Foundations for
Sustainability
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Foundations for
Sustainability
A Coherent Framework of
LifeÀEnvironment Relations
Daniel A. Fiscus
Western Maryland Food Council, Cumberland, MD, United States
Brian D. Fath
Department of Biological Sciences, Towson University,
Towson, MD, United States
and
Advanced Systems Analysis Program, International
Institute for Applied Systems Analysis, Laxenburg, Austria
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Dedication
To our mentors: Bernard C. Patten and Robert E. Ulanowicz.
DAF: To my wife, Tracy Behan, who has taught me so much about
connective tissue, family, love, hard work, and the benefits of a
well-organized environment. You are truly the best, and you are the
better half of our “coupled complementary process.”
DAF: To my Dad, W. Guy Fiscus, who has taught me so much
about sitting still outdoors to learn from and delight in the wonders
of nature, about the arts and sciences of diagnosis, and the value of
good questions.
BDF: To my family, Natasha, Maria, Peter, and, to all who have
inspired me.
To our many students.
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Contents
List of Figures...........................................................................................................xi
List of Tables........................................................................................................ xvii
Preface ....................................................................................................................xix
Reviews................................................................................................................ xxiii
Acknowledgments .................................................................................................xxv
CHAPTER 1 To solve a difficult problem, enlarge it.......................1
Introduction.................................................................................... 1
The Reality of WinÀWin.............................................................. 4
A New System of Ideas................................................................. 5
Life as the Greatest Common Denominator ................................. 9
Life as Complex and Dual Modeled........................................... 10
Dynamic Range of Applicability ................................................ 12
Sustainers and Transcenders ....................................................... 14
Deep Truths and Paradigms ........................................................ 19
CHAPTER 2 Life as the basis of value ........................................... 27
Introduction.................................................................................. 27
The Anticipatory Strategy of Systemic Change ......................... 32
Setting Life as the Basis of Value .............................................. 37
Schweitzer’s Reverence for Life................................................. 38
Aldo Leopold’s Land Ethic......................................................... 40
Robert Ulanowicz’ Ecological Metaphysic ................................ 43
CHAPTER 3 Holistic science of lifeÀenvironment À mutualistic
interfaces .................................................................... 49
Introduction and Overview.......................................................... 50
Back to the Drawing Board—Seeing is Key
to Achieving ............................................................................53
The Oxygen Atmosphere.........................................................58
The Ozone Layer.....................................................................60
Soils..........................................................................................61
The LifeÀEnvironment WinÀWin in Summary....................63
The LifeÀEnvironment Interface............................................63
The Synergy of Cooperation and Competition.......................70
CHAPTER 4 Life: From origins to humans......................................81
Holistic Perspective on the Origin of Life.................................. 81
Holistic Perspective on “What is Life?”..................................... 87
vii
CHAPTER 5 Reforming reductionism with six core principles .....99
Core Principles of Holistic Science and LifeÀEnvironment
Science......................................................................................... 99
Summary of the Six Principles.................................................. 127
CHAPTER 6 Life science lessons from ecological networks
and systems ecology ................................................ 129
Introduction and Background for the Seven Life Lessons....... 130
Summary and Synthesis of Chapter 6....................................... 164
CHAPTER 7 A bridge not too far: Spanning theory
to science to application.......................................... 167
Introduction................................................................................ 167
Rosen’s Modeling Relation Revisited—A Double-Edged
Sword......................................................................................... 170
Our Idea—Formal Systems (Science, Knowledge)
and Natural Systems (Fabrication, Technology) Are
Always Co-creating Each Other................................................ 175
The Machine Metaphor—More Views on the Legacies
of Descartes and Newton........................................................... 176
Our Synthesis Idea—We Are Making the World Into a
Machine ..................................................................................... 188
From Mono-Metaphor to Poly-Metaphors: Blossoming
Diversity in the Toolkit for Life Science.................................. 195
Summary and Steps Toward Chapter 8 .................................... 200
CHAPTER 8 Technology and applications in the context
of holistic lifeÀenvironment .................................... 205
Introduction................................................................................ 205
Holistic Life Technologies Differ for Sustainers and
Transcenders .............................................................................. 208
Case Studies in Holistic Life Technology ................................ 213
Cradle-to-Cradle Design........................................................216
Biomimicry ............................................................................218
Permaculture ..........................................................................219
Ecological Engineering .........................................................220
A Hypothetical Application—Holistic Land Development...... 223
Focus and Priority Case Study—Science Facilities..............225
Challenges to Holistic Technology Transformation................. 228
CHAPTER 9 Sustainability: A goal for all .................................... 231
Introduction................................................................................ 231
Two Successful Futures Are Better Than One ......................... 232
viii Contents
The Roads Ahead, the Road Maps, and the Drivers ................ 237
Disrupting the Scientific Paradigm........................................... 238
The Ecological Self and the Participatory Universe ................ 244
Clarity of Mind and Purpose..................................................... 246
Bibliography ..........................................................................................................249
Index ......................................................................................................................261
ixContents
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List of Figures
Figure 1.1 This diagram depicts the current humanÀenvironment
system of problems or “mess” in the sense of Ackoff
(1974). Our culturally shared system of ideas is at the
center, and this is linked closely to the dominant
scientific paradigm. This central systemic cause leads
to the ultimate “tragedy of the commons” outcomes
by a set of relationships that radiate outward (influence
travels from center outward, from ideas to actions to
global impacts) in stepwise fashion:
A. A paradigm in science is promulgated via education,
technology, and media to most people in industrial culture. It
is the assumed and shared normative system of ideas,
specifically with respect to life and environment. In this
science paradigm, life is separated from environment thus
severing the unity of life and life-support systems
conceptually and scientifically
B. Following the scientific paradigm, inherent in the cultural
system of ideas, life is separated from environment in mind
and action. This is the key error (or outdated paradigm) that
severs the unity of life and life-support systems in the real
world
C. Once fragmented, it is possible and likely that the value of
environment is seen and treated as less than the value of
life. Note that it is not possible for this relative devaluation of
environment to occur if lifeÀenvironment remains unified as
a single focal entity and system of study. This follows from
the revised paradigm we present here
D. Individuals act for self-interest primarily and compete for
what they perceive as limited, scarce, and zero-sum
resources and assume that environment degradation is
normal, expected, inevitable, and acceptable
E. Environment is consumed and degraded as manifest in
many symptoms of ecological crisis, and the influence of the
citizens’ mental fragmentation and devaluation of
environment travels upward to larger scales and produces
the global crisis
3
Figure 1.2 Contrast between the “tragedy of the commons” that
occurs as a result of fragmentation of life from
environment versus the possibility of the “bounty of
the commons” which life achieves and which we can
achieve by reuniting life and environment via
foundations of science
7
xi
Figure 1.3 Ball and cup diagrams depicting systems and
stabilities from the Thompson et al. (1990) worldviews.
This includes the center group hermits which can
show characteristics of any group
18
Figure 1.4 Depiction of self-world model in mind. This cartoon
illustrates a simple idea—two people can share the
same real-world environment but have very different
models in mind by which they perceive and
understand that shared objective reality. Different
models or systems of ideas can also lead to different
expectations about the best or normal
humanÀenvironment relation
19
Figure 2.1 Our model of change, or theory of change, by which
we imagine this book (and allied works and ideas of
others) can contribute to societal change and eventual
humanÀenvironment sustainability
32
Figure 2.2 Diagram from Leopold’s Round River depicting both
cycles and branches
42
Figure 3.1 (A) Overlapping realms of sustainability. (B) Nested
realms of a sustainable society
54
Figure 3.2 One key step to reframing our understanding of the
LifeÀenvironment relation, and the ultimate net
outcome of LifeÀenvironment interactions, is where
we draw the system boundary. This in turn starts with
the realization that drawing this boundary is a choice,
and that this scientific choice has implications and
ramifications that are profound
65
Figure 3.3 Modified from Ulanowicz (1997) whose original caption
read “Two hierarchical views of an autocatalytic loop.”
The original perspective (solid line) includes only part
of the loop, which therefore appears to function quite
mechanically. A broader vision encompasses the
entire loop, and with it several nonmechanical
attributes. Where Ulanowicz called the smaller system
boundary the “Original system boundary,” we have
labeled it the “Reduced system boundary” associated
with the reduced perspective and general approach of
reductionism and analysis. We also added the letters
to label each component
66
xii List of Figures
Figure 3.4 Modified from Fath and Patten (1999).
(A) EntityÀenvironment dualism, the mainstream
paradigm. (B) EntityÀenvironment synergism
and distinct input and output environs, Patten’s
paradigm
69
Figure 3.5 Modification of the three-node autocatalytic network of
Ulanowicz (1997) to include an environmental
compartment such as soil shows how mutually
beneficial relations can integrate environmental roles
and lead to enhancement of life support capacity. We
could draw a similar diagram with atmosphere,
surface waters, or other environmental components in
place of soil
78
Figure 4.1 Visualization of an energy pulse that is degraded at
different rates depending on the number of
intermediate reactions that are coupled to the gradient
utilization: (A) no coupling, (B) moderate coupling, and
(C) extensive coupling
93
Figure 4.2 Environs doing their own thing and doing their own
thing to fit together
94
Figure 4.3 (A) Three unit models of Life by McManus (2013).
(B) A pattern that can be folded to form a dynamic,
cyclically foldable hexaflexagon. For explanation of the
hyperset equation, see Chapter 6
95
Figure 4.4 Three different folded configurations of the single
hexaflexagon of McManus showing from left to right
the organism, environment (or biosphere), and
ecosystem holons
96
Figure 5.1 Three integrated and interdependent holons or unit
models of Life, and their associated three materials
cycles
107
Figure 5.2 Artwork of Jan Heath, entitled “food chain” 109
Figure 5.3 (A and B) Rosen’s conceptual diagrams for machines,
organisms, and how complexity is essential for
understanding both
122
Figure 5.4 A depiction of the “new taxonomy” for natural systems
Rosen described in which simple machines and
complex organisms are categorically different types of
systems requiring fundamentally different science and
technology
123
xiiiList of Figures
Figure 6.1 Modified slightly from Rosen’s modeling relation. This
appeared as his Figure 3H.2 on page 60 (Rosen,
1991). An elegant representation of the scientific
process as heavily entangled with the real world it
seeks to understand
135
Figure 6.2 Mapping of context into form, according to level of
abstraction
136
Figure 6.3 This is a typical ecological network showing the flow of
energy between compartments. Each circle represents
an ecological functional group (or species) and the
arrows represent the flow of energy between
compartments. X1 = pelagic planktivores, X2 = pelagic
omnivores, X3 = pelagic carnivores, X4 = demersal
carnivores, X5 = switch feeders, X6 = benthic
residents, X7 = reeftype cchoolers, X8 = plankton, X9 =
benthos (after Patten, 1982. Environs: relativistic
elementary particles for ecology. American Naturalist.
119(2), 179À219). This figure was constructed using
the online ENA tool EcoNet http://eco.engr.uga.edu/
cgi-bin/econetV2.cgi. Other software tools are available
to perform the network analysis routines described
below such as the MATLAB function nea.m (www.
mathworks.com/matlabcentral/fileexchange/5261-neam)
and enaR (https://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/
enaR/index.html)
147
Figure 6.4 Redrawn from Ulanowicz (2009) an early paper on the
“balancing act” metric
157
Figure 6.5 Robustness measure for various socio-ecological
networks. Note, natural food webs cluster at the
optimum trade-off between efficiency and redundancy;
economic networks are overly redundant; and, the
nitrogen in industrial beef supply chain is overly
efficient
158
Figure 7.1 Rosen’s modeling relation modified again from our
Fig. 6.1. In Rosen’s representation of the scientific
process, science operates with a main flow from left to
right in clockwise steps and can be thought of as
starting at step 2, encoding, which is the realm of
measurement and observation. As work proceeds
clockwise, the formal systems (science models,
theories, etc.) are successively and progressively
formed, refined, and improved and knowledge
increases. Thus the formal system is shown as a
reservoir that can gain in content
172
xiv List of Figures
Figure 7.2 The process of “fabrication” modified after a diagram
of the modeling relation (Rosen, 1991). The main flow
of action now is the gain of a physical, material
realization—a new construction in the natural system,
the real world, based on an idea, mental model, or
design in the formal system
172
Figure 7.3 Concise contrast of the machine metaphor (a), and its
rigidly deterministic simple causality, “If A, then BÀno
exceptions!,” as paraphrased by Ulanowicz (1997) vs.
a nonmechanical metaphor Goerner calls “web
dynamics” compatible with our principles of holism,
complexity, and Life lessons, and the propensities and
conditional probabilities of Ulanowicz, all gleaned from
studies of ecosystems and networks
182
Figure 8.1 Key variables of energy consumption and world
population over 10,000 years and under three future
scenarios
209
Figure 8.2 Doughnut Economics which combines upper bound
for planetary limits and lower bound for social
foundation
215
Figure 9.1 Vranov nad Dyji, Czech Republic 235
Figure 9.2 Conceptualization of the holons of Life or “flexons” at
work in a real landscape. Organism, ecosystem, and
environment hexaflexagon images from Sarah
McManus
236
Figure 9.3 Modified version of Holling’s four-stage adaptive cycle 239
Figure 9.4 The adaptive cycle applied to the growth and
development of social institutions and firms (Fath
et al., 2015)
241
Figure 9.5 System dynamics from growth and development to
conservation and stasis. Crisis can spur new ideas
and stages
242
xvList of Figures
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List of Tables
Table 1.1 Hard Evidence of Our Crisis 2
Table 1.2 Dynamic Range of Applicability—The Ambitious Goal of Our
System of Ideas, Unified via Holism, Reverence for Life, and Love
13
Table 1.3 Cultural Theory Types of Thompson et al. (1990) with Our
Sustainers and Transcenders Shown
17
Table 1.4 Meadows’ Leverage Points 21
Table 8.1 Technologies Reviewed Here That are Compatible with Holistic Life
Science
214
xvii
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Preface
In this book, we make an ambitious claim—herein you will find scientific principles,
methods, models, and ways of thinking that are uniquely capable for solving
the chronic and systemic “humans in the environment” problem. While the impact
for which we aspire is large, the creative credit and sources of insight we never
claim as solely our own.
To take the broad and holistic view, to attempt to see, comprehend, and act
wisely for both the lifeÀenvironment and humanÀenvironment relations as undivided
wholes, we have had to stand on the proverbial “shoulders of giants.”
Robert “Bob” Ulanowicz and Bernard “Bernie” Patten are the holistic science
revolutionaries and trail blazers whose towering legacies of work have afforded
us this wide-angle view. To have been taught and mentored by such visionaries,
and to later have the humbling privilege to work side-by-side as colleagues, is
necessarily to catch some of the infectious urge, excitement, dream, and action
plan for revolutionary science in service to people, ecosystems, and living beings.
If any of our ideas or proposals seem a stretch to comprehend, and if in searching
to answer your questions you dig deeply into to the great bodies of work by Bob
and Bernie, then this book will have served a good purpose. We have sought to
present a comprehensive picture, but you will almost surely find their work necessary
to help understand the full foundations of the science reform we describe.
In Chapter 7, Bridge Between Science and Applications a La Rosen, we retell
a story and anecdote of a discussion between Bob and Bernie with respect to their
differing views of the workings of Nature. In 1999, they debated the relative
mechanistic and deterministic aspects of airplanes, an area and system they each
know well as pilots. Their debate played out in the pages of the journal,
Estuaries. The story is both fun and insightful, and we won’t spoil it here. But
extending the airplane analogy can serve to depict a strategic aspect of this book.
If you have flown with a commercial airline, then you have heard the pre-flight
safety spiel. The instructions always include the protocol on what to do “in the
event of loss of cabin pressure,” when the oxygen masks will drop down. The
flight attendants insist to put on your own oxygen mask before helping others
with theirs. This common-sense principle to ensure that your own “life support”
is established prior to attempting to be of service to others links to a deeper principle
that is wise in general. We employ an analogous principle in this book—we
explain why science must learn to sustain itself before it can successfully promote
sustainability in other sectors.
Bob and Bernie have contributed science that goes beyond Darwinian theory,
and as we show, our present global ecological crisis calls for radical reform in the
foundations of life science. When it first came out, Darwin’s and Wallace’s work,
among many profound impacts, transformed people’s sense of the human self in
relation to the natural world. Evolution by natural selection presented a coherent
framework by which to see ourselves as having coevolved with other species and
xix
as being descendants of prior species. Ecology, ecosystem and systems science,
ecological networks, and sustainability science afford a similarly transformative
new sense of self. As we strive to portray in this book, we humans are fully
integral with the web of life “from origin to destiny.” The original tapestry of
lifeÀenvironment relations we did not weave, but in the anthropocene earth, we
are now very much responsible for major and creative aspects of the design and
implementation of the planetary tapestry that is the web of life. We are at a fork
in the road, and the choices and eventual destiny of life are our responsibility.
The new self-realization required from full understanding and appreciation of
holistic ecology is equally as compelling as the Darwinian implications of our
genetic and evolutionary unity with Nature. Grasping our ecosystemic selves, we
are aware of our participation in an extensive and multi-scale life system that is
here and now, minute-by-minute, second-by-second, with every molecule of O2
we inhale and every single calorie of food energy we ingest, burn, and live by.
This unity with Nature was also relevant to evolutionary dynamics far back in
time; holistic lifeÀenvironment relations were active when proto-humans evolved
larger brain size, and when innovations such as tool use and language arose.
Ecological network science reveals and quantifies that we are an incredible nexus
of a multitude of energy, material, informational, and relational flows. And holistic
ecology demonstrates that this network aspect is now, always has been, and
always will be essential to our humanness. Humanness is essentially about connectivity
to ourselves, to each other, and to the environment. We are connected
whether we recognize and embrace it or not. As Wendell Berry wrote, “There is
no such thing as autonomy; there is only a distinction between responsible and
irresponsible dependence” (1977, p. 116). We hope this book can lead to a more
responsible, engaged, and appreciative understanding of the active role of the
“ecological theater” in which the “evolutionary play” is performed.
This new unity, the holistic humanÀenvironment relation, is the continuing
and everyday reality, and the one we need to heed now to make a radical course
correction. Ironically, understanding and appreciating our essential unity with our
planetary home may well be a necessary developmental step before colonizing
life beyond Earth can have a chance to succeed.
One of the surprises, delights, and rewards of the work and writing is the
learning that can occur during the process. One new insight gleaned from the collaborative
creation of this book involved a deeper understanding and surprising
twist to one of Donella Meadows’ contributions. We had known that she ranked
“the power to transcend paradigms” as the number one source of leverage for
influencing complex social, economic, environmental systems. At the start of this
book journey, we took this as evidence and encouragement to push forward with
our efforts for a paradigm shift in life sciences and wider industrial culture. As
we had to struggle to compile and unify the full book, however, her principle
took on new and unexpected meaning and power. For Meadows did not only
speak about transcending the dominant mechanistic paradigm of modern science—her
principle was generic; thus, it must apply to all paradigms. In the
xx Preface
exhilarating but humbling epiphany that this realization unleashed, we had to
apply her principle even to our own most closely held and cherished ideas and
concepts. We ask that you read with an eye to assess whether we have been true
to her insight. We now see even more leverage and power in being open to
changing one’s own mind and being free to honestly challenge one’s own cherished
assumptions and worldview. And we have employed her idea of “transcending”
as a central concept throughout the book—one that is complementary to our
other main concept, “sustaining.”
We have worked in our fields for about 25 years. We have worked on this
book for about 18 months. We know it is just another stepping stone. And so, as
we offer this for your reading and consideration, we also ask and invite your collaboration.
We seek allies willing to read and discuss this book in a graduate seminar,
or reading groups, collaborative teams or interested individuals to read this
closely and provide us honest feedback and criticism. We know already that a
second edition will be needed, and we hope this next book will have even more
coauthors and contributors.
As we continue to learn from our mentors, we also continue to deepen the process
of learning from what they have learned from—natural ecosystems. While
we are concerned by the state of the world, and though one key impetus is seeking
to solve a systemic crisis, we are continually inspired by natural ecosystems
that are able to heal themselves and to reorganize, recover, and regenerate from
massive disturbance. While some of the explanations for these capacities for selfsustaining
are paradoxical—requiring equal respect for life as well as death, for
example—we take heart in the nearly 4-billion-year track record of success. We
have lots of science to do, lots of work, and lots of creative play and fun to be
had. This is the glorious bright side of the humanÀenvironment condition. In this
creative space, we can solve all problems, together.
Daniel A. Fiscus
Western Maryland Food Council, Cumberland, MD, United States
Brian D. Fath
Department of Biological Sciences, Towson University, Towson, MD, United States;
Advanced Systems Analysis Program, International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis,
Laxenburg, Austria
August 2018
xxiPreface
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Reviews
Foundations for Sustainability is an important synthesis that points the way,
along a long and rocky road, to an ultimate solution of humanity’s environmental
problem.
Edward O. Wilson, Emeritus Professor, Harvard University.
By taking the big picture of our spaceship called planet Earth, and mixing this
with modern ideas on ecology and energy flows, this wonderful little book is a
must read for every free thinking individual. The writing is bright, fresh and
easy, and the ideas are all worth pondering for days. The Book’s framework
offers concrete sustainability pathways each embedded with a win-win
philosophy.”
Jaia Syvitski, former Director IGBP.
In clear and compelling language, the authors of this remarkable book present
solid scientific and ethical foundations for a ‘science in service to Life,’ oriented
unequivocally toward building a sustainable future. In view of the frequent
co-option and distortion of the concept of sustainability, their effort
could not be more timely. I recommend Foundations for Sustainability warmly
to anyone concerned about the future of humanity.
Fritjof Capra, author of The Web of Life, coauthor of The Systems
View of Life.
In this compelling call to “serve life”, Fiscus and Fath have taken direct aim
at the one thing holding us back from moving beyond industrialism: our inability
to recognize the limits of our own beliefs. Drawing on an astonishingly
broad and deep integration of science, philosophy, spirituality, and culture,
they show us how to let go of the myths of modernity and embrace a fundamentally
different relationship with each other and the planet nurtured by mutual
understanding, cooperation, acceptance and unity.
Laura Lengnick, Author of Resilient Agriculture: Cultivating Food
Systems for a Changing Climate.
Fiscus and Fath provide a comprehensive and philosophical perspective on the
holistic approach to ecosystems, and on the need to confront the interplay
between the physical environment and life. They provide counterpoint to those
such as me, for whom the complex adaptive system perspective views systemlevel
properties as largely emergent from processes at much lower levels of
organization, but feeding back to influence those lower-level interactions.
Simon Levin, Professor in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Princeton University.
xxiii
An ambitious work, Foundations for Sustainability is a radical challenge to the
foundations of life science. Get ready to experience your mind stretch to see
the connectedness of all life in new ways. Best of all, Fiscus and Fath help us
see possibilities to address our planet’s greatest crises. Great for the general
reader and professionals alike.
Frances Moore Lappe´, author of Diet for a Small Planet and EcoMind.
xxiv Reviews
Acknowledgments
Any book project is the culmination of work made by many hands. This project,
in particular, has emerged out of conversations, dialogues, collaborations, workshops,
and courses that we have participated in over a lifetime of pondering big
questions about the future of human–environment interactions. It is impossible to
list here all the persons that have touched or shaped us and the ideas herein, but
we are grateful for and anticipate further collaborations. We are thankful for the
patient and responsive team at Elsevier for shepherding us through this process.
We are grateful that Laura Kelleher got the whole project started and with faith
and encouragement facilitated the early days of the book.
Thanks to countless librarians who help provide access to the collective
wisdom of prior workers. Special thanks to Felicity Pors at the Niels Bohr
Archive for assistance in tracking down the original sources of Neils Bohr’s
comments on “great truths”.
Thanks to Sarah McManus, Steven Fiscus, and Jan Heath for generously sharing
their artwork and for creative discussions of the interplay between art, science,
and the main ideas of the book.
xxv
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CHAPTER
1To solve a difficult problem,
enlarge it
INTRODUCTION
At its center, this book is a scientific work that we offer in service to life itself,
life as a unified whole. We have sought to develop and present scientific theory
and linked applications that are rigorously rooted in science. In order to do that,
we have had to question and modify the foundations of science itself, to prepare
this ground so it is fertile to accept and nurture the roots of the science and
actions we see as vital. The novelty and gravity of the human-environmental circumstances
we now face provide the necessity as mother of inventing solutions
commensurate with the challenge. These modified foundations unfold throughout
the book as we aim to expand on an applied-theory science for sustainability that:
1. Balances and synergizes holism with reductionism;
2. Equally emphasizes internalist and self-referential as well as objectivist
perspectives;
3. Is anticipatory and accelerates the pace and process of paradigm shifts; and
4. Is consciously, intentionally, and transparently value-based centered on the
value of life.
We will elaborate on these and additional founding principles and give credit to
path breaking works of those from whom we have learned. In particular,
Ulanowicz’ (1999, 2009) “ecological metaphysic” is a guiding light that encapsulates
a system of ideas compatible with LifeÀenvironment unity. His metaphysic
includes three key tenets of reality that he gleaned from studies of ecosystems and
networks; living systems are characterized by contingency, feedback, and memory.
We also develop and explain the coherent links to philosophy and values as
well as to actions and daily life. To address such a broad range of topics requires
that we focus on a level that is shared common ground between these areas—the
basic ideas at the foundation of science as well as ethics, culture, and day-to-day
reality. There are many ideas and processes at the intersection, from experience
and experiments to reasoning, values, decision-making, learning, and understanding.
We see it as necessary to work on the bridge areas between science and society
as this is where we see both the causes and solutions of our current major
problems to lie.
Foundations for Sustainability. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-12-811460-5.00001-7
Copyright © 2019 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
1
A critical issue for understanding our current world situation—especially the
“global ecological crisis,” but also many related social and economic troubles—
relates to the interdependence between “systems of ideas” in various cultures and
subsets of cultures and “real world systems” or more simply, the real world. We
will examine many detailed descriptions of the various subset problems that make
up the current crisis, but for now, we cite these top 11 factors (Table 1.1) as sufficient
hard evidence, corroborated by thousands of scientific studies, and reported
experiences of millions of citizens worldwide, to make the case for a bona fide
global socio-ecological crisis.
In addition to these primarily environmental indicators of systemic dysfunction,
we could add many others that are more social and economic, such as growing
income inequality, widespread armed conflicts—many of which derive from
natural resources—challenges with human health, and more. Although the challenges
we face are global and cannot be untangled along national borders, this critique
and proposal for solutions mainly applies to industrial cultures such as the
United States and other developed nations.
This is the real world as we see it now, and we aim to show that these conditions
have been manifest based on the ways we think about—and then relate to—
the world and environment. This interface and integral relationship between how
we think and the outcomes we see in the world are at the crux of what we
addressed in the 2012 paper (Fiscus et al., 2012) and other works. We proposed
that our shared “system of ideas” (or paradigm, shared mental model, etc.) is
responsible for our current lifeÀthreatening state of affairs in the real world
showing chronic and systemic environmental degradation, as well as systemic
social dysfunction. And that, going forward, in order to solve our current suite of
chronic and systemic environmental problems, we will need to change our minds,
mindsets, and one or more “system of ideas.”
Table 1.1 Hard Evidence of Our Crisis (and see Fig. 1.1)
1. Soil loss and degradation
2. Unprecedented land use change and conversion of natural habitat to human
dominated landscapes
3. Rates of species extinctions on par with the five mass extinctions of all time
4. Plateau of food production and increasing vulnerability of the food supply
5. Disruption of the global nitrogen cycle
6. Pressure related to fossil-fuel dependency (including conflicts over pipelines, fracking,
and more)
7. Global climate disruption
8. Sea level rise and impacts on coastal areas with dense human population
9. Ocean acidification and related disruption to coral reefs and ecosystems
10. Water pollution and shortages in many areas
11. Persistent and bioaccumulating toxins and solid waste such as plastic and micro-
plastics
2 CHAPTER 1 To solve a difficult problem, enlarge it
FIGURE 1.1
This diagram depicts the current humanÀenvironment system of problems or “mess” in
the sense of Ackoff (1974). Our culturally shared system of ideas is at the center, and this
is linked closely to the dominant scientific paradigm. This central systemic cause leads to
the ultimate “tragedy of the commons” outcomes by a set of relationships that radiate
outward (influence travels from center outward, from ideas to actions to global impacts) in
stepwise fashion:
A. A paradigm in science is promulgated via education, technology, and media to most
people in industrial culture. It is the assumed and shared normative system of ideas,
specifically with respect to life and environment. In this science paradigm, life is
separated from environment thus severing the unity of life and life-support systems
conceptually and scientifically.
B. Following the scientific paradigm, inherent in the cultural system of ideas, life is
separated from environment in mind and action. This is the key error (or outdated
paradigm) that severs the unity of life and life-support systems in the real world.
C. Once fragmented, it is possible and likely that the value of environment is seen and
treated as less than the value of life. Note that it is not possible for this relative
devaluation of environment to occur if lifeÀenvironment remains unified as a single
focal entity and system of study. This follows from the revised paradigm we present
here.
D. Individuals act for self-interest primarily and compete for what they perceive as limited,
scarce, and zero-sum resources and assume that environment degradation is normal,
expected, inevitable, and acceptable.
E. Environment is consumed and degraded as manifest in many symptoms of ecological
crisis, and the influence of the citizens’ mental fragmentation and devaluation of
environment travels upward to larger scales and produces the global crisis.
3Introduction
THE REALITY OF WINÀWIN
The prevailing science paradigm sees a fragmented and antagonistic relationship
between life and environment and between humans and environment by logical
extension. This paradigm separates life and environment as distinct entities and is
conceptually aligned with the Darwinian story of life as “the struggle for existence”
emphasizing competition of individuals upon an environmental stage. Our alternative
paradigm emphasizes a mutualistic relationship between life and environment
(Lovelock, 1972; Patten, 1982; Fath and Patten, 1998; Bondavalli and Ulanowicz,
1999; Fath, 2007). This approach integrates life and environment into a unified
whole and seeks to understand the interdependence and coevolution of the full
lifeÀenvironment system emphasizing cooperation. We assert that this alternative
view is key for achieving a winÀwin relationship between humans and environment,
which would then enable lasting and systemic solution (in the form of a system of
solutions) to the “global ecological crisis” (for characterization of this crisis, see
Wackernagel et al., 2002; Leigh, 2005; Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, 2005;
Cabrera et al., 2008; Rockstro¨m et al., 2009) and environmental sustainability.
Ecological network analysis (ENA) is a holistic scientific approach that quantifies
storages and flows of key life currencies such as energy, carbon, nitrogen,
phosphorus, water, and more. ENA has been employed to study hundreds of ecosystems
and food webs with data to document “who eats whom” and by how
much in any given ecosystem of study. It is based on the science and mathematics
of thermodynamics, information theory, and material flow of networks that are
generic, and it has also been applied to flows of money and goods in economies,
geographic flows in transportation networks, and more.
In addition to standard ecological questions of feeding interactions, ENA of
food webs gives insight into the indirect relations that exist in these interconnected
networks. In particular, it has been shown (Fath and Patten, 1998) that the
overall relations tend toward positive outcomes both in terms of type (mutualism)
and degree (synergism). In other words, normal ecosystem interdependencies promote
mutualism and synergism. When all direct effects (from first order, proximate
interactions) and indirect effects (from higher order interactions, between
network components that are only indirectly connected) are integrated, most pairwise
relations between species or components in ecosystem networks are
winÀwin. Despite this widespread pattern of mutually beneficial relations
between living entities, humans (again, in modern industrial cultures) defy this
pattern and clearly show negative impacts on other species, the atmosphere, soils,
other integral components of the biosphere, and even ourselves. Therefore, it is
reasonable to propose our global ecological predicament this way:
The fundamental, net humanÀenvironment relationship is antagonistic or
winÀlose.
The crux of the problem and solution is a shift between two scientific views
of the fundamental relationship between life and environment. Thus, we propose
4 CHAPTER 1 To solve a difficult problem, enlarge it
the holistic summary of our global ecological solution, and the desired outcome
we seek to assist is:
The fundamental, net humanÀenvironment relationship is mutualistic or
winÀwin.
With this systemic solution, we would live in a world in which human actions
naturally and consistently result in improvement in our environment and lifesupport
systems over time, unlike the trend of environmental degradation we see
now.
A NEW SYSTEM OF IDEAS
Frances Moore Lappe´ presented a similar approach in her book, EcoMind, where
her solution is that we “think like an ecosystem.” Capra and Luisi, in their book,
The Systems View of Life, suggested the solution is a systems view of life to
replace a mechanical metaphor. Our recent work with additional coauthors,
Flourishing within the Limits of Growth: Following Nature’s Way, also proposed
implementing lessons from systems ecology and natural processes as a step forward
to find integrated, winÀwin solutions to the socio-ecological crisis. Here,
we weave these and other contributions into a coherent framework we see as
uniquely able to allow us to think, act, live, and create a culture from the locus of
“lifeÀenvironment as a unified whole,” such that we think and act on behalf of
this whole. David Orr (2008, Encyclopedia of Ecology) echoed a similar analysis
as related to education:
In important respects, all education is environmental education, that is, by what
is included or excluded students are taught that they are part of or apart
from ecological systems. The standard, discipline-centric curriculum may have
contributed to a mindset that helped to create environmental problems by
separating subjects into boxes and conceptually by separating people from
nature. (p. 1119)
Many workers have used many different terms related to the shared cultural
“system of ideas.” It will help to acknowledge many of them and then to adopt a
single terminology for this book for the sake of clarity. We are aware of this set
and acknowledge many others not in this list:
Paradigm Conceptual framework Conceptual model
World view Epistemology Relational model
System of ideas Mental model World hypothesis (Pepper)
Mindset Belief system Root metaphor (Pepper)
Value system Zeitgeist Way of thinking
Ideology Shared story/narrative Metaphysic
5A New System of Ideas
And even others, and combinations of the above.
Given these options, we choose to use primarily the term system of ideas to
represent the detailed and comprehensive picture and description of the shared
cultural mindset; and, we use the term root metaphor (Pepper, 1942) to speak of
the shorthand version or central motivating image to which the entire system of
ideas of a given era is often distilled or condensed. We also follow Goerner et al.
(2008) and their depiction of the revolution and total re-structuring process of the
cultural system of ideas as Great Change and that the process of periodic and profound
Great Change—from the Renaissance to the Industrial Revolution and
more—is driven primarily by learning. We also use the term paradigm when
speaking specifically of the system of ideas within science, following Kuhn
(1962).
We also borrow from Goerner et al. (2008) and Pepper (1942) and see the
root metaphor now in a process of changing from “machine” or “mechanism” to
“ecosystem,” “web,” or “network.” We say “now in a process of changing” and
do believe qualitative and profound change is happening in the near term, but we
also know that aspects of this transition have been conceived, written, signaled,
foreshadowed, promoted, and built upon for decades and even centuries. Again,
speaking mainly about United States and industrial culture, from Thoreau and
Emerson, to Alfred Lotka and Lawrence Henderson, to Aldo Leopold, Rachel
Carson, Wendell Berry, and many others in science, arts, and diverse fields—
much of our message, and many of the ideas in our system of ideas have been
said before. We see the current need to add our voice to this choir, to help replay
and amplify those great clear voices of the past, and to call them back to the
main arena for encore performances now, when we need them the most.
We see this Great Change to a new root metaphor, and the associated major
overhaul of our system of ideas, to be necessary if we are to solve the current
suite of entangled, chronic, and systemic ecological problems. This is our current
assessment of the best way to follow Ackoff (1974) who wrote:
English does not contain a suitable word for “system of problems.” Therefore,
I have had to coin one. I choose to call such a system a mess.
And soon after:
The solution to a mess can seldom be obtained by independently solving each
of the problems of which it is composed. (p. 21)
We similarly see the current humanÀenvironment problem as a mess and that
to help with the Great Change to a new root metaphor and a new system of ideas
will be our best and perhaps only chance to emerge from this crisis with a successful
outcome and path forward to true sustainability and winÀwin relationships
with our environment and home. Rather than solving each problem separately, a
new system of ideas (in culture) linked to a new paradigm (in science) could get
at the core causes from where the problems arise. See Fig. 1.2 for our depiction
of this situation.
6 CHAPTER 1 To solve a difficult problem, enlarge it
We need to shift from a focus on treating symptoms, something that is all too
common in a highly specialized world, to preventive and systemic approaches.
This is in accord with what Wendell Berry referred to as “Solving for Patterns,”
which relies on integrated solutions. For example, three of his fourteen principles
instruct that:
3. A good solution improves the balances, symmetries, or harmonies within a
pattern.
4. A good solution solves more than one problem, and it does not make new
problems.
13. A good solution in one pattern preserves the integrity of the pattern that
contains it.
Berry (1981)
Those are characteristics of the solutions we seek here, and we believe our
proposed solutions meet these criteria.
In this book, we present an expanded version of our previous ideas and add
new evidence and explanatory corroboration. We show how and why a new mainstream
system of ideas, aligned with the ecological metaphysic of Ulanowicz
(1999, 2009), holds the greatest promise as a scientifically based way to better
harmonize our thoughts with the real-world outcomes we desire. Speaking of this
ideal end point, we could begin to describe a future humanÀenvironment system
FIGURE 1.2
Contrast between the “tragedy of the commons” that occurs as a result of fragmentation
of life from environment versus the possibility of the “bounty of the commons” which life
achieves and which we can achieve by reuniting life and environment via foundations of
science.
7A New System of Ideas
in which all of the top 11 problems above (Table 1.1) have been solved and continue
in healthy and sustainable conditions. At that point, we would observe
1. Soil building, increased fertility and aggradation;
2. A compromise similar to E.O. Wilson’s “Saving Half the Earth” is reached;
3. Rates of species extinctions in line with historical rates between mass
extinctions;
4. Improved food production and resilience, sustainability, affordability, and
health of the food supply and its beneficiaries;
5. Stable global nitrogen cycle including an end to dead zones in estuaries and
gulfs;
6. Broken addiction with fossil fuels with most energy from renewable sources;
7. Stable global climate similar to the Holocene; no net increase in atmospheric
gas concentrations or temperature;
8. Sea levels follow natural patterns and more secure coastal areas with human
populations;
9. An end to increased ocean acidification and regeneration of coral reefs and
ecosystems;
10. Abundant, affordable clean water sufficient for human needs and for wild
nature; and
11. Great reduction in environmental toxins/waste; emissions within rates of
recycling or decontamination.
Clearly, to achieve success on so many variables requires a new, more comprehensive,
more holistic level of systems thinking coupled with well-coordinated
innovative actions, monitoring, and adaptive management.
But, we do not seek to develop and propose one single system of ideas and
defend it as more correct than all others in any specific absolute or exclusive
sense. This kind of hegemonic approach may in fact be closely linked to our
deepest underlying problem—for example, any approach that serves to divide
rather than unify, splinter rather than combine views, or foster argument more than
agreement seems a path toward continued fragmentation and confusion rather
than unity and cooperation. Instead, we seek a “big tent” or umbrella system of
ideas that is generic enough to be inclusive of and compatible with many others,
even ones that are very different—even views that appear diametrically opposed.
In this way, we propose a conceptual framework that we see capable to help unify
people by providing a coherent and readily accessible way to see and understand
our common ground.
We know of many other approaches that are compatible, and have informed
our thinking, and that are also leading the way forward. Several kindred efforts
that are highly noteworthy include work of the Center for Advancement of the
Steady State Economy, the Great Transition Initiative, the Research Alliance for
Regenerative Economics, and Future Earth. These are a few of the strong and
clear voices we seek to echo and join with a larger chorus of consensus and cooperation
for systemic change.
