be aware of the important aspects of social science epistemology, ontology, and methodology that differ from those in natural sciences (Clark et al. 2022).

Dionysian researchers—antipositivism in research

Finally, I categorize a researcher type perceived as fundamentally different from the 6 previously described types: the “Dionysian type.” No explicit philosophical stream fits this classification, but I became inspired by Friedrich Nietzsche’s (1844–1900) “The birth of tragedy from the spirit of music” (Nietzsche 1872), in which Nietzsche distinguishes the Apollonian from the Dionysian side of life according to the figures of Apollo and Dionysus from Greek mythology. Apollo is the god of rational thinking and order, of logic and prudence, and stands for reason. Dionysus represents passion, emotions, and instincts and hence can be considered the god of irrationality and chaos. It is tempting to relate this distinction to the opposing characters of Thienemann and Naumann described earlier. While the previous 6 researcher types resemble the rational Apollonian side of life in many ways, the Dionysian type may perceive the objects of aquatic research, whether organisms or systems, emotionally and therefore from an individual perspective, whereby understanding is at least partly achieved by introspection and intuition. Dionysian types also may often have artistic access to their loved objects, via paintings, photography, or music.

The dichotomy of Apollonian and Dionysian types somewhat resembles the dichotomic philosophical classification between positivism and antipositivism. The epistemological perspective of positivism was first described by Auguste Comte (1798–1857), where “positive” in philosophy means that things are imposed on the mind by experience. According to Comte, positive knowledge can be obtained not only in natural sciences, but ultimately also in humanities (primarily sociology) because social sciences are a logical continuation of the natural sciences into the realm of human activity. Therefore, humanities retain the scientific method and elements of the natural sciences such as objectivity, rationalism, and causality. From this view, metaphysics, introspection, and intuition are considered meaningless. By contrast, antipositivism (for example, expressed by Max Weber 1864–1920) considers that knowledge can be obtained from introspection and intuition because human cultural values and social processes shall be viewed from a subjective perspective. Personally, I would posit that even in natural sciences Dionysian researcher types and knowledge obtained from introspection are valuable. I have met scientists who predicted the devastation or collapse of “their” freshwater system far earlier than it became visible from regular fluctuations of measured objective variables, certainly based on their long-term emotional connection to the system and intuitive understanding of the small abnormal changes not detected by rational thinkers. Furthermore, scientific revolutions in the sense of Kuhn (1970) are initially often driven by intuition.

It might be inspiring to contemplate Apollonian and Dionysian sides even within the same person. Scheffer (2014) mentioned 2 aspects of cognition, where the “associative machine” is linked to creativity and is considered the complementary mode to rationality. The associative machine works when we do not actively work, but rather when we disconnect from problem-solving, often via a physical activity like running or cycling. The fascinating outcomes of the associate machine are intuitive insights and problem solutions not previously resolved by active thinking. I am not arguing that the associate machine must be a metaphysical process outside of objective reality; my point is that nonempirical and nonrationalist approaches to research may contribute to understanding and comprehension, despite the exclusion of “positive knowledge” from sensory perception or experience. A similar perspective on the joy of doing science by combining different facets of activity was developed by Legendre (2004). He mentioned intuition, craftsmanship, and pleasure as the 3 elements to scientific excellence, with intuition constituting the cornerstone of creativity in science. Creative scientists select or combine often already known information, which in principle is available to all people. However, only truly creative scientists intuitively select the right elements (Legendre 2004); therefore, the proper consideration and combination of the Apollonian and Dionysian sides inside ourselves may be a key to scientific excellence.

Consequences of researcher type diversity for science, education, and human development

The researcher types described here follow an entirely subjective classification, driven by my motivation to reflect their value in research, contributed through their different approaches towards doing science. For me, this diversity of approaches and methodologies is important, and less so the exact definition of the types. The links to philosophical streams and thoughts are likewise not at all systematic with respect to ontological and epistemological concepts, but eclectic, and reflect my individual fascination for certain philosophical movements and theories. This means that the typology and the potentially corresponding philosophical thoughts and streams do not reflect an objective reality, but rather are a construction based on my motivation to order and classify people whom I have met or worked with.

