The role of natural history in understanding a changing world

Natural history is “…a systematic account based on observation rather than experiment.” Experiments reduce realism to isolate cause; observations contend with—and capture—the world’s complexity. Experiments span years; observations extend before history, captured in collective memory since the Pleistocene. But viewing natural history and experiment along a spectrum, rather than as antipodes, will best inform responses to global change. We understand how oaks respond to climate change from observational, landscape experiments. We understand how extinctions affect ecosystems by incorporating observed species loss into biodiversity experiments. We need both, because the strongest inference is one that applies to nature’s tangled bank.