8 CHAPTER 1 To solve a difficult problem, enlarge it
LIFE AS THE GREATEST COMMON DENOMINATOR
The need for unity instead of divisiveness, and the need for a solid basis for
people to come together to address our profoundly problematic situation, can be
advanced by seeing life as the “greatest common denominator.” In this book, we
follow Albert Schweitzer and his work on “reverence for life,” and we ground
our scientific and conceptual work with a view in which life is the basis of value
and ethics. We see science and the scientific method as of fundamental importance
and utility, but many people have become skeptical and lack in trust and
respect for science. It may be that more often and more explicitly stating and
ensuring that science acts in service to life will aid both the progress toward sustainability
and increased trust and respect for science. These two benefits are why
we see the need to begin the foundations for sustainability with ethics and values
and to focus our ethics and values on the unique and uniquely unifying reality of
life. Chapter 2, is devoted to this idea of “life value,” but we mention
Schweitzer’s concept here briefly. Schweitzer (1965) wrote:
The elemental fact, present in our consciousness every moment of our existence,
is: I am life that wills to live, in the midst of life that wills to live. The
mysterious fact of my will to live is that I feel a mandate to behave with sympathetic
concern toward all the wills to live which exist side by side with my
own. The essence of Goodness is: Preserve life, promote life, help life to
achieve its highest destiny. The essence of Evil is: Destroy life, harm life,
hamper the development of life.
The fundamental principle of ethics, then, is reverence for life. (p. 26)
The importance of this perspective is that life itself has value, inherent to it as
life. This is not a measure of the economic transactions one extolls from nature nor
is it the ecological rationalization that life supports further life processes, nor the
scientific value we earn through investigations, nor even the aesthetic wonder and
beauty we experience from a serene sunset or breaking wave. Rather, it is a moral
underpinning of value for life simply because it is living. Schweitzer also wrote:
I cannot but have reverence for all that is called life. I cannot avoid compassion
for everything that is called life. That is the beginning and the foundation
of morality. (pp. 115À116)
Solutions that improve the conditions of life are sought as foundational, but
we also speak soon (just below) of the distinction between two aspects of life:
discrete and sustained. Clearly, promoting sustained life is a priority from the perspective
of the long term and all peoples. In addition to Schweitzer, Aldo
Leopold (1949) provides a succinct description of the approach to ground all
ethics in explicit valuation of life:
A thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability, and beauty of
the biotic community. It is wrong when it tends otherwise. The Land Ethic, A
Sand County Almanac.
9Life as the Greatest Common Denominator
It is interesting to note that Schweitzer’s first printed mention of reverence for
life came after an experience with hippos in Africa, and Leopold’s views were
transformed by witnessing a wolf dying, watching the green fire in its eyes extinguishing.
For these scientists and thinkers, as for ourselves, close contact with life
can spark lasting insight.
That life serves as an excellent universal basis for ethics, and as an ethical
basis able to unify all people, is perhaps common sense. We add details below,
but by speaking of “life,” we refer to life itself, life as a unified whole, all life;
this must be understood as distinct from the life of a single individual or organism
and even as distinct from the existence versus extinction of a single species. To
state the rationale explicitly:
Life is the “thing” (quality, reality or process) we humans all share, it is the
also the “thing” that unites the human species with all other species on Earth.
Life is the prerequisite that must continue for any other human endeavors, concerns,
hopes, aspirations, development, or progress to be possible. If life ends
or is jeopardized, then all other concerns end or must take lower priority.
Additional corroboration comes when we ask what threatens life and therefore
is bad, wrong, or undesirable. Here, we can reverse Leopold’s statement:
A thing is wrong when it tends to threaten or harm the integrity, stability, and
beauty of the biotic community.
Note, that for Leopold, the fundamental unit of which he speaks is the community.
This is an interesting and important articulation, and it is also worth noting
that life appears here as an adjective—a modifier describing a certain type of
community, a biotic one.
LIFE AS COMPLEX AND DUAL MODELED
We have spoken of life as a unified whole, and of the distinction of discrete versus
sustained life, and this helps to understand the importance of the associations
of Leopold, Berry, and Schweitzer with life as community or a complex, selfreinforcing,
awesome, and eternal phenomenon. This dual-model view of life
draws clear lines between the discrete life inherent in cells, organisms, and even
species, and the sustained life inherent in communities, ecosystems, and the biosphere.
In addition to the difference in the clarity of spatially boundedness of discrete
life forms (again, mainly cells, and organisms) which have readily
recognizable skin or membrane boundaries, and the difference between the longevity
of their existence, we can focus on a difference related to logic. At any
point in time, discrete life forms can be determined to be either alive or dead. In
contrast, sustained life forms (most clearly as applied to ecosystems and the biosphere)
cannot be thus classified and instead are simultaneously both alive and
10 CHAPTER 1 To solve a difficult problem, enlarge it
dead; they contain and depend on the integration of both living and nonliving
functional components.
In this book, we employ and further develop these complementary models of
sustained and discrete life, and we point out ways in which over-emphasis on the
discrete model in life science and education is linked to our systemic
lifeÀenvironment crisis. Imagine if we taught physics as restricted to either the
particle or the wave view of light. We see the complementarity of life models just
as essential for scientific understanding and all applications.
At least three corroborating views exist for the idea of two types of life, for
the necessity of the distinction, and for individual definitions for “discrete life”
and “sustained life.” We present just one of these for now. Morowitz (1992: 5)
wrote, “. . .we recognize two approaches to defining life: one focuses on the properties
of individual organisms and the other is much more global and ecological
in character,” and:
Sustained life is a property of an ecological system rather than a single organism
or species. A one-species ecological system is never found. The carbon
cycle requires at least one primary producer and a method of returning carbon
to the CO2 pool. A system of only herbivores would eventually die of starvation.
A system of only primary producers would grind to a halt from CO2
exhaustion unless autolysis or burning produced CO2 at a sufficient rate, which
does not appear to occur.
Morowitz (1992, p. 54)
He went on to discuss how the origin of life can be considered to involve key
planetary processes including “protoecological cycles” and synergy between anabolism
and catabolism. Unfortunately, he may have diluted the power of his holistic
framework when he wrote, in the same book, “All life is cellular in nature,”
and later, “A cell is the most elementary unit that can sustain life.” Perhaps, by
not keeping the terminology and reference units related to sustaining life clear,
and by other statements such as titling his book The Beginnings of Cellular Life,
Morowitz (1992) assisted with continuation of the single-type, species-centered
paradigm of life.
More discussion and supporting work on this complementary model of discrete
and sustained life is presented in Chapter 6. See also the section below on a
related dialectical distinction between deep truth and simple truth. Much as we
must reconcile seeming opposites and mutually exclusive models to understand
the complexity of light, to understand the complexity of life, we have to integrate
death and dying, eating and recycling. All discrete life forms, outside of autotrophs,
kill and eat other discrete life forms to sustain their own lives, and life
itself is a continual process of killing, eating, dying, going extinct in individual/
organism/species form to sustain life as a unified whole. Patten (2014, 2016a,b)
has asked “Is life’s destruction of current life (eating and being eaten) to sustain
and re-configure new life to fit a changing planet the only way to organize a biosphere?”
We currently see no way to answer other than to say “yes;” and thus, we
11Life as Complex and Dual Modeled
propose to act to make the best of this reality. As for Schweitzer, for us this mystery
and paradox is cause for reverence and awe. We also see this holistic integration
of life and death as necessary for the path forward to a truly sustainable
lifeÀenvironment relation.
DYNAMIC RANGE OF APPLICABILITY
We present in this book ideas able to unify life and environment, to integrate discrete
and sustained forms of life, and to reconcile that sustained life depends fully
on death. In Berry’s (1981) words:
In an energy economy appropriate to the use of biological energy, all bodies,
plant and animal and human, are joined in a kind of energy community. . . .
They are indissolubly linked in complex patterns of energy exchange. They die
into each other’s life, live into each other’s death. (p. 90)
One depiction of the “dynamic range” of this holistic conceptual framework is
shown in Table 1.2—a chart of six realms. This table shows our ambitious hope
for a system of ideas to link from ideas of, and beliefs about, God, spirit, and the
unknowable on the left side to real world and practical action for daily life, meeting
real needs of the human body, and community action for human and environmental
enhancement on the right side. One need not believe in God for this
framework to be of value—one could easily start with philosophy, ethics, and
values and consider just five realms.
Table 1.2 represents a conceptual framework toward a system of ideas able to
span from the unknowable and mysterious, to the most abstract and subjective
ideas, and on to the most pragmatic and basic aspects of daily life with the ultimate
goal of healthy and sustainable humanÀenvironment relations. The main
contributions of this book are in the center of this table, and they are central to
the new system of ideas we see now emerging. Near the middle of Table 1.2, we
see our ideas as pivotal, serving catalyst roles, and providing leverage for systemic
change—including a new science formalism that prohibits fragmentation of
life from environment and of discrete from sustained life, and Ecological
Network Analysis showing how “everything is connected to everything” very literally
and how this can be quantified (Ulanowicz and Puccia, 1990; Fath, 2007).
In Chapter 6, we show in detail many more major and paradigm-shifting concepts
from ENA and whole system studies. For example, such studies have shown
that the US human food system uses 10 calories of fossil energy for every 1 calorie
food energy, which is clearly unsustainable, and clearly different from energy
use in natural food webs. ENA also quantifies how indirect effects between any
two participants in a food web are usually greater than direct effects. The science
of ENA is the most versatile tool by which observations, data, and replicable science
can be part of the Great Change from the mechanism to the web root
metaphor.
12 CHAPTER 1 To solve a difficult problem, enlarge it
Table 1.2 Dynamic Range of Applicability—The Ambitious Goal of Our System of Ideas, Unified via Holism, Reverence
for Life, and Love
Realm of Pure
Spirit
Realm of Human Spirit, Ethics, Values Realm of Science Theory and
Application
Society/Enviro. Realm
Love thy neighbor
Higher power God is Love Service to. . .??? Holistic Science to Serve Life Itself,
Life as a Unified Whole
Systemic Change for
Health and Justice (some
specific and personal
examples below)
Golden Rule (To life, to God, to
nation, to humanity,
to community, to
family, etc.)
God Love Love Love Love Love
Faith/belief Ideals Potential Actual Living reality
Unknowable ’ Link to
unknowable
Schweitzer:
Reverence For Life
Anticipation Reality Gratitude
Beyond our ken Reflection Creation, ideation Validated data Sustainable agriculture
Wisdom traditions What is right to do? Holism Ex. Networks Food assistance
Religions What is important? How to observe Ex. Human food
web
Anti-poverty programs
Truth, meaning What to look for Care,
compassion
One spirit/soul One heart One mind One body
Spirituality Philosophy Science as theory Science as
applied
Service to people
Spiritual practice Ethics Ideas Data Community action
Meditation Values Mental models Maps and
graphs
Note: missing from
this table: war,
greed, money, fear,
hate. . .
Church/Temple/
Mosque/Synagogue/
Shrine/etc.
Subjectivity More objective,
hypotheses
Observing
process, real
observations
Environmental stewardship
Life Life Life Life Life
Holistic spectrum of spirit-material
Life (again, life itself, or life as a complex unified whole) is such a comprehensive
basis for ethics and unity that it can even serve to unify and integrate two
widely divergent human views. Next, we present an example showing how we seek
to aid unity between people and groups with divergent views and belief systems—
that is, operating with different systems of ideas—related to the environment.
SUSTAINERS AND TRANSCENDERS
One may get the sense that we move one step forward and two steps back, that
the right hand doesn’t know what the left hand is doing, and that we have major
institutions, policies, movements, energies, leaders, organizations, and efforts
working at cross purposes with respect to sustainability and related challenges in
the humanÀenvironment crisis realm. Another sense that has stimulated this work
comes from efforts to understand the “climate deniers” and similar groups who
are so opposed to the mainstream scientific assessment of climate change and the
warnings that major change is needed to avert or reduce catastrophic impacts.
Unfortunately, climate has become one issue in the bundle of positions that right
and left politicians carry, particularly in the United States. There is no doubt that
some positions are driven by financial interests, but at the core of the divide may
be an oppositional base that cannot reconcile the climate issue with their inherent,
adopted, learned, assumed, or operating system of ideas. Problems occur, however
for both sides, when a system of ideas mismatches to reality, as well as when
opposing sides fight and impede each other to the detriment of both. However,
what is that system of ideas, or root metaphor, that sees no urgency of priority to
limits and planetary boundaries, or that acts to encourage individual views that
are diametrically opposed?
We think it will help to characterize two tendencies or modes of life that play
out in human systems. We suggest that if we do not understand these two modes
we may continue what we have now—huge amounts of unnecessary confusion
and conflict. These ideas came out of trying to understand how someone could
have a system of ideas (again, we could say mental model or belief system) such
that they do not accept the scientific consensus of climate change or evolution.
We struggled to find a larger explanation (in the spirit of one of Stephen Covey’s
Seven Habits of Highly Effective People that is “seek first to understand and second
to be understood”) such that perhaps the “climate deniers” were “right” on
some other level that we were not aware of and not taking into account. We
express our simple working hypothesis with metaphors of two types of people,
with two different systems of ideas, with respect to environment and especially
with respect to environmental limits, constraints, or challenges.
This typology starts by assuming that everyone is aware of the environmental
limits, constraints, and challenges now increasingly apparent, at least at some
general level. However, the proposal is to see two different responses to this
awareness. These two groups we label as “Sustainers” and “Transcenders,” in
14 CHAPTER 1 To solve a difficult problem, enlarge it
order to make the typology value-neutral similar to MyersÀBriggs personality
types. We are not trying to say that either is “good” or “bad,” or that one is better
than the other in an absolute sense.
In this typology, the “Transcenders” are aware of environmental limitations
(again, even if just at some general level such as “human impacts are damaging
the environment,” or “we are starting to see real shortages of key natural
resources”), but when confronted with a perceived limitation they seek to break
through it, innovate out of it, or change the world to transcend that external barrier
or limitation. The “Sustainers” adopt the opposite approach, and they accept
the perceived environmental limit and then seek to change themselves to fit
within, and sustain a lifestyle and culture within, that perceived real world
constraint.
Based on holistic and historical understanding of the origin, evolution, and
development of life, as well as understanding of human origins, evolution, and
development, we could view these two tendencies as both natural and needed.
The Transcender may be first out of the block, as in the case of migration to new
areas, modifying an environment to satisfy essential human needs. Whereas, this
approach focuses on extensive variables (quantities and acquisition), the Sustainer
contributes to resource intensivities (qualities and management). This can be seen
akin to the pioneer and climax adapted species described in ecological succession
theory. The early arrivers are attuned for growth, rapid response, and facilitating
the environmental conditions (r-selected species), whereas the later ones are prepared
to persist over the long haul with a priority on stability and homeostasis at
or near the carrying capacity (K-selected species). Since there is natural variety
over space and time, both roles contribute to the overall functioning in a patchy
landscape.
If these two modes are both natural and needed, if they have existed forever,
and are likely to exist forever, then we should not be stuck in a battle in which
adherents of the two worldviews fight against each other. It would be better to
dispel any myths or assumptions that either of these modes is more right or absolute
in truth. At a local scale, there may be a case of “right time, right place” that
one worldview fits the situational conditions “better” when resources are plentiful
(Transcenders) or scarce (Sustainers), but in a diverse and multiscale system there
are typically niches satisfying and requiring both types.
Elbow (1986) provides a generic principle of cognition that is relevant here:
The dialectical pattern of thinking provides some relief from [the] difficulty
inherent in knowing. Since perception and cognition are processes in which the
organism “constructs” what it sees or thinks according to models already there,
the organism tends to throw away or distort material that does not fit this
model. The surest way to get hold of what your present frame blinds you to is
to try to adopt the opposite frame, that is, to reverse your model. A person who
can live with contradiction and exploit it—who can use conflicting models—
can simply see and think more. (p. 241)
15Sustainers and Transcenders
We examine and employ Elbow’s ideas in greater depth in Chapter 7, but we
see this concept as important at the beginning. If we could agree that our models—as
good, true, and useful as they are—also blind us to any aspects of reality
that are not included in the model, then this highly refined and mature level of
dialectical thinking could be of enormous value in ending petty conflict so that
we can cooperate to tackle the real-world challenges we must face together. This
blindness becomes increasingly evident in the later chapters dealing with the
dominant machine metaphor in science and its applications.
One futuristic example of a case in which both types are needed is any project
to colonize life beyond Earth. As remote a project as it may sound, several groups
are actively planning and designing such missions now, such as the plans of
SpaceX to colonize Mars. For this project (which is fraught with many issues,
controversies, and unknowns, but we think still serves well as a case study and
thought experiment), we have to have the two camps—the Transcenders and the
Sustainers—working in close collaboration and synergy. Individuals from each
camp must work with acceptance of each other despite their seeming diametric
opposition. The Transcenders might lead the way, since the mission is perhaps
primarily about transcending the limit of the Earth as a base for life and human
life. But the Sustainers must co-lead, since for the mission to succeed in full—an
independent and self-sustaining outpost for life and human life beyond Earth—we
not only have to leave Earth, but we have to know how to take with us the crucial,
holistic, resilient, complex life-support system all humans must have. We
have to take with us a mini-biosphere, and we have to be able to self-sustain in
space as we colonize. This would be true for very long distance and long-term
space travel, for long-term life on a space station, and for establishing and sustaining
life on any other planet. NASA and other space efforts so far have had to
work to understand how, and then to develop successful systems, to recycle the
biological and other wastes of astronauts—CO2, water, urine, feces, food wastes,
and more. But as we imagine and begin to design the qualitatively different missions
of true colonization—missions which must be designed such that the crafts,
crews, and systems are fully independent of Earth—at that point we must understand
how, and then to develop successful systems, to recycle astronauts themselves.
We will have to understand the lifeÀenvironment relation at its very root
and complex dialectical core in order to establish a successful, survivable
lifeÀenvironment relation in the context of some totally different space or
planetary environment.
A space colony mission needs the full unity and cooperation of Transcenders
and Sustainers due to lack of contact with Earth. And, we need both modes cooperating
on Earth too, since we only have one Earth. Thus, figuring this out, ending
the conflict and confusion on Earth, is a top priority. Talk of space is important in
its own right, but also serves for discussion purposes and to examine the broad
and perhaps universal applicability of the typology. Remember—Earth is very
much like a spaceship (Spaceship Earth of Kenneth Boulding, Buckminster
Fuller, and others) and very much a solo life colony.
16 CHAPTER 1 To solve a difficult problem, enlarge it
This SustainerÀTranscender typology relates to others already published and
developed, including various typologies of people and their worldviews, systems
of ideas, and root metaphors with respect to the environment. We consider just
one here in detail but see value in exploring other such type schemes to aid with
unifying and finding synergy. In his scheme with “Druids” and “Engineers,” for
example, Paul Saffo seeks to prevent a viewpoint divide that could “. . .frustrate
the sensible application of technological innovation in the service of solving
humankind’s greatest challenges.” (Saffo, 2013).
Thompson et al. (1990) proposed a theory of culture and characterized a typology
of several distinct “ways of life” that provides support for the typology proposed
here. They base their work on the grid-group typology of Mary Douglas.
Their work employs three key concepts and terms: cultural biases, social relations,
and ways of life. They unify these three: “When we wish to designate a viable
combination of social relations and cultural bias, we speak of a way of life.”
Using these concepts, they “present a theory of sociocultural viability that
explains how ways of life maintain (and fail to maintain) themselves.”
(Thompson et al., 1990, p. 1). They wrote:
Causal priority, in our perception of ways of life, is given neither to cultural
bias nor to social relations. Rather each is essential to the other. Relations and
biases are reciprocal, interacting and mutually reinforcing: Adherence to a certain
pattern of social relationships generates a distinctive way of looking at the
world; adherence to a certain worldview legitimizes a corresponding type of
social relations. As in the case of the chicken and the egg, it is sufficient to
show that cultural biases and social relations are responsible for one another,
without confronting the issue of which came first. (p. 1)
In particular, the cultural theory stereotypes are useful in understanding one’s
relation with the environment and whether the focus is on managing and changing
ourselves, the environment, both, or neither. Table 1.3 shows the combinations of
interactions.
Our Transcenders and Sustainers map onto the Individualists and Egalitarians,
respectively. The centrist, compromising Hierarchists represent a pragmatic middle
ground and the capricious Fatalists just try to get through each day. This can
also be represented by the now classic ball and cup stability diagrams (see
Fig. 1.3) indicating whether a system, represented by the ball, is stable or not in
its current landscape. The Egalitarian frame is precarious with any disturbance
Table 1.3 Cultural Theory Types of Thompson et al. (1990) with Our
Sustainers and Transcenders Shown
Manage Needs Not Manage Needs
Manage resources Hierarchist Individualist (Transcenders)
Not manage resources Egalitarian (Sustainers) Fatalist
17Sustainers and Transcenders
throwing it out of balance and into a new regime (pick a daisy, move a star).
Oppositely, the Individualist sees a world of deep stability that any action we take
will be absorbed and buffered by the forces of nature (how can one species,
humans, impact the vast atmosphere?). Hierarchists again play the role of compromiser
recognizing both buffers and limits. Poor Fatalists see no hope for stability
in their flatworld where anything goes. This typology provides a useful
guidepost to understand why one holds specific positions; however, it is important
to note that these labels are not absolute and can and do change under different
circumstances and situations. A person making decisions on one topic as an individualist
could be a hierarchist on another (Fig. 1.4).
In summary, our main purpose in defining Transcenders and Sustainers is toward
seeking reconciliation and cooperation. Rather than continue to fight, we need ways
for these two strongly opinionated camps to accept and respect each other for the
greater good. It may help Sustainers to consider that perhaps it is not so much that
Transcenders—or, as sometimes disparagingly called “climate deniers”—literally
argue or refute evidence of environmental limits like climate change, it may be more
that they see the whole topic as an irrelevant or “unthinkable” idea or issue.
Similarly, rather than convert Sustainers to a more growth-oriented view and action
plan, Transcenders may do better to see the widespread need for learning to manage
human needs and working with rather than against the inherent patterns and processes
of nature that have helped life to self-sustain for over 4 billion years.
FIGURE 1.3
Ball and cup diagrams depicting systems and stabilities from the Thompson et al. (1990)
worldviews. This includes the center group hermits which can show characteristics of any
group.
18 CHAPTER 1 To solve a difficult problem, enlarge it
DEEP TRUTHS AND PARADIGMS
Our starting point is to develop and present ideas, theory, science, data analysis,
applications, and examples that can help us achieve true environmental sustainability.
However, given that this ultimate goal is so completely entangled with
human social, economic, and environmental ideas, policies, systems, and practices,
and with ideologies, beliefs, and governance strategies, we see it as an integral
goal to help achieve human peace, justice, and unity, and overall well-being,
thus requiring widespread cooperation and greatly diminished conflict, confusion,
divisiveness, and disagreement. This grand goal is again our approach to “start
with the end in mind” and “to think winÀwin”. This also acknowledges that people
are very different and diversity is good.
One approach to unify at deeper levels what seem to be in conflict on the surface
is the idea of “deep truth” from Niels Bohr. Bohr spoke of a deep truth as a
truth for which its opposite is also a deep truth. He wrote:
. . .the old saying of the two kinds of truth. To the one kind belong statements
so simple and clear that the opposite assertion obviously could not be
FIGURE 1.4
Depiction of self-world model in mind. This cartoon illustrates a simple idea—two people
can share the same real-world environment but have very different models in mind by
which they perceive and understand that shared objective reality. Different models or
systems of ideas can also lead to different expectations about the best or normal
humanÀenvironment relation.
19Deep Truths and Paradigms
defended. The other kind, the so-called “deep truths”, are statements in which
the opposite also contains deep truth.
Bohr (1949)
His son, Hans Bohr, wrote of this view in slightly different terms:
One of the favorite maxims of my father was the distinction between the two
sorts of truths, profound truths recognized by the fact that the opposite is also a
profound truth, in contrast to trivialities where opposites are obviously absurd.
Rosental (1967)
This openness to opposing ideas is fully compatible with science, as in the
simultaneous acceptance of the dual models of light as both particle and wave.
Light can be explained as wave via observations such as interference, diffraction,
and polarization, but the photoelectric effect requires the particle model.
Our similar dual-model framework for life presented above is based on the complementarity
of discrete life and sustained life, and we believe likewise presents a
fuller picture than either taken alone. If this discussion of reconciling opposing ideas
seems very abstract and that we have strayed from our assertion of real-world relevance,
then consider Donella Meadows’ ranked list of sources of leverage in complex
systems. Meadows (1999) was a systems thinker and lead-author of the
landmark book, Limits to Growth, among many lasting contributions. She understood
the profound complexity of real-world systems, and the difficulties of modeling
them, but she also was highly disciplined, wise, and clear about effective ways
to engage, intervene in and even “dance with” (Meadows, 2001) complex systems so
as to be successful in steering them, and ourselves, toward better futures.
Meadows (1999) proposed 12 leverage points for change with complex socioenvironmental
systems, which she referred to as “points of power” since a small
change in one can produce a large effect on the system. For our purposes of unifying
people of seemingly opposite perspectives, note especially the difference
between her #1 and #2 sources of leverage (Table 1.4).
This article is a mother lode of important concepts, but we quote just one
about her penultimate leverage point #2: “. . .people who have managed to intervene
in systems at the level of paradigm have hit a leverage point that totally
transforms systems.” (Meadows, 1999, p. 20). She also explains that societies
resist paradigm change ruthlessly, while it can occur instantaneously for an individual,
much as for Leopold’s land ethic and Schweitzer’s reverence for life
epiphanies. Given our need for transformative, systemic, widespread societal
change, we see it as mandatory to explore this leverage point fully.
We had not really understood the profound relevance of her #1 source of
leverage—the power to transcend paradigms—until after an extended period of
time considering what it would mean not only to let go of our own cherished idea
that the Sustainer paradigm is more correct, more true, and more good, but also
to accept that its total opposite, the Transcender paradigm, is equally true and
good. This is akin to Meadows’ #1 point of leverage, in the sense that to
20 CHAPTER 1 To solve a difficult problem, enlarge it
transcend paradigms is related to the ability to let go of attachment to or defense
of one’s own most closely held point of view. It feels as if a much larger and
broader form of unity or conflict resolution is possible when we go all the way
beyond specific paradigms as Meadows suggested. While some sort of “victory”
of Sustainers over Transcenders might help to resolve our current planetary ecological
crisis in the shorter term, mutual understanding, acceptance, unity, and
cooperation between both would seem to promise success of human life, and life
itself, even beyond planet Earth and over the much longer term.
Of this greatest source of leverage, Meadows (1999) wrote: “It is in this space
of mastery over paradigms that people throw off addictions, live in constant joy,
bring down empires, found religions, get locked up or ‘disappeared’ or shot, and
have impacts that last for millennia.” She concludes: “In the end, it seems that
power has less to do with pushing leverage points than it does with strategically,
profoundly, madly letting go.” Harkening back to Thompson’s et al. (1990) cultural
theory, the Hermit, who is best equipped to throw off paradigms, is most
needed during times of transitions or Great Changes.
We work from the scientific premise and present evidence and data along with
logical, rational arguments that such a strategy shows the greatest promise to
work in the real world. Ethical and spiritual views provide another means of support
for this open-minded view—from the Buddhist principle to strive for nonattachment
to the Christian precept to “love your enemies” both speak of opposites
and letting go.
The bottom line is that life supersedes all other values because if we cannot
continue life, then nothing else matters. It is perhaps ironic that pushing the
Table 1.4 Meadows’ Leverage Points
Places to intervene in a system (in increasing order of effectiveness)
12. Constants, parameters, numbers (such as subsidies, taxes, and standards)
11. The sizes of buffers and other stabilizing stocks, relative to their flows
10. The structure of material stocks and flows (such as transport networks, population
age structures)
9. The lengths of delays, relative to the rate of system change
8. The strength of negative feedback loops, relative to the impacts they are trying to
correct against
7. The gain around driving positive feedback loops
6. The structure of information flows (who does and does not have access to what kinds
of information)
5. The rules of the system (such as incentives, punishments, constraints)
4. The power to add, change, evolve, or self-organize system structure
3. The goals of the system
2. The mindset or paradigm out of which the system—its goals, structure, rules, delays,
parameters—arises
1. The power to transcend paradigms
21Deep Truths and Paradigms
life-support systems of the planet to near breaking can serve to bring into greater
focus what is most important. A crisis can lead to a moment of clarity unseen in
the daily routines. We are now beyond the limits of the possible, and so we are
able to determine this via the rare benefit to see the limit and boundary from both
sides.
The Egalitarians may want to battle the Individualists today; and, the Sustainers
may want to fight the Transcenders tomorrow, but such battles, quarrels, debates,
and games are either meaningless or suicidal unless we are able to continue life
itself indefinitely. Thus, we also see that we must do two contradictory things—we
must sustain life on Earth and we must colonize life beyond Earth (at least before
Earth is destroyed, or the Sun burns out), or again: all of our cherished arguments,
platforms, ideologies, and beliefs become meaningless and will terminate for all
time. In such discussions of the ultimate—ultimate ends, ultimate values, ultimate
priorities—we could well take things to a logical extreme conclusion: our choice
appears to be whether we prefer eternal life or eternal death. If this stripped-down
ultimate seems too extreme, then consider this phrasing:
Our ultimate choice appears to be whether we commit to do everything in our
power to sustain life indefinitely and thus accept no other possible future, or to
allow ourselves to believe that life may end, and that may be acceptable,
unavoidable, or even necessary.
This ultimate choice brings to light another cherished paradigm or system of
ideas that may be linked to the root cause of our situation—the elevation of the
second Law of Thermodynamics to being the supreme law of physics. While
many treat entropy and the tendency to decay and disorder as the dominant tendency,
in this book we describe a view of entropy as complementary with its
opposite—“syntropy” or self-organization. We mention it now, and discuss it indepth
later, as another scientific concept at the foundation of our system of ideas
depicting a unified lifeÀenvironment system.
The great potential is that if we can reconcile the many apparent contradictions
we have examined and again following Covey’s Seven Habits, seek
winÀwin and find the synergy, then we could stop fighting and start finding common
ground. We—all people, people of the United States and industrial
cultures—need to end conflict and start with healing, increasing our maturity,
peace, wisdom, better progress toward meeting all basic human needs, ending
the chronic and systemic environmental crisis, ending poverty, war, and other
unnecessary ills that we could remedy if we all work together. As a step in this
direction, we (authors) start with an effort to help heal this massive split as we
see it as now a massive waste of time, energy, brain power and resources that
we desperately need to redirect and channel in to positive solutions—even if the
positive applied solutions are agreed and resources shared between priorities
advocated by the “Transcender” and “Sustainer” camps.
As we present our system of ideas for understanding the lifeÀenvironment
relation, we will often employ “dialectical thinking” as used above to understand
22 CHAPTER 1 To solve a difficult problem, enlarge it
Transcenders and Sustainers. We will explore modes of thinking, logic and general
cognitive and conceptual strategies for conflict resolution, resolution of paradox,
holistic ways to address chronic/systemic problems, and similar approaches
we need to understand and solve our current humanÀenvironment crisis.
For the rest of the book the major sections and concepts will be as follows:
Chapter 2. Life as the basis of value—following Schweitzer, Leopold, and
others, we go further into the effort to restate, clarify, and corroborate these
ethical tenets as key motivational impulse for the whole new system of ideas
and new root metaphor. A system of ideas in which the world is seen as
living, and with generally useful models like system, web, network, and
others. We contrast this with the view of world as dead and a root metaphor,
general model of explanation centered on the idea of “mechanism.” We
examine Ulanowicz’ work on an ecological metaphysic and a cosmology of
hope.
Chapters 3À5. Holistic science to balance reductionism, repair fragmentation
and unify fields splintered by hyper-specialization. The first step on this
holistic approach is to see lifeÀenvironment as a single unified system, entity,
and relationship. We develop the framing that fragmentation causes the
systemic crisis we now experience, and holism is the solution. We will
contrast winÀwin versus winÀlose lifeÀenvironment relations and examine
how life achieves the winÀwin outcome such that the environment improves
(oxygen atmosphere, ozone layer, soils, etc.) but industrial human systems
manifest winÀlose outcomes (such as the top 11 symptoms of global
environmental crisis).
Chapter 6. Seven Life Lessons we have learned from studies of ENA and
systems ecology. ENA provides many holistic and systemic results, for
example, the matrix of total impacts that shows “everything is connected to
everything” very literally and quantifiably, not just as a loose metaphor or
romantic notion. This chapter includes discussion of “coupled complementary
processes,” which build on the “coupled transformers” of Lotka (1925). This
section also presents a novel science formalism that serves to prohibit
fragmentation of the lifeÀenvironment unity. This formalism employs
hypersets, a self-referential logical and mathematical construct.
Chapter 7. Characterization of the two-way bridge between science and
technological applications. Starting with Robert Rosen’s modeling relation, we
examine the profound impacts and power of the machine metaphor for
transforming the world.
Chapter 8. Technology, applications, and policy based on holistic life science.
We describe several case studies that fit our proposed foundations for science
and recommendations for actions based on this science. These examples show
how a new root metaphor based on life instead of machine can do better.
Chapter 9. From the “hard,” technical and abstract realms of theory and
science, we transition to everyday life. We envision thought and action from
23Deep Truths and Paradigms
the locus of, and in the service of, life itself. We borrow from Lappe´ who
advised that we learn to “think like an ecosystem.” We end with some final
discussions and qualifications, including suggesting next steps. This includes a
recommendation that academic and other scientific enterprises lead by
example and transform themselves to sustainable operations first.
This book focuses on the science of sustainability, but we work from the perspective
to always keep in mind the opposite/complement of this Sustainer worldview
and to be aware of the necessity of both Sustainers and Transcenders
working in complex, dialectical, synergistic cooperation. We address these broad
efforts, questions, and goals throughout this book.
1. What is a foundation for science and society that can lead to and help sustain
a healthy humanÀenvironment relationship?
2. What would the world under this new science paradigm and societal system
of ideas look like? What would it be like if and when we achieve a winÀwin
humanÀenvironment relation?
3. Given a clear vision of this ideal end point, how can we get there? What
combination of a new science paradigm, a new cultural shared system of
ideas, a new value basis, plus then operationalizing these values and concepts,
will work?
This end point is described well in our prior book, Flourishing Within
Limits to Growth, in which we added specific actions, policies, applications,
and example success stories to the general recommendation to “follow
nature’s way.” This present book is not mainly about the applications; this
book is about the foundations that could lead to more rapid and more
successful applications and aid justifying and funding for them. In fact,
intentionally, in the previous book, we chose actions that are instrumental and
plausible in our current governments (increased recycling, foreign aid for
family planning, increased education and research, particularly in STEM
fields, implementation of Pigovian taxes). These fixes did not require a
paradigm shift.
4. Our prior book was primarily from and for the perspective of the Sustainers,
and so in this book, we ask: How to reconcile and synergize the seemingly
opposite, seemingly contradictory worldviews and values of the Transcenders
and Sustainers so each aids the other rather continuing the mortal battle which
now thwarts both? This topic overlaps with both what the world will look like
under a new paradigm and how to get there.
5. What are the main characteristics and foundational values of other
worldviews, paradigms, and systems of ideas that we expect to lead to
negative futures and to fail at the core mission to value life?
We end this introduction with a quote from Wendell Berry. Berry describes
well how our system of ideas and culture can arise naturally from life itself.
These words, and this book, can be interpreted as a call to serve life, an elaborate
24 CHAPTER 1 To solve a difficult problem, enlarge it
and sincere invitation with many suggested methods for how to go about this
great service mission.
The concept of country, homeland, dwelling place becomes simplified as ‘the
environment’—that is, what surrounds us. Once we see our place, our part of
the world, as surrounding us, we have already made a profound division
between it and ourselves. We have given up the understanding—dropped it out
of our language and so out of our thought—that we and our country create one
another, depend on one another, are literally part of one another; that our land
passes in and out of our bodies just as our bodies pass in and out of our
land; that as we and our land are part of one another, so all who are living as
neighbors here, human and plant and animal, are part of one another, and so
cannot possibly flourish alone; that, therefore, our culture must be our response
to our place, our culture and our place are images of each other and inseparably
from each other, and so neither can be better than the other.
Berry (1977, p. 24).
25Deep Truths and Paradigms
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CHAPTER
2Life as the basis of value
INTRODUCTION
In Chapter 1, "To Solve a Difficult Problem, Enlarge It", we mentioned the need
for a systems worldview grounded in ideas of life as the basis of value. In this
chapter, we describe a set of principles, and related goals, mission, and ultimate
purpose, for a new science that serves life and humanity. The principles we propose
are for a value system in which the primary basis of value is life. This puts
life in the dual role of both means and ends. In a holistic sense, there is closure of
activity such that an individual’s action makes a life and is a life. This approach
is observed in the tightly coupled networks in nature and applied here to humans
in both science and society.
In sustainable, holistic, and organic agriculture, this expression is often used
to summarize the strategy of humans interacting with a complex living system to
grow food:
Feed the soil, and let the soil feed the plants.
Continuing our analogy that the foundations for science we propose are like
fertile soil in which a new holistic science of sustainability can take root, grow,
and flourish, we could say our strategy in this chapter is to:
Feed the foundations, and let the foundations feed the science.
This is the positive and proactive principle that leads to both fruitful food production
and healthy soils in the agricultural case and, we propose, can lead to
both fruitful scientific advances and healthy integration of the ultimate human priorities
in our science foundation’s case. And, to examine the alternative helps to
prove the necessity of this holistic approach—industrial agriculture that shortcuts
the above strategy and works to feed plants directly by ignoring soil health and
function and applying inorganic and synthetic fertilizers is known to degrade soil
quality and fertility over time. This adds fragility and dependencies into the production
system that are not necessary in healthy systems. In particular, this mechanized,
linear, industrial approach breaks the unifying cycles of nature that
include fertility, growth, and renewal. The soil is made vital again by the actions
of decay and the role of decomposers living and making. The conscious removal
of this step through biocides that render soil nearly inert displays an arrogance in
our ability to control the system and manage it better than nature. This mistake of
Foundations for Sustainability. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-12-811460-5.00002-9
Copyright © 2019 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
27
failing to care for soils, whether through modern chemicals and energies or more
ancient soil/water mismanagement, is known to have resulted in the ends of several
great civilizations; the lessons of history of the fundamental value of soil are
clear. Similarly, we believe that our current mainstream science may be seen to
shortcut the above strategy of transforming and renewing the essential role of science
foundation based in the most widely shared human values. And, in the analogous
quest for short-term science gains—numbers of publications, numbers of
citations, grant dollars awarded, etc.—we assert that something of much greater
value, essential to long-term survival of our civilization, is being missed and lost.
One first step is to clarify and set our terminology for the central concepts. In
Chapter 1, and in our dual-modeled view of life, we used “life” to mean life itself,
life as a unified whole, all life on Earth as integrated with environmental life support,
a complex, complementary, holistic system with both “discrete life” and
“sustained life” modes.
To further develop our distinctions, we now begin to use the term and capitalized
word “Life” and will hereafter use Life to refer to this full meaning of “life
as a unified whole.” Given that choice, we will specify any other meaning by
using terms like “organismal life,” discrete life, the life of an individual, or when
using “life” that is not capitalized as a proper noun.
One of the benefits of choosing Life as the basis of value is as a unifying
foundation for ethics that has all humans, as interdependent with Life itself, equal
and on the same team, in the same planetary boat. Expanding our area of recognition
and concern for all Life shifts the focus onto cooperation and mutual benefits,
and our shared relationship to Life and environmental life support come to
the foreground. No organism is isolated and independent of its environmental
Life support such that the entire habitat arena becomes compatible with the idea
of “the commons.” Environmental Life support systems such as the soils, oceans,
or atmosphere are shared by all humans and all Life. And thus, for environmental
commons like the atmosphere, and given the total necessity of a healthy, stable,
and functional atmosphere, the emphasis naturally stays on maintaining and
replenishing for mutual benefit rather than exploiting, consuming, or degrading.
Psychologically, and perhaps unfortunately, common cause can be promoted
or inspired through an “us” versus “them” mentality. An individualistic framing
would put the system boundary at “me” versus the environment, but as we’ve
shown that has failed to protect the necessary Life support services that are not
contained within this perspective. If, for some reason, we need to reinvent an idea
of an “enemy,” then from this unifying value of Life, we see that the enemy is
not among us. The enemy is no one alive, as all living beings share Life and thus
would “fight” on the same team with respect to protecting, valuing, promoting,
and defending Life (again, with specific reference to life as a unified whole, not
with reference to the discrete life of individuals, organisms—not even the life of
nations, tribes, or families—and other artificially isolated subsets of Life). The
enemy we humans all share is what we might call “systemic death”—an end of
all Life, any threat to Life itself, and including extinction of humans as a
28 CHAPTER 2 Life as the basis of value
species—as we discuss later, we see humans as having an essential role in the
success and destiny of Life into the open future; thus, an end to humans is detrimental
to Life.