I am not the first researcher to focus on the value of diverse teams in interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary science and the most effective ways to interact within these teams. High-performing collaborative teams are built on 2 interpersonal skills: social sensitivity and emotional engagement. In addition, 5 dimensions of diversity were named as important: career stage, degree of team member familiarity, interaction mode of scientist, type of discipline and the number of individuals per discipline, and viewpoints (Cheruvelil et al. 2014). However, I highlight that beyond the diversity in gender, ethnicity, religious beliefs, career stage, personality, socioeconomic class, life experiences, viewpoints, and skills, the diversity of researcher types also facilitates collaboration, certainly because the typology developed here encompasses a range of diversity dimensions important for success of collaborative research. Furthermore, through collaboration among diverse researchers, our understanding about the complex world is structured more comprehensively than when researchers with similar philosophical approaches collaborate. Therefore, ignorance of the diversity of philosophical backgrounds and the concepts of science that consciously or unconsciously drive and motivate research would be harmful for education, society, and ultimately science itself (Boniolo and Campaner 2020, De Haro 2020). Science needs philosophy because of its important heuristic function in the formulation of new scientific theories and its important analytic function to scrutinize the existing concepts and presuppositions (Laplane et al. 2019, De Haro 2020). The famous dichotomous distinction between how-questions and why-questions in natural sciences (for example, in evolutionary biology) makes it obvious that mechanistic approaches and methodology may help resolve only how-questions, whereas why-questions encompass deep metaphysical elements and hence need philosophical thoughts for comprehension.

Accordingly, the diversity of researcher types has a major effect on education, scientific thinking, and career development. If the majority of young researchers in limnology and aquatic ecology are educated predominantly by researcher types who are considered best because of their documented publication output in advancement-driven research (disciplinary specialists, universalists), we risk streamlining the initial diversity of individual capabilities in young researchers into a small subset of approaches towards science, conducted by young researchers that can best copy and adapt to the style of their dominant mentors. I would strongly argue that scientific education should instead facilitate personal development by propagating the individual strengths of young researchers. The responsibility to integrate these strengths into teams and ultimately into the research and management landscape should rest with the leading scientists instead of expecting young researchers to fit into the current science system, and hence their prime qualification is exclusively evaluated by novel publications in top journals. In turn, educating learners so that their individual strengths may become strong assets in team science would require all researchers who are involved in teaching, education, and mentoring to be trained in some basics of philosophy and history of science. With this background, frontal teaching can be transformed into individual facilitation by elucidating how the researcher’s own motivation, consideration of objective reality, and reasoning are rooted in certain philosophical thinking while alternative philosophies may likewise contribute to understanding of the world. From this perspective, the 3 elements of scientific excellence—intuition, craftsmanship, and pleasure (Legendre 2004)—can be considered guidelines for a teaching style more comprehensive than the didactic presentation of facts.

However, the current system of research evaluation clearly does not reflect the unique contributions from researcher types who are less frequently, or never, lead or senior authors of scientific publications. Exclusively counting published papers and benchmarking scientific innovation and originality via journal impact factors will lead to the deterioration of the impact of science in the long term. More and more scientific journals have adopted a policy that the individual author contribution be listed. Datasets and program codes openly available for re-use can get a unique digital object identifier (DOI), facilitating that credit is given to their authors (see editorial in Nature; Editorial 2022). And some science databases meanwhile also curate researcher contributions to scientific editorship and review, an enormous and still undervalued contribution to the development of a discipline. It is time that researchers are more fairly evaluated on their scientific vision, appropriate experience, and contributions to science and society. One potential improvement is a curriculum vitae (CV) of a researcher with narrative sections to explain achievements and contributions to science that do not fit traditional CV categories (Woolston 2022). In turn, committees deciding on funding and hiring should adopt broader approaches towards evaluating researchers by emphasizing the scientific excellence of approaches and results more than the sheer number of published papers. Particularly for interdisciplinary research teams, evaluation of an individual’s direct contribution to output quantity may address only research scholarship. Team functioning and public outreach, 2 other major categories of project success, are based on researchers contributing via organizing workshops, training individuals from other disciplines, and developing interdisciplinary dialogue (Goring et al. 2014). These latter contributions are often linked with research methodology and education, approaches with a strong foundation in philosophy. Qualitative evaluations that focus more on real-world contributions and less on impact factors, and that may even consider projects that help local communities, could support a fairer evaluation of researchers from the Global South, in particular since the switch to open access publishing has generated insurmountable financial hurdles for these researchers to publish in the highly ranked journals (Mekonnen et al. 2022).

