Definitions Flashcards
What is a Malthusian Trap?
That a population growth is potentially exponential, while the growth of the food supply or other resources is linear, thus eventually triggering a population die off
What does stochasticity mean?
Unexplained (unpredictable)
Define science
A process of gaining knowledge about the natural world
What is the scientific method?
The use of experiments and observation to explain something in nature
Define hypothesis
Proposed (tentative) explanation of a phenomenon that can be tested (normally based on a prediction that follows from the hypothesis
What is a theory?
Widely accepted and tested (confirmed) explanation for a phenomena
What is a law?
Description of how nature behaves under certain conditions (often mathematical formula, rare in natural sciences)
What’s the difference between a prediction and a hypothesis?
Prediction - if this then that
Hypothesis - explain
What is environmental science?
A cross-disciplinary natural science because it relies on the disciplines of chemistry, biology, & geology
What is Holism?
Focuses on ‘top-down’ approach by studying higher organizational levels (“the whole is more than the sum of it’s parts”)
Define emergence
Properties of groups that can’t be entirely explained by their individual components (across scales)
How does reductionism describe systems?
By dividing them into smaller units to understand them through their elemental properties (“The whole is simply the sum of it’s parts”)