We admit this may at first seem a big leap to convince people to consider
equally any urge to preserve one’s own life and the need to preserve Life itself.
This may in fact be one of the hardest crux issues we address in this book—challenging
the genetically and culturally deep-seated human sense of self and selfpreservation,
so as to extend these urges and instincts beyond the boundary of the
individual and to include Life-support organically into our decision-making. We
start this challenging effort here and continue for the rest of the book. A first step
is to consider it as highly rational that anything one absolutely needs to live—the
top priorities in Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, physiological needs, such as oxygen,
water, and food—these “things,” and the processes and systems which provide
them in sustained supply indefinitely, these are worthy of high value, care,
and preservation.
As far as a shared enemy of all Life, this enemy of “systemic death” really
exists and can be described, measured, observed, and characterized. It could be
caused by the harshness of outer space, the ultimate outcome of entropy and the
tendency to dissipation and disorganization if they are allowed to proceed to thermodynamic
heat death, and potentially by impactors from outer space or catastrophe
such as nuclear holocaust. Even a change as dramatic as arriving through
anthropocentric climate change would hardly wipe out all Life, but rather make it
quite difficult for continuing current human institutions and expectations.
We note, too, that our holistic conception of Life changes our views and discussions
of death, systemic death, or perhaps Death with a capital D: an end of all
Life. The concepts of death and Death are thus scalar or multi-scaled, similar to
our multi-scale and complex ideas of life and Life. Individual death is very different
than population death, species extinction, or planetary Death. This is consistent
with our distinction between discrete life and sustained life. It also raises interesting
questions: Is death of the individual really our enemy? This is perhaps an
American or Western value more than a universal one. Many cultures view other
features higher than individual life—honor, family, religion, etc.—and would readily
trade an individual’s life for those. In line with Life’s broader and wider cycles,
and the inevitability of human death, we do not suggest that the death of an individual
is inherently bad ever and always. Many contextual factors come into play.
It is really only capitalized, systemic, and ultimate Death—an end to all Life on
Earth—that we suggest is inherently bad and something we humans could agree to
fight against and oppose, as we increase our unity, solidarity, and cooperation for
serving and sustaining Life.
One working analogy could be to consider three system states akin to phases
of water—gas, liquid, and solid—where fluid liquid represents an adaptive and
living state, and where the other two represent two forms of death. Life is balanced
between too much rigidity (ice) and too much anarchy (gas). This implies
there are two ways to die, to be out of balance in extreme in either direction.
29Introduction
A system in which entropic processes outpace self-organizing ones would find
itself with too many connections, too little efficiency, and too much redundancy
and dissipation, ending in the classic heat death early 20th century physicists
feared. But, there is another imbalance that can occur when too few connections,
too little redundancy, and too much efficiency lead to immobility and inflexibility.
This results in a system or network that is frozen like a crystalline lattice and
with no lifelike change, dynamism, or evolution, essentially displaying an “ice
death.” The shared goal of Life is to aim at the balanced, fluid, middle ground
where Death is held at bay.
The second and last set of concepts and terms we define for the work of this
chapter are “value” and “value system.” The Stanford Encyclopedia of
Philosophy describes “value system” under the heading of “social norms”:
In the theory of the socialized actor (Parsons, 1951), an individual action is
equated with a choice among several alternatives. . . . Order and stability are
essentially socially derived phenomena, brought about by a common value system—the
“cement” of society. The common values of a society are embodied
in norms that, when conformed to, guarantee the orderly functioning and reproduction
of the social system. In the Parsonian framework, norms are exogenous:
how is a common value system created, and how it may change and
why, are issues left unexplored. The most important question is rather how
norms get to be followed, and what prompts rational egoists to abide by them.
The theory of the socialized actor’s answer is that people voluntarily adhere to
the shared value system because it is introjected to form a constitutive element
of the personality itself (Parsons, 1951).
From https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/social-norms/
This description of social norms and the closely related value system highlights
the interdependence of the individual sense of self and the societal system
of values and norms. We similarly see this dual role as important in the Great
Change for sustainability, in that individuals and societies must transform in
mutually reinforcing ways. The idea of value system as the “cement” of society is
important too, although we might use a less industrial metaphor like “connective
tissue.”
The literature on value and value systems is large, and several value theory
schools of thought exist, in which debates about intrinsic versus extrinsic value, and
intrinsic versus instrumental value continue. Again from Stanford Encyclopedia of
Philosophy:
The term “value theory” is used in at least three different ways in philosophy.
In its broadest sense, “value theory” is a catch-all label used to encompass all
branches of moral philosophy, social and political philosophy, aesthetics, and
sometimes feminist philosophy and the philosophy of religion — whatever
areas of philosophy are deemed to encompass some “evaluative” aspect. In its
30 CHAPTER 2 Life as the basis of value
narrowest sense, “value theory” is used for a relatively narrow area of normative
ethical theory particularly, but not exclusively, of concern to consequentialists.
In this narrow sense, “value theory” is roughly synonymous with
“axiology”. Axiology can be thought of as primarily concerned with classifying
what things are good, and how good they are. For instance, a traditional question
of axiology concerns whether the objects of value are subjective psychological
states, or objective states of the world.
But in a more useful sense, “value theory” designates the area of moral philosophy
that is concerned with theoretical questions about value and goodness of
all varieties—the theory of value. The theory of value, so construed, encompasses
axiology, but also includes many other questions about the nature of
value and its relation to other moral categories.
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/value-theory/
The work to examine, classify, communicate about, and seek to build consensus
around “what things are good, and how good they are,” what the author
describes above as axiology, is our main concern here. We build a case that Life
is good, and that Life is among the “items” we humans should all classify as the
ultimate good (other items may share this classification as ultimate good, but
none can displace Life, otherwise Life is threatened and is in danger of nonexistence,
at which point all other values and goods are meaningless).
We may also take a more biophysical approach, toward the question of social
norms following the work of Odum (1971) who used the laws of thermodynamics
to explain that social orders emerged as self-organized properties for better utilization
of the society’s available energies (with reward loops and penalties). He
goes so far to as to propose a “Ten Commandments for the Energy Ethic for
Survival of man in Nature” (p. 244). Yet another way to seek value aside from
constructivist social sciences, and that is more consistent with our whole Life
vision, stems from the field of environmental ethics, dating at least back to
Leopold’s work on the Land Ethic (see more on Leopold below).
The Oxford Dictionary defines value and values in different ways:
Value: “The regard that something is held to deserve; the importance, worth,
or usefulness of something.”
Values: “Principles or standards of behaviour; one’s judgement of what is
important in life.”
https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/value
These are the same meanings we will employ for value—seeking to show that
Life deserves to be of the greatest importance and worth—and for values—seeking
to show that Life deserves to inform our principles and standards of behavior and
aid our judgment of what is most important.
Before describing the value system centered on Life, we describe how it fits
into the overall strategy for solving the systemic sustainability crisis.
31Introduction
THE ANTICIPATORY STRATEGY OF SYSTEMIC CHANGE
A value system centered on Life is crucial to our book plan and strategy to solve
the systemic humanÀenvironment crisis. In Fig. 2.1, we depict the change
model, theory of change or working idea for how this book could fit into a
larger process of scientific and societal change. This change model is analogous
to other Great Changes in science and society where scientific advancements
led to new ways to aid human life, and by extension, at least potentially, Life
itself (Goerner et al., 2008). Some fairly recent (i.e., the 20th century) examples
of major science-and-society advances include agricultural advances (nitrogen
fertilizer), medicine (antibiotics), water and sanitation (water and waste water
treatment including chlorination), and family planning [oral (and other) contraception].
In addition, certain science breakthroughs transformed science itself
and people in science-and-society revolutions such as the Fossil Fuel
Revolution, Industrial Revolution, Genetics Revolution, Information Revolution
and others, which touched on all aspects of Life and how Life is organized. It is
important to note that many if not all of these science major advances and revolutions
raised the human carrying capacity on Earth (capacity of the environment
to support human populations), at least temporarily if not permanently,
FIGURE 2.1
Our model of change, or theory of change, by which we imagine this book (and allied
works and ideas of others) can contribute to societal change and eventual
humanÀenvironment sustainability.
32 CHAPTER 2 Life as the basis of value
and increased complexity of the humanÀenvironment system. This increase in
capacity and complexity then gave additional responsibilities associated with
greater numbers of people, more complex science and society, and greater and
more complex impacts on the environment.
As we said in Chapter 1, to solve our current suite of many environmental
problems, we frame the sustainability and humanÀenvironment crisis as systemic.
The many sub-crises (see Fig. 1.2 and Table 1.1) are then seen as “superficial”
(relatively speaking) surface symptoms. We believe we cannot solve the individual
subproblems in isolation—to attempt this is to validate the prior reductionist, specialist
approach, which isolates and fragments problems and systems, and which we
suggest is more aligned with the systemic cause of the problem than with a strategy
for its solution. We also see evidence that this approach to focus on individual
humanÀenvironment problems in isolation can result in a trap of solving one
problem at the expense of creating one or more other problems—potentially worse
problems—in some other humanÀenvironment area. This “robbing Peter to pay
Paul” approach of unintended consequences, obviously, is not viable. Someone
solved an isolated problem of a needed refrigerant by creating chlorofluorocarbons,
which resulted in the far worse problem of destroying stratospheric ozone.
Someone solved the shale gas problem by inventing fracking, only to threaten
groundwater and aquifers, and release large amounts of methane, thus creating
potentially deeper and longer lasting problems. Someone solved the problem of
low-level infections inhibiting beef growth, production and profits, and innovated
continual antibiotic use, thus creating “superbugs” resistant to antibiotics. Thus, we
propose our holistic alternative is at the very least worth a thorough vetting and at
best has a true potential to solve the systemic problem, and all associated symptoms
of the ecological crisis, at once. This approach may not deter all unintended consequences,
but not applying it guarantees that none will be anticipated.
One other critique of piece-meal approaches to solve isolated subset problems
is that—especially as we know, or for those who do know or have a hunch, that
our problem is systemic—failure to address the systemic crux problem is essentially
procrastinating, “kicking the can down the road,” waiting, assuming, and
hoping someone else will do the hard work. Surely, we have the responsibility
and it is worth the courage and conviction to face the deep root problem now.
Again, to recap from Chapter 1, from this systemic framing of the
humanÀenvironment problem, we can set the goal, strategy, and approach to
solve the systemic root cause of the humanÀenvironment problem and achieve
lasting sustainability. And, in framing the solution case in similar holistic fashion,
we see the solution as a change from a winÀlose humanÀenvironment relation
(in which environment degrades over time) to a winÀwin humanÀenvironment
relation (in which environment improves over time).
To unify all people is one benefit of a revised foundation for science centered
on the value of Life. Given that our humanÀenvironment problem is global, it
impacts all people, and all people play parts in the collective humanÀenvironment
relation. This connection to all humanity is relevant to all stages and all conceptual
33The Anticipatory Strategy of Systemic Change
and applied aspects of our discussion. Our challenge is big, and we are thinking
big—focusing our minds not only to reduce or to end environmental destruction,
but also to solve the systemic humanÀenvironment problem rapidly and
effectively.
We also propose a science revolution now based on the essential need for a
specific future outcome: a successful transition to true sustainability. This follows
Meadows’ #1 and #2 sources of maximum leverage related to changing the paradigm
of the system (see Table 1.4 in Chapter 1). Thus, we propose we should not
wait for a slow Kuhnian science revolution like many of those in the past that can
take one or more generations of scientists to slowly test and resolve major conceptual
difficulties. The Kuhnian crisis in science is here and now (the current
approaches are not working), and we need a more rapid paradigm shift to match
the urgency of our planetary humanÀenvironment situation.
In order to achieve the new understanding of Life and its successful winÀwin
relation with environment, we need to develop a new paradigm of Life and Life
science. This is an anticipatory and novel approach to intentional use of “science
itself” (all of science, not just a single study) to serve fundamental human needs
and tackle a great challenge for humanity.
We proceed by these steps to the strategy (again, working from the “change
model” in Fig. 2.1):
1. Start with the end in mind—Again, the #1 principle from Covey’s Seven
Habits of Highly Effective People. This anticipatory approach is essential, and
it relates to the strategies of “completion backwards” and to be proactive.
Another perspective is to think in terms of a “final cause” in the sense of the
four Aristotelian causes (material, efficient, formal, and final causes).
Aristotle brought an insight to the problem of causation that rested on four
required aspects for any event to happen. First, the material itself that is acted
upon must be present; second, an agent brings the material to action, but
which is guided by the third element, a formal plan. Fourth, no event proceeds
without its reason or justification for happening which is the final cause.
Logicians often use an example of what “caused” a statue to appear in a
Greek temple accordingly in which the block of marble is the material cause,
the sculptor is the efficient cause, the blueprint/design in the sculptor’s mind
the formal cause, and the dedication of a new temple for Athena the final
cause. Modern science puts most agency on the actor and to a lesser extent
the material, but hardly ever on the purpose, which has been intentionally
driven from and ignored by science. In Aristotle’s vision, the statue would
never have been built without the need for it. This perspective makes us
question our motives and aspirations to ask not just “How?” but “Why?” A
final compatible idea is to think in terms of what our ultimate goal in this
work is, to set a course for what is most important and truly essential, even if
this is very general and qualitative, what our gut wants, a hunch or intuition
of the right direction in which to steer.
34 CHAPTER 2 Life as the basis of value
2. Depict the goal and outcomes—The next step is to describe the general ideal
future, imagine it, add details, form a rich and clear vision of success. As
above, this involves a future in which the humanÀenvironment systemic crisis
has been solved once and for all, with a lasting and systemic winÀwin
humanÀenvironment relation going forward. These aspects of the ideal
endpoint and future are essential:
a. All 11 of the crisis symptoms are solved.
b. All such “vital signs” and Life support major metrics are self-regulating
going forward, and no new systemic and Life-threatening problems are
created.
c. Human and environmental capital, capacity, and competencies are
regenerated—healing of old wounds to environment (atmosphere, waters,
soils, species, habitats, and more) and social cohesion (conflicts and
animosity based on natural resource conflicts primarily, hopefully
extending to conflicts of religion, ideology, and other divisions).
d. All major vital signs and capacities are robust to disturbance and selfhealing
after disaster. Here, as in many areas, we can model success
(Sustainer success) based on, and mimic for success, living systems. Thus,
human systems will be like forests that recover after defoliation by insects,
regrow after fire, and are resilient after other major disturbances.
In addition to the environmental vital signs (outcomes, indicators, top 11
symptoms), we also must ensure that social sustainability is achieved with
social justice as integral at all phases. For this, we follow work of Julian
Agyeman who defined “just sustainabilities.” From his website
julianagyeman.com, we read:
Agyeman is originator of the concept of ‘just sustainabilities,’ the full integration
of social justice and sustainability, defined as ‘the need to ensure a better
quality of life for all, now and into the future, in a just and equitable manner,
whilst living within the limits of supporting ecosystems.’
At first read, this might appear impossible, idealistic, even utopian.
However, all these features of ideal environmental success are what
preindustrial living systems do naturally. The goal is not to romanticize nature
blindly, as strife, hunger, bloodshed all existed in nature before humans and
will continue (eating and being eaten is the way the ecosystem is organized).
But, there is a “fitting in” that humans have lost and need to rediscover. In
fact, there is no reason to believe that the intelligence of humans can’t be a
vital asset in designing, modeling, and constructing livable winÀwin socioecological
relations, ones that would not be possible without the input of
humans. The missing parts currently are seeing Life as model and mentor, and
seeing that part of this process of setting a value basis centered on Life relates
to efforts to do more biomimicry, and “ecomimicry,” by which we learn to
live in ways that enhance our environmental Life support systems. The tree in
the forest makes the forest better. Or as Jacobs (2000) phrased it: “An
35The Anticipatory Strategy of Systemic Change
ensemble grows rich on an environment that the ensemble itself made rich.”
(p. 60), which she observed in nature and reapplied to human-built
environments such as cities.
Just as we do not romanticize nature blindly, we also do not romanticize
or even accept as necessary our current state of affairs that includes systemic
environmental degradation and thus degradation and devaluation of Life.
If at first read our proposals do appear impossible, idealistic, or utopian,
then we ask you to consider reversing your model, as Elbow suggests. Our
thesis in this book is that such a complete reversal is needed to provide the
new perspective to allow for solutions and success. For example, instead of
considering our descriptions of the ideal as impossible, try the opposite—
consider that what we are experiencing now is impossible (to sustain),
idealistic (to think it will all work out) and dystopian (if we become numb
and accept it). In Chapter 5, we describe a founding scientific principle,
radical empiricism, that fits with this radical shift in perspective. What if
environmental degradation is the abnormal condition, and self-maintaining
and self-improving environment is the norm? What if clean water, pure air, a
stable atmosphere, abundant biodiversity, renewable energy, and other socalled
“idealistic” or “utopian” dreams are common sense, readily achieved by
basic natural Life systems, and every human’s birth right?
To solve the crisis, we can mimic life which has solved this systemic
issue—the net outcome of the relationship between life and environment over
the long term is winÀwin. The last decades of research in systems ecology
has identified a number of critical features that keep ecosystems functioning
with high levels of complexity, organization, diversity, adaptability, and
resilience. We can see this clearly because over the long term, the
environment has improved in its capacity to support life.
3. Work backward to realize the ideal outcomes—the “how” that leads to it.
Now that we have depicted the future goal, we can work backward to realize
it. For this successful future vision to come true, we need science, technology,
and culture that result in the winÀwin humanÀenvironment relationships and
maintenance of our Life support systems. This is the “how” part—the
realization and actualization, the building, operating, maintaining, doing, and
the infrastructure for “business as usual” (i.e., a new form of business as usual
that is successful, sustainable, and just). Given the emphasis on Life (again,
life itself, life as a unified whole), life science must be elevated to a priority
role among sciences. Thus, we need new ideas for biology, ecology,
environmental science, and how these can all be integrated in holistic science
and technology. Since the value of Life is shared by all humans, other
sciences need to serve Life as well—chemistry in service to Life, physics in
service to Life, engineering in service to Life, etc. It can be assumed that in a
world where all humans value Life that the science and institutions of those
humans will also value Life.
36 CHAPTER 2 Life as the basis of value
More specifically, the outcomes—whether direct and intended products or
unintended byproducts and side-effects—must reverse damage, contribute to
solving the systemic root cause of the crisis, or assist in maintaining high
quality of human life and environmental Life support systems. The system is
functionally locked together such that there are loopbacks that reinforce the
overall goals.
4. The “why” that motivates the “how.” For these transformed realizations of
science, technology, culture, action, policies, and results to come true, we need
an intentional and shared value of Life as the center and foundation of ethics
and what is known to be good, right, important, essential, and prioritized. This
is the paradigm of Meadows’ leverage, which can then be codified and
embodied in rules of the system and other systemic properties which must
change (Meadow’s goals, power to change system structure, structure of
information flows, gain around positive feedback loops, etc. See Table 1.4).
These are the societal norms and widely held assumptions of what is good, true,
right, normal, accepted, and what informs or motivates business as usual. This
is the “why” part; the final cause in Aristotelian parlance. Once it is set, the
“how” parts of science, technology, and infrastructure are activated to achieve
these goals and realize these values all day and every day.
SETTING LIFE AS THE BASIS OF VALUE
A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.
Chinese proverb from Tao Te Ching
Here, we take the first step on this long and complex “journey of a thousand
miles”. . .setting Life as the basis of value for science and, by extension, for society.
This is one form of the final answer to any long series of “Why?” questions,
such as might be asked by an insistent and inquisitive child probing ever deeper
to ask “Why?” again after each explanation of a proximate cause or intermediate
step. We submit that a suitable answer will always be, To Serve Life. And we
hope to show, and hope others will help to show, that this form of an ultimate
answer (for which there may be multiple compatible additions), purpose, or value
is compatible not only with the best of science, but also with the best of world
religions and spiritual traditions. Such is the awesome unifying power of Life.
For this main section of this chapter, we follow Albert Schweitzer, Aldo
Leopold, Robert Ulanowicz, and others that have already written beautifully and
persuasively on these topics. We go further into the effort to restate, clarify, and
corroborate these ethical tenets as key motivational impulse for the whole new
system of ideas and new root metaphor. The ethical tenets proposed and used are
ones that are corroborated or mutually reinforcing with scientific tenets, such as
the scientific understanding of both life and Life, lifeÀenvironment, and the needs
37Setting Life as the Basis of Value
of living systems for continued existence. To play the sequence forward again,
based on Life value, we develop a science to serve Life. And, using that science,
we develop a technology and other real-world applications to serve Life. From
then on, the systemic cause of the 11 Life-threatening symptoms in Chapter 1 are
replaced by values, science, technology, and culture of Life-enhancing solutions,
infrastructure, business, and everyday activities.
This value system basis, in our analogy, is the rich and fertile soil needed to
support, nurture, and feed the sprouting new holistic sciences, including the holistic
lifeÀenvironment science we describe in Chapters 3 through 6.
SCHWEITZER’S REVERENCE FOR LIFE
Albert Schweitzer was a medical doctor as well as a devout Christian. We see his
approach to setting Life as the most fundamental value to be fully compatible to
the approach we develop here. While his main approach—what he called “reverence
for life”—came from the context of Christian theology and ethics, his
knowledge of science and biology, and skills in philosophy and logic, contribute
to the strength of his ideas which serve well as general and foundational values.
We do not intend to imply that ideas of Life reverence are limited to Christian
theology, but rather to underpin Schweitzer’s background and motivation—in
fact, we see him as a transcendental figure who could be at the core of any deep
teachings.
In Chapter 1, we quoted Schweitzer (1965) and repeat a part of that quote
here as encapsulating the main points:
The essence of Goodness is: Preserve life, promote life, help life to achieve its
highest destiny. The essence of Evil is: Destroy life, harm life, hamper the
development of life.
The fundamental principle of ethics, then, is reverence for life. (page 26)
To fit with this book, we would like to replace Schweitzer’s term “life” with
our term “Life” to signify Life as a unified whole, including Life as integrated
with its essential environmental Life-support context and thus not to confuse the
issue of the discrete life of an individual, organism, species, or any other fragmented
subset of Life.
Later in the same book, “The Teaching of Reverence for Life,” Schweitzer
(1965) wrote:
In the main, reverence for life dictates the same sort of behavior as the ethical
principle of love. But reverence for life contains within itself the rationale of
the commandment to love, and it calls for compassion for all creature life.
The riddle of extraordinary and exalted ethics that Schweitzer identifies is that
true values should be viewed as ordinary and are to be carried out in everyday
38 CHAPTER 2 Life as the basis of value
life—in other words, in the act of doing and becoming, there is no wasted effort,
no cross purpose, no conflict of interest. This insight is not unique to Christian
faith but is relevant to our present systemic crisis in that we confront the same
essential issue—how to unify and harmonize the ultimate long-term ends of successful
care and stewardship of Life with the proximate and short-term priorities,
decisions, and actions of daily life.
Schweitzer’s desire for an understanding of the deepest root of the matter
motivated his sermon of 1919 (Schweitzer, 1969):
We want to grasp the underlying principle of all ethics and use that principle
as the supreme law from which all ethical actions can be derived. (p. 111)
This quest for “supreme law” shares much with scientific quests for universal
laws of physics, chemistry, biology, ecology, and other fields—a shared consensus
foundation and standard reference against which all new insights and questions
can be tested for validity. In terms of a universal ethic, and linked to
Schweitzer’s mention of compassion and love, we are in the realm of the Golden
Rule—another axiom which is both exalted and every day.
In his effort to “let reason speak” on ethics, Schweitzer notes that one of the
best results of reason is, “. . .it can teach us a certain integrity and justice, and
these things are more or less the recognized key to happiness.” Merging reason’s
results of knowledge and happiness in wisdom, Schweitzer (1969) gets to the kernel
of reverence for life:
Desire for wisdom! Explore everything around you, penetrate to the furthest limits
of human knowledge, and you will always come up against something inexplicable
in the end. It is called life. It is a mystery so inexplicable that the knowledge
of the educated and the ignorant is purely relative when contemplating it. (p. 114)
He goes on to say that the farmer contemplating his garden and trees and the
scientist observing via microscope are in the same boat:
Both are confronted with the riddle of life. One may be able to describe life in
greater detail, but for both it remains equally inscrutable. All knowledge is, in
the final analysis, knowledge of life. All realization is amazement at this riddle
of life À a reverence for life in its infinite and yet ever-fresh manifestations.
How amazing this coming into being, living and dying! How fantastic that in
other existences something comes into being, passes away again, comes into
being once more, and so forth from eternity to eternity! How can it be? We
can do all things, and we can do nothing. For in all our wisdom we cannot create
life. What we create is dead. (pp. 114À115)
He continues in poetic language that integrates the voices of heart and reason,
spirituality, and science:
If you study life deeply, looking with perceptive eyes, into the vast animated
chaos of this creation, its profundity will seize you suddenly with dizziness. In
39Schweitzer’s Reverence for Life
everything you recognize yourself. The tiny beetle that lies dead in your path À
it was a living creature, struggling for existence like yourself, rejoicing in
the sun like you, knowing fear and pain like you. And now it is no more than
decaying matter À which is what you will be sooner or later, too. (p. 115)
It is difficult to paraphrase or to restate. . .his words are original and authentic:
I cannot but have reverence for all that is called life. I cannot avoid compassion
for everything that is called life. That is the beginning and the foundation
for morality. Once a man has experienced it and continues to do so À and he
who has once experienced it will continue to do so À he is ethical. He carries
his morality within him and can never lose it, for it continues to develop within
him. He who has never experienced this has only a set of superficial principles.
These theories have no root in him, they do not belong to him, and they fall
off him. (pp. 115À116)
He goes on to say that reverence for life is essential to “building a new human
race” and that “existence depends” on the transformation of individuals able to
see this as a “true, inalienable ethic.”
Written and spoken in a sermon very nearly 100 years ago, at the end of World
War I, we hear these words loud and clear and just as relevant today. Schweitzer
was a kind of Renaissance man, a whole person who seemed never to have been
forced to choose between science and religion, a person fluent in languages of both
heart and reason, a keen observer of both inner and outer worlds. Thus, we take it
seriously, and find a solid corroboration for our efforts here, when Schweitzer notes
that without experiencing “reverence for life” one “has only a set of superficial
principles,” and by extension no basis deep enough to provide a solid anchor and
foundation for ethics and ethical actions. He also refers to “reverence for life” as
“the foundation for morality” and states that without this foundation a person is
morally weakened because other theories or ethics “have no root in him,” “do not
belong to him, and they fall off him.” This fits with our proposal that Life has ultimate
value, since if we threaten, weaken, or end Life, then nothing else of human
concern can exist, much less matter; other “theories” or values are necessarily
superficial in comparison and can only hold value when rooted in the value of Life.
ALDO LEOPOLD’S LAND ETHIC
Leopold (1949) put forth an ethic with the same emphasis on Life in the extensive
sense of which we speak here. There is much written by Leopold, and about
Leopold’s “land ethic,” and we mention just three main passages here.
First, to quote his succinct and eloquent ethic (Leopold, 1949):
A thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability, and beauty of
the biotic community. It is wrong when it tends otherwise. (pp. 224À225)
40 CHAPTER 2 Life as the basis of value
In addition to aligning the right and good—the fundamental value—with Life,
Leopold also refers to “the biotic community” thus clearly recognizing the essential
interdependence of individuals and organisms as we do with “sustained life.”
He also explains how this ethic changes our view of ourselves:
In short, a land ethic changes the role of Homo sapiens from conqueror of the
land-community to plain member and citizen of it. It implies respect for his
fellow-members, and also respect for the community as such. (p. 204)
Here, in addition to emphasis on biotic community, Leopold refers to “land-community,”
which, similar to his mention of “thinking like a mountain” below, shows
his awareness and value of the integration of environment into the biotic community.
Next, we quote the story of Leopold’s experience, perhaps like an epiphany,
to which he attributes the inspiration and realization of his transformed view of
life. Leopold (1949) tells of an experience in the mountains, after realizing what
he and others saw at a distance was not a deer as they first assumed:
When she climbed the bank toward us and shook out her tail, we realized our
error: it was a wolf. A half-dozen others, evidently grown pups, sprang from
the willows and all joined in a welcoming meˆle´e of wagging tails and playful
maulings. What was literally a pile of wolves writhed and tumbled in the center
of an open flat at the foot of our rimrock.
In those days we had never heard of passing up a chance to kill a wolf. In a
second we were pumping lead into the pack, but with more excitement than
accuracy: how to aim a steep downhill shot is always confusing. When our
rifles were empty, the old wolf was down, and a pup was dragging a leg into
impassable slide-rocks.
We reached the old wolf in time to watch a fierce green fire dying in her eyes.
I realized then, and have known ever since, that there was something new to
me in those eyes À something known only to her and to the mountain. I was
young then and full of trigger-itch; I thought that because fewer wolves meant
more deer, that no wolves would mean hunters’ paradise. But after seeing the
green fire die, I sensed that neither the wolf nor the mountain agreed with such
a view. (p. 130)
He goes on to explain how—driven by the narrower view of life, and the
short-term goal of eliminating competition—wolves were extirpated in most of
the United States. He tells how the unchecked deer multiplied to levels unsustainable,
beyond the carrying capacity of the land, and they died of population pressures
and also damaged the vegetation and soils by overgrazing. The mountain
itself suffered rapid erosion, due to the loss of a link in an interconnected system.
The section with the quote above is titled “Thinking Like a Mountain,” and
Leopold’s mention of the view and awareness of “the mountain” is akin to our
search for an ethics and value system compatible with the perspective of sustained
life and Life as a unified whole.
41Aldo Leopold’s Land Ethic
Our third and final reference to Leopold shows his holistic understanding of
life cycles, and the integration of Life and environment. The book, Round River
(Leopold, 1993), contained essays he was working on near the end of his life.
Near the end of that book is a chapter titled “Round River” and subtitled “A
Parable.” It contains these quotes:
One of the marvels of early Wisconsin was the Round River, a river that flowed
into itself, and thus sped around and around in a never-ending circuit.
Paul Bunyan discovered it, and the Bunyan saga tells how he floated many a
log down its restless waters.
No one has suspected Paul of speaking in parables, yet in this instance he did.
Wisconsin not only had a round river, Wisconsin is one. The current is the
stream of energy which flows out of the soil into plants, thence into animals,
thence back into the soil in a never-ending circuit of life. ‘Dust unto dust’ is a
desiccated version of the Round River concept. (p. 158)
He also wrote:
A rock decays and forms soil. In the soil grows an oak, which bears an acorn,
which feeds a squirrel, which feeds an Indian, who ultimately lays him down
to his last sleep in the great tomb of man À to grow another oak...
(pp. 159À160)
Leopold goes on to comment that the river is also analogous to a pipe line,
and revised his diagram to show, that “the pipe line leaks at every joint,” and
“energy is side-tracked into branches” and finally notes that “. . .each animal and
each plant is the ‘intersection’ of many pipe lines; the whole system is cross-connected”
(Fig. 2.2). In this essay, we see how Leopold’s ethics or value system
was integrated with his intuitive and extensive understanding of energy flow networks
that form the basis of modern-day ecosystem science. We likewise propose
an ethic centered on the value of Life as supporting, and as supported by, a
Rock soil oak acorn squirrel Indian
Rock
Rock
soil
soil sumac rabbit tularemia
oak acorn squirrel Indian
FIGURE 2.2
Diagrams redrawn from Leopold’s Round River depicting both cycles and branches.
42 CHAPTER 2 Life as the basis of value
holistic ecological and Life science. In Chapters 3À6, we describe how ecological
networks and other tools and insights help with the scientific paradigm shift
needed.
In reference to Leopold’s comments on the infancy of the science of ecology,
and coinage of big words, it is interesting to note these history landmarks for ecological
terms arising around the time of Leopold’s writing:
1935—ecosystem—Tansley (1935)
1942—trophic-dynamic aspect of ecology—Lindeman (1942)
1950s—diversity and stability relationship—Elton (1958) and MacArthur (1955)
1969—strategy of ecosystem development—Odum (1969).
Also note that Tansley’s (1935) first publication coining “ecosystem” echoed
our unified lifeÀenvironment view, shared by Leopold, and efforts for fundamentals
and foundations, shared by Schweitzer:
Though the organisms may claim our prime interest, when we are trying to
think fundamentally, we cannot separate them from their special environments,
with which they form one physical system. (p. 299)
Tansley’s pathway to this integrated view of lifeÀenvironment came via years
of scientific research; Leopold’s path included the experience with the dying wolf
and efforts to understand and promote founding principles of conservation.
Schweitzer (Kiernan, 1965) told a story of an early childhood experience when a
friend dared him to kill an innocent bird with a slingshot, and he realized he could
not due to his own internal strongest conviction; this he later articulated as “reverence
for life.” There are many pathways to this perspective and value system.
Next, we hear the insights into fundamentals from another scientist.
ROBERT ULANOWICZ’ ECOLOGICAL METAPHYSIC
Perhaps the contributions of Robert Ulanowicz do not speak to the primary value
of Life as explicitly or directly as Schweitzer and Leopold, and we may have no
quotes in which he says this verbatim, but he and his work very much show Life
as a core tenet of his motivating values. In the preface to his book, A Third
Window, Ulanowicz (2009b) shares that his goal has been to “describe an alternative
approach to reality” in the form of “an ecological narrative” and an “ecological
metaphysic.” Much as we are proposing here, he has developed a coherent
scientific narrative in his search “for new foundations upon which to build a rational
description of nature,” and he sees the need for a new science paradigm. If we
can add even a single new supporting idea or concept as a new brick or beam to
the edifice he has built in his ecological metaphysic, then it will be a humble contribution
by comparison to his body of work. His work, in which we see the primary
ambition for an alternative approach to reality to rejuvenate science to
better serve humanity, pervades all aspects of our own work and thinking.
43Robert Ulanowicz’ Ecological Metaphysic
Ulanowicz shows his value of Life by three means that we address here. First,
he shows a deep respect for nature and Life by his professional lifetime devotion
of learning from living systems. While often reported in the language of science
and mathematics, his body of published books, papers, and other works all reflect
his passion for deep communion with Life in a sincere effort to understand. This
respect and reverence is shown perhaps most clearly in his honest admissions and
obvious openness to changing his own cherished ideas multiple times when lessons
from his dialogue with nature proved it necessary. One example of this came
when he realized that his major discovery of the ecosystem network principle of
“ascendency” was not a unitary driving force able to explain the tendencies of
ecosystem dynamics single-handedly. Submitting to the lessons of his encounters
with complex living systems, he changed his views to put ascendency in context
as one of two major tendencies of nature (the other being redundancy).
A second way that we read between the lines of Ulanowicz’ work and infer a
deep value of Life is in how he seeks to understand “agency”—what is responsible
for causing events. This causal understanding is, of course, the gold standard
of a valid scientific paradigm, and as we will see in coming chapters, we believe
Ulanowicz and allied holistic scientists are pointing us in the right direction. But
Ulanowicz has also done research and reported results in ways that show he takes
responsibility for his own work, he is aware of his own agency, and he helps to
make us all aware of our own avenues for empowerment as well. By demonstrating
how “configurations of processes” at the focal level have agency—such as
relationships in food webs (equally valid in human communities) rather than
assigning all agency to the interaction of microscopic or subatomic particles as
many reductionist and mechanistic approaches do—he has produced work and
promoted ideas that inform and inspire our shared capacity to make change, to
help others, and to do good in the world.
Lastly, Robert Ulanowicz has worked to apply lessons learned from study of
living ecosystems to studies of human socioeconomic networks, thus promoting
lessons of Life (in this case, complex ecosystems) from which we can learn and
benefit if we abide by the same natural principles. In 2009, he and his coauthors
wrote of their robustness index and information theoretic approach to understanding
sustainability in networks (Ulanowicz et al., 2009a):
The analysis provides heretofore missing theoretical justification for efforts to
preserve biodiversity whenever systems have become too streamlined and efficient.
Similar considerations should apply as well to economic systems, where
fostering diversity among economic processes and currencies appears warranted
in the face of over-development.
And later:
It seems not unreasonable to assume that many of the same dynamics are at
work in economics as structure ecosystems, and that, over ‘‘deep time,’’ nature
has solved many of the developmental problems for ecosystems that still beset
human economies.
44 CHAPTER 2 Life as the basis of value
This effort to respect Life as model and mentor is another form of leading by
example in which we see, follow and wish to appreciate Ulanowicz’ value of Life
as well as his own creativity, insights, and many scientific and philosophical
contributions.
As we said above, and in both A Third Window and a paper on the topic
(Ulanowicz, 1999—Life after Newton: An ecological metaphysic), one succinct
phrase for Ulanowicz’ main goal is “an ecological metaphysic.” The Oxford
Dictionary of Philosophy (Blackburn, 2016) describes metaphysics as “. . .any
enquiry that raises questions about reality that lie beyond or behind those capable
of being tackled by the methods of science.” It goes on to say that “metaphysics.
. .tends to become concerned more with the presuppositions of scientific
thought, or of thought in general. . .”
Compatible with what Ulanowicz’ works show for an ecological metaphysic, we
hope that this chapter has made a solid case that Life can serve in this arena of the
presuppositions of science and thought. As we laid out above in the theory of
change, or evolutionary scenario, we imagine for how we can achieve true environmental
sustainability, and by admitting that other valid worldviews exist (in
Chapter 1), we do not suggest “Life as the basis of value” as an absolute truth or universal
metaphysic. We do, however, assert that it must be considered as necessary if
we wish to survive, thrive, and sustain our existence as a real life form and biophysical
species living in intimate interdependence with the Earth as Life support system.
Toward summary and synthesis of this section, we note that the works of
Schweitzer, Leopold, and Ulanowicz all refer to cycles of life, and we see this
common idea to be of great importance for the foundations of value and science
we propose to aid sustainability. While the Circle of Life is a common theme
even echoed in popular culture and Disney movies, we feel it is hugely underappreciated.
We focus on it now as a central aspect of a value system necessary
to Life and human culture, and we will see the concept of cycles again as related
to scientific formalisms (Chapters 3À6) and as key to policies, actions, and sustained
system designs (Chapter 8). To recap two key references above, and to add
one for Ulanowicz:
1. Schweitzer (1969) wrote: “How fantastic that in other existences something
comes into being, passes away again, comes into being once more, and so
forth from eternity to eternity!”
2. Leopold (1993) wrote: “In the soil grows an oak, which bears an acorn, which
feeds a squirrel, which feeds an Indian, who ultimately lays him down to his
last sleep in the great tomb of man À to grow another oak. . .”
3. Ulanowicz (2009b) wrote of autocatalytic loops, closed cycles of energy,
matter, or influence in natural food webs and ecosystems: “The action of
autocatalytic feedback tends to import the environment into the system or,
alternatively, embeds the system into its environment.”
The concept of the essential cyclic nature of Life (and death) is profound—
this serves to unify Life (and death) and environment into a single entity, and
45Robert Ulanowicz’ Ecological Metaphysic
from this unification makes fully equal the value of living beings and their fundamental
Life support context. As long as the circle is unbroken, Life remains unified
with environment. This universal lifeÀenvironment cycle also brings a
unifying quality to all humans across all races, nations, and ethnicities, and
between all life forms. Referring back to Fig. 1.1, this helps prevent the fragmentation
of Life from environment and subsequent devaluation of the environment
relative to Life that we see as the first step that yields the systemic crisis and
associated “tragedy of the commons” (Hardin, 1968) we now confront.
