On Quantifyi:ug the Effects of Formal and Final Causes in Ecosystem Development R.E. Ulanowicz 1 and A.J. Goldman 2 1 University of Maryland, Chesapeake Biological Laboratory, Solomons, MD 20688, USA 2Department of Mathematical Sciences, The Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD 21218, USA In physics and in traditional biology it has sufficed until now to describe phenomena as the results of purely material or efficient causes. However, a growing number of biologists and philosophers think that a satisfactory description of biological development must also include reference to what Aristotle labeled formal and final (or teleonomic, sensu Mayr) causation. A measure called the network ascendency has been defined to track the changes in the system that result from positive feedback acting as an endogenous formal cause of system development. In turn, positive feedback appears to exert a selection pressure reminiscent of teleonomic final cause upon each of its constituent elements. Associating development with the increase of network ascendency permits the modelling of final cause using the powerful modern tools of mathematical optimization. Cheung and Goldman have developed an algorithm to find a reconfiguration of any given starting network that locally optimizes its network ascendency. Typically, the optimal configuration, as demonstrated by two simple examples, is a "one-tree", that is, a single, directed cycle adjoined to a tree. Studying the differences between the observed and the optimal networks yields insights into the particular constraints acting on the system and reveals the most efficient pathways through the network. Ecodynamics, as conceived by Kenneth Boulding (1978), is a highly complex subject involving numerous new and unique features. But the name itself is not evocative of just how different ecological phenomena are from those included in classical dynamics. However, such inadequacy of name is quite understandable. As the late media analyst Marshall McLuhan (1973) was wont to point out, when faced with the radically new, we are often numbed into seeing the new in the guise of the familiar. For example, the name "quantum © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 1988 W. Wolff et al. (eds.), Ecodynamics