Ecologists tend to focus on the former and disregard the latter.
The scientific method provides us with tools that buffer our observations from many tricks of the mind . Nonetheless, every observation we make is filtered through our senses, our minds, and our models. Our mind is a product of nature. In turn, we use our mind to describe nature. In this course we will examine how our perceptive abilities and cultural contexts constrain the way we interact with, and thus interpret, our world.