If it feels we have gone on too long, then please note we have not covered
many other workers and their corroborating views on the value of Life. No study
of this topic would be complete without inclusion of the work of Naess (1989) on
“deep ecology” and the “ecological self” and Wendell Berry’s writing on health
as a property of a community. Christopher Uhl has written on “developing ecological
consciousness,” a closely allied concept and one of equal importance. The
Dalai Lama has stated that “What we need. . .is compassion at every level—
including for the planet” (Goleman, 2015), thus adding Buddhist perspectives of
awareness, mindfulness, and compassion to the modes by which we can and must
value Life and environment. Roderick Nash (1989) has depicted the history and
evolution of environmental ethics in his book, The Rights of Nature. We cannot
cover these and many other compatible thinkers in depth here, but we provide
readings in the references. We hope we have whetted the reader’s appetite for further
exploration of Life as linked to fundamental value.
As a step toward transition to Chapter 3, in which we again borrow from
Ulanowicz to describe a new holistic science, a few last thoughts on his ecological
metaphysic. We note that we could have included in this chapter on Life as
the basis of value important complementary work by Bernard Patten, as he, too,
has contributed to ecosystem and network science which supports a primary ethical
valuation of Life as a unified whole. Ulanowicz’ and Patten’s work in ecological
network analysis, systems modeling, sustainability, and related fields shows
repeatedly that ecosystems—as represented by food webs, stocks and flows of
energy, carbon, and nitrogen (and at times other biophysical “currencies”)—are
bona fide, holistic life entities. Their work demonstrates that essential Life properties
exhibited by ecosystem networks (i.e., autocatalysis, indirect mutualism,
ascendency, network synergism) are not observable at reduced scales (i.e., the
organism, species, predatorÀprey interacting pairs, or other isolated subsets of
Life). They thus teach that ecosystems must be treated as fundamental units of
study, and units of Life, and cannot be treated as epiphenomena explainable by
dynamics of interacting subset parts. But, we reserve further discussion of
Patten’s contributions for Chapters 3À6 on holistic science.
The ecological metaphysic Ulanowicz sees as general and robust enough to be
valid for many scientific fields even beyond ecology is based on three axioms
(Ulanowicz, 2009b): (1) systems are vulnerable to disruption by chance events,
(2) a process, mediated by other processes, is capable of influencing itself, and
(3) systems have different histories, and some aspects of unique histories are
46 CHAPTER 2 Life as the basis of value
recorded in material configurations. Note how these axioms are more lifelike than
mechanism-like—as being applied to all of reality, they correlate more with a
root metaphor in which the world’s systems have inherent lifelike capacities for
responding to disruptions and events, for self-reference and self-action, and for
dynamic change over time, as opposed to a root metaphor of a mechanistic reality
of dead interacting matter/energy components. Emphasizing the ubiquitous networks
of relationships in ecosystems, Ulanowicz (2009b) shows how mutualism
is ontologically prior to competition, which supports a view of an inherently
mutualistic aspect to the original and fundamental nature of Life. Ulanowicz’
canon of work provides results, examples, evidence, case studies, and analogies
that corroborate the view of community-ecosystem networks as bona fide, holistic,
irreducible units of life. Via sustained study of this level of organization, his
work and that of allied systems ecologists verify that wholes are “greater than the
sum of their parts.”
Putting these together, Ulanowicz promotes ecology and life science—his
“third window” perspective—as equal to, and perhaps now more important than,
either of the prior windows/perspectives of Newtonian mechanics and Darwinian
evolution. We move next to examine several key vistas from this perspective that
we view as crucial to our future.
47Robert Ulanowicz’ Ecological Metaphysic
This page intentionally left blank
CHAPTER
3Holistic science of
lifeÀenvironment À
mutualistic interfaces
The goal of the next section of the book, which includes this chapter and the next
two chapters, is to describe a new form of holistic science, a science grounded in
the value basis of Chapter 2, in which we have set Life in all its forms—Life
itself, Life as a unified whole, and Life as integrated with its essential life support
environment—as the primary basis of human value; we also seek a science able
to solve the systemic humanÀenvironment crisis at its root. We address this holistic
science from three perspectives related to concepts and principles.
In this chapter, we present an introduction and overview—our starting point,
working assumptions, and modeling strategies for LifeÀenvironment as a unified
whole and how and why we have gotten to this perspective. In Chapter 4, we
address major context issues to help frame studies of Life—the origin of Life and
the question “What is Life?” This includes a chronology and story—starting even
before the origin of life; we share our hypothetical and relational narrative of how
Life originated. This story starts with a seamless wholeness that gave rise to Life
and the LifeÀenvironment relation via a series of developments and codevelopments
through bifurcations that continue to unify life-and-environment in
mutually beneficial synergy even as aspects of each realm differentiate, diversify,
and increase in complexity.
In Chapter 5, we propose the six core principles of the science we seek and
are developing, including a science grounded in Life as value basis, that is anticipatory
and oriented toward a future successful transition to sustainable
humanÀenvironment relations, that balances and synergizes holism and reductionism,
is radically empirical, and other founding principles.
As previously described, we propose a new science oriented to serve Life. We
have also made the case that the primarily reductionistic and mechanistic science
of the present and past, as excellent as it has been for many advancements and
powerful human capacities, must be held responsible at least in part for the current
global ecological crisis. Thus, our existing science has not accomplished
what we see now as job #1 (following Leopold, Schweitzer, and others)—to promote,
sustain, and enhance Life. Once we get the basic Life necessities covered,
and once environmental life support is inherently being protected, nurtured, and
enhanced, as required when Life is the ultimate value, then we can move on to
other human values and human projects.
Foundations for Sustainability. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-12-811460-5.00003-0
Copyright © 2019 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
49
INTRODUCTION AND OVERVIEW
As we attempt to do always, we start by acknowledging prior holistic writers who
have helped prepare the ground for our current project. A Billings’ quote (1952)
helps with the context of our approach:
Since the environment is a complex it has been customary for ecologists and
plant physiologists to break it up arbitrarily into factors and to study the effect
of such single factors on the plant. This is a somewhat artificial, but probably
necessary, method of attack, since in nature it is almost impossible for one factor
to change without affecting others. Yet if such an analytical approach is followed,
each factor must be evaluated in relation to all of the other factors, and
the analysis must be followed by a synthesis of the total results. (p. 252)
The approach in the first part of Billings’ quote is familiar: to break “it” up—
where “it” can be the environment, some aspect of plants or Life, or really any
scientific system of study—arbitrarily into smaller separate and single factors.
This is the widely shared method of “reductionist science,” which is the mainstream
and primarily analytical approach used in almost all branches of science
far beyond just ecology and plant physiology. We have lost sight of the fact that
science and analysis have become essentially the same idea. The Merriam
Webster Dictionary gives the first definition of analysis as “A detailed examination
of anything complex in order to understand its nature or to determine its
essential features: a thorough study doing a careful analysis of the problem” and
the second definition as “Separation of a whole into its component parts.” This
same source describes the origin of the word analysis as coming from the New
Latin, and from the Greek, “from analyein to break up, from ana 1 lyein to
loosen.”
We submit that analysis cannot constitute a full scientific process, not even if
the breaking apart into a reduced number of factors is done strategically and
intentionally rather than arbitrarily. The second half of the full process Billings
describes—“the synthesis of the total results”—is sorely neglected and rarely
done. Given that this bias toward analysis and breaking up of environment and
Life factors has gone on for decades and even centuries, there is much overdue
synthesis needed to stay true to this fuller vision of Life and environmental science
as indicated by Billings. We hope this book and works of holistic colleagues
can stimulate a longer process—perhaps, a matching synthesis period of similar
length stretching for decades or centuries.
After years of studying the multiple and entangled symptoms of the
humanÀenvironment crisis, we have developed the framing that fragmentation
(stemming in part from science biased heavily toward analysis) is at the root
cause of the systemic crisis we now experience, and thus, we see holism at the
root of the solution. Fig. 1.1 in Chapter 1, depicts this with “System of Ideas” at
the center of the bullseye diagram, the locus of understanding the root cause, and
50 CHAPTER 3 Holistic science of lifeÀenvironment À mutualistic interfaces
the caption describes the scientific paradigm as an integral part of this problematic
shared cultural system of ideas: “In this science paradigm, life is separated
from environment thus severing the unity of life and life support systems conceptually
and scientifically.” In Chapter 1, we described how, from this central problem,
bias, or imbalance, values associated with this fragmentation, and especially
a lower value of environment relative to life, then influence actions, which we
assert then lead to the many superficial (but still profound) symptoms of life support
collapse that we see everywhere.
The fragmentation emerges from the very way we think about and analyze the
world as stated above. By treating a system as only a set of parts, we miss critical
relations. It sets up an “us” versus “them” mentality in which that which is not
“us” surrounds us but is separate from us. Again, quoting from Wendell Berry:
A minor problem, perhaps, is the tendency of materialism to objectify the
world, dividing it from the “objective observer” who studies it. The world thus
becomes “the environment,” . . . which means “surroundings,” a place that one
is in but not of. The question raised by this objectifying procedure and its
vocabulary is whether the problems of conservation can be accurately defined
by an objective observer who observes at an intellectual remove, forgetting
that he eats, drinks, and breathes the so-called environment.
Berry (2001, pp. 25À26)
Another way of looking at this is to examine the potential for downside or
negative side effects associated with a key aspect of the strength of modern reductionistic
science—the narrow, extreme, and laser-like focus on understanding specific
relationships, processes, and phenomena in nature. While this approach has
led to an explosion in knowledge gained about how various individual aspects of
natural systems work and behave, when this narrow focus on subsets of nature
treated in isolation is translated into technology development and problem solving,
a new issue arises. It becomes possible and even commonplace that a wellmeaning
scientist or engineer (or a team, or an entire disciplinary field) can solve
one problem with seeming brilliant success, but only at the expense of creating
one or more worse problems somewhere else. This is the proverbial pushing
down a bump in a rug only to see it reappear elsewhere in another location.
Removing sulfur from coal before combustion ameliorates an air pollution problem
but creates a solid waste or water problem. Only a transformative technology,
such as alternative energies, could fully satisfy the situation. Because the initial
science involved a reduction of the system of study that necessarily cuts out most
of the world in order to focus, any liabilities, damage, or unintended consequences
that may arise have also been truncated from view and are thus invisible
and deemed unimportant.
When “successful” solutions created in isolation are also heavily rewarded
by financial gain and professional stature (publications, tenure, promotion,
awards, etc.), we get a positive feedback driving the system growth toward
51Introduction and Overview
hyper-specialization. This then leads to increasingly fine-grained reductionism,
ever narrower fields of focus, and ever greater chance that the big picture is
ignored and left on its negative trend toward being the forgotten commons, the
wasteland of unintended consequences, the dumping ground of the “messy”
aspects of problems, which are easier to be ignored than explained, all associated
with the scientifically and socially removed realm of the “externalities” in
economics. By repeating the process of isolating microscale science studies to
those variables that can be controlled, and by then building engineering and
technological solutions leading to greater micro-control, we inadvertently leave a
huge mess for someone else to figure out—scientifically, socially, environmentally,
and economically.
We now focus on a new science paradigm that mends the key mental fragmentation
of life from environment, contributes to a better system of ideas grounded
in Life as primary value, influences better actions, and with the hope, hypothesis,
prediction, and anticipation of better impacts and outcomes toward healing current
damage and fostering long-term sustainability. We see this proposed holistic
Life-centered science as uniquely able to help unify disciplines and fields that
have been splintered by hyper-specialization and to provide pragmatic tools for
synthesis as balance and antidote to unfettered analysis.
The fragmentation of life from environment sets up a zero-sum scenario that
requires, or creates the appearance of, winners and losers. If there are fixed
resources, then our taking leaves less for others. This dilemma has been acknowledged
for over 150 years. Perhaps, the first scientific treatise on this was George
Perkins Marsh’s Man and Nature who wrote in 1864, “A certain measure of
transformation of terrestrial surface, of suppression of natural, and stimulation of
artificially modified productivity becomes necessary. This measure man has
unfortunately exceeded.” Recognition that we have taken and modified the Earth
too much is the first step to change the pattern, but rather than simply taking less,
an integrated solution would refute the premise that the Earth must lose for us to
win. Similarly, in Chapter 1, we framed the current problem this way, which
bears repeating:
The fundamental, net humanÀenvironment relationship is antagonistic or win-
lose.
The crux of the problem and solution is a shift between two scientific views
of the fundamental relationship between life and environment.
However, even with fixed resources, our using them can enhance their function
for others. Thus, we propose the holistic summary of our global ecological
solution, and the desired outcome we seek to assist is a future in which:
The fundamental, net humanÀenvironment relationship is mutualistic or win-
win.
Following achievement of this systemic solution, human actions would naturally
and consistently result in improvement in the environment and Life support
52 CHAPTER 3 Holistic science of lifeÀenvironment À mutualistic interfaces
systems over time, reversing the trend of widespread, chronic, and systemic environmental
degradation we see now. Healing the fragmentation removes the inherent
confrontation that otherwise dominates perception translated into action. This
qualitative change from winÀlose to winÀwin human relation to environment
may sound simple, but the full implications are profound; and so we next dig deeper
into this issue.
BACK TO THE DRAWING BOARD—SEEING IS KEY TO ACHIEVING
As we begin to understand the role and responsibility of science as both partial
cause and potential solution for our current Life-threatening crisis, we must examine
many of the hidden or tacit assumptions in our scientific enterprise. This
examination includes study of founding ideas codified into our primary textbooks
and educational curricula all the way up to well-funded research labs. It also
addresses everyday working assumptions, behaviors, activities, and choices by
people inside and outside of science.
We can also observe our situation and circumstances—the world we have in
part created through our science and technology—with newly focused holistic
eyes. One way to summarize our crisis now is that humans threaten the environmental
life support capacity for our own species and many other species. At the
very least, one could expect motivation for repairing environmental damage
because of this profound dependency we humans have for all resources often
referred to nowadays as ecosystem services. This partition and lack of recognition
of the prominence of ecosystems at the base of the pyramid is even evident in the
current thinking around sustainable development. A common metaphor is that of
a three-legged stool or overlapping circles in a Venn diagram (see Fig. 3.1A),
where the three domains are social, economic, and ecological. The image tries to
convey the idea that the only sustainable solutions are the ones at the center
where all circles overlap. However, such a perception of three circles reinforces a
concept that there are areas of each domain that do not overlap, that somehow
there can be economic activity completed divorced from social or ecological
aspects. Of course, this is crazy and not possible. Therefore, a more appropriate
metaphor is one of nested circles with ecology at the base, human society a subset
of that, and the economic activity a subset within that (see Fig. 3.1B). There are
social aspects that are noneconomic such as family and community relations,
volunteering, worshipping, recreating, meditating, etc. However, there are no economic
activities that are not part of society. The same goes for the primacy of the
ecological domain.
Upon serious reflection, this negative circumstance (global crisis, damage to
environmental Life support) is highly problematic and paradoxical scientifically.
Mainstream biological and economic theories hold that self-interested and competitive
behavior of individuals—the prevailing cultural principle which has radiated
outward from the prevailing scientific paradigm—naturally leads to
betterment for individuals, species, and for living communities as a whole. Within
53Introduction and Overview
evolution, the explanatory theory of natural selection holds that those organisms
that are better adapted to the environment survive and reproduce more than variants
of the same species that are less fit. While a core aspect of this theory
addresses the relationship of an organism or species to its environment in general,
and this natural selection can involve variation in fitness to abiotic variables such
as temperature, moisture, physical disturbance, pH, and many other factors, it is
often the case that the most dynamic and most challenging aspects of the environment
are living actors. Thus, an integral and primary focus is on competitive
relationships—innovations are selected that lead to competitive advantage of one
life form over another, such improvement spreads by still more competition, and
all life forms become better adapted to the environment as a result. Within social
and economic realms, competition is similarly viewed as the fundamental relationship
that leads individuals to strive to better themselves in the contest for
FIGURE 3.1
(A) Overlapping realms of sustainability. (B) Nested realms of a sustainable society.
54 CHAPTER 3 Holistic science of lifeÀenvironment À mutualistic interfaces
social and economic rewards and again is assumed to lead naturally to improvement
in business, technology, and efficiency for all.
Another perspective on this is to note that the working assumption is that betterment
of individuals scales up to higher levels of organization, such as to populations,
communities, ecosystems, and all of Life. This is akin to saying that the
life units at these varying scales—from the individual up to the biosphere—all
behave the same or in fundamentally similar ways. Another possible take on these
linked assumptions is that many seem to believe that the smaller scale units are
the only ones that really matter for explanation and that various forms of individuals,
acting like “elementary particles,” are the only unit or scale of analysis that
has value or meaning. It ignores heterogeneity and hierarchy. This is another core
tenet of reductionism—that phenomena are best explained by behaviors of the
subsets and smaller units at levels below. Ulanowicz (1997, 2009a,b) has critiqued
this working assumption of explanation coming from levels below and
found it to have deep faults in his revolutionary offering of a philosophy of science
grounded in ecology.
The principle of improvement through competition is thus treated as universal
in the current dominant worldview and as equally applicable to nonhuman species
and natural selection as well as humans in social and cultural interactions.
Familiar social/economic examples include the way competitive grants are made
for scientific research and other project funding, and the competitive bids process
for construction and development work.
But the increasing and irrefutable evidence of systemic environmental crisis
presents a serious paradox and contradiction for both realms in which this theory
has been assumed to hold, for any claim that it is universally and generally true,
and for any claim that it can be uniformly applied across all levels and scales of
organization. Our current circumstances indicate clearly that some major explanatory
principles must be missing that can account for the negative side effects in
the case where humans have “won” competition against other species, and in
which industrial nations and economies appear to be “winning” in competition
against other socioeconomic systems.
We previously described this paradox this way (Fiscus et al., 2012):
. . . the multiplicity of chronic and systemic symptoms—arising from industrial
societies and economies that predominantly emphasize competitive action for
self-interest—suggests a deep problem. From [the] holistic perspective, the
most basic relationship of humans to environment appears clearly dysfunctional
and suicidal. The net relationship in the short-term is that humans win (gain
resources, grow, develop, etc.) at the expense of the environment (environment
deteriorates and loses, resources are depleted, wastes accumulate). However,
since we are dependent on the environment for life (and in fact not even
clearly separable; see below), if this relation continues in the long-term, then
humans eventually lose, too. (p. 47)
55Introduction and Overview
One also can view this as a mismatch between proximate goals or values (e.g., to
gain resources, to spur economic development in the short term) and ultimate goals
or values (e.g., to sustain human life and to provide essential life support services for
all people over the long term). Currently, society often has a hard time distinguishing
between means and ends. For example, a rational interpretation of economic growth
is that it is a means to an end but has instead become an end in itself. This could be
partly due to ignoring Aristotle’s Final Cause, which is the reason that something
occurs, without which there is no point in the action. Also, it is just more convenient
and lazy to turn ends into means since it avoids deeper and harder questions about
the objectives being pursued. Raskin (2017), who used multiple scenarios of the
future as a way to understand our choices (and their implications) now, wrote of one
positive future he and colleagues called the New Paradigm within a path called the
Great Transition. In the positive future after the Great Transition, Raskin wrote,
“economies would be understood as the proximate means to the ultimate ends of
vibrant lives, harmonious societies, qualitative, not quantitative, development”
(p. 49). Wise distinction combined with clear realization of proximate and ultimate
values is a generally useful approach as we have seen in Chapter 2 and again here. It
appears to be an essential feature of Homo sapiens as we mature into a more
beneficial relationship with our environmental home.
The current situation matches key aspects of the conditions prior to a scientific
paradigm shift as described by Kuhn (1962) in his theory of the structure of scientific
revolutions. First, there are anomalies, followed by persistent anomalies that
lead to a full-blown crisis in one or more fields of science. Second, there must be
available an alternative theory or paradigm that resolves anomalies and crises and
that fits better in explanation of nature. Kuhn (1962) wrote:
. . . in all these cases [multiple past major scientific revolutions] except that of
Newton the awareness of anomaly had lasted so long and penetrated so deep
that one can appropriately describe the fields affected by it as in a state of
growing crisis. Because it demands large-scale paradigm destruction and major
shifts in the problems and techniques of normal science, the emergence of new
theories is generally preceded by a period of pronounced professional insecurity.
As one might expect, that insecurity is generated by the persistent failure
of the puzzles of normal science to come out as they should. Failure of the
existing rules is the prelude to a search for new ones. (p. 68)
And later:
. . . once it has achieved the status of paradigm, a scientific theory is declared
invalid only if an alternate candidate is available to take its place . . ..
. . . the act of judgment that leads scientists to reject a previously accepted theory
is always based on more than a comparison of that theory with the world.
The decision to reject one paradigm is always simultaneously the decision to
accept another, and the judgment leading to that decision involves the comparison
of both paradigms with nature and with each other. (p. 77)
56 CHAPTER 3 Holistic science of lifeÀenvironment À mutualistic interfaces
We see the current mounting crisis with our environmental Life support systems,
and the failure of “normal science,” mainstream mechanistic and reductionist
science to solve this crisis, as the necessary preconditions for the next major
scientific revolution. Kuhn’s (1962) work provides additional useful framing
where he described “normal science.” He wrote of normal science research as:
. . . a strenuous and devoted attempt to force nature into the conceptual boxes
supplied by professional education . . .. Normal science, for example, often suppresses
fundamental novelties because they are necessarily subversive of its
basic commitments . . .. Sometimes a normal problem, one that ought to be
solvable by known rules and procedures, resists the reiterated onslaught of the
ablest members of the group within whose competence it falls. (p. 5)
And
. . . when . . . the profession can no longer evade anomalies that subvert the
existing tradition of scientific practice—then begin the extraordinary investigations
that lead the profession at last to a new set of commitments, a new basis
for the practice of science. (p. 6)
Ulanowicz (1997, 1999a,b, 2009a,b) is the leading developer and proponent of
the alternative paradigm that we work to help develop here. We seek to help solve
problems in the real world as a means to develop and test aspects of the new theory
and paradigm. For this problem-solving effort, we turn to the understanding
generated by centuries of research and thought on ecology and nature.
A crucial step is to observe that Life has achieved what we seek to solve ultimately,
our current real-world crisis. The LifeÀenvironment relation is inherently
winÀwin on balance, such that the environment has improved over time as influenced
by the operation of Life systems. We have already mentioned briefly that
key forms of evidence for this winÀwin relationship include soils, the oxygen
atmosphere, and the ozone layer. We next provide more in-depth description of
each of these systemic improvements in Life support and then discuss how to
understand this powerful and ideal LifeÀenvironment relation.
While we see the LifeÀenvironment relation as hugely important—almost
miraculous—it seems to have been profoundly underappreciated that, over the
long term, the environment improves in terms of its quality of Life support and
carrying capacity for Life. The evidence of this directional change is in the
increased diversity, energy density, and structural and functional complexity (at
chemical molecular, organismal, and system organization levels) to name a few.
Other scientific narratives within the dominant mainstream focus on how
unexpected it is that life emerged from the “primordial ooze,” bootstrapped itself
into existence, managed self-organization and increasing order and complexity
despite the second law, and survived major cataclysms like impactors and climate
change over geologic time. While this is an interesting story with much truth and
power, we see another wonder that gets much less attention and examination—
how Life has managed over billions of years not only to avoid fouling its planetary
nest but also to feather that nest so beautifully. Our theory fits more with
57Introduction and Overview
Kauffman’s (1995) ideas in his book, At Home in the Universe: life is not random
and unexpected, but very much to be expected when the self-organizing tendency
of the universe is fully understood and appreciated. By extension, we propose that
a winÀwin LifeÀenvironment relationship is likewise to be expected.
As we address the specifics next, such as the oxygen atmosphere, we admit
that, from the perspective of some early species and groups, the presence of oxygen
originally was a great “fouling” and much life died off as this more reactive
element increased and proliferated. In this sense, there were distinctive groups of
winners and losers. However, when we intentionally adopt the orientation to focus
on Life as a unified whole, we assert that the invention of the oxygen atmosphere
was of greater overall benefit than harm. Furthermore, recall that we use Leopold
and Schweitzer’s stance of value relative to all Life, Life itself, Life as a unified
whole. Schweitzer (1965) wrote, “The essence of Goodness is: Preserve life, promote
life, help life to achieve its highest destiny.” And Leopold (1949) wrote, “A
thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability, and beauty of the
biotic community.” One additional detail here is that many of the anaerobic
microbes for which oxygen is toxic still exist and play important Life roles even
today—they have found many suitable environments with little or no oxygen.
Several major sets of evidence serve to illustrate the point of
LifeÀenvironment mutualism, but one must be open to reflect deeply on factors
which may have become common to the point of being taken for granted as
merely “the way things are.”
THE OXYGEN ATMOSPHERE
First, the oxygenated atmosphere of Earth is unique compared to other planets
(Lovelock, 1988). The unique atmosphere, as it developed over time, has served
to make higher rates of energy use and metabolism possible (Swenson, 1989;
Goerner, 1999). This far-from-equilibrium atmosphere also makes it possible that
life forms like mammals can arise and exist, as the energy required for mammalian
respiration and metabolism depends on the high oxygen content and high
redox potential of the environment. To say this another way—if Life’s actions did
not result in a net positive impact in the environment, then we would have no
oxygen atmosphere, no mammals, and no humans.
The composition of Earth’s atmosphere in early stages of formation was
largely carbon dioxide. The atmosphere is believed to have formed from intense
volcanic activity which ejected carbon dioxide as well as water vapor, ammonia,
and methane. Life arose on Earth under these conditions (see below for our ecosystemic
and holistic hypothetical scenario of the origin of Life and the
LifeÀenvironment relation). Without oxygen, the heterotrophic life energetics utilized
anaerobic metabolism such as glycolysis. This has very low and limited efficiency
in generating ATP from each molecule. Over time, perhaps around 2.45
billion years ago, additional energy capture pathways evolved which led to photosynthesis
(probably following on from chemosynthesis as a precursor); the direct
58 CHAPTER 3 Holistic science of lifeÀenvironment À mutualistic interfaces
transformation of solar photons into stored chemical energy bonds. As a result of
this process, carbon was actively removed from the atmosphere and oxygen was
emitted as a by-product. Again, over long time scales, the chemical composition
of the atmosphere changed noticeably. This is referred to as the Great
Oxygenation Event. Oxygen is a highly reactive molecule and its presence opened
the doors for additional biochemical advances, notably oxidative or aerobic respiration.
This new pathway was much more efficient at generating ATP from each
molecule allowing the organism much greater resources for growth and development.
As described by Hall (2017):
If one takes a broad view of evolution any time a new technology with a high
energy return happens along in the evolution of life there will be an explosion
of life forms using this technology. For example, . . . Life was abundant and
diverse, but none of it used oxygen (as we do) as a terminal electron acceptor
because there was no oxygen available. Life operated on fermentation, generating
energy-rich alcohol as an unusable by-product. But once land plants
evolved and generated free oxygen as a by-product of photosynthesis, other
organisms were able to utilize this oxygen and increase their own utilization of
their own food (such as plant sugars) by about a factor of 4.
Organismal development abounded with this new-found energy, leading to
thermoregulation, increased mobility, and neurological and biochemical complexity
to name a few. And, this development eventually led to mammals and to
humans.
Again, examining both the positive and negative aspects, we could say that it
was a form of “creative destruction” in that the old Life systems gave way and
opened up for new possibilities.
The story of the oxygen atmosphere is important for several reasons. First, it
is an example of how complex systems evolve and develop to more complex ones
along particular path-dependent trajectories. Often, these are not based on the
immediate survival aspects that would be selected for. The oxygen atmosphere, in
fact, was quite harmful to a great number of species leading to one of the major
extinction events. Yet, the unintended by-product of oxygen and the new development
pathway that was found was an exaptation in the language of Stuart
Kauffman (2000). It was an aspect of evolution that was not immediately relevant
yet became adopted and even critical in other conditions.
Second, the oxygen atmosphere demonstrates how Life changes the environmental
conditions that further enable Life to thrive and flourish. This codevelopment
and self-regulatory feature of Earth as a complex system was noted
by James Lovelock leading to his Gaia Hypothesis. Without going into the details
of the entire theory, it is useful to point out that the origins for this came from the
question regarding atmospheric compositions. The story goes that Prof. Lovelock
was approached in the 1960s by space scientists—before there was a field of
astrobiology—with the question about whether life exists on other planets. During
this early period of space exploration, the space scientists’ preferred answer
59Introduction and Overview
would be uncertainty that would lead to human missions to other destinations,
which can capture the public’s imagination, funding dollars, and fame. However,
after some consideration, Prof. Lovelock provided his insight that an answer can
be found simply by looking at the atmosphere of the celestial body in question.
His theory was that life would leave a signature on that atmosphere because it
would maintain the conditions far from thermodynamic equilibrium. The Life
action on Earth continually pumps oxygen into the atmosphere, and without that
action, the oxygen levels would decrease. It turns out that both Mars and Venus
have over 95% of their atmosphere comprised of carbon dioxide with only trace
levels of oxygen, water vapor, and other gases. Clearly, there are no Life forces
at play that alter this composition—this composition is predicted by thermodynamic
equilibrium. We are here assuming that this feature of Life-altered atmospheric
composition is a general one, which we see to be a reasonable
assumption. This is also a hypothesis increasingly testable as we discover more
and more Earth-like planets. And, furthermore, the lifeless neighbors give some
clue as to what the Earth’s early atmosphere must have looked like.
THE OZONE LAYER
The increasing oxygen in the atmosphere had additional benefits for the development
of complex life forms on Earth. Life forms originated and lived in water
bodies, due to its special properties and ongoing need for water. But water also
provided protection from solar ultraviolet (UV) radiation. On land, exposure to
direct UV radiation would increase mutation and cell damage. Oxygen, once it
became abundant in the lower atmosphere, could migrate to the stratosphere, dissociate
driven by UV energy, and form ozone. Ozone effectively absorbs radiation
in the 0.1À0.3 μm wavelength range at which most harmful UVB is
transmitted. The ozone layer created by life-and-environment synergistic process
formed around 600 million years ago, and it provided a protective shield, allowing
aquatic organisms to colonize and spur biogenesis on land surfaces.
Without this regulatory ecosystem service, Life would be confined to aquatic
and near aquatic environments (e.g., oceans, seas, estuaries, wetlands, mudflats,
etc.). Continuing to the present day, the stratospheric ozone layer has been maintained
by LifeÀenvironment processes. Damage to this layer by human industrial
emissions—chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs)—destroyed ozone, but as the CFC emissions
have decreased, the protective layer has begun to “heal,” building back up
toward its former thickness and size. During the period of decreased ozone due to
CFC emissions, people have observed increased rates of skin cancer in humans
(Slaper et al., 1996). And, increased UVB radiation has been implicated in damage
to amphibians associated with widespread decline in this group of organisms
that are susceptible to harm from UVB. While the physics and biology have been
well understood, and people in science, policy, and industrial action arenas have
worked in cooperation to diagnose the problem, prescribe change, and achieve
remediation in this case, we believe the holistic implications of the origin and
60 CHAPTER 3 Holistic science of lifeÀenvironment À mutualistic interfaces
maintenance of the ozone layer have not been fully understood or appreciated.
Had we humans completely destroyed all ozone, for example, it seems unlikely
that any technological fix or human actions alone would be sufficient to regenerate
the ozone layer. This essential Earth feature is a unique product of the fully
integrated LifeÀenvironment system operating in winÀwin mutualistic fashion.
SOILS
Soils are a third source of evidence that a winÀwin LifeÀenvironment relation is
possible and normal. In forests, grasslands, and terrestrial environments, soils
“spontaneously” (as a net, holistic, systemic result of LifeÀenvironment action)
develop and increase in depth, structural complexity, fertility, and function in
ways that support living communities existing on those soils (Van Breemen,
1993).
Similar to the steps of increasing complexity mentioned above in the case of
oxygen, changes that result from integrated action of LifeÀenvironment build on
each other and lead to successive increases in the quality of the environment in
its capacity to support Life. The enhanced life forms and ecosystems stimulated
as fertile soils develop act to increase the depth and fertility of soils even more,
and a positive feedback loop is clearly operating (see Fig. 3.2 for depiction of this
positive feedback between life and environment). Reports estimate upward of 1
billion bacterial cells and over 1000 species exist in a single gram of fertile soil.
The process of ecological succession—by which life forms colonize barren
sites like new volcanic islands, or recolonize sites made barren by disturbance,
and then develop over time—includes a key aspect linked to the development of
soils on the site. The development of soils during succession greatly aids an
increase in the biomass that the site can support (e.g., from lichens at the start to
mature forests over hundreds to thousands of years) as well as the biodiversity on
the site. Soils are also operative with the elemental, energy, and nutrient fluxes
and the impact of Life and environment at other sites and at larger scales that a
given site has during succession. For example, as soils develop on a site, that site
plays an increasing role in regulation of the water, carbon, and nitrogen cycles
(among others) and thus has greater impact on other sites downstream or
downwind.
As Life actions lead to soil development, strong gradients are built, such as
the decreasing concentrations of organic matter, carbon, and nitrogen with depth.
In prior work (Fiscus, 2007), we found power law distributions of organic matter,
carbon, and nitrogen in soils of Western Maryland that matched the gradients and
distributions reported by others seen in soils worldwide (Jobbagy and Jackson,
2000, 2001). This far-from-equilibrium, highly nonrandom soil structure—likely a
common phenomenon to anyone who has seen the vivid, striated color spectrum
of a soil profile—is a very strong signature of LifeÀenvironment synergy. In
addition to the changing color, soils show high levels of organic matter, carbon,
61Introduction and Overview
and nitrogen (and other essential life elements) near the surface with decreasing
amounts going down to bedrock.
In part, based on this distinctive gradient structure, soils provide many functions
aiding plant and animal life and the interdependent ecosystems in which
they live. The long list of beneficial functions includes the abilities of soils to
1. absorb, store, and release water in ways that aid plant, animal, and microbial
life locally;
2. play a role in the purification of water and the global hydrological cycle;
3. absorb, store, and release organic and inorganic nutrients aiding myriad life
forms locally;
4. play significant roles in global carbon, nitrogen, and other elemental cycles;
5. recycle wastes and dead organisms and regenerate key inorganic nutrients via
decomposers;
6. provide habitat for diverse biotic organisms; and
7. provide a physical basis for anchoring plants, particularly large trees.
Echoing many of these critical soil functions, the Soil Health Institute (SHI)
states on its website (Soil Health Institute, 2017):
The concept of soil health is gaining widespread attention because it promotes
agricultural practices that are not only good for the farmer, but also good for
the environment. An abundance of research shows that improving soil health
boosts crop yield, enhances water quality, increases drought resilience, reduces
greenhouse gas emissions, increases carbon sequestration, provides pollinator
habitat, and builds disease suppression.
SHI has developed a suite of indicators to define and measure soil health and
states:
Soil health, like human health, is a complex and holistic concept. For example,
when a person goes to a medical doctor, their health is not judged by blood
pressure alone. Instead, many tests are used to assess their health. In a similar
way, soil health is based on numerous chemical, physical, and biological
measurements.
The SHI also works with multiple agriculture partners to develop and promote
practices that restore, enhance, and maintain soil health. One could say that at the
core, organic farming (OF) [or other restorative farming approaches; see, for
example, “regenerative agriculture” as recently defined (The Carbon
Underground, 2018)] is all about soil health. However, our reductionist approach
has conditioned us to think of OF as what it is not, rather than what it is. A survey
of students in introductory biology to the question of “What is OF?” produces
a list that OF does not utilize biocides (herbicides, pesticides, insecticides, rodenticides,
etc.), does not utilize synthetic fertilizers, does not utilize genetically
modified organisms (GMOs), does not utilize growth hormones, does not use confined
animal feeding operations, etc. A long list of NOTs, but never an
62 CHAPTER 3 Holistic science of lifeÀenvironment À mutualistic interfaces
understanding of what OF is. In fact, the multitude of constraints sounds as
though the farmer is putting herself at a disadvantage. In reality, the farmer recognizes
that plants have evolved and adapted to survive and thrive; therefore, the
aim is to create conditions where those foreign additions are not needed. This
boils down to maintaining healthy soils.
This appreciation of how soil health is totally essential for human life, via
agricultural provision of food and fiber and the ecosystem services listed above
plus many more, is an excellent sign of well-placed understanding and value of a
key LifeÀenvironment system. However, as for the ozone case above, we see that
understanding and value of soil often stops at proximate values and drivers. The
deeper implication of soils revealing and requiring a more holistic concept of life
and environment as inseparably integrated is usually missed.
THE LIFEÀENVIRONMENT WINÀWIN IN SUMMARY
In each of the examples given above, we see that parts of the ecosphere that are
normally thought of as abiotic—without life—are in fact heavily influenced and
maintained by Life processes. Therefore, a better descriptor of such activities is
conbiotic rather than abiotic to expressly acknowledge the role of Life in these
environmental aspects (Fath, 2014; Fath and Mueller, 2018). In addition to the
few forms of evidence here, it is interesting that Life is able to improve one primarily
solid material form of its environment (soils, which admittedly have liquid
and gaseous aspects as well), as well as two gas material forms of its environment
(atmospheric O2 and stratospheric O3). We could add details of how Life actions
serve to improve the aquatic and liquid forms of the environment in ways that
likewise have reciprocal benefit for Life. The CO2 and O2 concentration of oceans,
dissolved O2 concentrations in freshwater, water purification, and resupply through
the hydrological cycle, mineral concentrations in waters, and pH regulation are all
influenced by integrated LifeÀenvironment actions, interactions, and ongoing interdependencies.
Looking at all this evidence jointly, we see that Life (action of the
LifeÀenvironment relation) has transformed and continually modifies all phases of
matter—solid, gas, and liquid—of the planetary environment, in ways that aid and
enhance the capacity of those materials to support Life.
We could go on—we could examine the generation and maintenance of habitat
diversity (which in turn aids species diversity), creation of those deposits that
became fossil fuels (starting with photosynthesis), and other aspects of biogeochemical
cycles as strong and abundant evidence that a mutually beneficial
LifeÀenvironment relation is not only possible but is plausibly the natural norm
when considering the full history of Life.
THE LIFEÀENVIRONMENT INTERFACE
The paradigm we propose here, and seek collaborative assistance to refine,
explains the fundamental antagonism between humans and environment, resolves
the apparent contradiction between evolution driven by competition and the state
63Introduction and Overview
of the world today, and indicates the way to successful mimicry of the net positive
LifeÀenvironment relation. We not only go to great lengths to present this
paradigm as so far developed, but also know well that it is still hypothetical—
thus the need for collaboration and active participation to test, refine, and further
develop it.
In order to attain what Life has achieved, we must first reimagine Life itself—
instead of thinking of life and environment separately, we submit that we need to
view the LifeÀenvironment system as a unified whole. One way to adopt this
holistic approach is to see LifeÀenvironment as a single unified system, entity,
and relationship, as indicated in the choice to draw the system boundary so as to
integrate both life and its essential environmental context. We discuss this more
below in diagram form, in view of work by Bernard Patten, and in later chapters
in terms of lessons from systems ecology.
Matching the paradigm shift circumstances of Kuhn, our proposed paradigm
redefines Life to integrate environmental processes, which we see then to provide
a more realistic idea (i.e., better objective fit to empirical data, more balanced science
with equal analysis and synthesis) of the fundamental nature of Life. This
theory holds potential to succeed where prevailing reductionist and mechanistic
theories are failing and provides us the potential for the mutually beneficial relationship
between Life and environment.
This redefinition in general form is depicted in Fig. 3.2A and B. This alternative
framing and systems model is an essential first step to associated and later
steps we present below and in Chapter 4. For example, to achieve the potential
winÀwin relationship, we assert the need for a new holistic, multi-model concept
for Life that integrates two distinct and complementary life types, “discrete life”
and “sustained life.” For our full discussion of the discrete versus sustained life
models, see Lesson 6 in Chapter 6. We also see the need to synthesize three unit
models of Life now used but not fully integrated (1) the cellÀorganismÀindividual,
(2) the communityÀecosystem, and (3) the biosphere. For our full discussion
of these three “holons” (Koestler, 1968) as interdependent and unfractionable
Life unit models, see Principle 5 in Chapter 5.
