Donald S. Maier

Donald S. Maier is an independent scholar whose early ambitions in theoretical physics were waylaid when he inadvertently wandered into philosophy. He integrates ideas culled from multiple fields, including philosophy of science and physics, but now also history of science, environmental philosophy, ecology, evolutionary biology, computational theory, ecocriticism, and social network theory.

His first book, "What's So Good About Biodiversity? A Call for Better Reasoning About Nature's Value" (2012), remains the benchmark for critical thinking about principles of conservation that revolve around the concept of biodiversity. He is also the principal editor of "Disruptive Innovations and the Environmental Crisis" (2025) to which he also contributed a chapter. His newest book, "Chasing Biodiversity Off the Tracks: How Dogma Overrides Evidence in the Science and Conservation of Biodiversity" (2025) blows the whistle on an enormous and enormously influential program of ecological research that has forsworn evidence to pursue its mission to "demonstrate" biodiversity's causal determination of ecosystem functions.