This article discusses the work of two American ecologists of the first half of the twentieth century, F. E. Clements and H. A. Gleason, who differed in terms of their understanding of community succession—that is, how ecological communities change over time. Clements's and Gleason's debate about the nature of ecological communities demonstrates, first, that in considering questions of succession, ecologists are constructing and testing plausible narratives. Second, it suggests that the structures of scientific narratives resemble structures of other cultural narratives in depending, at least to some extent, on cultural assumptions and values. The presence of these competing stories about ecological data thus calls attention to the importance of narrative as an interpretive and rhetorical strategy in scientific discourse.
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