For now, we compare and contrast the simple diagrams Fig. 3.2A and B and
discuss their implications. We then look at a similar concept in Fig. 3.3, a diagram
modified from Ulanowicz (1997) dealing with the “emergence” of whole
system properties, or the lack thereof, again depending on the act of drawing the
“arbitrary” (meaning intentional, decided, and chosen, as well as subjective)
boundary of what is system, what is context (or environment), and what is the
interface between.
In Fig. 3.2A, we see a generic system in which only Life components are
defined as inside the system of study. We also see that the generalized environment
is outside the chosen system boundary. The living ecological processes act
out on the environmental/evolutionary stage which is not itself part of the system.
This is similar to the isolated Venn diagram in Fig. 3.1A. The interface between
the two separate systems is characterized by a positive impact of environment on
64 CHAPTER 3 Holistic science of lifeÀenvironment À mutualistic interfaces
Life (e.g., high-quality solar energy, rain water, oxygen, carbon dioxide, etc. coming
in) and a negative impact of Life on environment (e.g., degraded and lower quality
energy leaving, waste materials leaving, etc.). While this is an exaggerated and
overly simplified cartoon, we see it as important to examine, and that the conceptual
links to both physical systems and to human systems are potentially critical.
The alignment with physics is in reference to entropy—the generic physical
system is understood to follow the Second Law of Thermodynamics, such that in
any energy transformation, energy quality decreases and entropy increases. And
for living systems, the general life system is assumed to be an open system that is
able to operate and do work (metabolism, growth, cognition, and all the functions
of life) only while receiving a steady input stream of high-quality energy, and
while necessarily exporting degraded and lower quality energy. In the case of
human systems, as said above, this generalized LifeÀenvironment (or systemenvironment)
model may be employed (even if not consciously or explicitly)
when we think, act, set policy, create technology, make plans, and govern ourselves
with the assumption that degradation of the environment is to be expected,
perhaps as a necessary evil or an unavoidable consequence of “doing business” as
FIGURE 3.2
One key step to reframing our understanding of the LifeÀenvironment relation, and the
ultimate net outcome of LifeÀenvironment interactions, is where we draw the system
boundary. This in turn starts with the realization that drawing this boundary is a choice, and
that this scientific choice has implications and ramifications that are profound.
Redrawn from Fiscus, D.A., Fath, B.D., Goerner, S., 2012. The tri-modal nature of life with implications for
actualizing human-environmental sustainability. Emerg. Compl. Organ. 14 (3), 44À88.
65Introduction and Overview
we modern humans have come to assume is normal. A final note on Fig. 3.2A is
that Life inside the system boundary is seen to impact itself positively, such as
via reproduction, growth, development, evolution, etc.
In Fig. 3.2B, we see a very different generic system modeling approach. Now,
the system boundary is chosen and drawn to include both Life and environment
as a single integrated system. While some aspects of this are arbitrary and would
benefit from further formalization (e.g., if, when, and why to label an impact
arrow as 1 , 2 , or 6 ; if we must always have an “outside” or external environment;
if we must always depict high quality, energy coming in, etc.), the main
feature of this alternative framing and system boundary is the ability to see a
winÀwin relation between Life and environment. These positive impacts are
related to those described above—Life improves the environment by way of soils,
atmosphere, and more.
We develop several linked and similarly foundational ideas and definitions
below in the sections on Holistic Perspective on the Origin of Life, and Holistic
Perspective on “What is Life?”, and we examine the complementary aspects of
FIGURE 3.3
Modified from Ulanowicz (1997) whose original caption read “Two hierarchical views of an
autocatalytic loop.” The original boundary perspective (solid line) includes only part of the
loop, which therefore appears to function quite mechanically. A broader vision
encompasses the entire loop, and with it several nonmechanical attributes. Where
Ulanowicz called the smaller system boundary the “Original system boundary,” we have
labeled it the “Reduced system boundary” associated with the reduced perspective and
general approach of reductionism and analysis. We also added the letters to label each
component.
66 CHAPTER 3 Holistic science of lifeÀenvironment À mutualistic interfaces
Gaia theory below as well. Note also that these intentions and choices of drawing
system boundaries for models and science relate strongly to the primary value
emphasis on Life (Chapter 2).
There are important basic concepts with respect to modeling in science that
we address in future chapters. For now, we offer just one quote and one reference
as important for our use and strategies of models and modeling. Allen and
Hoekstra (1992) provide the principle of imperfect modeling: “The past century,
however, has taught us a little more humility concerning our ability to perceive
reality directly. There always remains a veil that separates our models of the
world from reality itself.” And Rosen (1985) showed the multiple aspects which
at best can lead to interdependence between our models and the real world in his
modeling relation, where he has described the distinct processes of encoding,
decoding, causality, and entailment (or inference).
We next examine an exercise compatible with Fig. 3.2 and with similar outcome,
using a diagram modified from the one used by Ulanowicz (1997) as he
explained the special properties of autocatalytic loops (see a fuller discussion of
his work on autocatalysis below).
The main point of this diagram (Fig. 3.3) is again that our choice of the system
boundary can have a profound impact on what we observe and how we are
likely to interpret what we observe. Both of these are clearly related to our individual
mindset, the current scientific paradigm and accepted practices of “normal
science,” and to our shared cultural mindset and everyday views and beliefs. For
example, a common starting point is to study the direct relationship between one
predator and one prey species, which could map on to components A and B in
Fig. 3.3. As noted by Billings (1952), the breaking apart of an otherwise unified
community (or ecosystem, or biosphere) is standard analytic practice, but, as we
have noted, this is rarely followed by a counterpart process of the “synthesis of
the total results” that Billings said was necessary. As the caption of Ulanowicz
(1997) made clear, the choice of the reduced system boundary can align with the
expectation, and a set of mathematical tools and physical assumptions, that causes
and effects (or any of the predatorÀprey interactions), operate in linear fashion
and can be studied effectively with mechanistic models. In the reduced system, it
is clear that there is a zero-sum interaction with one winner and one loser. The
larger, whole system boundary, in contrast, reveals a much more complex system
that includes feedback and self-reference, and where mechanical behavior, valid
fractionability of a system into simple components, and predominantly linear causality
are now all highly questionable as starting assumptions, working hypotheses,
and standard methods. It also raises the opportunity for winÀwin outcomes
through the web of interactions.
These complex systems and philosophy of science themes and questions will
continue to arise. We make a final comment and pose a “thought experiment” for
now on Figs. 3.2 and 3.3. Consider the relative value and attractiveness of the
smaller versus larger system boundaries in these two alternative science mission
scenarios:
67Introduction and Overview
1. Your mission is to make an incremental advance in scientific understanding of
life and/or environmental process and to produce a “pragmatic” (as based on
social norms) contribution to science in the short term.
2. Your mission is to synthesize existing knowledge and to make an anticipatory
contribution to science that has the potential to yield true
humanÀenvironmental sustainability in the long term.
The ultimate mission context and the proximate tools of the trade shape each
other. We have chosen mission #2 above, and thus the expanded and holistic system
boundaries are more attractive. We next consider the contributions of another holistic
scientist on the fundamental issues of systems, environments, and boundaries.
Bernard Patten contributed much work toward understanding our options for
defining a system and its environment for the purposes of ecological modeling,
scientific research, and understanding in fundamental ways how the world works.
Perhaps the most basic and fundamental idea Patten provided is that we have two
options for how to conceive environment, and how environment is conceived relative
to any focal entity or living system of study. Patten (2001) explained the two
options in context of human thought and science:
In the history of human interactions with the external world, entities and environments
became separated into two distinct categories, the first concrete and
the second vague. This was due to a cognitive machinery that discerns objects
but not, at least not directly, their covert linkages. Objects are local, whereas
environments based on the transactions and relations between these are more
extended, and boundaries which may be real or perceived separate the two.
(p. 425À426)
And
So it is natural for man that things and their environments are viewed as separate,
and separated, and this entityÀenvironment duality is registered strongly
in physics’ basic categories of open and nonisolated systems. The opposite,
where environment and its defining entities are continuous and inseparable, is
entityÀenvironment synergy. (p. 426)
To understand these two conceptual choices—entityÀenvironment duality and
entityÀenvironment synergy—is profoundly important, and Patten’s work helps
us know when and why each is appropriate and most beneficial to employ. One
might argue that people readily conceptualize certain subsets of the environment
as entities—“estuary,” “meadow,” “wetland,” or “forest,” for example, bring to
mind well-defined regions, ecosystems, or local environments. The point is not
that entities cannot be conceptualized, visualized, or even managed at various
scales—the point is that for any subset of environment we may isolate in mind,
model, and action there is always a larger, extended, background environment
into which the subset is not only embedded but also fully interdependent for its
continued existence. The object, in essence, emerges out of this context. Even
68 CHAPTER 3 Holistic science of lifeÀenvironment À mutualistic interfaces
larger scale entities such as “forest” or “estuary” must exist in mutual relation
with a larger context and act in such way to maintain that context; otherwise,
they would eventually destroy themselves by destroying their own context of
existence. And, importantly, this concept applies to smaller entities such as
“organism,” including each human as an organism.
Patten (1982, 2001) credited Uexku¨ll (1926) and his idea of function-circles
(among other ideas) for the inspiration for his own concepts of environment.
From the starting point of these two categorical options—duality versus synergy
(or unity)—Patten (1978, 1982) built his own theory and methods based on environs.
Following Uexku¨ll as well as Gibson, Patten defined environs as relativistic—they
are constructed relative to focal entities or components within a
network or system model. That is, a distinct environ exists for each species or
functional group within an ecosystem model and is defined in specific reference
to each species or component.
Patten (2001) explained the major characteristics of environs—how they are
defined and used. Perhaps most importantly, each system component has separate
and distinct input and output environs. Additional key characteristics include (1)
environs are computable by the inputÀoutput methods derived from Leontief and
Hannon, (2) taken together they account for all the matter and energy in a modeled
system (they are exhaustive), (3) no environ shares the energy-matter of
another (they are mutually exclusive) (these two previous characteristics give the
environ the formal description of a partition), (4) they “reflect transactive causality”
(that based on direct exchanges of matter and energy) and “encompass relational
causality” (indirect causes and effects between components), and (5) no
two environs are alike qualitatively or quantitatively. As reported in Fath and
Patten (1999) network environ methods are also unique in the use of matrix
power series during analysis. Fig. 3.4 compares the dualism and synergy views
and shows separate input and output environs in Patten’s synergy view. In this
FIGURE 3.4
Modified from Fath and Patten (1999). (A) EntityÀenvironment dualism, the mainstream
paradigm. (B) EntityÀenvironment synergism and distinct input and output environs,
Patten’s paradigm.
69Introduction and Overview
case, the object is truly inseparable from its environment because it comprises
both an input environ and an output environ.
Patten (1982) traced the history related to these ideas back to Darwin:
Before Darwin (1859) environment was considered an organic whole.
Everything in it made some contribution and had some meaning with respect
to everything else. Darwin subscribed to this view, but his emphasis, and that
of his followers, on the evolving organism struggling to survive, suppressed
the exploration of holistic aspects of the origin of species that might have been
developed. After Darwin, the organism came into great focus, first as a comparative
anatomical entity, then later with physiological, cellular, molecular,
behavioral, and genetic detail. In contrast, the organism’s environment blurred
through relative inattention into a fuzzy generality. The result was two distinct
things (dualism), organism and environment, supplanting the original
organism-environment whole (synergism). (p. 179)
One approach to the choice posed by Patten is that we could use both synergy
and dualism methods and compare the results. This shares a basic strategy of
“dialectical thinking” as described and promoted by Elbow (1986), and which we
discuss in depth in Chapter 7. For now, we will work with the view that entityÀenvironment
dualism is the fundamental approach of the current mainstream
scientific paradigm. As such, we suggest the need to examine this fundamental
approach to understand how the world works, and we are exploring whether this
very early step in scientific process—drawing the boundary between a system of
study and its environmental context—may also be partly responsible for our current
chronic and systemic environmental crisis. Next, we merge two prior discussions—the
primary role of competition as explaining change and improvement
(increased fitness, adaptation to the environment) over time, and this boundary or
interface between life and environment.
THE SYNERGY OF COOPERATION AND COMPETITION
As long as we assume, in our daily practices of normal science, that life is fundamentally
separate from environment (as in Patten’s dualism in Fig. 3.4A, and as
in the fractioned LifeÀenvironment system boundary in Fig. 3.2A), and as long
as we assume that competition is the sole or primary driver of change in living
systems over time, we end up with the added assumptions that (1) life can be in
competition with the environment (or that the primary relation is antagonistic)
and (2) the best way forward for progress and increased evolutionary fitness is to
defeat, control, overpower, and/or outwit any and all components, factors, threats,
or variables presented by the environment. [We note the need to clearly differentiate
between transaction or predation, which is the reduced system of Fig. 3.3 and
competition, the focus here. Transaction or predation occurs pairwise between
two components (species, organisms, etc.) but for competition to be realized,
there must be a third actor or resource over which to compete, since the two
70 CHAPTER 3 Holistic science of lifeÀenvironment À mutualistic interfaces
competitors have no direct transactional connection. Given this differentiation, we
see the general conceptual point to be valid.]
As we have suggested, this perspective can also lead to the sequence of linked
causes and effects in Fig. 1.1 which emanate outward from the center of our
science-based system of ideas (restating with a few modifications):
A. In the science paradigm, life is separated from environment, thus severing the
unity of life and life support systems conceptually and scientifically.
B. Following the scientific paradigm, life is separated from environment in mind
and action in the wider cultural system of ideas. Note that culture can have a
reciprocal and reinforcing role to help continue the prevailing science
paradigm as industry rewards reductionist science, for example.
C. Once fragmented, it is possible and likely that the value of environment is
seen and treated as less than the value of life.
D. Individuals (as well as many nations, corporations, organizations, and other
social entities) act for self-interest primarily and compete for what they
perceive as limited, scarce, and zero-sum resources and assume that
environment degradation is normal, expected, inevitable, and acceptable.
E. Environment is consumed and degraded as manifest in many symptoms of
ecological crisis, and the influence of the citizens’ mental fragmentation and
devaluation of environment travels upward to larger scales and produces the
global crisis.
We also noted that it is not possible for this relative devaluation of environment
(and fundamentally antagonistic perspective) to occur if LifeÀenvironment
remains unified as a single focal entity and system of study. Either the combined
unit improves together or declines together. And, we have shown that in nonhuman
living systems, a positive impact of life on environment is readily observed
in the ways that atmosphere, soils, and other crucial aspects of the environment
improve over time. Thus, we are in search of an alternative approach by which
our science paradigm, and the linked cultural system of ideas, can help us to
understand and then achieve this same positive relation with environment. We
next look at work of Ulanowicz on his alternative explanation for how evolution
and competition function. We then seek to extend his model to integrate nonliving
components of the environment as inspired by the synergy model of Patten.
As mentioned before, Robert Ulanowicz has led the way in developing a new
holistic paradigm for science based on ecology that we seek to support and build
on here. He has contributed a large body of work in hundreds of papers and several
key books. In this section, we focus mainly on his radical and alternative
explanation for the first and most fundamental basis for evolution, competition,
and selection. We note along the way several of his other revolutionary ideas and
concepts that are inseparably linked to his model for evolution.
In his most recent book (Ulanowicz, 2009a,b), he provided the “axioms for
life” which also serve as the central tenets of process ecology and of his ecological
metaphysic. While already paraphrased in Chapter 2, we review and quote
71Introduction and Overview
these here, as they are relevant and applicable for the central set of concepts—
how autocatalysis and indirect mutualism provide a new perspective on evolution
and self-organization in living systems.
His book, A Third Window (Ulanowicz, 2009b), contained three fundamental
postulates for an ecology that Ulanowicz also described (quoting Hutchinson) as
“the study of the Universe”:
1. The operation of any system is vulnerable to disruption by chance events.
2. A process, via mediation by other processes, may be capable of influencing
itself.
3. Systems differ from one another according to their history, some of which is
recorded in their material configurations.
These appear deceptively concise, perhaps even incomplete or insufficient to
explain the basic processes and dynamics of Life’s unique properties and abilities
for growth, development, evolution, and adaptation, but we will see that they provide
a very sturdy foundation on which to build a full explanatory paradigm.
In his prior book, Ecology: The Ascendent Perspective (Ulanowicz, 1997; we
abbreviate this book as EAP), Ulanowicz presented his explanation for how autocatalytic
loops and indirect mutualism, along with the expanded view and holistic
modeling that allows these features to emerge, to become visible (see Fig. 3.3),
tell a very different story than the mainstream mechanistic view of life and evolutionary
change. We paraphrase the main thread of his ideas here (Ulanowicz,
1997).
Seeking a general and systems explanation for order, ordering, organization,
development, agency, formal and final causes, Ulanowicz considered the nine
possible pairwise interactions between any two processes that may come into contact.
Each can have on the other an impact that is positive or beneficial, denoted
by 1 , negative or detrimental 2 , or neutral or no impact, 0.
He then identified as “mutualism” the doubly beneficial interaction (1, 1 ) in
which each process aids the other. He noted that this pairwise interaction is
unique among the nine possible combinations, stating that mutualism “leads to
qualitatively different behavior” than any of the others, and it generates “nonmechanical
behaviors.”
Ulanowicz next extended this examination to sets of more than two interacting
processes, beyond pairwise interactions to the next simplest configuration—a
three node (or component) network (or system). In the case where all three individual
interactions around the three-node loop are positive (1, 1 , 1 ),
Ulanowicz noted how this leads to “indirect mutualism.” He further noted that the
property of indirect mutualism can apply to networks/systems of any size (any
number of nodes or components).
The language, modeling, and terminology Ulanowicz used are clear and precise.
Still, it is interesting to note several subtle variations in his expressions and
explanations. Throughout, he emphasized that the relations, interactions, and
influences between any two processes, nodes, or components are flexible,
72 CHAPTER 3 Holistic science of lifeÀenvironment À mutualistic interfaces
variable, and never fixed or fully determined. Borrowing from Popper, he used
the term “propensity” to describe the general tendency, or overall effect, of any
interaction or influence. So, an arrow with a 1 sign showing a positive interaction
from component A to component B means that component A has a propensity to
increase the rate of B. Imagining that not all instances of the influence of A on B
are the same, and not all are positive, the 1 can mean that the propensity for a
beneficial influence is greater overall than for a detrimental influence. In addition
to these usages, Ulanowicz also said that A will increase the activity of B. All of
these terms—positive, beneficial, to increase the rate, to increase the activity—
make sense, and all are related and understandable when considering a general set
of processes such as those energy and matter transformations and reactions of
chemistry, biology, ecology, and the environment.
Following the influences around the entire three-node loop (1, 1 , 1 ),
Ulanowicz noted crucially that component A can influence itself. Note, too, that
this principle ranks in the top three of his axioms of life. Thus, the three-node
loop of indirect mutualism is “autocatalytic,” a term meaning self-enhancing.
This is an important concept Ulanowicz gleaned from his early academic study
and PhD training as a chemical engineer.
In EAP (Ulanowicz, 1997), Ulanowicz noted that autocatalytic systems are
known and treated as mechanisms in chemistry, as all the reactants (similar to
components as we have called them here) are fixed. The chemical reactants do
not themselves change, and their modes and specifics of reaction (process) do not
change, and so all dynamics and interactions are strictly determined and predictable—two
signatures of mechanical behavior. But Ulanowicz stated that this is
not the case in ecology and life science, where the participants or components
can and do change, as they are more complex and adaptable. This makes all the
difference, and Ulanowicz asserted that in the ecological case, the autocatalytic
loop system is profoundly different—it is nonmechanical.
To help ground these abstract concepts in a realized and functioning system,
Ulanowicz presented a case study and real biological/ecological example and
showed how a three-node system with Utricularia, periphyton, and zooplankton
maps onto his generalized three-node autocatalytic system. The bladderwort
Utricularia aids the periphyton by providing it a substrate to grow on, the periphyton
is food for the zooplankton, and the zooplankton becomes food for the bladderwort
when sucked into its utricle trap, thus completing the (1, 1 , 1 )
influences around the three-node self-enhancing loop. This is a clear and accessible
example, but by no means a special case. Any time we construct a food web
or network of feeding relations, we see that many loops exist; thus, indirect mutualism
and autocatalytic loops are ubiquitous in all ecosystems. For other examples,
consider the very large set of food web network cases in which energy or
material passes from top predators through soil and decomposers and thereby
feeds and aids components (species, functional groups, plants, microbes, etc.) at
or near the base of the food chain.
73Introduction and Overview
Ulanowicz next described eight nonmechanical properties of this special form
of self-enhancing self-organizing life system. All eight of the special properties
are interrelated, and the cumulative effect can be described in many ways.
Regarding perhaps the most striking one of these, Ulanowicz (1997) wrote:
In an autocatalytic system, an increase in the activity of any participant will
tend to increase the activities of all the others as well. (p. 42)
This is a noteworthy special property—we could say that this is the locus of a
special case of the partÀwhole relation of Life. This is in essence a statement that
the parts aid the whole, each part aids each other part, and the whole serves to aid
each part. This kind of multi-scale unity and organic coherence is familiar in how
all organs and subsystems of an organism serve to aid all others and the organism
as a whole, and how all functional groups serve to aid all others and the ecosystem
as a whole with ecosystems.
Interestingly, systems thinker, architect, and urban pattern guru Christopher
Alexander made a similar observation about how buildings and other aspects of
the built environment relate with each other: “Each center is (recursively) dependent
on other coherent centers for its own coherence” (Alexander, 2012, p. 428).
In his terminology, a “center” is a quasi-autonomous building that has a defined
function and purpose. It is coherent in the sense that it performs this function as a
bank or hotel or post office. But it is dependent for its continuation on the other
buildings around it, which are each performing their own coherent functions.
A thriving community needs each of these centers interacting with each other.
The quality and health of the entire community emerges out of these contextual
relations. This demonstrates the foundational role of the concept of positive,
feed-forward relations in socioeconomic systems as well as ecological ones. We
expect that development of a more pervasive holistic science will spawn examples
in many fields.
It is difficult to paraphrase EAP (Ulanowicz, 1997) which is already concise;
this recapitulation does not do justice to the original, and we highly recommend
that everyone read EAP. But we borrow and share these bullet point ideas here,
as they are essential to the new holistic science we seek to promote. Ulanowicz
described each of the eight special properties of autocatalytic systems. It may
help to refer to Fig. 3.3 for reference. He explained how autocatalysis induces or
embodies the following system qualities (with our versions of his descriptions of
each):
1. Growth-enhancing—an increase in the activity (or rate, or material flow) of
any component leads to greater activity in all other components and in the
network as a whole. The configuration also results in greater activity of the
whole than the activity if the components were operating separately.
2. Selection pressure—random changes in any component’s behavior propagate
around the loop to either reward changes that increase the mutualism (either
increase its sensitivity to a prior component or increase its catalytic benefit to
a following component) or to penalize changes that decrease the mutualism.
74 CHAPTER 3 Holistic science of lifeÀenvironment À mutualistic interfaces
3. Asymmetry—as Ulanowicz wrote (1997), “Unlike Newtonian forces, which
always act in equal and opposite directions, the selection pressure associated
with autocatalysis is inherently asymmetric.” The propagation of positive
incremental changes forward, and their reward and amplification when the
effect returns to the originating component, impart a directionality to the
operation of the looped network as a whole, thus tending to ratchet up
activity, rate, and size of the system as a whole.
4. Centripetality—the autocatalytic system operates so as to pull in material and
useable energy (or exergy) from the environment. This follows from the same
kinds of reward loop impact as above—any modification to a component that
leads to increased input of energy or material into that component, and that
then enhances activity around the loop, will come full circle to reward that
increased input modification, and so on.
5. Competition—the autocatalytic system configuration induces competition not
only among varying properties of components (as under #2 “selection
pressure”) but also between components themselves. This occurs since more
than one pathway, with alternatives for any component as part of a pathway,
can exist. If some new component arises and begins to participate in the loop,
the mutualism and reward loop will act to penalize and eventually replace less
sensitive or less catalytic components where the flow can follow the better
pathway.
6. Autonomous—Ulanowicz described several ways in which autocatalytic
systems are (to varying degrees) independent of their elemental constitution
and environmental context. He described one aspect of this due to
centripetality by which the system “actively creates its own domain of
influence.” He also noted that this “creative behavior imparts a separate
identity and ontological status to the configuration.” Finally, he described how
“the characteristic time (duration) of the larger autocatalytic form is longer
than that of its constituents” leading to its “persistence of form beyond present
makeup.” Just as cells in organisms turn over and are replaced while the
organism remains, elements within cells are replaced more rapidly still, and
species come and go while ecosystems maintain their essential form and
function, such autonomy and persistence of form is a familiar feature of living
systems. In centripetality and the autocatalytic loop, Ulanowicz saw the “most
primitive hint of entification, selfhood, and id.”
7. Emergence—the autocatalytic configuration, as well as the other seven associated
special, nonmechanical properties, “emerges whenever the scale of observation
becomes large enough.” Again, see Fig. 3.3 for a graphical depiction of how the
picture changes from a mechanical and simple, linear causeÀeffect system, to the
complex, holistic, and organic autocatalytic loop system.
8. Represents a formal cause in the sense of Aristotle—whereas most
explanations in normal science refer to material or efficient causes (often
considered mechanisms) operating at a level below the focal level (the level at
which the system is defined, and its boundary is set, and observations,
experiments, and models are made), or occasionally to larger scale causes
75Introduction and Overview
operating at a level above the focal level, with autocatalysis “agency [much
like causality] can arise quite naturally at the very level of observation.”
Ulanowicz went on to say that autocatalysis not only “takes on the guise of a
formal cause, sensu Aristotle,” but also that the directionality and asymmetry
in autocatalytic loops represent “telos . . . a very local manifestation of final
cause . . ..” For Ulanowicz to associate autocatalytic loops with formal and
final causes is to us a major indication that this organizational form and
configuration of processes is highly unique, critical to understand Life, and
with potential to help solve the systemic problems we face with both our
science paradigm and our impacts on our Life support systems.
Taken together, the eight nonmechanical properties of autocatalysis form the
theoretical basis by which Ulanowicz has shown that mutuality is plausibly prior
to, and the generating source of, competition and evolution. These sections of his
later book add more emphasis to this new paradigm (Ulanowicz, 2009b):
... in connection with Darwin’s theory, a very important but unstated premise of
his scenario is that participants strive to capture and accumulate resources. The
conventional Darwinian narrative does not mention the origins of this drive, but
we now see it is as the deductive consequence of autocatalytic action. (p. 72)
And
To underscore the fundamental and essential status [of] centripetality, we now
assert that competition is derivative by comparison. That is, whenever two or
more autocatalytic loops draw from the same pool of resources, it is their autocatalytic
centripetality that induces competition between them. By way of
example, we notice that, whenever two loops partially overlap, the outcome
could be the exclusion of one of the loops. (p. 73)
And
One should never lose sight of the fact that the autocatalytic scheme is predicated
on mutual beneficence, or more simply put, upon mutuality . . .. That
competition derives from mutuality and not vice versa represents an important
inversion in the ontology of actions. The new ordination helps to clear up
some matters. For example, competition has been absolutely central to
Darwinian evolution, and that heavy emphasis has rendered the origins of
cooperation and altruism obscure, at best . . . these efforts . . . invariably misplace
mutuality in the scheme of things. Properly seen, it is the platform from
which competition can launch: without mutuality at some lower level, competition
at higher levels simply cannot occur. (p. 75)
As we have said, such positive feedback, autocatalytic loops are ubiquitous in
cycles of energy and materials in food webs. The work of Ulanowicz on this
unique community-ecosystem level property provides better understanding of evolution,
natural selection, competition, and the striving to self-improvement of living
systems. This systemic striving, as Ulanowicz suggested, is missing from
76 CHAPTER 3 Holistic science of lifeÀenvironment À mutualistic interfaces
mainstream Darwinian-theory based on unit models of organisms, individuals,
and species, none of which are modeled or defined as having innate positive feedback
or autocatalytic loops.
Even with this strong emphasis on the primary explanatory and ontological
role of mutualism, autocatalysis, and centripetality, we might say that Ulanowicz
has described various forms of synergy between competition and cooperation and
indicated ways in which they overlap and are interdependent. Whether seen as
primary, or as one half of a dialectic, this view of mutualism is a qualitatively different
approach than the current mainstream life science paradigm. See Chapter 6,
Lesson 5, for more on the fundamental role of mutualism as shown by systems
and network ecology. Overall, we assert that this perspective is a critical pillar of
a new science paradigm capable of helping us see and then achieve a mutually
beneficial relation of humans and environment.
The next step is to extend the work of Ulanowicz on autocatalytic loops and
indirect mutualism to incorporate an active, participatory, and self-transforming
role of the environment. In the diagrams, models, scenarios, and examples he
used, Ulanowicz depicted the components or participants in autocatalytic loops
primarily with reference to living components—species or functional groups, as
in his Utricularia case. While this is enough to shift radically the paradigm of
Life science and to elucidate a new and wholly missing fundamental concept to
evolutionary theory, we can do even more if we apply this approach while including
environmental components in the loops.
Since we have described already how soils and atmosphere improve over time
in terms of their quality and capacity to aid Life, we can start by imagining one
of these environmental factors as an active component inside an autocatalytic
loop that also includes living components. See Fig. 3.5 for a three-node loop
example.
Once we have an environmental process in the loop, then all of the eight nonmechanical
properties of autocatalysis (Ulanowicz, 1997) extend to the integrated
environment. For example, an increase in the rate or activity of the environmental
process will increase the rate/activity of the others—the living components—and
vice versa. A change in the activity of one of the Life processes will alter the
activity of the environmental process. This straight-forward extension of
Ulanowicz’ autocatalysis is the seed germ of the winÀwin LifeÀenvironment
relation and helps to understand LifeÀenvironment as an interdependent, unified,
and co-evolving system. This model also helps explain the strong evidence of
improvement in soils (e.g., how over time they grow in depth, increase in fertility,
and build nonrandom gradients in key constituents like organic matter, carbon,
and nitrogen). And, if we replace soil with atmosphere in Fig. 3.5 as an active
environmental component, then this model helps explain improvement in the
atmosphere (e.g., how over time the oxygen content aided the diversity and
energy processing capacity of Life, and how the ozone layer protected against
UV damage). This conceptual model would also apply to the seed germ of
Lovelock’s Gaia theory of a living biosphere.
77Introduction and Overview
The plot thickens as we examine details of some of the environmental processes
that can and do participate in autocatalytic loops in close mutualism with living
components. In order for the impact or result of a component such as soil to have a
beneficial (1 sign in the diagram) impact on the next component around the loop,
we must be able to observe a nonliving process, or perhaps a hybrid living and
nonliving process, that enhances the next process downstream. With respect to the
origination of this loop, as we discuss later related to the origin of Life, this is akin
to saying that some natural, spontaneous tendency explainable by physics and
chemistry becomes an asset to the loop as a whole, is able to be augmented by the
component feeding it, and to augment the component that it feeds. And on the flip
side, this suggests that living component processes will operate in ways that
increase the rate of activity of certain nonliving processes—those that can enhance
the next component in the loop and participate in the autocatalytic system as a
whole. The whole set of interactions becomes a pay-it-forward complex, which,
however, is unintentional in the proximate sense—there is no designer—but closed
in the extended sense that those that contribute to the autocatalytic processes best
promote existence of the overall system. As systems-thinking urbanist Jane Jacobs
once remarked: “It may be that all self-sustaining systems are reciprocating”
(Jacobs, 1969, p. 126).
One way to think of this beneficial physical/chemical process is in terms of a
spontaneous environmental capacity to break down structures, and to dissipate
FIGURE 3.5
Modification of the three-node autocatalytic network of Ulanowicz (1997) to include an
environmental compartment such as soil shows how mutually beneficial relations can
integrate environmental roles and lead to enhancement of life support capacity. We could
draw a similar diagram with atmosphere, surface waters, or other environmental
components in place of soil.
78 CHAPTER 3 Holistic science of lifeÀenvironment À mutualistic interfaces
energy gradients, as required by the Second Law of Thermodynamics. Ulanowicz
(2009b) attributed such a dissipative capacity to autocatalytic loops in general:
. . . as autocatalysis drives up the aggregate levels of system activity, it concomitantly
inflates the rate of system dissipation. (p. 94)
This overall system tendency to increase dissipation is compatible with an
integral role for a component that breaks down chemical bonds that may have
been formed, that “decomposes” molecular strings that may have been assembled
or “composed,” by an earlier process step in the loop. By analogy with Fig. 3.5,
this would fit with a process by which organic forms of nitrogen are mineralized
back to inorganic forms (NH4 or NH3), and this would be a positive process step
to increase the rate by which a plant component (or even a proto-plant, or protoautotroph,
like a general “composer”) would be able to take in nitrogen and grow,
thereby feeding the next component around the loop. A similar impact occurred
as increased oxygen concentration in the atmosphere increased the redox potential
of the environment, thus favoring greater energy-dissipating reactions.
The idea of a molecular string “composer” as a generalized proto-autotrophic
functional process operating in mutualism with a molecular string “decomposer”
as a generalized proto-heterotrophic process is something we presented in prior
work (Fiscus, 2001À2002). We use the term composer here, instead of the usual
term “producer” but with essentially the same meaning, to emphasize the complementarity
of function with the decomposer. We discuss this more in reference to
the origin of Life but note here that the systems concept of “coupled transformers”
is one that borrows from Alfred Lotka (1925) and one that is in harmony
with the “two-tendency universe” as Ulanowicz (1997) described the ubiquitous
synergy of natural processes that build up coexisting with processes that tear
down. This quote of Mikulecky (1999) summarizes this idea well (where he was
referring to work of Robert Rosen and Rosen’s holistic metabolism-repair model
of organismal life):
One of the first and most crucial aspects of the evolving living system was its
failure to last! It was in a condition of being torn down as fast as it was being
built up and this is what allowed it to evolve. Stability is the return to a condition
after being perturbed from it. How much more stable could something be
than to have both its construction and destruction under strict limits? Both construction
and destruction are systems properties. The systematic tearing down
allows rebuilding, replication, and evolution.
If we replace the soil component with an environmental atmosphere component,
then a similar scenario could be envisioned with reference to organic carbon
compounds—one living (or proto-living) functional component forms organic carbon
compounds, forming bonds and assembling “useful” structure, and another
component (perhaps originally as fully abiotic) naturally breaks those carbon
bonds, dissipates the energy, and returns original building blocks to the next component,
perhaps in the form of CO2 as an input.
79Introduction and Overview
This integral Life role for a decomposer, dissipation, or deconstruction function
hints at some profound issues. In essence, this view of the original and fundamental
nature of LifeÀenvironment systems and how they are organized and
operate—where we start with an ecological or ecosystemic unit model in mind
rather than a biological or organismal one—suggests that death and life co-arose
and have always coevolved. This echoes the question that Patten (2014, 2016a,b)
has posed and has studied in depth:
Is life’s destruction of current life (eating and being eaten) to sustain and reconfigure
new life to fit a changing planet the only way to organize a
biosphere?
As we continue to explore Patten’s rich question (first mentioned in
Chapter 1) and the concept of LifeÀenvironment as integrated whole, we may
find that another principle is a logical extension—death and life must always go
together and coevolve, as a form of creation and renewal.
In spite of a human longing for everlasting life, dissipative tendencies are
unavoidable in a thermodynamically lawful world. The necessity for new energy
and the processing that it ensues to maintain the complex, self-organized structures
wears down the very system it is nourishing. The design strategy of nature
has not been to extend this timeline indefinitely, but rather one stays long enough
to leave one’s mark that this process of birth and death can function in perpetuity
in a broad cycle of life and death, production and consumption, composition and
decomposition, creation and renewal.
The strategic integration of construction and deconstruction is also a useful
technological approach to sustainable materials use, as in the Cradle to Cradle
design philosophy of William McDonough, Michael Braungart, and associates
(McDonough and M. Braungart, 2002; also see: www.c2ccertified.org/ for current
certification and licensing process). We examine this inherently cyclical application
to manufacturing and use, which we might call “ecomimicry,” in Chapter 8.
Tying back to our discussion on soils, Wendell Berry eloquently remarked,
“Soil is the great connector of lives, the source and destination of all . . .. It is
alive itself. It is a grave, too, of course.” He was writing about the current agricultural
crisis and the forcing of industrial chains rather than ecological cycles
and concluded that it is essential that we “Establish agriculture upon the same
unifying cycle that preserves health, fertility, and renewal in nature by which
‘Death supersedes life and life rises again from what is dead and decayed’”
(Berry, 1977, p. 90).
In this chapter, we have looked at our choices related to drawing system
boundaries, how those choices impact the results and the values/assumptions promulgated,
options for conceptualizing the entityÀenvironment relationship, the
unique power of autocatalysis to explain Life in a way that also suggests a new
view of evolution, the synergy of cooperation and competition, and the synergy
of life and death. We next apply the holistic and anticipatory approach to study
the origin of Life and to address the question “What is Life?”.
80 CHAPTER 3 Holistic science of lifeÀenvironment À mutualistic interfaces
CHAPTER
4Life: From origins to
humans
In the last chapter, we looked at our choices related to drawing system boundaries,
how those choices impact the results we get, and how values and assumptions
play into our Life science. With these strategies and framing in mind, we
next apply the holistic and anticipatory approach to study the origin of Life. After
that, we review existing approaches to answering the question “What is Life?”
and offer our holistic contribution to this recurring and provocative question.
HOLISTIC PERSPECTIVE ON THE ORIGIN OF LIFE
How does the holistic Life perspective alter attempts to develop hypotheses,
models, scenarios, and narratives for the origin of Life? This is an important
question, not only due to the perennial interest in the question, and the potent
curiosity and basic science involved, but also due to the possibility that understanding
the original and fundamental nature of Life may hold clues and keys to
what we need to understand and change to live long and prosper as technologically
advanced humans in socially developed nations and civilization. If that
link—between the origin of Life and implications for actionable science to steer
human progress—seems weak, then we hope you will read this next section with
an open mind and consider that it may yield important fruits. This quote may
serve for inspiration—a motto that at one time was posted on the Internet as the
stated mission of the NASA Institute for Advanced Concepts (NIAC). The mission
of NIAC was:
To understand life from origin to destiny
If memory serves, this mission was on the NIAC website circa 1999. The group
is now called NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts (again, NIAC) Program, and
this holistic mission quote is no longer posted on their websites, as far as we can
tell. It remains an inspiration for us, and even if only temporarily a way of thinking
for NIAC, it serves to concisely encapsulate the idea that Life’s origin and
Foundations for Sustainability. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-12-811460-5.00004-2
Copyright © 2019 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
81
open-ended future are necessarily linked. NASA’s Office of Space Science does
currently list a similar mission, but with reference to the universe as a whole
(NASA OSS, 2017):
The mission of the Space Science Enterprise is to solve mysteries of the universe,
explore the solar system, discover planets around other stars, search for
life beyond Earth; from origins to destiny, chart the evolution of the universe
and understand its galaxies, stars, planets, and life.
The NASA Astrobiology group is similar, defining astrobiology as “the study of
the origin, evolution, distribution, and future of life in the universe” (NASA
Astrobiology, 2017).
As we mentioned in Chapter 1, we also see this original/fundamental and destiny/sustainability
unity, and that holistic science and an ecosystemic perspective
can help, when we compare the challenges of sustaining Life on Earth and successfully
colonizing Life beyond Earth. These two pursuits are interestingly entangled,
at least by our way of speculating: ironically, it may be that we cannot know and
achieve sustainability of Life on Earth until we know and achieve colonization of
Life beyond Earth, and vice versa. It was the photos of Earth from space, e.g., the
1972 The Blue Marble, that galvanized the environmental movement’s focus on a
global perspective, and ideas such as Boulding’s “Spaceship Earth” that made it
clear we are dealing with similar life-support issues as our astronauts, albeit on a
different scale. This same paradoxical consideration applies to the origins and destiny
extremes as well: we may not be able to know and achieve sustainability of
Life on Earth until we understand well the original and fundamental nature of Life.
In prior work, Fiscus (2001-2002) proposed an “ecosystemic life hypothesis”
that was compatible with the ecological origin of life scenario of Odum (1971).