Ultimately, if we continue doing and evaluating science with a narrow set of approaches, we contribute to a social construction of the science system and perpetuate it in the current form (Van den Brink and Benschop 2012). Assuming science should be perfectly meritocratic, in which advancement is exclusively based on performance and depends only on objective achievements, effort, and talent, is erroneous. One aim of this essay is to reflect my deep concerns that our science system excludes or at least disadvantages researcher types who do not fit into the current system of how achievements are evaluated and how researchers are ranked accordingly. The solution to complex environmental problems, for which the disciplines of limnology and ecology contribute, requires pragmatic theories and pluralistic approaches. During knowledge generation and application of knowledge in management of environmental resources, distinct theories may work differently at different times, termed as external pluralism across pragmatic theories (Travassos-Britto et al. 2021). I argue that educating and maintaining a good mix of researcher types, as described here, can help achieve this plurality.

Two examples show how deeply scientific methodology and reasoning are connected with philosophical concepts and how the underlying philosophical concepts are relevant for society. In a recent contribution, scientific approaches of ecologists to help society make responsible decisions were discussed (Currie 2019) using a 50-year-old example of factors that drive massive algal blooms. Statistical correlations (often discounted because of their noncausative nature) between concentrations of total phosphorus (TP) and chlorophyll a in lakes from around the world helped predict TP concentrations when algal blooms may occur (Dillon and Rigler 1974). By contrast, the famous lake-division experiment in which half of a lake was fertilized with phosphorus to induce an algal bloom was a reductionist demonstration of the same mechanism in a single waterbody (Schindler 1974). Earlier philosophical discussions had warned that the sciences of limnology and ecology may have failed in serving society needs because of the overemphasis on observation, understanding, and explanation through various mechanistic, causal, and historical models in cases where predictive power would be needed instead (Peters 1991, Rigler and Peters 1995). From my perspective, both approaches are complementary, not mutually exclusive, but similar to the initial distinction of methodology in limnology and ecology, different researcher types may favor one or the other.

A second example refers to societal values critical to water science, governance, and stewardship (Johns and Stewart 2022). These authors argue that a new set of water values are needed to achieve sustainable use of water worldwide. They discuss holistic indigenous water values and stewardship, often deeply connected with spiritualism and creation stories. These values must be considered when management schemes are developed. Furthermore, indigenous knowledge, traditional practices, sovereignty, and self-determination are considered important in research and management of inland waters (e.g., Amoutchi et al. 2023, Buschman and Sudlovenick 2022). The inclusion of indigenous knowledge and water values, which differ from capitalist values and liberalist viewpoints, demonstrates that empirical and objectivist approaches in limnology alone may have been insufficient to transform scientific knowledge into societal relevance.

I chose these 2 examples to make clear that we cannot do science without philosophizing. Many natural sciences and humanities contribute to limnology as the science of “everything that refers to inland waters.” The plurality of philosophical concepts, contributed by the diversity of researcher types, is part of the paradigm that characterizes the periods of normal science (Kuhn 1970) and encompasses ways of looking at the world, practices of instrumentation, traditions of research, and shared values and beliefs. Therefore, even if the connections to the philosophical roots are unconscious, they are relevant for every researcher, whether she or he is interested in fundamental mechanisms or science application. I suggest that discussion about the philosophical elements of research should become more prominent again to facilitate collaboration and mutual understanding for the benefit of science and society.

Outlook

As the current SIL president, I note that SIL, as an international society devoted to the study of limnology, has summarized the pluralistic approaches in its mission. Research, practical application, problem-solving, education, and team work are at the heart of SIL and shall continue to be. Scientific societies can construct their own pluralistic research environments that, at least in part, can diverge from the conflation of scientific quality with purely output-centered benchmarks. When honoring researchers, I suggest taking a broader view of their achievements, including contributions that reflect individual approaches to research and education and to science service and public engagement. Furthermore, SIL shall work on transforming our meetings, at least partially, from the didactic frontal presentation toward the facilitation of learning and mutual understanding, where a diversity of approaches is reflected in future SIL meetings.

The task of a society like SIL is to give all scientific approaches a platform and to provide equal appreciation for each contribution. Limnology is multidisciplinary, and problems and challenges related to inland waters in a globally changing world require ubiquitous solutions developed in transdisciplinary collaborations. Following the legacy of Thienemann and Naumann, the International Society of Limnology is a society composed of a network of limnologists aiming to resolve problems from science and the living world, beyond disciplinary boundaries and in full appreciation of the variety of research philosophies that help us comprehend what constitutes the natural world.

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank my father Klaus Mehner who ignited my interest in philosophy and history of science. Warwick Vincent and an anonymous reviewer helped revise the text by insightful comments and suggestions. I owe many thanks for fruitful and stimulating discussions about science and philosophy to many colleagues and friends whom I have met over the years.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).