As most of you know, I recently completed a draft of my book. But I’m still struggling to come up with a title. Commenters on the linked post had some good advice and suggestions. But I didn’t come away with anything I was entirely satisfied with. I’m now leaning away from calling it “Dynamic Ecology,” because that title doesn’t convey what the book is about, and because you can get just as much marketing value by putting the phrase “Founder of the Dynamic Ecology blog” below my name on the book cover.
So I decided to give AI a crack at the title. I gave Claude 3.5 Sonnet the introduction of my book, the chapter list, and the following prompt:
Please suggest some titles for a book I have written. The book is about how ecologists can better harness their diverse goals, ideas, and approaches, in order to better advance the science of ecology. To help you, I have provided the introduction to the book, and the table of contents.
Here are Claude’s suggestions for my book title:
- “Embracing Ecological Diversity: Harnessing Different Approaches for a Stronger Science”
- “The Polyglot Nature of Ecology: Leveraging Diversity to Advance the Field”
- “Ecology’s Strength in Variety: Unifying Diverse Approaches for Scientific Progress”
- “The Ecology of Ecologists: Cultivating Diversity in Research and Practice”
- “Many Paths, One Forest: Navigating the Diverse Landscape of Ecological Research”
- “Unified in Disunity: How Ecological Diversity Drives Scientific Discovery”
- “The Ecological Mosaic: Celebrating and Harnessing Diverse Approaches in Science”
- “Beyond the Disunified Mess: Leveraging Ecological Diversity for Scientific Advancement”
- “Complementary Ecology: Thriving on Diverse Goals, Ideas, and Approaches”
- “The Ecology of Ideas: Fostering Diversity for a Robust Science”
These titles aim to capture the main themes of your book: the diversity within ecology, the strength that comes from this diversity, and the potential for advancing the field by harnessing different approaches. They also reflect the positive stance you’ve taken towards the “disunified mess” of ecology, presenting it as a feature rather than a bug.
Overall, this is a pretty good list of suggestions!
Ok, they’re not all good. #1 is a bad title (the subtitle is fine), because it makes the book sound like it’s a conventional book about the value of biodiversity. #2 and #8 are bad titles based on phrases from the Introduction. #9 is bad because it identifies the whole book with just one of the idea in the book (the idea of complementarity). #3 is bad because it’s awkward and boring.
But the other five are pretty good! Some are better than pretty good. In particular, #4 and #6 have a lot of promise, I think. They’re both recursive or self-referential titles, which is a style of title Peter Adler suggested in a comment on my previous post. I liked that suggestion at the time, but had been struggling to think of a title that actually implemented it. And #10 could be modified to make it recursive. Something like “The Ecology of Ecological Ideas.” #5 and #7 are too, though they have the disadvantage that neither metaphor (forest paths or mosaics) occurs in the book.
The subtitles are decent overall. Some are better than others. But even the best ones are merely on a par with subtitles I’ve come up with already. It’s the title I need help with, not the subtitle.
What do you think? Take the poll below!