In this hypothesis, similar to the discussion above, Life arose as an integrated set
of coupled complementary processes of molecular string “composers” (analogous
to proto-autotrophic processes) and molecular string “decomposers” (analogous to
proto-heterotrophic processes or organisms). Odum (1971) described two similar
coupled chemical reactions as representing prebiotic “production” and “respiration”
and depicted them as arising prior to cells and organisms as aided by hydrological
cycles, thermodynamic gradients, and photochemical reactions in
“circulating seas.” Odum’s scenario also depicted this ecological cycle as later
generating cells and organisms via “encapsulation and miniaturization.”
Instead of a solely bottom-up approach—the origin of “cellular life”
(Morowitz, 1992) as most mainstream scientists have imagined it—in new paradigm
we offer hinges on a multi-scale perspective. We hypothesize that the
biospheric, whole-Earth aspect of Life played a key role, most likely as related to
the hydrological cycle. The backbone of the planetary water cycle is an interesting
prototype for Life as a general dynamic system: two main phase transitions of
water (evaporation and precipitation), and the dialectical interplay of solar radiation
(driving evaporation) and Earth’s gravitation (driving precipitation), form a
cycle that sustains itself indefinitely.
82 CHAPTER 4 Life: From origins to humans
Another feature of the hydrological cycle we have explored as potentially implicated
in the origin of Life is the interface between freshwater runoff, estuarine
dynamics, and ocean circulation. A region of unique dynamics, where the phenomenon
called the estuarine turbidity maximum (ETM) occurs, displays complex characteristics
at the place where freshwater from land (river input) meets salt water
coming in the from the ocean (aided by estuarine and tidal flows). A well-studied
example of this ETM zone exists in the Chesapeake Bay (North and Houde, 2001).
The physical and chemical interactions create a stratification and boundary layer
between the salt and fresh waters. The ETM zone also has a high degree of mixing,
circulation, and resuspension of particles, playing roles much like Odum’s (1971)
“circulating seas.” These and other features make it a prime candidate for the location
of a systemic origin of Life at the intersection of planetary, regional, local, and
microscopic dynamics, and creative forces and elements involving water, land,
atmosphere, and ocean. This scenario also integrates the three Life modes, and
three Life unit models, we have employed to explain Life—the biosphere (or
planet), the ecosystem (as in the proto-plant and proto-animal functions), and the
cell/organism (microscopic and discrete life entities).
An existing Life feature that may be a legacy of an origin at the ETM is the
common combination of (1) an internally salty cellular and physiological makeup
with (2) the continual need for freshwater input observed in most life forms.
A literature survey would be useful to examine how common this is among all
life forms. A related issue worthy of study is the timing of ocean/estuarine salt
content, the origin of Life and important developmental stages of early Life. Are
the time scales compatible? How did ocean salinity change in relation to dynamics
and processes in the prebiotic world and into the protobiotic world? These
questions are candidates for follow-up work based on our theory, and they would
help to confirm or refute the holistic LifeÀenvironment hypothesis.
Many other properties of water are important for understanding and aiding Life,
but we do not address them in depth here. Properties such as water’s specific heat
capacity, temperatureÀdensity relation, ion solubility, hydrophilic and phobic membranes,
absorption of ultraviolet radiation (UVB), and many others, while key to
Life, are not essential for explaining and differentiating the ideas and paradigm we
present here. Thus, they are explained well in many other works and references.
Another approach, an alternative to starting with the physical/chemical dynamics
at the ETM, or with molecular string composersÀdecomposers in proto-symbiosis,
is a line of “relational reasoning” that may amplify the value of a holistic and
ecosystemic origin of Life scenario. Next, we consider the origin of Life in relational
terms and see support for our idea that the primary LifeÀenvironment relation likely
has been a winÀwin relation from the origin onward.
Imagine a pre-Life Earth environment characterized by an undifferentiated
wholeness. In this hypothetical era existed no life or Life, no living cells, organisms,
ecosystems, or biosphere, and no living “self” existed as distinct from environment.
In this time and space, in the most general sense, we could imagine that only a single
“relation” existed: the environmentÀenvironment relation (see below for features of
83Holistic Perspective on the Origin of Life
“relation” as we are using the term here). The logic here is that the other key generic
relation we seek to understand and heal (to achieve humanÀenvironmental sustainability)—the
LifeÀenvironment relation—did not yet exist. Starting from this original
whole and unitary environmentÀenvironment relation, we then seek to
understand the origin of Life, and the origin of the LifeÀenvironment relationship,
in broad conceptual terms, and importantly, in relational terms.
To add more details to the simplest pre-Life situation, we imagine two aspects
of environment as nonliving processes or objects characterized as energy and/or
material. The link between these two processes/objects is a relation of some sort,
such as a transformation (e.g., liquid water evaporates to water vapor), interaction
(e.g., two molecules of water collide), or some other form of material, physical,
chemical, energy, gravitational, etc. influence or effect. From this starting premise,
we suggest the next set of logical steps, eight propositions and a working
hypothesis. The propositions are as follows (modified slightly from Fiscus, 2013):
1. Relations are not material. Relations are physical and real.
2. Relations are not localized and are not objects. Relations are non-localized
and exist between objects or processes. Relations can be transformations,
interactions, forms of organization, configurations, or influences. They are not
conserved and can multiply combinatorically.
3. The origin of Life involved “something new” arising from the pre-Life realm
of environment and relations.
4. The “something new” that arose was not material, energy, or any kind of
object or “stuff.” [We note that this is compatible with the first law of
thermodynamics—matter-energy is not created or destroyed; thus, matter and
energy are conserved at the origin of Life.]
5. The “something new” that arose at the origin of Life was a novel emergence
in the realm of relations. For example, something new could have arisen in
the organization of matter-energy, or in the configuration of some set of
matter-energy processes (Ulanowicz, 1997, 2009b).
6. Relations need not be conserved—relations can be created and destroyed.
7. During and after Life arises, we imagine existence of the first
environmentÀenvironment relation plus two new relations: LifeÀenvironment
relation and the LifeÀLife relation. This is consistent with laws of
thermodynamics in that the “something new” created is a set of two new
relations.
8. The two new relations were created inside the former undifferentiated system
(environment).
These propositions feed into the synthesis hypothesis of the original, fundamental,
and relational nature of Life:
A key quality of the LifeÀenvironment relation is its integration with events,
processes, trends, dynamics, and further articulated relations that all (on
average, in the sum, or when taken as a whole) serve to support, sustain, aid,
84 CHAPTER 4 Life: From origins to humans
and increase the quantity, quality, and complexity of Life. That is, the
LifeÀenvironment relation is inherently “good” for Life and is beneficial to
the continued existence and operation of Life in the environment. We see this
to be true from the origin Life and for nearly 4 billion years afterward.
Here, we again invoke values where we hypothesize that a defining characteristic
of Life—which again cannot be fractionated from, and must be considered in
terms of, the LifeÀenvironment system as a whole—is to exist and operate in
such way to be supported and aided by, to create and maintain a “good” (or positive)
relationship with, the nonliving environment.
It is critical to be clear that this value basis centers on the continued existence
or survival of Life—life itself, life as a unified whole, including “sustained
life”—and not an emphasis on the continued existence or survival of an individual
organism, species, or other subset of Life (as in to consider strictly “discrete
life”). The same applies to the idea of the environmental function or role as being
“good” for Life. This value judgment, too, would only apply to Life as a unified
whole, which is able to continue and improve in concert with continued improvement
in soils, atmosphere, and environmental Life-support capacity, and not to
individuals and organisms who inevitably suffer death, nor to species, families,
genera, communities, and ecosystems which inevitably suffer extinction or
annihilation.
We admit some difficulty with this approach to analyze and study the idea
that the environment can act or be “good” toward Life, and even more challenging
to address how Life can be “good” for the environment. The main difficulty
arises because it is not obvious how to define a winning, “good,” or positive
impact on the environment, at least not in terms of an isolated relation. Qualities
we might consider good are ones that increase both the energetic efficiencies and
total energy use as well as pay-it-forward to offer other parts of the system some
share of these benefits. These include relations that can “squeeze” more value and
usefulness out of a particular energy unit, such as aerobic respiration getting
closer to ground state than anaerobic respiration, lifting the system along a higher
gradient. These qualities can often be observed in the overall system complexity
and diversity. The “goodness” does not emerge until the relation is processed, or
in some way vetted, by the system as a whole. There is almost a tautological
aspect to this in that relations that support the good are those that are favored and
selected for and those that do not are left behind and forgotten. Conventional wisdom
seems to hold that “environment” has no basis for value, good/bad, or right/
wrong on its own. We see the value-neutral environment in science, and it also
appears in philosophy, Buddhism and Taoism, as in this quote from Watts (1959):
Looking out into [the universe] at night, we make no comparisons between right
and wrong stars, nor between well and badly arranged constellations. (p. 5)
This quote refers to extraterrestrial aspects of environment, but many use similar
logic in reference to species extinctions, a lack of direction or progress in
85Holistic Perspective on the Origin of Life
evolution, climate change, soil degradation and other natural phenomena, and side
effects of human actions. All of these aspects of environment are treated as essentially
the same as storms, floods, and natural disasters—like either “random
events” or “acts of God” which cannot be assigned any clear or solid determination
as “good” or “bad.”
Thus, we assert the only solidly justifiable way to conceive of win, benefit,
and what is good for environment is self-referential with respect to Life and
human life. By this rationale:
What is good for the environment is anything that allows the environment to
aid Life and by extension humans.
We include reference to human life here, not just out of self-interest, hope for
human survival and sustainability, or anthropocentric values. We also see humans
as a unique and crucial member species of Life as a whole, with unique capacity
and important roles to play in service to Life, as we discuss later in Chapter 9.
Some self-referential definitions have been taboo in mathematics, such as selfreference
in sets which Whitehead and Russell attempted to ban in their Principia
Mathematica. Self-reference can be pragmatically pathological in math, computing,
and some science realms; for example, self-reference in a formula in an
Excel spreadsheet, or tautological statements that are trivial. Nonetheless, here we
propose that a self-referential definition for value and what is good for environment
is fully necessary. Similar self-referential logic is being employed effectively
in allied studies where complex systems are treated in non-fractionable
ways; we discuss one of these with reference to hypersets in Chapter 6, Lesson 7.
(At the same place in Chapter 6, we also work with more basic ideas such as the
definition of impredicative logic.)
This starting place for value that we employ in our relational origin of Life scenario—what
is good for the environment is something that allows environment to
aid Life—is compatible with the concept we asserted in earlier chapters—that Life
is the central basis for all value. Again, we see this basis for value as logical and
valid: Life is unique relative to nonliving aspects of the environment, it is certainly
important and special, it can be destroyed and thus requires care and stewardship, it
is shared by all humans, and it is thus an excellent and fitting basis for unity among
sciences and among people and nations. Therefore, we choose this value basis as
the foundation for understanding both the original winÀwin LifeÀenvironment
relation, and the future and ideal winÀwin humanÀenvironment relation.
This framing of the first principles of Life, environment, and a mutually beneficial
relationship between them depicts the original differentiation of life and
environment not as a clear-cut separation between system and context, and not as
an image of a “self” as isolated or fully autonomous from an environmental “context”
as “non-self.” Instead, this view of the original, fundamental nature of Life
focuses on an organic context dependence, associated with continual collaborative
co-creation. This essential interdependence is compatible with “dependent coarising,”
a central idea of Buddhism (Macy, 1991).
86 CHAPTER 4 Life: From origins to humans
Another way to say this in summary is (1) environmental context is integral to
Life ever and always and (2) environmental context is not merely neutral, not just
the provider of an arbitrary or dispassionate “natural selection” of winners and
losers—environmental context actively aids, augments, and enhances Life from
the origin onward. Were it set up the other way—if Life originated and operated
as fundamentally organized to go against the grain of the universe, fighting the
local planetary context, with a base relation of winÀlose antagonism, or opposing
all the natural environmental tendencies—the massive, ubiquitous, continual
influence of the environment would plausibly have destroyed Life early on.
We could continue with great amounts of additional discussion of corroborating
works, ideas, and scientists. Morowitz (1992), for example, acknowledged that the
origin of life could be considered to involve planetary processes including what he
called “protoecological cycles.” He also mentioned synergy between anabolic and
catabolic functions. These and many other compatible views exist, but we must end
our focus on the origin of Life here and move on to consider a similar perennial
question.
HOLISTIC PERSPECTIVE ON “WHAT IS LIFE?”
Building on these new holistic images of Life, including our holistic hypothetical
origin of Life story, we next address the fertile ground of the recurring question,
“What is Life?” (Schro¨dinger, 1944; Murphy and O’Neill, 1995). We also document
how problematic it is that Life and environment are arbitrarily split apart,
from biology textbooks to dictionary definitions to common everyday understanding
of Life. Part of this examination involves ambiguity with definitions and
meanings of the terms “life” and “ecosystem.” We discuss how this ambiguity is
a good thing that hints at the holistic way we see best to answer “What is Life?”.
We first examine the current mainstream answer to this question, or the general
sense of what life is. The dictionary definition of life is one indication of
how the term “life” is used and understood. The Merriam-Webster Collegiate dictionary
(merriam-webster.com) defines “life” as “an organismic state characterized
by capacity for metabolism, growth, reaction to stimuli, and reproduction.”
In line with the dictionary, Morowitz (1992) wrote that “all life is cellular in
nature . . . A cell is the most elementary unit that can sustain life” (however, see
below: he said something different with respect to sustained life). It seems fair to say
that cells and organisms are generally seen as the fundamental units of life. We also
use the term unit-model of Life when explicitly acknowledging the close integration
of science and modeling (as in Rosen’s modeling relation, and Patten’s work). Thus,
as we form an answer to “What is Life?”, one part of the answer for the conventional
paradigm (in both science and culture) is that life is a property of a cell or organism.
When it is defined or characterized in this conventional cell/organism unitmodel,
life is described as displaying a list of special properties such as
87Holistic Perspective on “What is Life?”
metabolism, growth, reproduction, sensing, and acting on environmental stimuli,
being made of cells, and containing information molecules such as DNA. While
such Life properties are widely familiar, useful to differentiate life from nonliving
entities, systems and processes, and logically associated with organismal life, not
all textbooks, dictionaries, biologists, scientists, or people agree on which properties
should be included in the list, or on the definitions and descriptions of the
essential Life properties. Lahav (1999), for example, reported a long list of
diverse and often conflicting definitions and characterizations of Life. The
Encyclopedia Britannica online (britannica.com) lists five distinct approaches to
defining Life based on physiological, metabolic, biochemical, genetic, and thermodynamic
considerations. Still more disagreement is seen from a comparison of
the attributes of Life emphasized in Campbell et al. (2008) and Ireland (2010),
two widely used college introductory biological science textbooks.
Soon we will see that scientists have had a similar challenge to define “ecosystem.”
But first, consider this high standard as a potential approach for creating
or choosing definitions for Life and for ecosystem. Solomonoff (1997) suggests
the importance of operational definitions for science:
An operational definition of anything is a precise sequence of physical operations
that enable one to either construct it or identify it with certainty. When
one can’t make an operational definition of something, this is usually an indication
of poor understanding of it. Attempts to operationalize definitions can
be guides to discovery. I’ve found this idea to be an invaluable tool in telling
me whether or not I really understand something.
We admit our attempts here do not produce fully operational definitions of Life
or ecosystem, in Solomonoff’s sense of “certainty” above. But, we agree with
him that the exercise itself can be a guide to discovery, is valuable for understanding,
is important for developing holistic Life science, and helps with the
project of realizing humanÀenvironmental sustainability.
As we attempt to articulate an operational definition for Life—a means to
either construct it or identify it with greater clarity and consensus, if not total certainty—we
shine a light on those areas that are most difficult on which to reach
agreement. And by extension, the same crux issues that make definition of life
(or Life, as we are framing it holistically) problematic hold potential for helping
to flush out the root causes of our problems that now jeopardize Life, and the
root causes to enable solutions and better protection, sustaining, and stewardship
of Life.
While working with Solomonoff’s very high standard, and seeking operational
definitions of life and Life, we consider Solomonoff’s concept broadly. Where he
spoke of the need for “a precise sequence of physical operations,” we consider
the possibility that “physical” can encompass relational as well as material entities,
and that mathematical structures or operations may be essential as well. We
also leave open the possibility that no “operational definition” can ever yield a
perfect, fully precise, or fully complete definition—such an achievement may be
88 CHAPTER 4 Life: From origins to humans
impossible given the ambiguity of language and inherent incompleteness of any
formal system shown by Go¨del (Raatikainen, 2018).
Robert Rosen studied the question, “What is Life?” over many years and via
many approaches. He spoke in poetic terms of this great question (Rosen, 1991)
and how essentially all of his published scientific work was:
. . . driven by a need to understand what it is about organisms that confers upon
them their magical characteristics, what it is that sets life apart from all other
material phenomena in the universe. That is indeed the question of questions:
What is life? What is it that enables living things, apparently so moist, fragile
and evanescent, to persist while towering mountains dissolve into dust, and the
very continents and oceans dance into oblivion and back? To frame this question
requires an almost infinite audacity; to strive to answer it compels an
equal humility. (p. 11)
One of his many contributions was a holistic model of life he called the
metabolism-repair model or (M, R)-system (e.g., Rosen, 1958, 1991). He developed
this model, focused on the organism scale, via general systems theory, and
mathematics using algebra and especially category theory. He associated “metabolism”
with basic anabolic and catabolic processes in living cells. He integrated a
generalized “repair” function, observing that all metabolic components—
enzymes, for example—last and function for a finite life-time after which they
cease to function and must be replaced or repaired (Rosen, 1958). In perhaps his
most well-known book, Life Itself (Rosen, 1991), he used this model to address
the question: “What is life?” In this book, he asserted that a more relevant and
tractable question is why is an organism different than a machine? He answered
these linked questions by showing how life (again, he focused on organismal
life), is “closed to efficient cause” unlike a machine (Rosen, 1991). We take the
essence of his result to mean that by their special internal relationships of metabolism
and repair organisms are self-making or self-causing. See more discussion of
Rosen’s work on complexity and his relational model of life in Chapter 5—part
3, Principle 5. And, as mentioned below, we also borrow ideas of Rosen (1985)
on the fundamental importance of anticipatory behavior for understanding Life,
and by our extension here, for building holistic Life science.
We look next at the typical answer to the question, “What is an ecosystem?”.
As we shift to this angle, we acknowledge we are dealing with different time,
space, and organization scales between organisms and ecosystems, and that this
issue of scale must be treated directly at some point. The term ecosystem was
coined in 1935 in a paper in the journal Ecology by the British botanist Sir Arthur
Tansley. Tansley (1935) was writing as a response to what he felt an abuse of
terms dealing with community interactions that were labeled as being “organismal.”
His compromise was to make a new word that captured the concept of communities
of organisms functioning together within their environment. He defined
an ecosystem as “the whole system (in the sense of physics), including not only
the organism-complex, but also the whole complex of physical factors forming
89Holistic Perspective on “What is Life?”
what we call the environment of the biome . . .” (Tansley, 1935, p. 299). Note,
this definition has held largely intact during the ensuing 80 1 years. Tansley
(1935) also wrote, “Though the organisms may claim our primary interest, when
we are trying to think fundamentally we cannot separate them from their special
environment, with which they form one physical system.”
The same dictionary cited above (merriam-webster.com) defines ecosystem as
“the complex of a community of organisms and its environment functioning as an
ecological unit.” Thus, ecosystems are understood as interacting and higher order
collections of the fundamental units of Life, namely organisms. Putting the two
definitions together, we could describe the conventional view this way: life is a
property of organisms, and ecosystems are a collection of organisms interacting
with each other and with their environment. An extension of this reasoning is that
we must keep in mind that the environment is not strictly abiotic but has emerged
with Life as expressed in the concept of conbiota introduced above. Fath (2015)
used conbiota to address the fuzzy boundaries and, in this way, helped to bring
into focus the LifeÀenvironment relation that is our focus:
Therefore, it is at the ecosystem scale that possesses all necessary aspects to
sustain life obligatory (Keller and Botkin, 2008). In fact, the lifeÀenvironment
interactions permeate so fully that on a living planet, the very notion of abiota
loses its meaning. Life conditions the environmental factors that we typically
associate with abiota such as temperature (both local and global), humidity,
soil moisture and percolation rates, stream flow, ocean salinity, nutrients concentration,
etc. A more apt term would be conbiota - the ‘physical’ environment
only makes sense as expressed with life. This gives an important clue
into the features of sustainable systems. (p. 14)
But, there remains ambiguity over implementation of the concept. The more
we look, the more complex the definitions become and the more the distinctions
seem blurred. Even merriam-webster.com refers to “functioning as an ecological
unit,” by which one could interpret “ecosystem” as a bona fide entity that is not
divisible, since it is unitary. O’Neill et al. (1987) also spoke to the fuzzy boundaries
between Life and ecosystem definitions. In their book, they
. . . define ecosystems as the smallest units that can sustain life in isolation
from all but atmospheric surroundings. However, one is still left with the problem
of specifying the area that should be included.
This is very close to defining the ecosystem as the fundamental unit of Life, as
“smallest units” can be considered the simplest or most basic units. Morowitz
(1992), despite titling his book “The Origins of Cellular Life,” also blended the two
concepts, stating that “sustained life is a property of an ecological system rather than
a single organism or species.” Similarly, Keller and Botkin (2008) wrote:
To understand how life persists on Earth, we have to understand ecosystems.
We tend to think about life in terms of individuals, because it is individuals
90 CHAPTER 4 Life: From origins to humans
that are alive. But sustaining life on Earth requires more than individuals or
even single populations or species . . . Living things require 24 chemical elements,
and these must cycle from the environment into organisms and back to
the environment. Life also requires a flow of energy . . . Although alive, an
individual cannot by itself maintain all the necessary chemical cycling or
energy flow. Those processes are maintained by a group of individuals of various
species and their non-living environment . . . Sustained life on Earth, then,
is a characteristic of ecosystems, not of individual organisms or populations.
(p. 66)
These ideas fed into our development of the coupled complementary definitions
of “discrete life” and “sustained life.” (See Chapter 1 and also Lesson 1 in
Chapter 6 for full explanation of our discrete/sustained life concept.)
Yet another possible path is to move to the framework of evolution, arguably
the strongest basis for integration of biology and ecology. For example, Eigen
(1995) tackled the definition of life by defining a unit of selection. He listed selfreproduction,
mutation, and metabolism as properties of systems that are “predestined”
to selection (i.e., possessing the capacity for selection inherently). While
these properties more often are associated with cells than ecosystems, in light of
Ulanowicz’s revised view of evolution via autocatalytic loops, Eigen’s approach
opens another question. Could an ecosystem (or biosphere)—if considered a
holistic organization of physical and chemical dynamics and a unified
LifeÀenvironment relation—provide an equally or even more robust unit of selection
than a cellular, organismic, metabolic, or genetic organization?
To address this, and to develop our answer to the question of what Life is,
we employ the same distinction to Solomonoff’s “construction” process for
operational definitions as we did to Life. We note that one-time construction is
distinct from continued construction, and thus, we can speak of “discrete construction”
of Life and “sustained construction” of Life as both necessary, as
fully interdependent, but also categorically different. It is also useful to consider
time scales that discrete construction in the sense of the origination of
Life can be seen as a geologic endowment, providing a baseline contribution
of bedrock, nutrients, and climate. Overlaying that foundation are processes at
the ecological time scale that contribute to sustained construction. Shifting to
the present day, we could say that our current global, systemic ecological crisis,
and growing threats to our ability to sustain Life, has resulted in greater
emphasis on defining sustained construction of Life relative to defining life
in a discrete, one-time construction or snapshot approach. Extensions of this
discussion will have impact on topics such as artificial life and artificial
intelligence.
An interesting result of this approach, linked to our major thesis to integrate
Life and environment, is that we end up with a theory and a system in which Life
selects its environment (or alters, improves, and causes the environment to adapt)
just as much as the environment selects for the most fit Life forms. Yet again, we
91Holistic Perspective on “What is Life?”
see that “what is old is new,” and that we are able to build on work contributed
long ago. Henderson (1913) wrote of the “fitness of the environment”:
The fitness of the environment is one part of a reciprocal relationship of which
the fitness of the organism is the other. This relationship is completely and
perfectly reciprocal; the one fitness is not less important than the other, nor
less invariably a constituent of a particular case of biological fitness; it is not
less frequently evident in the characteristics of water, carbonic acid and the
compounds of carbon, hydrogen and oxygen than is fitness from adaptation in
the characteristics of the organism. (p. 113)
Despite some of his language and ideas relating to mechanism and mechanistic
science with which we may now disagree, we credit Henderson with early awareness
and appreciation of this holistic LifeÀenvironment idea and approach to science
which we now employ and promote.
Another essential LifeÀenvironment relation we must understand is Life’s
ability to build gradients in energy and material components, to maintain the
gradients so they persist, grow, and increase in complexity, and to harness the
gradients for useful work to aid Life. By gradients, we refer to nonrandom structures
and varying amounts, stocks, or concentrations of energy as well as key
material constituents (e.g., carbon, nitrogen, water, etc.). This gradient building
capacity is closely linked to the ways we described above that Life improves the
environment over time, as in the atmosphere and soils. Two issues at play are
(1) the build-up of gradients and (2) the slow release, use, or dissipation of the
gradients. The build-up is a result of autocatalysis, which we covered extensively
above. We described Life’s inherent growth capacity made possible by
connected loops of processes, and positive self-enhancing feedback, causing
growth and improvement in all nodes in a cyclic network, including environmental
components such as soils, atmosphere, and more. The slow release is
achieved through the close coupling of multiple Life processes. Rather than
expend accumulated stores of energy or matter, to “blow the load all at once,”
Life processes exhibit a hierarchical stair-step of smaller and smaller cycles
each being driven by the dissipation of the initial energy gradient. Fath (2017)
used this simple figure to contrast the quick versus slow release of energy or
dissipation of useful gradient (Fig. 4.1).
In summary, our multipart answer to “What is Life?” is based on the more
holistic, more synthesis-oriented science we have been developing and promoting.
Our answer is still complex, ambiguous, incomplete, and requiring a dynamic collaborative
learning process and constant renewal going forward, but it contains
these major component concepts we see as useful:
1. Life is not strictly reducible to a cell or organism nor to a process or property
of a cell or organism.
2. Life is not strictly reducible to an ecosystem nor to a process or property of
an ecosystem.
92 CHAPTER 4 Life: From origins to humans
3. Life is complex and thus irreducible; there is no “single largest model” in the
sense of Rosen (1991) and no single best, complete, sufficient, unambiguous
unit-model by which to frame and study Life.
4. Definition, construction, and understanding of Life requires at least three unitmodels—cell/organism,
community/ecosystem, and biosphere.
5. Operating in concert, these three integrated and interdependent Life systems
are able to construct (create) Life and a Life-supporting environment
indefinitely over time.
We see these three unit-models as holons (Koestler, 1968)—wholes which are
integral parts of larger wholes. To unify these three unit-model holons, we go more
in-depth into a proposed integrated multi-model using hypersets, in Chapter 6,
Lesson 7. For now, we close this section with additional quotes, ideas, and corroborating
work that help to paint a picture of this new holistic, irreducibly complex,
self-referential, self-enhancing LifeÀenvironment system we seek to envision and
depict, so that we may learn from it and mimic its success. We also share another
diagram and an artistic-and-scientific representation of the organic nestedness of
these multi-scale Life systems.
An amazing feature we continue to see is how Life emerges and self-sustains
through a type of self-organization such that each participant “thing” is simultaneously
“doing its own thing” and “doing its own thing to fit together.” Fig. 4.2
shows a small subset of this cooperative organization between a generalized plant or
plant-like function and generalized animal or decomposer function using network
FIGURE 4.1
Visualization of an energy pulse that is degraded at different rates depending on the
number of intermediate reactions that are coupled to the gradient utilization: (A) no
coupling, (B) moderate coupling, and (C) extensive coupling.
Redrawn from Fath, B.D., 2017. Systems ecology, energy networks, and a path to sustainability. Prigogine
Lecture. Int. J. Ecodyn. 12 (1), 1À15.
93Holistic Perspective on “What is Life?”
environs of Patten. In this figure, outputs and byproducts of one environ (which is a
multi-scale model and can apply to an organism, species, ecosystem, or other Life
unit) serves both as an output and as input to another network environ. Since input
and output environs of unique entities can overlap, the output of one structures the
input of another. This mutualistic interplay aids Life’s ability to build gradients, not
just dissipate them, when many linked environs connect in loops as in the autocatalytic
loops of Ulanowicz. Either individual component may be seen to dissipate a
gradient, or degrade higher quality input energy or material. However, as a combined
and complex functional unit, and due to autocatalysis of the loop system as a whole,
energy and material gradients—perhaps along some third dimension not associated
with either interacting component—can be built, slowly used, and leveraged to aid
key Life functions. Vertical structures that Life spontaneously constructs in soils,
and differential concentrations of gases Life spontaneously constructs in vertical
layers in the atmosphere, are our best examples.
Kauffman (2011) has written of this characteristic, holonic, unity stating: “The
function of each task is its role in the reproduction of this Kantian whole.” He
also wrote:
. . . biological evolution concerns Kantian wholes, where the whole exists for
and by means of the parts and the parts exists for and by means of the whole.
And
A collectively autocatalytic set of peptides, as exemplified by Gonen Ashkenazi
of Ben Gurion University and his nine peptide collectively autocatalytic set, is a
clean example of a Kantian whole, achieving a closure in “catalytic task space,”
where all reactions requiring catalysis are catalyzed by members of the nine
peptide set.
FIGURE 4.2
Environs doing their own thing and doing their own thing to fit together.
94 CHAPTER 4 Life: From origins to humans
We will return to Kauffman’s “Kantian whole” and seek to clarify the ideas
and sharpen the image, which we see as perhaps the crux idea of Life in a nutshell.
As we unpack this complex concept and make sense of it, we can proceed
to make a new holistic Life science, with testable hypotheses and predictions, and
ultimately with application to successful human sustainability.
Another compatible and supporting quote, “The results of systemic operations
are at once more systemic operations,” comes from Moeller (2006) in a book
about Niklas Luhmann. This quote, and both authors, helps reinforce the essential
interplay between system independence and interdependence.
In a collaborative contribution to aid prior work, Sarah McManus created the
image below (Fig. 4.3A) depicting the three unit-models we have described as
necessary holons—Life simultaneously as organism, ecosystem, and environment
(or biosphere). While this image is two-dimensional, McManus also created an
image (Fig. 4.3B) and instructions for folding this image into a “hexaflexagon”
that becomes a three-dimensional structure that can then be folded repetitively as
a spinning cycle. This was her brilliant translation of our idea of using hypersets
as integrated multi-model of Life (Fig. 4.4).
McManus’s art work, images, and three-dimensional form provide an excellent
link to the graphical work of M.C. Escher, whose “Whirlpools,” “Drawing
hands,” “Ascending and descending,” and similar works help to invoke the sense
of paradox, folding, and complex interplay of dimensions that we consider necessary
conceptual tools and terrain for understanding Life in full holistic complexity.
These artistic expressions also link to increasing scientific evidence and
observations of fuzzy boundaries and complex relations, such as growing awareness
that ecosystems are enfolded within organisms, such as in the gut microbiome.
These cases of multi-scale Life are also known to be of practical
FIGURE 4.3
(A) Three unit-models of Life by McManus (2013). (B) A pattern that can be folded to
form a dynamic, cyclically foldable hexaflexagon. For explanation of the hyperset equation,
see Chapter 6.
Printed with permission of the author.
95Holistic Perspective on “What is Life?”
importance, such as relations between the ecological dynamics of gut microbes
and human health outcomes.
We could go on and broaden the exploration even more; we could examine
fractals with their self-similar structure at many scales; we could explore Rosen’s
(1991) metabolism-repair model for the complex life of an organism; we could
add to Ulanowicz’s idea of autocatalytic centripetality (pulling inward) by showing
entwined centrifugality (radiating outward) in Life systems, invoking ideas of
waves or fields that interpenetrate and mesh in phase space. But we save these
explorations for future efforts, including related topics on holism and complexity.
We have seen in this chapter how this deeply profound question, “What is
Life?”, not only is challenging to address, let alone answer, but it also invokes
additional and equally challenging questions. Patten has explored the complementary
question, What is environment?, and this too has led to important advances.
And, in this book, we have seen how the question, What is death?, also must be
addressed. We have also discussed the possibility and potential benefits of differentiating
between two forms of systemic death. The idea of “heat death” is likely
familiar as a thermodynamic end state driven by increasing entropy and resulting
in a uniform system with no usable energy gradient, like a diffuse gas. This topic
was addressed in the book Into the Cool: Energy Flow, Thermodynamics and Life
by Schneider and Sagan (2005). But we also may need to form an idea of a different
form of systemic death driven by syntropy (Fantappie`, 1942; Szent-Gyorgi,
1977; Fuller, 1979), characterized by increasing orderliness, yet also a bland configuration
in its uniformity, until an endpoint like a frozen crystalline lattice incapable
of any dynamics or Life process. Syntropy is another term for negentropy,
FIGURE 4.4
Three different folded configurations of the single hexaflexagon of McManus showing from
left to right the organism, environment (or biosphere), and ecosystem holons.
Printed with permission of the author.
96 CHAPTER 4 Life: From origins to humans
but Fantappie` and others developed concepts associated with syntropy beyond
those of negentropy. Life may then best be seen as a perpetual balancing act
between these two attractor basins of heat death at one extreme (too little order or
constraint) and some other kind of death at the other extreme (too much order or
constraint). With analogies to matter, this makes Life more akin to a liquid phase
like water, and with process and potential that is fluid, dynamic, able to change,
reconfigure, evolve, and grow. See Chapter 6, (Lesson 6) for examination of
Ulanowicz’s related ideas and quantification of the balancing act between order
and flexibility as a universal pattern in ecosystem networks.
A last linked idea for now is the implication that a holistic idea and image of
Life will also necessarily alter our concept and model of the human self. This
relates to the concept of the “ecological self” of Næss (1989). Just as we have
shown that the choice of drawing a boundary, consciously choosing what is inside
versus outside any system of study or any concept we can frame, is critical, our
sense of self also depends on the boundary of the system being modeled or considered.
This is not purely a metaphysical topic, such as a rhetorical question like
“Who am I?”. Instead, a newly formed sense of the human self holds potential as
an alternative core strategy for linking humans, our values, our behaviors, and the
ultimate outcomes of whether we will be able to achieve social and environmental
sustainability. A healthy sense of self—where by healthy we refer to the capacity
for social and environmental sustainability and the care of Life-support systems
and services—would plausibly entail an individual (as well as a community,
nation, or society) that recognizes “self” in both discrete form (bounded by one’s
skin, or by one’s species) and in extensive form (with wider boundaries integrated
with Life-support systems and critical environmental context). This dialectical
and irreducibly complex, even ambiguous sense of self thus would enable the
individual, community, society, or species to remain healthy in whole, in holistic
individual 1 context fashion. This holistic and multi-scale sense of self, linked to
a holistic science of Life, is an aspect of the human wisdom and maturity to
which we seek to contribute.
Our next step is to translate the many holistic concepts and supporting work
from previous scientists into a set of core founding principles for holistic Life
science.
97Holistic Perspective on “What is Life?”
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CHAPTER
5Reforming reductionism
with six core principles
CORE PRINCIPLES OF HOLISTIC SCIENCE AND
LIFEÀENVIRONMENT SCIENCE
We interpret the evidence and concepts in Chapter 3 and Chapter 4, to mean that
living systems are inherently skillful at operating in ways that preserve and even
enhance the environmental context in which they exist. The fact that our industrial
era science, technology, policy, and shared cultural ideas have not yet managed
to recognize, understand, mimic, reproduce, and achieve this essential selfenhancing
LifeÀenvironment relation thus informs our need for science reform.
We next describe core principles of a new holistic science to balance reductionism,
repair fragmentation, and unify fields splintered by hyper-specialization.
We have set the basis of value on Life for both society and science; we have
strategies for choosing system boundaries; and we have explored the conceptual
challenges of defining Life and understanding the origin of Life. We next show
the need for, and propose new foundations for, science in service to Life. We propose
six key characteristics and qualities that summarize that this science:
1. Is consciously, intentionally, and transparently value-based centered on the
value of Life;
2. Is anticipatory and accelerates the pace and process of scientific change,
including paradigm shifts, toward the ultimate goal of a sustainable
humanÀenvironment relation and LifeÀenvironment relation;
3. Balances and synergizes holism with reductionism and synthesis with
analysis;
4. Equally emphasizes internalist and self-referential as well as objectivist
perspectives;
5. Is complex (in the sense of Rosen, 1977, 1991, 2000) and is able to reconcile
seeming opposites and handle multiple scales and fluid boundaries of focal
entities;
6. Is radically empirical with constant capacity for questioning, challenging, and
transforming ingrained assumptions and structures, especially whenever these
distract scientific attention and resources from those topics of greatest benefit
to humanity and Life.
Foundations for Sustainability. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-12-811460-5.00005-4
Copyright © 2019 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
99
Taken as a whole, we see this set of guiding principles to be internally consistent,
and with all of the principles supporting the others. We predict that the
impact of future development and adoption of such principles would be unifying
instead of dividing, would increase stabilizing trends instead of fragmentation,
and would enable large-scale focusing of scientific enterprise on those topics of
most importance to humanity and to Life. These guiding principles would help us
steer a steady course toward solving our current global ecological crisis and preventing
against wild wandering paths chasing after whims and current hot topics.
This is a proposal for an evolutionary leap for science itself—we envision a science
that grows beyond its original meaning of knowledge, and beyond current
practices to inform government and decision makers. Holistic Life science takes
on responsibility for success and acts in service to Life from a wisdom and maturity
integrated with the traditional humility and skepticism that have been
science’s strengths. We now go into more detail for each of these six principles.
Principle 1. Holistic Life science has a value basis centered on the value of
Life.
This principle is the focus of Chapter 2. The only idea we mention here is that
the holistic science we propose can be considered “value neutral” given that the
value of Life is universal among all people, applies to everyone equally, and
introduces no value bias of any detrimental kind in the sense of any “conflict of
interest” or invocation of identity politics. To say this another way, the only value
basis that is discriminated against or given less priority is a value system centered
on Death (systemic Death, the death of all living things), which by our definition
has no advocates, adherents, proponents, or anyone with any “standing” in the
legal sense to be discriminated against, marginalized, or left out. We can easily
say if anyone has an objection to “speak now or forever hold your peace” and be
certain that no one will speak. Thus, we also see this value foundation to offer no
weakness or vulnerability to any attack to the strength or rigor of the science
involved; the value we are imbuing is essentially value neutral, as it is value
generic, or value universal.
Principle 2. Holistic Life science is anticipatory and oriented toward a
sustainable humanÀenvironment relation.
This project to reform science and its foundations is inherently anticipatory.
At each step, we are thinking and looking ahead with a clear idea in mind of the
ultimate outcome and “system of solutions” working together in the desired
future. Anticipatory science is different from predictive science—it does not
merely foresee but acts in advance. This means we also have in mind that the
innovations in science philosophy and theory we develop in this chapter must
have real capacity to translate fully into innovations in science applications and
technology, aspects of which we address in Chapter 8. And, these applications
and technologies must also feed forward effectively to achieve the outcomes we
imagine as our “problems solved” and “relations healed” scenario to end the
100 CHAPTER 5 Reforming reductionism with six core principles
current humanÀenvironment crisis, without, or at least with minimal, unintended,
or unanticipated negative side effects from these solutions. Positive side effects
and unintended consequences—similar to those net impacts by which Life has
improved its environment over time—are possible as well as consistent with value
and respect for Life.
Following Ulanowicz and others, we can look forward and look deeply to
assess our current situation, to see the need for a paradigm shift. By following
Ulanowicz, we mean not only to pursue a paradigm shift but also to do so with
humility and deliberation. In the Preface to his 2009 book, A Third Window,
Ulanowicz recounts how he began to realize that his work, and the science principles
grounded in an ecological perspective he was helping develop, is indeed a
new paradigm. After a colleague suggested to a graduate seminar class on the philosophy
of science that Bob’s presentation of his work represents a new paradigm,
Bob wrote of his reaction and thoughts:
Initially I was irritated, given my aversion to overuse of Kuhn’s word paradigm.
