EXPERIMENTATION AND ITS EPISTEMIC ROLE IN ECOLOGY: THE CASE OF LANDSCAPE ECOLOGY

In the XX century, the experiment has been presented as a fundamental way to study of nature since disciplines and sub-disciplines. The aim of this work is to study characterization of the experiment and its epistemic effects over an area of knowledge of Ecology: Landscape Ecology. Between 1930's and 1950's decades, experiment was considered as a fundamental methodological tool in studies of Ecology. However, in 1980's decade it is recognized significant changes in characterization and application of the experiments. One of the causes of this change may be the wide geographic scales of the ambient problems producing the replacement of manipulative experiments by mensurative experiments in Landscape Ecology.