There followed, however, a tinge of excitement at the possibility that
maybe I had not fully appreciated how much the ecological perspective can
alter how we see the rest of the world. Perhaps ecosystems science truly offers
a new angle on nature (Jørgensen et al., 2007). Hadn’t Arne Næss (1988)
proposed that “deep ecology” affects one’s life and perception of the natural
world in a profound and ineffable way? Although I am not averse to the transcendental,
I do nevertheless expect scientists to exhaust every rational
approach to phenomena before abandoning them as ineffable. (page xix)
As we hope our evidence and citations of corroborating scientific research
show, we also work to “exhaust every rational approach” in our efforts to understand
the world. We are also compelled by the excitement and possibility
Ulanowicz mentions, and, while not only or primarily transcendental, we do see
the potential revolutionary change from an antagonistic to a synergistic
humanÀenvironment relation as wonderful, hopeful, and inspiring.
In addition to looking to future promise to guide science reform, we can also
learn from the past and seek to turn this learning into a proactive and anticipatory
science and technology. In Western Maryland, Appalachia, and other regions
referred to as “coal country,” we continue to live with and pay heavy costs of the
legacy of energy development based on coal mining. We still suffer the side
effects and unintended consequences of mining done over 100 years ago—the
land subsides under our buildings as old wooden posts rot and underground mines
collapse, and our water runs bright orange due to acid mine drainage and the iron
and other minerals it leaches out of the disturbed layers of rocks and minerals.
Energy development need not be done in this way, and a forward-thinking science
can assist with forward-thinking technology and applications. We return as always
to see the highest role model in Life—the ideal side effects and unintended consequences
can lead to benefits like oxygen atmosphere, soils, and the ozone layer—
if we have organized ourselves in proper relation to the planetary environment.
101Core Principles of Holistic Science and LifeÀEnvironment Science
The precautionary principle is important to mention here and to adopt going
forward. To utilize the precautionary principle in all deliberations would be compatible
with valuing Life and Life-support ever and always as a top priority. As
part of any plan, design, or action, a holistic approach to any new work would
scan forward to test scenarios and search for risks to Life and Life-support. If any
such threats to Life appear in this scan of future impacts, then one would necessarily
redesign or alter the plan to avoid that risk. An ability and habit to be “risk
averse” with respect to Life value would drive the abilities, habits, and skills to
identify risks and act in advance to prevent them from coming to be.
As we see in many damaged ecosystems and environments, prevention is preferable,
less expensive and causes less human suffering than cure. Beginning
around 2000, in the process of Chesapeake Bay restoration, advocacy, science,
governance and in the press and community, estimates for full restoration of Bay
health started at $19 billion and then were revised a few years later to $30 billion,
and then people stopped making and publishing such estimates. The years of this
receding goal have been dominated by the prior reductionist, objectivist, mechanistic
science paradigm including central ideas, theories, and definitions within
biology and ecology in which Life has been separated from environment. But,
this is the wrong model to address the problem and assess the cost. It is not as
though someone, say Warren Buffett or Bill Gates, could just airdrop $30 billion
and the problem is fixed. The monies spent will be to revitalize self-healing autocatalytic
cycles that restore and regenerate ecosystems and communities dependent
on the healthy functioning of the Bay. Once invested, this will reap
dividends in years to come, but not in a Wall Street financial sense, but in that
the place will become home to and supportive of sustained Life for humans and
nature. Only by refusing to accept defeat and failure, by insisting on successful
achievement of Chesapeake Bay (and all local ecosystems) restoration and
humanÀenvironment sustainability, can we muster the will and energy needed to
transform our science, values, and society.
The principles we propose and the emphatic focus on success with sustainability
may be considered as most applicable to a transitional period in near-term
human history. We see these principles, the science methods, and other concepts
in this book as necessary to achieve a successful transformation of both science
and society. Once this transformation is complete, and the crisis averted, and
once we are well on-track with a winÀwin humanÀenvironment relation, then
these principles and the associated paradigm we propose could be reexamined
and reformed toward new primary focal needs. Given that we see Life value and
Life science as of perpetual importance, we would advocate and hope that any
future waves of science reform or paradigm shift would continue to ensure
LifeÀenvironment health and quality going forward.
We seek to make these principles mutually supporting; note that this anticipatory
principle is consistent with principle 1—Life value basis. And, see below
how it meshes closely with principle 4 related to internalism and self-reference.
Combining these, we propose that science itself should operate with a “pay as
102 CHAPTER 5 Reforming reductionism with six core principles
you go” ethic, not leaving a debt or mess for future generations. In fact, properly
done, anticipatory science will not only avoid leaving messes but also will leave
positive conditions and opportunities.
A conceptual angle on anticipatory systems we employ follows Rosen (1985),
whose book, Anticipatory Systems, asserted that anticipatory behavior is unique to
living systems and Life forms. He used anticipatory in the sense of a system in
which the future determines or influences present action. By aligning our proposed
holistic Life science with this meaning of anticipatory, we seek to mimic
Life as we build this science of Life.
These proposed principles borrow much inspiration and insight from Stephen
Covey’s (1989) book, Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, and his subsequent
works on principle-centered leadership. Covey’s body of work sought to
anchor human behavior on a foundation of “natural law” very much akin to our
proposal to mimic nature and ecological systems. He also promoted an ethic of
leading by example and wrote of the unity of right thinking and right action.
Covey’s (1989) first two habits are “be proactive” and “start with the end in
mind.” Our second principle of anticipatory science mirrors and seeks to adopt
these two habits. Covey’s fourth habit is “think win/win” and his sixth “synergize.”
We seek to follow these habits in the remaining four principles.
Principle 3. Holistic Life science balances and synergizes holism with
reductionism, and synthesis with analysis.
Mainstream science is primarily reductionist with emphasis on analysis. Many
trends and workers are helping to remedy this overemphasis and to increase the
capacity of science for synthesis. We support and join these allies and seek to
build on work of holistic scientists like Bateson, Ulanowicz, Patten, Lotka, Bohm,
Goerner, and many more. We also borrow relevant principles from Eastern philosophical
schools and traditions such as Buddhism and Taoism, ancient sources of
wisdom with potential to make Western science more holistic and thus help us to
see, understand, and provide stewardship for LifeÀenvironment as a unified
whole. As recommended by Billings (1952), we propose here that in holistic Life
science “. . . analysis must be followed by a synthesis of the total results.” In fact,
the holistic and synthesis approach can also come first, followed later by analysis
as needed.
Gregory Bateson contributed holistic work and ideas touching on our focal
topics of Life, environment, thinking, and sustainability. In a talk in 1970, the
year of the first Earth Day and creation of the US Environmental Protection
Agency, he said (Grossinger, 1978):
We face a world which is threatened not only with disorganization of many
kinds, but also with the destruction of its environment, and we, today, are still
unable to think clearly about the relations between an organism and its environment.
What sort of thing is this, which we call ‘organism plus environment?’
(p. 30)
103Core Principles of Holistic Science and LifeÀEnvironment Science
This simple yet profound observation calls attention to the need to understand
better not only both organism (what is Life?) and environment (what is environment?)
but also the ever present, inseparable, and obligate relation that exists
between the two. In our prior paper (Fiscus et al., 2012), and in this book, we
seek to help us all “think clearly” to get at the same basic ideas—what is the system
that unifies Life and environment, and can this approach help explain and
reverse our destruction of the environment? Bateson went on:
It is now empirically clear that Darwinian evolutionary theory contained a very
great error in its identification of the unit of survival under natural selection.
The unit which was believed to be crucial and around which the theory was set
up was either the breeding individual or the family line of the subspecies or
some similar homogeneous set of conspecifics. Now I suggest that the last hundred
years have demonstrated empirically that if an organism or aggregate of
organisms sets to work with a focus on its own survival and thinks that that is
the way to select its adaptive moves, its “progress” ends up with a destroyed
environment. If the organism ends up destroying its environment, it has in fact
destroyed itself. And we may very easily see this process carried to its ultimate
reductio ad absurdum in the next twenty years. The unit of survival is not the
breeding organism, or the family line, or the society. (p. 32)
For evidence of the penetration of this overly reductionistic error in thinking
about evolution, look no further than the images used to present evolution in
introductory biology textbooks. A typical image shows the branching pattern
from only the organisms’ evolutionary perspective absent of the environmental
context or relations in which the coevolutionary processes occur. Returning to
Bateson, he continued:
The flexible environment must also be included along with the flexible organism
because, as I have already said, the organism which destroys its environment
destroys itself.
The unit of survival is a flexible organism-in-its-environment. (p. 32)
Bateson, in this same talk, switched from a focus on “life” to focus on “mind”
and again sought holistic integration (Grossinger, 1978). Just as analysis can be a
stepwise process of splitting and studying subsets in isolation, synthesis can be a
stepwise process of ever fuller integration. By Bateson’s approach to seek and
employ the “pattern that connects” (a phrase he wrote later, Bateson, 1988) and
by generalizing the idea and process of a trial-and-error system, Bateson first conceptually
unified life and environment into a unit of survival or evolution and
later proposed further unification and wholeness.
The talk quoted above by Bateson was titled “Form, Substance and
Difference” and was the 19th Annual Alfred Korzybski Memorial Lecture,
January 9, 1970, at the Oceanic Institute, Hawaii. From the book Ecology and
Consciousness (Grossinger, 1978). From Bateson, who worked in anthropology,
104 CHAPTER 5 Reforming reductionism with six core principles
cybernetics, interdisciplinary conceptual studies, and other science fields, we turn
to holistic ideas from Eastern spiritual and philosophical traditions.
Alan Watts played a role in bringing many of the views of Eastern religions,
Zen Buddhism, Indian, and Chinese philosophies to the West in the 1950s and
1960s. The quotes that follow are from his book, The Book: On the Taboo
Against Knowing Who You Really Are [1989, Vintage Books (after the 1966 original)].
Watts, though working in a very different field, gave a similar perspective
as Bateson’s and our own. He wrote of the link between scientific reductionism
and human thought process using an analogy of trying to understand a cat walking
by while restricted to the view of looking through a narrow slit in a fence:
The narrow slit in the fence is much like the way in which we look at life by
conscious attention, for when we attend to something we ignore everything
else. Attention is narrowed perception. It is a way of looking at life bit by bit,
using memory to string the bits together À as when examining a dark room
with a flashlight having a narrow beam. Perception thus narrowed has the
advantage of being sharp and bright, but it has to focus on one area of the
world after another, and one feature after another. (p. 31)
And a bit later, with another analogy of brain process like the scanning of radar:
But a scanning process that observes the world bit by bit soon persuades its
user that the world is a great collection of bits, and these he calls separate
things or events. We often say that you can only think of one thing at a time.
The truth is that in looking at the world bit by bit we convince ourselves that it
consists of separate things, and so give ourselves the problem of how these
things are connected and how they cause and effect each other. The problem
would never have arisen if we had been aware that it was just our way of looking
at the world which had chopped it up into separate bits, things, events,
causes and effects. We do not see that the world is all of a piece . . .. (p. 32)
Watts also applied holistic thinking and Eastern philosophical perspective to
life, humans, and the environment. He wrote:
. . . technical progress becomes a way of stalling faster and faster because of
the basic illusion that man and nature, the organism and the environment, the
controller and the controlled are quite different things. We might ‘conquer’
nature if we could first, or at the same time, conquer our own nature, though
we do not see that human nature and ‘outside’ nature are all of a piece. (p. 51)
And later with ideas that align with attempts at scientific definitions, models,
and descriptions of Life:
The whole is greater than the sum of its parts if only for the fact that a scientific
description of the body must take account of the order or pattern in which
the particles are arranged and of what they are doing.
105Core Principles of Holistic Science and LifeÀEnvironment Science
But even this is not enough. We must also ask, ‘In what surroundings is it
doing it?’ If a description of the human body must include the description of
what it, and all its ‘parts,’ are doing À that is, of its behavior À this behavior
will be one thing in the open air but quite another in a vacuum, in a furnace, or
under water.
If, then, a definition of a thing or event must include definition of its environment,
we realize that any given thing goes with a given environment so intimately
and inseparably that it is more difficult to draw a clear boundary
between the thing and its surroundings. (p. 67À68)
And finally, indicating that ignoring this wholeness can be deadly:
We cannot chop off a person’s head or remove his heart without killing him.
But we can kill him just as effectively by separating him from his proper environment.
This implies that the only true atom is the universe À that total system
of interdependent ‘thing-events’ which can be separated from each other
only in name. (p. 69)
Similar to Bateson, Watts took his Buddhism-inspired holism to a logical
extreme and unified the entire universe. And, similar to Bateson and Ulanowicz,
he wrote of how this full wholeness necessitates unity of spiritual and material
realms as well. The “true atom” he mentions above he later identifies as the self
and the soul. We focus our strategy for paradigm shift and successful achievement
of humanÀenvironment sustainability on Watts’ observation that “we can kill
him just as effectively by separating him from his proper environment.” We take
the “him” in Watts’ statement to symbolize modern industrial humankind, and the
reductionistic mechanistic science “he” employs. We point to our biology and
ecology textbooks and shared ideas and definitions as currently “separating him
from his proper environment.” If this is true, then reconnecting humans to their
proper environment should lead to healing of wounds and a healthier Life going
forward. This demands the promotion of an integrated, holistic science that is in
need of good teachers and good textbooks.
Watts also reminds us of the value of environmental science, ecology, philosophy
of science, sustainability studies, and other holistic, interdisciplinary, and
integrative fields. These fields have built methods, habits, and infrastructure by
which we can do more than see only isolated bits of the world illuminated by specialized
sciences serving as narrow flashlight beams or restricted views from slits
in a fence. As we widen the view and take in more, and as we connect the patterns
like Bateson, we begin to see important new relations such as the features
shared by all the symptoms of environmental degradation in Fig. 1.1.
In diagrams and text from our prior paper (Fiscus et al., 2012), we used a
thought experiment of tracing the flow and movement of an atom of carbon as a
means to highlight the holistic unity of Life and environment. The flow path
traces three major material cycles and our three integral holons (organism, ecosystem,
and biosphere) and weaves them together. As this imagined carbon atom
106 CHAPTER 5 Reforming reductionism with six core principles
moves between organism, ecosystem, and biosphere, it provides corroboration for
principle 3 of holism here, and for principle 5 of multi-scale complexity below.
Tracing the flow of any single atom involved in Life process over an extended
period of time shows three material cycles to be fully unified. This tracing of elements
has been done quantitatively and scientifically by use of radioactively
“labeled” atoms. Patten and Witkamp (1967) and Neal et al. (1967) reported work
with radioactive tracers to understand structure, function, and materials movement
in ecosystems. The general processes are basic enough that we used a thought
experiment to convey the main idea, as inspired by Harding (2006), and used the
simple system diagram (see Fig. 5.1). In 2012, we wrote:
Imagine an atom of carbon fixed into plant sugar from the atmosphere during
photosynthesis. This carbon atom bound into glucose might move to another
area inside the same plant (along a portion of the internal biochemical cycle).
The glucose might then be metabolized to provide energy for a physiological
process in the plant, and the carbon atom might then be respired and emitted
back into the atmosphere where it began. But it might also be that the original
carbon atom eventually became incorporated into cellulose, and then entered
the soil when that plant died. If so, then it could provide food for another living
organism such as one of many leaf-eating insects. Then once embodied in the
insect the carbon atom might move locally as the insect travels or disperses, or
it could be transformed on up the food chain if eaten by some predator (either
route part of a biogeochemical cycle). If the carbon atom became incorporated
into the organic matter of the soil, then it might only return to the atmosphere
much later (perhaps after hundreds or thousands of years), or it could be
washed away and travel far downstream or even to the ocean via actions of
rainfall, erosion and stream transport (part of a geochemical cycle). From this
FIGURE 5.1
Three integrated and interdependent holons or unit models of Life, and their associated
three materials cycles.
Modified from Fiscus D.A., Fath, B.D., Goerner, S., 2012. The tri-modal nature of life with implications for
actualizing human-environmental sustainability. Emergence Complexity Organ.14 (3), 44À88.
107Core Principles of Holistic Science and LifeÀEnvironment Science
or any similar brief survey of the many possible pathways for our single carbon
atom, it is clear that all three major material cycles can and must be involved
in any and all life processes.
Fiscus et al. (2012, pp. 67À68)
We find a similar result if we trace the journey of oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen,
phosphorus, sulfur, or other elements essential to Life and provided by the environment.
Continual turnover of elements in organisms and ecosystems is well
known. The separation of the three major material cycles (biogeochemical, biochemical,
and geochemical)—much as the separation of the three associated unit
models of Life (ecosystem, organism and biosphere)—is valid “for discussion
purposes only” or as a temporary analytical step to be followed by a necessary
synthesis step. Close examination of real systems (by imaginary means like
thought experiments as well as scientific tracer studies) shows all three cycles to
be inextricably interwoven.
Network analysis research along these lines quantified the degree by which
ecological networks redistribute matter throughout all compartments—a phenomenon
called “resource homogenization” (Borrett and Salas, 2010; Fath and Patten,
1999). Patten (2016a) has also written of “network nonlocality” and “network
enfolding” as two holistic scientific concepts needed to understand Life and sustainability
(these are two of many holistic concepts derived and quantifiable from
ecological networks and systems ecology; see more in Chapter 6). Of network
enfolding, Patten wrote “. . . the environments of systems enter those systems as
inputs, and these are progressively incorporated into the fabric of the system by
network enfolding” as inputs move through and transform the network via interior
flows between compartments. He also wrote that the large set of flows along interior
pathways, calculated via an infinite power series in matrix math, “achieve
network enfolding, a process that more than any other is the source of systemic
holism” (Patten, 2016a, p. 72).
While Patten’s technical terminology may seem hard to understand (even if
challenging, we recommend everyone read his work), it may help to visualize a
typical food web such as that depicted in Fig. 5.2. Entitled “food chain” and only
showing three players in a subset of a complex food web, this image is powerful
and helps understand network enfolding and systemic holism. It portrays how, as
food for the fish, a fly becomes incorporated into the very being of the fish, both
of whom then become embodied in and help to form the bear. What is not shown
overtly, but we can add with imagination (and we have even asked the artist, Jan
Heath, to help with this in a revised “food chain” print) is that flesh (matter and
energy) of the bear can also be consumed by and thus be incorporated into the
being of the fly. This turns this chain into a cycle leading to the large numbers of
cycling pathways that Patten and others use infinite power series to calculate.
(Note, this is not in defiance of the second law of thermodynamics as the dissipation
at each transfer is lawfully accounted for, but the molecules do cycle around
and around.) This cycling of matter and energy that repeats many times, linked to
108 CHAPTER 5 Reforming reductionism with six core principles
the very real way we think of as “you are what you eat,” illustrates how even our
categories of bear, fish, and fly mask an underlying integration via centuries, millennia,
and longer cycles of Life process making them all also unified in a larger
LifeÀenvironment whole.
Shakespeare spoke of this food-linked holism, too, and even applied it to people.
Hamlet says (Eliot, 1914):
We fat all creatures else to fat us, and we fat ourselves for maggots. Your fat
king and your lean beggar is but variable service, two dishes, but to one table;
that’s the end.
And soon after:
A man may fish with the worm that hath eat of a king, and eat of the fish that
hath fed of that worm . . . to show you how a king may go a progress through
the guts of a beggar.
In this respect, network enfolding and ecological holism may be seen to serve as
an equalizing influence—the worm, king, fish, and beggar all end up on the same
level playing field. The material flow is, in a sense, homogenized and shared
throughout the LifeÀenvironment system.
It is possible to integrate and see larger wholes via science, visualization,
and capacities of the human mind or via caring, compassion, extension of rights
and thus capacities of the human heart, ethics, and morality. Roderick Nash, in
his book, Rights of Nature (1989), charted how the concepts of rights, equal
FIGURE 5.2
Artwork of Jan Heath, entitled “food chain.” Used with permission of the author.
109Core Principles of Holistic Science and LifeÀEnvironment Science
standing, and intrinsic value can be seen to have expanded over human history.
Rights originated from narrow self-interest, such that early teaching and tenets
focused on peopleÀpeople interactions (which was largely settled, at least in
theory, with some version of the Golden Rule, to treat others as you treat yourself).
These rights passed later to human ethics that embraced tribes, families,
and regions, and to other humans as through ending slavery and establishing
civil rights, in which the challenge is dealing with peopleÀgroup interactions.
Democratic and legal institutions have rules in place, but we still struggle today
with instances when the rights of an individual conflict with the rights of many.
In recent decades, concern has been extending to rights of nature and other
species—peopleÀenvironment relations—as codified in the Endangered Species
Act and other shared cultural documents. Leopold’s Land Ethic goes a long way
in guiding our actions in this realm, and an extended version of the Golden Rule
avers to leave the world better than you found it. This expansion of rights has
paralleled the development of the field of Environmental Ethics and the work of
Arne Næss on Deep Ecology mentioned earlier.
These unifying processes are the complement of the perhaps more often used
processes of splitting, dividing, and fragmenting—the ways science fragments
into hyper-specialized subdisciplines, or the way that people at times listen to fear
or ignorance to see themselves as different than and threatened by other humans
based on superficial differences such as skin color, language, or lifestyle choices.
Expressing a similar concept, a famed scientist speaking of religion in a letter
to a grieving father, Albert Einstein wrote (Calaprice, 2005):
A human being is a part of the whole, called by us “Universe,” a part limited
in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something
separate from the rest—a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness.
The striving to free oneself from this delusion is the one issue of true religion.
Not to nourish it but to try to overcome it is the way to reach the attainable
measure of peace of mind.
There are scores of other workers who have contributed unique as well as
shared concepts that support the value of holism and synthesis, and they span
many fields. Goerner et al. (1999), in a book similar to this one seeking foundations
for change for sustainability, wrote of “a Great Ordering Oneness” that manifests
itself in universal patterns, “sacred geometries” shared by both physical and
living structures, and web dynamics, a Oneness that as a whole “weaves order
into every nook and cranny” of the universe. David Bohm (1995 after 1980) echoed
very similar ideas in his work on “wholeness and the implicate order,” in
which he sought to change physics but also saw the negative impact of fragmentary
thinking on human life. Palmer et al. (2010) wrote, “We are being called into
a more paradoxical wholeness of knowing . . .” by which we would “understand
that genuine knowing comes out of a healthy dance between the objective and the
subjective, between the analytic and the integrative . . ..” They outline and help to
teach practical ways to reform higher education to better acknowledge wholeness,
110 CHAPTER 5 Reforming reductionism with six core principles
and they explain the benefits to society and environment they predict would follow.
Capra and Luisi (2014) in their book, The Systems View of Life, propose a
“unifying vision” and new science concepts very similar to our own—with wholeness
and systems thinking they, too, see alarming trends now as “just different
facets of one single crisis,” and that this is driven by “a crisis of perception”
linked to “the concepts of an outdated worldview.”
In addition to ideas, concepts, and ethics, holistic and synthetic science also
entails and requires practical new methods of a fuller accounting. These are
needed to prevent misunderstanding or illusion that proximate successes or gains
are positive on net balance when all direct and indirect effects are considered (or,
if not all effects, as many as can realistically be quantified and evaluated, and
with special attention to impacts on Life, environment and Life-support systems).
Like any new technology or tool, a true anticipatory, predictive, holistic science
could be abused to manipulate outcomes for selfish or greedy ends, but that is
always the case when new knowledge abounds. We reserve deeper examination
of this topic for the next principle where we discuss balancing externalities with a
science that inherently internalizes its own impacts and role in the world.
Principle 4. Holistic Life science equally emphasizes internalist selfreferential
and externalist objective perspectives.
Another quality of the science we see as needed serves to balance negative
side effects of objectivism, which we may consider as the well-intended attempt
to observe a system of study from outside it, without influencing it, so as to
understand it as free from any interference on the part of the scientist. This general
principle of objective science, usually taken to be fully synonymous with
“good science” in the sense of rigorous, repeatable, generally applicable, and
valid science, we see to be much like analysis. Objectivity is excellent when used
in moderation and when counter-balanced by one or more alternative perspectives,
but it becomes harmful and even pathological when used as the sole form
of science or when treated as an absolute, a singular criterion, an unqualified
“truth.”
In many if not most mainstream science arenas, if someone’s science is criticized
as being “not objective,” this is equated with subjectivity and bias, combining
to make the motives of the scientist suspicious and results of the study
invalid. However, beyond cases of actual deceit, intentional bias, and dishonesty,
these seemingly solid assumptions about equating objectivity and good science
bear greater scrutiny.
Like many of the sciences and concepts we examine in this book, and many
others now in vogue such as principles and methods of economics, medicine and
others, the formative years of the sciences and fields have occurred during an era
and set of circumstances in our planetary environment that are no longer effective
descriptors of current circumstances. This mismatch between the period of science
or scholarly development and the conditions of the current moment also align
with fields that have developed based on fundamental working assumptions,
111Core Principles of Holistic Science and LifeÀEnvironment Science
which are no longer true. Perhaps, the best illustrative metaphor for this is the
abrupt change from real world conditions and linked assumptions of an “empty
world” to those of a “full world” as described by Goodland and Daly (1996).
They posed this metaphor mostly with respect to economics, but the pattern
applies to other sciences as well.
During the era Goodland and Daly (1996) generalized as the “empty world,”
the size of human populations and the impact of human resource extraction and
environmental pollution were small compared to the scale of the planet, and one
could reasonably assume minimal human impact. During these many years,
roughly all human history prior to the Industrial Revolution, for those developing
science, economics, and other disciplines, natural resources could reasonably be
treated as if infinite, and the same assumed for the waste absorbing capacity of
the planet’s atmosphere, land, and waters. Not only that, but it was the human
resources that were scarce and the central and sole focus of conservation. Total
human population, which now stands at over 7.5 billion, is estimated to have first
reached 1 billion around the year 1800. However, in a relatively short period of
time, these conditions, and the linked assumptions like those built into economics,
changed qualitatively (and quantitatively). In the century from 1850s to 1950s
(again treated approximately), the numbers of humans, the dent we collectively
began to put on natural resources, and our clear footprint due to our wastes, all
changed fundamentally leading to conditions better seen as a “full world.” This
abrupt and qualitative change in real world circumstances meant that key working
assumptions about humans, resources, wastes, and the environment became invalid
nearly over night, roughly about the dawn of the 20th century. This change was not
simply a step function from one state to another but a fast-growing trajectory that
continues to this day, thus motivating some to call this current time the age of
acceleration.
Herman Daly and others used the realizations contained in the empty and full
world metaphors, and much other evidence and insight, to create ecological economics—one
of many new scientific fields that had to be transformed based on
awareness of the profound change in the humanÀenvironment relationship and its
implications for old and outdated working assumptions. One of many pathological
side effects of the old form of economics (as also manifest in culture, policy, government,
business, and everyday life) was the proliferation of “externalities”—
impacts of business, government, and other human enterprise yielding unintended
consequences to essential environmental and social capacities. These impacts are
largely negative causing harm, damage, and depletion of natural resources
(although positive externalities are also possible); yet, these negative impacts were
ignored since they were assumed to be external to valid accounting and forecasting
practices. As above, we see this as an abuse of reductionism and analysis spanning
science and culture. Internalism, self-reference, and intersubjective perspectives
can serve to remedy this problem and prevent others of similarly negative impact.
We describe the principle of internalism to balance objectivism from two
angles. We first describe internalism in primarily scientific, conceptual,
112 CHAPTER 5 Reforming reductionism with six core principles
theoretical, and philosophical terms; this section is primarily information from
past work. Second, we examine internalism from applied, social, ethical, and
environmental perspectives; this section focuses on what we choose and intend
for the future of holistic Life science. This division is not clear-cut, and the concepts
and linked actions are often described at the same time.
Internalism and the relative importance of its complement, externalism (similar
to objectivism), have a rich literature in the philosophy of science and related
fields. Van de Vijver (1998) gave an excellent critical analysis and history of
internalism that provided major concepts we need for our project in this book.
She described one origin of internalism based on the work of Heinz Von Foerster
in cybernetics and especially second-order cybernetics. This history and idea
development was parallel to and overlapping with work being done by Van de
Vijver, Salthe (2001), and others seeking new theoretical foundations for understanding
living beings as self-organizing systems. Von Foerster worked during the
beginning of cybernetics (first-order cybernetics) as the field “aimed at modelling
purposeful behavior” in living beings and in machines (Van de Vijver, 1998).
Van de Vijver wrote that modeling in cybernetics:
. . . did so in terms of control and communication, that is in terms of external
descriptions developed on an a priori basis and implemented in one way or
another in the machine. Cybernetics of the first order was a theory of the
observed systems. The major dissatisfaction with this approach was the impossibility
to model genuinely autonomous systems, prototypical examples of
which can be found in the biological realm. The main question is indeed: how
to model systems that develop their own goals themselves, that are apparently
organized from within, that self-organize? (p. 297).
She goes on to recount how Von Foerster was intent to understand biological systems
and how they create and choose goals for themselves. She wrote:
In comparison to the externalist approach of first order cybernetics, one can
readily call this an internalist approach. The attention indeed shifts from external
descriptions in view of control, to questions of ‘self’: self-organization,
self-description, internal development.
This interesting dilemma arose in and between fields seeking to understand
the inner essence of living things, and to model and then mimic such internal
capacities for self-knowledge and self-determination in the early computers,
robots, and forms of artificial intelligence (AI) beginning to be developed. To dig
deeper into these concepts requires serious commitment to complex, abstract, and
challenging ideas and terminology. As we see in current debates related to AI
(Bostrom and Yudkowsky, 2014), these challenges continue and are likely to be
relevant and important for a long time.
Once Von Foerster and others considered the possibility of an internalist
approach, more challenges arose. Van de Vijver (1998) reported some of the
major questions, such as the following:
113Core Principles of Holistic Science and LifeÀEnvironment Science
1. How do we precisely describe and define the internalist approach?
2. Does internalism imply or require “the abandonment of any form of control?”
Or more generally, what happens to “control” as the relationship changes
from the externalist approach of first-order cybernetics and its external model
and primary role of the external engineer and programmer, to the new
internalist approach seeking to work to understand “from the inside” of the
system, whether living or machine?
3. Kant, Pask, and others grappled with uncertainty and the inability to know
about the internal model of any system. Van de Vijver wrote: “To Kant, we
will never be able to objectively know internal teleological forms; their
internal circular causality will never be describable in terms of a priori
principles, hence we have to add meaning in order to make sense of them.”
4. What are the implications for the “relational property” unique to internalism.
She wrote: “Self-organization is a relational property that attributes to the
observed system the capability to observe the one who observes, to interpret
the one who interprets.” This reflexive or two-way observation and modeling
relation was echoed by Von Foerster who said “. . . we have to think of a
cybernetics of cybernetics . . . a second order of cybernetics, a kind of selfapplication
of the notion.”
Van de Vijver (1998) and also Salthe (2001) have helped to explore and discuss
these issues in the literature including studies of evolutionary systems theory.
Both authors discuss important overlap with semiotics. Salthe’s (2001) brief overview
of internalism shares our sense that it is an essential approach we must
amplify and build into the foundations of holistic Life science. He wrote of
internalism:
From the viewpoint of modern science, this is certainly among the most radical
perspectives emerging at the end of the Twentieth Century. Internalism is
poised over against externalism, which is just science as it has been, where the
theoretician constructs a model of some part of the world as if (s)he were looking
at it from the outside, therefore objectively. Such models are known to be
partial... and are focused only upon aspects of the world that may be viewed
for practical purposes as being mechanistic.
And later:
There have been several attempts to move away from models of this kind in
the direction of internalism as a response to the failure of externalist models
when placed up against the complexity of the actual world and our own material
situation in it.
Salthe (2001) related several famous examples where internalism arose largely
due to necessity from the type of science being conducted. From the
“Copenhagen interpretation of microphysics” emerged the “complementarity of
particulate and wave/field representations of electrons” based on the realization
that observer (scientist) and experimental system of study “are entangled.” This
114 CHAPTER 5 Reforming reductionism with six core principles
entanglement thus called in to question the existence of external versus internal
stances for representation, modeling, measurement, and understanding.
Cosmology also led to “internalist realizations” stimulated by vast difference in
scale of the observed system and the scientist-observer. As Salthe wrote: “Here
we are clearly inside the system we are observing, and this has some major consequences
. . ..”
These historical and conceptual topics provide a review of the ideas of internalism,
how and why they have developed, and how they can be relevant and useful
for a new holistic Life science with intentional founding goals to serve Life,
to reverse damage to Earth’s Life-support systems, and to achieve true
humanÀenvironmental sustainability. Much as with cosmology, we are clearly
inside the system we are observing when we study Life on Earth. Similar to the
physics of Neils Bohr and others in the Copenhagen school, we can interpret our
integral relationship with Life and the environment as a very real form of entanglement,
in which the outcomes and implications of our experiments and science
can vary profoundly based on the choices we make in formulating questions,
experimental designs, analysis/synthesis, and associated activities.
One last set of quotes from Salthe, Van de Vijver, and Von Foerster on concepts
help as we bridge next to the implications of internalism for responsibility,
ethics, and action. Salthe (2001) wrote of similarities between internalism and
dialectics:
Dialectics also contests the objective stance of Western science, suggesting
instead that investigators are (and should be) not only observers, but actors in
their own interests at the same time.
Describing Von Foerster and allies, Van de Vijver (1998) wrote:
. . . the encounter with self-organizing systems means the experience of the
impossibility to describe and explain the internal dynamics of systems from an
external viewpoint. This impossibility clearly implies for them an anthropomorphic
as well as an ethical move: (i) we have to assume that those systems
are able to interpret our interpretation, and hence (ii) our own behavior, our
own choices, values and decisions have an essential place in the theory of selforganizing
systems. No objective knowledge is at stake: it is the interaction in
view of certain goals, like consistency, like survival. It is not appropriate to
call this an externalist position, as the objectives of control, and the purported
adequacy between internal and external are abandoned (p. 299)
Note her mention of “interaction in view of certain goals . . . like survival.”
This insight gets right to the root of our present need—a science of the human
interaction with all Life in view of the shared goal of survival. She also quoted
Von Foerster on why internalism is radically different, first speaking about the
classical or externalist approach:
You speak about something else . . . And at the moment the separation between
you and what you are saying is made, my feeling is that any notion about
115Core Principles of Holistic Science and LifeÀEnvironment Science
ethics and responsibility is already subdued, suppressed . . . You don’t need to
be responsible if you are only speaking about something.
And then describing the internalist alternative:
It is not going that nice classical way any longer . . . Whatever you say, it is
you who is saying it . . . at the moment you speak about you then it is you who
is speaking and therefore you are responsible. (p. 296)
Van de Vijver (1998) notes the implications:
What a bold statement this is! Can scientists ever get seriously involved with
such an idea? . . . it implies that there is no room for hiding, no escape of the
speaker is possible: everything you say, you said it, and it has to be taken into
account as such. (p. 296)
She goes on to describe how this is “revolutionary” in relation to most of philosophy,
including Kant, who assumed the “existence of objective knowledge”
and worked from there, but “Kant is speaking about the possibility of objective
knowledge; he is not speaking about himself.”
We seek to follow this power of internalism to provide a self-referentially consistent
science. We seek concepts and modeling that make sense and provide
actionable intelligence both when applied in a first-order sense (an ecology of
Nature, or an environmental science of the world) and in a second-order sense
(an ecology of ecological science, an environmental science of environmental science).
We embrace the imperative to consciously accept responsibility for our science,
words, and actions—to speak about ourselves and the world at the same
time—and see internalism to help make this responsibility explicit and transparent.
Operating under mainstream externalism and objectivity, in reality, we still
are responsible for the effects of what our science does to the world and to ourselves
(for the ultimate outcomes on Life-support systems, other species, and people
of the future) of both daily science operations and the manifold downstream
repercussions of the data, results, methods, models, and conclusions we publish.
But, perhaps constrained by an artificial and overly narrow view afforded by
extreme objectivity, we may ignore this responsibility, treat it as “external” to our
science, find excuses for leaving it outside the system of study, and fail to incorporate
such ethics into our founding ideas and institutional transmission of our
fields and disciplines.
This kind of fragmentation between internal and external theories can lead to
academic institutions receiving millions of dollars in government and other grants
with stated goals to help understand and solve the sustainability crisis, while operating
within buildings, and with technology and habits, that have nearly the same
negative impact on atmosphere, water, species, and energy (thus, making worse
key global ecological and social symptoms) as the industries and practices usually
treated as causes of the problems—energy, transportation, agriculture, mining,
entertainment, manufacturing, etc.
116 CHAPTER 5 Reforming reductionism with six core principles
As we develop a “second-order ecology,” an ecology of ecology like von
Foerster’s cybernetics of cybernetics, we turn the “ecoscope” inward in addition
to outward. We seek modeling and science general and robust enough for us to
apply to ourselves at same time as we apply this holistic Life science to the
world. We are also able to apply this science to the relationship between our science
and the planetary system in which we are intimately embedded. A large proportion
of the dynamic systems we study and for which we seek to build a
science and theory are self-organizing, alive, and thus also observing, interpreting,
and responding to us as we observe them. If we adopt the humility and responsibility
inherent with internalism—even if we use it only half the time as an equal
complement to mainstream externalism and objectivity—then this fundamental
stance leads to new imperatives and promises a new quality of results, impacts,
and outcomes.
We see a central aspect of holistic Life science like Van de Vijver described
internalism—“attention shifts from external descriptions in view of control, to
questions of ‘self’: self-organization, self-description, internal development.” In
harmony with our Chapter 2 and Principle 1 in this chapter, this attention shift
leads to a shift in values. As we give up on control of other living systems, as we
acknowledge and respect the unknowable internal self, life, and right to exist in
other Life, we in essence elevate the value of those living and environmental systems
to equal status with ourselves. Related expressions of this perspective are
the following: (1) the move to make Life the highest value has the effect to put
all Life, including humans and the environment, on the same value level; (2) we
have a better chance of survival if we identify, cooperate, and ally with all the
other Life systems who share this survival goal; and (3) if we accept the concept
of sustained Life as integrated with ecosystem and biosphere scales of Life organization,
then we humans are always “inside the system of study” and participating
parts in a larger living whole that is also a larger living self with its own
internal models and unique interior realm.
As we look closely at the world now, we become aware that we are seeing our
own reflection. The symptoms of crisis we see are our own doing, not only the
results of our numbers, actions, and technology but also the direct results of our
science, values, systems of ideas, and ways of thinking. This environmental
awareness and attendant self-awareness can be a stimulus to develop a more selfreflective
science. The next step is to realize that we need ways to bring humans,
scientists, and the science process inside the science paradigm itself, such that
there is a consistency and closure of doing, practicing, and objectives. And, much
as our grand goal is science to help sustain Life, we also seek a science paradigm
able to sustain science by serving to value and maintain the essential context and
Life-support system (science support system) with which science, like any living
system, must coexist and coevolve in winÀwin mutual relation.
Taking as given that we love and value science greatly, we must help science
care for its own legacy and its own health. Moreover, we must be holistic and
comprehensive to understand and care for the legacy and health of science in all
117Core Principles of Holistic Science and LifeÀEnvironment Science
forms—not just narrow subsets of the science enterprise and output, like students
taught and advised, publications, grants, etc. We also need to internalize care for
the facilities, operations, ability to continue and sustain, and our impacts on the
planetary environment.
One way to achieve this is to develop and set goals, or adopt existing goals,
for transforming our science facilities, schools, labs, and field sites to be environmentally
sustainable. Many universities have done this via the American College
and University Presidents’ Climate Commitment (ACUPCC, 2018), Sustainability
Tracking, Assessment, and Rating System (STARS) of the Association for the
Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education (AASHE, AASHE STARS,
2018) metrics, and other targets and transition plans. These commitments and
cooperative monitoring and change programs can help to identify targets and
trends for the carbon, energy, water, nitrogen and other ecosystem fluxes as we
move toward sustainable practices. Some organizations and even governments set
target dates, such as to achieve climate neutrality by 2020, 2030, or 2050. Great
works are readily available providing still more key indicators that can guide
plans and change—see for example the planetary boundaries (Rockstro¨m et al.,
2009), ecological footprint (Wackernagel et al., 2002), Genuine Progress
Indicator (GPI, 2018), and Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (MEA, 2005). To
incorporate internalism fully, to internalize all those environmental impacts previously
ignored and externalized, these kinds of systemic goals must be met; and,
we must begin immediately and keep track continually of the trajectory to success.
Given what we know now, we have no excuses, no exits—as internalism
requires, both our words and our actions speak about ourselves as well as our
world, and there is nowhere to hide.
This approach may seem to cross the line into bias, a bad form of subjectivity,
or activism that threatens to tarnish the public trust in science products and process.
We assert strongly that this need not be true, and that the evidence, rational
case, and ethical imperative of the full necessity of valuing, understanding, and
sustaining Life eclipses any such doubts. Furthermore, if we seek trust from the
public so as to be able to teach, inform, and help guide, then we would benefit
from holistic ethics, from unifying thought, words, and actions, as in the words of
Albert Schweitzer (Byers, 1996) who said, paraphrased:
For influencing others, example is not the main thing. It is the only thing.
Thus, as we convert ourselves and our science operations to sustainable practices
first, we increase trust as we remove hypocrisy and double standards.
Students and the public can read, hear, and absorb what our buildings, labs, technology,
habits, and culture teach about our true understanding and respect (or
lack thereof) for Life and environment. Moreover, these actions can “speak louder”
than the words in our lectures, textbooks, academic exercises, and exams.
We can practice what we preach and teach; we can use our R&D capacity and
expertise to develop the science and applications of sustainability to be sustainable
themselves, at the same time and in mutually beneficial synergy.
118 CHAPTER 5 Reforming reductionism with six core principles
As a segue to the next section on complexity and the need for multi-scale
methods, we outline briefly a hypothetical process to help scale up, scan outward
in space and forward in time, to gage the impacts of any science theory or action.
This table starts at a local, small, personal scale of the scientist and provides three
stops on the way to a wider assessment of impacts.
Entity or Holon Spatial Scale Time Scale Social Units
Organism 0.1À1 m 1 s to 1 day Individuals, team
Ecosystem 100À1000 m 1 week to 1 month Community, region
Biosphere 1 À10 km 1 year to 1 century Nation, humanity
This kind of bridgework or scaffolding, even if done quickly and qualitatively,
or via thought experiment, can help to span the boundaries between narrow and
artificially isolated subsets of the world that we simplify in order to study, to integrate
to more whole and complex systems in their authentic interdependency. In a
general way, to evaluate the extended impacts of any science idea, theory, study,
or activity would be like the tradition in some Native American cultures of considering
the impact of decisions on the seventh generation in the future (Kirmayer
et al., 2011). We see that the concept and necessity of a long-term and intergenerational
perspective and equity is not new. Then why is it so hard to implement?
Specifically, regarding the role that we control and modify the environment, especially
without an overriding respect for the value of Life, we must be cognizant
of the lasting extension of our impacts, which create path-dependent futures, thus
dictating opportunities for those yet to follow. Author C.S. Lewis expressed a
similar concern in his work, The Abolition of Man, in 1959:
In order to understand fully what Man’s power over Nature, and therefore the
power of some men over other men, really means, we must picture the race
extended in time from the date of its emergence to that of its extinction. Each
generation exercises power over its successors: and each, insofar as it modifies
the environment bequeathed to it and rebels against tradition, resists and limits
the power of its predecessors. This modifies the picture which is sometimes
painted of a progressive emancipation from tradition and a progressive control
of natural processes resulting in a continual increase of human power . . .
This process of long-term thinking also aligns with more holistic and comprehensive
accounting processes, such as life-cycle assessment (e.g., Guine´e, 2006)
and triple bottom line methods (e.g., Slaper and Hall, 2011), but they are not
employed in standard and ubiquitous fashion.
The next section on complexity also deals with a science able to reconcile
seeming opposites and accept apparent contradictions, and so we can admit here
that the plea just above for a sustainable science of sustainability is rooted in the
Sustainer worldview. As such, we also realize other scientists, perhaps operating
from and espousing a Transcender worldview (see Chapter 1), may disagree
119Core Principles of Holistic Science and LifeÀEnvironment Science
totally with our assessment and recommendation. This is to be expected, and
rather than seek to defeat or refute the differences in views with Transcenders, we
seek to unite and cooperate.
Principle 5. Holistic Life science is complex itself and is able to model,
understand, and recommend wise actions for interacting with and sustaining
complex systems in Nature.
We use the term complex here primarily in the sense of Robert Rosen (1977,
1991, 2000). As for the other five principles in this chapter, we see complexity as
an essential founding principle that is not currently understood, appreciated, or
employed fully. Rosen’s first work on complexity focused on the relational
aspect—how complexity arises in one’s interaction with, or study of, any system.
He wrote (Rosen, 1977):
Complexity is generally viewed as an intrinsic property of certain kinds of systems,
or at least, as a property of a specific description of such systems. The
view towards complexity taken in the present note is different; namely, that
complexity reflects the necessity for many distinct modes of description of a
system. This in turn depends upon the number of ways we can effectively
interact with a system, and ultimately on the number of distinct subsystems
which available observational techniques make accessible to us.
In other words, using this approach, complexity cannot be measured as an
independent state variable, but rather in context with its environment. Even some
of the approaches that use thermodynamic principles (energy storage, exergy storage,
energy throughflow, retention time, cycling, etc.—see Fath et al., 2001) are
measured relative to some reference state. A far from equilibrium system has an
absolute equilibrium, in terms of universal background temperature, but more relevantly
a local, contextual, and transitory environmental reference. How much
work can be extracted from a system (one measure of complexity) depends on
this local situation. If it were simply an intrinsic property, then that system could
be isolated from its environment and reduced to its constituent parts. The number
and type of parts and subsystems would be an indication of the complexity.
In later works, Rosen’s definitions and uses of the terms “complex” and “complexity”
both seemed to increase in complexity! Following his own definition
above, at least in the sense of using language as a means of modeling, he used
“many distinct modes of description” of complexity, although all are interrelated.
At various times, he referred to complexity (Rosen, 1991, 2000) with respect to
these main ideas, which we have classified into groups:
1. Necessity of multiple distinct modes of description and interaction (as above).
This relates to his idea that a complex system has no single model capable of
representing the system.
2. Complex systems are beyond formalization, simulability, and computability.
This is similar to his syntactic versus semantic distinction. In addition, he
120 CHAPTER 5 Reforming reductionism with six core principles
points to Go¨del’s Incompleteness Theorems as proof of this issue using the
example of inherent incompleteness of formalizations in mathematics.
3. Generic (complex systems) versus limited or special cases (simple systems).
He asserts that complexity is the norm and generic case whereas simple
systems are rare and artificially constrained cases.
4. Simplicity and simple systems—to describe the opposite of complex and
complex systems. This is similar to his references to mechanisms, machines,
and mechanistic approaches as only applicable to simple systems and not
complex systems. We see this as also overlapping with his statements on
fractionability—complex systems are unfractionable.
5. Entailment as a more general concept that has two major types—causal
entailment in natural systems in the real world and inferential entailment in
models and formal systems. We take Rosen’s use of entail to mean the same
as the dictionary definition: “to impose, involve, or imply as a necessary
accompaniment or result” (merriam-webster.com). Entailment is needed in
Rosen’s “modeling relation,” which he saw as the essence of the scientific
process. We align the main points of this book with need for a revised
modeling relation much the same as we have proposed the need for a new
paradigm in science and new system of ideas in culture. Rosen also employed
entailment differently for complex systems (and life) compared to simple
systems (and machines).
6. Impredicativity—he wrote of the need for impredicative logic to understand
and model complex systems such as living organisms.
We will address most of these, as the set of interrelated facets of complexity
has value for our project to better under Life and living systems, for interactions
with them, and for interventions seeking to steer complex humanÀenvironment
systems toward sustainability, such as via science and technology. Our ultimate
claim in this section, which we work to develop and support, is that Rosen’s
closely integrated distinctions between (1) complex and simple systems and (2)
living systems and machines are crucial for both understanding the causes of our
current humanÀenvironment crisis and for developing a new holistic Life science,
and technologies based on it, to solve the crisis.
A series of diagrams may help to clarify these many interwoven, and yes—
complex—ideas about complexity. The first two diagrams (Fig. 5.3) are reproduced
as slightly modified from Rosen (2000). The third one he described in his
text but did not actually present that graphic (Fig. 5.4).
Rosen used these two figures to differentiate the mainstream and prior science
views on the left (his Figure 19.1) from something closer to his own theoretical
perspective on the right (his Figure 19.2). He spoke of classical science dominated
by physics that assumed that organisms were nothing more than special
case subsets of machines or mechanisms. He also wrote of von Neumann and
others who believed that machines could achieve life just as organisms do, while
Rosen himself treated organisms as categorically different. Complexity
121Core Principles of Holistic Science and LifeÀEnvironment Science
determines the boundary and threshold between organisms and machines in his
Figure 19.2. He did not publish Fig. 5.4, but he did describe it (Rosen, 2000):
. . . I suggest a taxonomy for natural systems that is profoundly different from
that of Figure 19.1 or Figure 19.2. The nature of science itself (and the character
of technologies based on sciences) depends heavily on whether the world is
like Figure 19.2 or like this new taxonomy.
In this new taxonomy there is a partition between mechanisms and nonmechanisms.
Let us compare its complexity threshold with that of Figure 19.2. In
Figure 19.2, the threshold is porous; it can be crossed from either direction, by
simply repeating a single rote (syntactic) operation sufficiently often . . .
In the new taxonomy, on the other hand, the barrier between simple and complex
is not porous; it cannot be crossed at all in the direction from simple to
complex; even the opposite direction is difficult. (p. 293)
Here, we note that Rosen is equating or associating mechanism as simple and
organism as complex.
Impredicativity is another facet of complexity that Rosen studied and showed
to be fundamental to understanding Life. It relates closely to our founding principle
of holism above. Rosen (2000) wrote that something is impredicative if
. . . it could be defined only in terms of a totality to which it itself had to
belong. This . . . creates a circularity: what is to be defined could be defined
only in terms of a totality, which itself could not be defined until that element
was specified. (p. 294)
He goes on to say that formalizations and simple systems cannot include any
impredicativities or forms of self-reference, while complex systems and models
FIGURE 5.3
(A and B) Rosen’s conceptual diagrams for machines, organisms, and how complexity is
essential for understanding both.
122 CHAPTER 5 Reforming reductionism with six core principles
of them must include impredicative aspects. This connection to self-reference corroborates
the need for our principle of internalism above, which is also aligned
with self-reference.
Rosen employed these multiple conceptual facets of complexity, along with
category theory, system modeling, and related mathematics, to develop his unique
strategy and answer to the question, What is Life? He wrote (Rosen, 1991):
. . . a material system is an organism if and only if it is closed to efficient causation.
That is, if f is any component of such a system, the question “why f?”
has an answer within the system, which corresponds to the category of efficient
cause of f. (p. 244)
Rosen further explained this provocative result and its implications and wrote that
machines and mechanisms, and their associated models, suffer from an “impoverishment
of entailment” as compared with living systems such as organisms.
Despite the elegance, potentially generic validity, and seemingly revolutionary
impact of Rosen’s ideas, as with any great work, he also serves to inspire many
new questions. While Rosen focused his study and modeling of life on the organism—which
we treat as just one of three holistic Life unit-models, and which
must be integrated with the ecosystem and biosphere—his closure to efficient
cause faces another opening when we consider the making of an organism beyond
any individual life span. That is, while the organism-maker function may well be
FIGURE 5.4
A depiction of the “new taxonomy” for natural systems Rosen described in which simple
machines and complex organisms are categorically different types of systems requiring
fundamentally different science and technology.
123Core Principles of Holistic Science and LifeÀEnvironment Science
inside the organism-as-system during one life span, in many cases to make a next
generation of organisms (fully necessary for Life to continue to exist long term)
requires something outside, from the environment, such as another organism with
which to mate and reproduce. Similarly, Rosen’s (1991) relational model of organism
includes a representation of inputs from the environment that are transformed
during metabolism in his focal function f. If these inputs are available at a rate that
ever drops below the necessary input rate needed for metabolism, then Rosen’s
organism faces another opening for a functional role for something outside the
organism. We see the need for two coupled complementary types of organisms—
autotrophs and heterotrophs—such that as a synergistic combination they are able
to recycle the essential resources inputs for each other and thus embody “sustained
life.” This larger Life system beyond the organism we see to also reflect Rosen’s
key insight, albeit at a different scale of organization—at the ecosystem and biosphere
scales, we again have closure to efficient cause, in a process of “self-making
of the self-makers” which also helps to explain and enable sustained Life.
Much like the impredicative, self-referential loops Rosen invokes—like holding
two mirrors to face each other and looking down into the indefinitely repeating
reflecting images—we can and will dig even deeper into Rosen’s contributed
complex wellspring of insights. However, we save further discussions of his ideas
for Chapter 7, where we examine the bridge between science and real-world
applications and Chapter 8, where we look at examples of holistic technology and
applications. There we utilize his modeling relation, in which the key achievement
is a commutative property such that inferential entailment in a model faithfully
represents the causal entailment in some natural system. We also use ideas
of Rosen’s warning of infinite regress when adding control loops to simple models
and mechanistic systems. Also, later in the book, we examine why it matters
to keep machines and Life categorically separate.
Principle 6. Holistic Life science is radically empirical with constant capacity
for questioning, challenging, and transforming ingrained assumptions and
structures quickly and efficiently.
This principle is necessary to recognize formal and founding value for a culture
and practice of science that has a robust means of self-critique to keep itself
honest and focused on Life value. When holistic Life science, and the scientists
practicing it, are unafraid, encouraged, and rewarded for saying what is actually
happening, that culture of science will have the capacities to (1) resist peer pressure
to conform or to avoid certain types of questions, such as challenging questions
related to sustainability; (2) resist pressure to remain within paradigm and
continue the normal science program of “puzzle solving” (Kuhn, 1962); and (3)
make questions and forays into “postÀnormal science” (Funtowicz and Ravetz,
1993) always available and valid. These capacities for staying focused on what is
really happening are necessary to resist any social, economic, or other pressures
that could distract scientific attention and resources from those topics of greatest
benefit to humanity and Life.
124 CHAPTER 5 Reforming reductionism with six core principles
The allegory or metaphor for this principle is the story of The Emperor’s New
Clothes. In this fable, while all the adults play along with the delusion and charade
of the King and the salesman, it is left to a child to be the courageous and
radically empirical one to speak the truth. In a similar way, we propose this principle
(which we hope can be developed, refined, and strengthened over time) to
help holistic Life science retain a similar value system in which truth—represented
by those truths anchored in Life value—has greater power and authority
than social or economic forms of peer pressure.
This radical empiricism is made more possible since we have anchored and
grounded holistic Life science on the value of Life. The courage to speak truth,
Life value truth, can be bolstered by solid foundations when tests and critiques
are made relative to radical respect for Life itself. Here, we employ one meaning
of the term “radical,” which relates to getting to the root of a matter. When the
values of science are anchored to a deep basis that is perennial, timeless, and
unchanging, it can help individuals and institutions steer a steadier course and not
be blown off track by changing winds of political, social, or economic “hot
topics,” norms, or fads.
We will describe just two examples of what radical empiricism would look
like in practice in this chapter and then propose possible future efforts in this
vein. One necessary capacity of radical empiricism is the ability to test our deepest
assumptions, and we see the need to do so regularly. These tests would best
be done by actual physical experiments; however, thought experiments can serve
this capacity at least for an initial form of testing assumptions. For example, we
see one such deep assumption in the current mainstream science model of “life as
organism” which is linked to the assumption that “life is separate from environment”
(or life is other than environment, and thus can be valued less than life).
We can test these assumptions, and our having done so has informed the work in
this book. What we see as the result of a test of these assumptions, is that when
we actually separate life from environment, life is destroyed (using life here
instead of Life to fit with the existing mainstream paradigm).
A physical implementation of this experimental test would be to isolate any
individual life form (again, a discrete life form, or organismal life form, as in the
current dictionary definition of life) in a closed container, like a glass jar or chamber.
Whether this individual life form is an autotrophic plant, a heterotrophic animal,
a microbe, a human, or any other type, it would not be able to live for long.
The only intermediate result would be a delaying tactic of some life forms which
might be able to go dormant and wait for the environment to change. But, in general,
by actualizing a real system (by implementing such a system in experimental
form) in which “life is separated from environment,” we must confront the radical
truths that (1) an organism or individual is an incomplete instance or unit-model
of life and (2) life and environment are inherently inseparable and unfractionable.
This leads to the further realization that it is not enough to have a single model of
Life (like “life 5 organism”). If we could use a single model, then it would mean
that Life is simple and has a single reducible model. As we saw in Rosen’s work
125Core Principles of Holistic Science and LifeÀEnvironment Science
on complexity above, this assumption does not fit well with either evidence or
logic.
Another example comes from an educational experience. In a seminar course
in graduate school, we read the famous Likens et al. (1970) paper on their experiments
in Hubbard Brook forested watershed ecosystems. In this enormous experiment,
they clear-cut a forested watershed and then used herbicide to prevent
vegetation regrowth. By studying the minerals and essential Life system nutrients
that were rapidly exported via the stream (e.g., nitrogen, calcium, magnesium,
and potassium), they learned about the natural homeostatic properties of forested
ecosystems and what happens when they are disturbed. In the conclusion of this
seminal paper, they wrote that homeostasis and a continued healthy ecosystem
depend on “a functional balance within the intrasystem cycle of the ecosystem,”
and they referenced balance between production and consumption via decomposers
and nutrient cycling. This experiment was of profound historical, conceptual
and scientific importance and had been read and studied by all the leaders in the
university environmental science institution in which we were enrolled in a PhD
program. However, looking around the room where the graduate seminar was
meeting, it was immediately clear these core lessons from Likens et al. (1970)
had not been learned in any deep way or in a radically empirical way. The lessons
of the fundamental importance of functional balance and intrasystem cycling
were not employed in the design of the academic science building, and they were
not embodied or operational in the science or educational enterprise and its associated
apparatus. It was as if those hard-won lessons of that huge experiment
were treated as for “academic purposes” only—interesting topics to read, and discuss,
and perhaps even employ in other scientific studies, but not grasped as fully
relevant to the Life, culture, practices and operations of ecological and environmental
science itself.
This seeming disconnect between lessons learned from Nature and how we
live and act in academia has changed greatly since this graduate seminar. Many
now follow the early work by David Orr at Oberlin College (Orr, 1991) and his
insistence that we use university campuses as a laboratory and for experiments to
transform our universities to sustainable operations. This leadership was followed
by the American College and University Presidents’ Climate Commitment
(ACUPCC) and related efforts for radical change for sustainability in colleges
and universities. Many other self-change leaders have added works and voices to
this chorus, including Chris Uhl at Penn State and John Aber at New Hampshire.
Here, we see another tie back to our principle of internalism, another example of
the consistency of the six principles.
These academic leaders were not usually rewarded within the existing system
of academic advancement and recognition. Many times, they had to buck the system
and go against the grain, and most often did not risk such radical work before
achieving tenure due to the professional risk. Empiricism and the principles,
ethics, habits, culture, and practices of Life science should not be biased, bound,
or constrained by money, pay, rewards, peer pressure, ego, tenure, or stature.
126 CHAPTER 5 Reforming reductionism with six core principles
Socioeconomic pressures and careerism should take a backseat to a science enterprise
oriented and pragmatically able to deliver the best for humanity, including
elevation of the value of Life and Life support to its rightful place as #1 priority
that must be ensured for other human endeavors to have meaning or even be
doable into the future.
If Life value could be institutionalized into the rewards and value structures of
academic, government, and private practices of Life science, then this principle
would enable accelerated learning, change, and paradigm shifts when the criteria
for success and value are grounded in what is needed to support Life. Sidetracks,
distractions, and coopting of the science enterprise for work that harms Life
would be minimized or eliminated. Thus, another benefit would be more efficient
use of limited science resources, such as funding and people power.
SUMMARY OF THE SIX PRINCIPLES
This set of science principles embodies an ethical sense that emerges from the
value orientation to serve Life, from the anticipatory program to succeed in
achieving sustainability, and from the other principles that promote leading by
example and applying the holistic Life science to the scientific enterprise itself.
This ethical imperative is similar to the Hippocratic Oath taken by medical doctors—Do
No Harm. These principles also hold capacity to create a science that
will be seen by future generations in a positive light—we can be more confident
that future scientists and citizens will look back on our generation and see us as
good ancestors, elders, forerunners, or grandparents. Much like the Native traditions
we referred to above, we see holistic, anticipatory, self-referential Life science
to provide a solid basis for such generosity of forethought and service to
seven or more generations in the future. If we cannot ascertain or be confident
that a scientific or technological program or project will be net positive for Life
and the future, then we should not do it. Just as with conflict of interest, if the
motives and rewards are not clear and well founded, then the initiative should not
be trusted and should not be conducted. With such high standards holistic Life
science can be a platform for us as servant leaders.
These principles also hold potential to enable greater scientific insight and
understanding and to open new avenues for holistic action for sustainability. One
example is application to modern, industrial human systems in the case of the US
food system. Multiple studies have shown that our current food system uses
approximately 10 units of fossil fuel energy for every 1 unit of food calorie
energy delivered to people via their diet. This network-level synthesis view is
only visible via whole system analysis, whole network analysis plus synthesis.
This analysis 1 synthesis, when combined with radical empiricism and the other
principles, indicates clearly that the US food system is not actually effective,
functional, or efficient for delivering food (as measured in energy for human
127Summary of the Six Principles
metabolic needs): clearly, this approach to agriculture is not sustainable when
those inputs are nonrenewable fossil energies and the outputs burden the atmospheric
balance. By understanding Life, and the necessity of its relation to environment
and energy, we know that no rational food energy system would expend
10 times the energy it supplies. In search for explanation, it becomes clear that
the food system is designed for some other primary purpose and that the grounding
to Life value has been lost due to distraction, confusion, or other negative
influences. As we examine further, and as we observe that the food system does
function for generating financial profit for some individuals and corporations
involved, we are confronted with the need for fuller accounting to internalize the
many social and environmental costs now being externalized. Employing radical
empiricism and the other proposed principles of Life science, we must address
such hard reality and develop solutions for systemic change in light of ultimate
values grounded in Life.
Ecological network analysis and systems ecology provide many holistic and
systemic ideas, methods, case studies, and results that serve as an excellent foundation
tool kit for the Life science we propose. We next discuss seven major lessons
from these holistic fields and how they can be employed.
128 CHAPTER 5 Reforming reductionism with six core principles
CHAPTER
6Life science lessons from
ecological networks and
systems ecology
In this chapter, we present transformative lessons from ecological network analysis
(ENA), systems ecology, and related fields, including analytical tools, science
results, case studies, models and their validation, holistic hypotheses and their
tests, and an equation for LifeÀenvironment using hypersets. Our central goal is
to identify tools able to translate from the values and principles of holistic Life
science (Chapters 2À5) through to the proximate goals of applications, technologies,
and solutions (Chapter 7 and Chapter 8) and on to successful outcomes and
the ultimate goal of a winÀwin humanÀenvironment relation by which the environment
improves over time as a result of human influences (as framed in
Chapter 1 and the focus of this book).
We outline seven key lessons from systems and network ecology that are starting
points for essential concepts and tools for the new holistic Life science. These
Life Lessons are as follows:
1. Discrete versus sustained life. We summarize and present in concise form all
the subtopics presented in Chapters 1À3 on this topic. This includes
recognition of “coupled complementary processes” (Fiscus, 2001À2002) as a
bridge relationship between discrete and sustained life.
2. Ecological goal functions—developmental tendencies and the orientation of
change of whole ecosystems—are complementary and can be reconciled (Fath
et al., 2001). For example, maximum network dissipation and maximum
network storage though opposite tendencies can both occur as long as network
retention time is also increasing.
3. Indirect relations and impacts are often greater in magnitude and can be
qualitatively different (positive versus negative) than direct impacts between
any two entities, for example, two species in a community or food web or two
firms in an economic web. This means detailed, fully articulated whole
networks or systems (or as close to whole as is reasonable) must be studied.
Indirect relations and impacts integrate over all the connected relations in a
network (or community, ecosystem), and we cannot see this predominance of
indirect relations via narrow studies, on a few isolated entities, when many
interactions are truncated and ignored.
Foundations for Sustainability. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-12-811460-5.00006-6
Copyright © 2019 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
129
4. All Life is connected—via ENA, we can quantify how the connections,
relations, flows of energy and material between Life forms are crucial to
understanding Life. These network relations between all entities are equally as
important as more traditional approaches focusing on dynamics (as in
dynamic process models) and measures of materials such as the particles,
objects, or masses of individual entities. This lesson adds quantitative
evidence to the social and moral sense of the need for a new “declaration of
interdependence” to formally recognize the organic unity of all Life.
5. Ecosystems and natural networks show mutualism and synergism between
species, actors, and participants. As a general pattern, “life is beneficent under
network rule” (Patten, 1991; Fath and Patten, 1998), but the details and
specific methods to see this systemic quality are important.
6. Ecosystems and networks naturally balance order and flexibility. The
robustness index of Ulanowicz (2009a) uses information theory to quantify
the balance of efficiency versus adaptability (linked to redundancy) in
ecosystems and flow networks in general, including economies.
7. A hypothetical new formalism is presented which can serve to prohibit
fragmentation of life from environment and of life from life. This formalism
employs hypersets—impredicative, self-referential, meaningfully ambiguous
mathematical tools as suggested by Rosen.
INTRODUCTION AND BACKGROUND FOR THE SEVEN LIFE
LESSONS
ENA and systems ecology provide many holistic and systemic methods and
results that serve as an excellent foundational tool kit for the holistic Life science
we propose and the systemic solution project we promote. These are the fields we
have worked in for decades, the disciplinary tools with which we are most familiar,
and those methods and results we see to be most closely integrated with the
holistic Life science we have begun to develop. However, we are also aware of
allied workers in related fields who employ kindred concepts and methods, who
have obtained corroborating results, and who have blazed new interesting lines of
investigation using network science.
We seek to remain in cooperation with these folks whether as actual collaborators
or mutually informing references. We have already mentioned three people
who we see as leaders in this work, scientists from whom we have borrowed and
learned much. Robert Ulanowicz has developed an ecological metaphysic, most
recently laid out in his book, A Third Window (Ulanowicz, 2009b), and he elegantly
describes his perspective on a paradigm shift and new foundations for science
compatible with our views. Several of the methods in ENA he invented and
developed figure into our list of critical tools below. Patten (2016a) has similarly
presented a comprehensive scientific framework he calls Holoecology. This
130 CHAPTER 6 Life science lessons
masterful work details his 20 cardinal hypotheses for understanding causality in
complex adaptive hierarchical systems. We borrow several of his cardinal hypotheses
for our list of seven key lessons of Life learned from systems ecology and
ENA. Sally Goerner developed a holistic approach to sustainability science
(Goerner, 1999) and most recently has led efforts to bridge between ENA methods
developed by Ulanowicz and others in order to apply them to economic networks.
Her inspiring interdisciplinary and systems science work spans the whole
of human history. She is expert at framing complex topics in readily accessible
language, metaphors, and imagery, and developing pragmatic tools and metrics to
aid sustainable development of vibrant human economies.
Beyond these three closest allies, we know of a large community of practice
in areas akin to holistic Life science. Louie and Poli (2011) have followed up on
Rosen’s work helping to apply his category theory, modeling relation and impredicative
systems to living systems, human psychology, and social realms. Capra
and Luisi (2014) present compatible work employing systems and systems thinking
as an alternative to the mainstream mechanistic paradigm. Stephan Harding
and his colleagues at Schumacher College teach unique graduate programs in
Holistic Science and have continued Lovelock’s work after Gaia (Harding, 2006).
Alan Savory, Lester Brown, Joel Salatin, the Rodale Institute, and others in regenerative
agriculture and permaculture are leading the way to truly sustainable and
regenerative food production methods successfully improving soils and other key
elements of environmental quality as they operate.
Having gotten this far in this book, you might be aware of these milestones or
branch points along the journey, or some similar series of experiences and
thoughts.
You are willing to entertain our conceptual framing of the current
humanÀenvironment crisis and one avenue for systemic solution—reform of science
foundations to better enable understanding and actualization of the already
demonstrated winÀwin LifeÀenvironment relation we see in most natural systems
(Chapter 1).
You are open to the idea that there may be two distinct camps with respect to
this crisis, and two categorically different assessments of the meaning, and
entailed action plan, related to our current set of world circumstances. These two
lightly held (by us) models of types of people and their often strongly held worldviews
are the Sustainers and the Transcenders (Chapter 1). You have accepted
our working assumptions and hypotheses for the purpose of this book that these
two groups interpret and act in distinct ways when confronted with real evidence
of environmental and resource limitations and negative harmful impacts of human
activities. Transcenders, when confronted with limitations, interpret them as limits
to be transcended, and they thus focus on ways to increase the pace and efficiency
of resource extraction and utilization to fuel innovation, invention, technology,
growth, and development in order to smash through any physical limitations with
sheer human ingenuity, determination, and hard work. Sustainers by contrast see
the current real evidence of environmental and resource limitations and negative
131Introduction and Background for the Seven Life Lessons
harmful impacts of human activities as essentially insurmountable at the scale of
planet Earth. Thus, when confronted with this limitation, they interpret it as a
hard constraint—a system itself, environmental, ecological, human, on the other
side of the barrier that deserves respect and understanding, that must be accepted,
and they thus focus on ways to reorient and reinvent human activities in order to
abide by the limited real capacity of planetary Life support systems.
If you identify more as a Transcender, then we have noted that this book may
not provide foundational science, values, principles, methods, and applications for
the “Transcender program.” But, you hopefully are aware that other enterprises
can be compatible with the Transcender worldview and action plan while also
respecting the validity of the Sustainer approach. Efforts related to colonizing
Life beyond Earth, for one example, are not only compatible with allowing
Sustainers to lead the work on Earth but also reveal the essential complementarity
of Sustainer and Transcender modes (how else will you sustain Life during space
travel and on any space station, colony, or new world?).
Whether identifying as Sustainer or Transcender, or perhaps agnostic and still
learning with respect to these hypothetical worldviews, you are open to considering
Life as the primary basis of value (Chapter 2).
You are aware of the options and implications for choices of system boundaries
when developing a study of real-world systems. This includes the important
realization of the impacts of what one considers inside or outside of a system of
study, and what aspects of the real world one chooses to separate and split apart
versus those seen as unified and whole (Chapter 3).
You have considered holistic approaches to addressing those deep and wide
fundamental questions of the original and fundamental nature of Life (Chapter 4).
You have read and considered six founding and interwoven principles of a
potential reformed paradigm of holistic Life science, namely, (1) anchoring science
on Life value, (2) anticipatory capacity to enable a successful solution to the
humanÀenvironment crisis, (3) holistic emphasis to balance predominantly reductionistic
current and past practice, (4) internalism emphasis to balance mainstream
objectivism, (5) inherent capacity to handle complexity, and (6) radically empirical
strategy that gives greater authority to Life value than to social and economic
norms and forms of peer pressure (Chapter 5).
Thus, at this point, you are ready for specific, quantitative, scientific tools and
techniques, pragmatic methods that are not only analytical but also synthetic. You
are open to learn about innovations in science able to inform actions and enable
successful outcomes where prior methods have gotten stuck, delayed, or sidetracked.
You seek new ideas and strategies to aid existing science culture that still
needs assistance if we are to avoid grave damage to people and planetary Life
support and achieve a positive future in mutually beneficial relation to our environment
and home.
Are there fundamentally different ways to formulate the scientific questions
we ask that could lead to better outcomes and more rapid progress? Do we have
access to different starting assumptions about how best to do science? Are the
132 CHAPTER 6 Life science lessons
current norms and values about “good science” acceptable? Should we expect
more from our research projects than new information leading to new publications?
Do we trust that the stepwise and incremental accrual of new knowledge
can scale up to address the systemic humanÀenvironmental crisis we are confronting?
What science methods and techniques are available to help balance
holism with reductionism and synthesis with analysis? These are the types of fundamental
and existential questions we have been exploring for many years and
for which we seek to contribute answers and insights.
The seven lessons below are the most powerful ones we have gleaned from
our studies of Life in the natural world and the human relationship to it. Based on
many experiences using these methods, we have developed the holistic diagnosis
of a scientific and cultural “system of ideas” as the root cause of our crisis, as
depicted in Fig. 1.2 (and as causing the top 11 symptoms of global environmental
crisis in Table 1.1).
Given that we identify science as part of the problem, and see science as part
of the solution, and are employing science to develop the solution, this is a complex,
multi-perspective, self-referential process in the sense of Rosen—we attempt
to pull the scientific process inside our project system as an internal function of
self-transformation and to help develop a science of science. This is similar to the
essential “closure to efficient cause” quality of life-as-organism that Rosen discovered.
By analogy, we hope that this effort can “take on a life of its own” and
mimic the self-making aspect of Life systems. By way of a more humorous if
dangerous analogy, it at times feels a lot like “building the plane while flying it.”
Before describing the set of seven Life Lessons and science methods, we want
to make conscious starting steps and be aware of preparations largely ignored and
not done now in the current dominant mainstream, reductionistic, mechanistic science
that we hold partly responsible for our current crisis. These are necessary
and major considerations that guide the strategy of science given our rare and specific
context at this point in history. We use Rosen’s modeling relation as central
conceptual framework. We also consciously employ internalism and internalization,
an anticipatory approach, holism, complexity, radical empiricism, and the
Life value principles of Chapter 5.
First, for the context, we propose a necessary awareness that we are in a transition
period. This highly dynamic era, perhaps like a transient period or even a
phase change, phase transition, or bifurcation moment, allows us to recognize,
accept, and even participate in the current science process and its non-sustainable
operations, while also insisting for change in the direction toward future sustainable
science operations, and hopefully with a rate of change such that this transformation
occurs sooner rather than later due to the urgency of our circumstances.
This is our first issue, and additional essential starting point issues, building on
our five principles of holistic Life science, prior to planning scientific studies are
as follows:
1. Orient science toward transitional goals that ultimately value Life. In
anticipatory fashion, seek to embody and actualize Life value and to correct
133Introduction and Background for the Seven Life Lessons
the humanÀenvironment relation, so it becomes inherently winÀwin and
environment can improve rather than degrade over time due to human actions
and impacts.
2. Employ holism—seek more to unify, synthesize, and integrate rather than
divide, differentiate, isolate, fragment, and analyze. We will always start with
basics of systems and systems modeling—first steps always include defining
the focal system, the system of study, the system boundaries, what is
nonsystem (or environment, context, surroundings, etc.), and the variables of
interest. This process—a conscious, intentional, and partly subjective process
in which values are operating and mindsets, paradigms, assumptions (from our
shared system of ideas) are employed—also involves deciding which variables
will NOT be modeled and thus are treated as “exogenous” or “external
drivers.” We saw in Chapter 3 that we have a conscious choice whether Life
and environment are separated versus integrated (see Fig. 3.2). And, we saw
Patten’s two ways to model environment—dualism versus synergism
(Fig. 3.4).
3. Internalize all costs—bring science itself inside the system of study and plan
strategically for science first to transition to sustainable operations and later to
run using inherently sustainable infrastructure and principles. Running on
renewable energy and recycling materials processes, and helping correct
environmental quality metrics are required. Scientists have succeeded in
developing many metrics of impact and monitoring progress and regress, such
as genuine progress indicator (GPI, 2018), planetary boundaries (Rockstro¨m
et al., 2009), and ecological footprint (Wackernagel et al., 2002); and it is
time to turn these metrics inward on the practice of science itself. We are not
so pedantic to claim that scientists should never use resources or travel
(spreading research results, ideas, and face-to-face collaborations are part of
the human experience and learning process), but we recognize that our own
profession must change to operate in a context that is consistent with the
whole goal of sustainability.
4. Keep Rosen’s (1991) modeling relation in mind—see Fig. 6.1. This concise
representation of the scientific process has many profound implications, and
they are common sense despite having been largely ignored. One profound
implication is that this is a two-way relation that operates and has action,
impacts and real influence in both directions.
This starting point and anticipatory approach require additional explanation,
so we take a brief detour to explain one key aspect here. (We examine in detail
how Rosen’s work helps bridge between science and the real world in Chapter 7.)
In the more commonly understood direction in Fig. 6.1, science makes models
(formalisms, equations, relationships, theories, explanations, understanding, etc.)
of Nature and how Nature works. But, Rosen says the process and “apparatus” of
encoding (measurement) and decoding (predictions) exist partly in both realms.
He also wrote that this modeling relation can operate in the opposite direction.
134 CHAPTER 6 Life science lessons
One can make a model of a natural system, or one can create a natural realization of
a model (Rosen, 1991). Formal systems (ideas, mental models, theories, paradigms,
etc.) can move from the mental and internal realm of the human self to become realized
in physical and material form in the natural system or real world. This is tied to
an extension and generalization of another observation of Rosen’s. Writing about the
most basic ideas of science and its validity, he wrote (Rosen, 1991):
As philosophers have pointed out for millennia, all we perceive directly are
ourselves, together with sensations and impressions that we normally interpret
as coming from “outside” (i.e., from the ambience), and that we merely impute,
as properties and predicates, to things in that ambience. The things themselves,
the noumena, as Kant calls them, are inherently unknowable except through
the perceptions they elicit in us; what we observe are phenomena, which are to
an equally unknowable extent corrupted by our perceptual apparatus itself
(which of course also sits partly in the ambience). (p. 56)
Thus, Rosen is saying that encoding and decoding in the modeling relation (see
Fig. 6.1) and in the science process (as measurement and prediction, for example)
exist in between the “inner” realm of formal systems, the mind and human self, and
the “outer” realm of natural systems, the ambience, and the environment. And he is
saying that our “perceptual apparatus” likewise exists straddling between these two
realms—our eyes, ears, finger tips, and all sensory systems, as well as attendant
motor systems that enable us to manipulate equipment or construct experiments.
These are hybrid systems that bridge between and share fundamental aspects with
the mental and abstract realm of the mind and the physical and material aspect of
the environment that we both study, make, and are made of as we eat, breathe,
excrete wastes, build, modify, use resources, and coexist. We are of the world
1
2
3
Formal
system
Natural
system
Encoding
Casual
entailment
Inferential
entailment
Decoding
4
FIGURE 6.1
Modified slightly from Rosen’s modeling relation. This appeared as his Figure 3H.2 on
page 60 (Rosen, 1991). An elegant representation of the scientific process as heavily
entangled with the real world it seeks to understand.
135Introduction and Background for the Seven Life Lessons
around us. Life’s great advance as a complex adaptive system was to emerge as differentiations
from and using the stuff of the background and simultaneously
develop ways to interact and make sense of this background.
We discuss in detail a synthetic idea on this topic tied to our main thesis of
this book in Chapter 7. This is the idea that the machine metaphor, as the dominant
mental model of the mainstream science paradigm, operates via the modeling
relation (the two-way process of science) to alter the environment in detrimental
ways. We now see Life and the environment breaking down and wearing out just
like the machines we have imagined them to be. For now, we urge that we always
keep in mind that science is an active, participatory, and two-way process that
has multiple forms of impact on the systems of study and the world as a whole.
By no means is it merely a passive or one-way process by which inert information
moves from Nature into our minds, models, and shared bodies of knowledge.
Alexander (1964) added another layer to the model above to show explicitly the
role of the mental model in interpreting the noumena (Fig. 6.2). Also, he put
C2 F3
C1 F1
C1 F1
Context Form
Actual world
Actual world
Mental picture
C3 F3
C1 F1
C2 F2
Actual world
Mental picture
Formal picture of
mental picture
FIGURE 6.2
Mapping of context into form, according to level of abstraction. Redrawn from Alexander
(1964).
Alexander, C., 1964. Notes on the Synthesis of Form. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA, 216 pp.
136 CHAPTER 6 Life science lessons
emphasis on the formal mathematical systems to highlight the added benefit that
we can now apply logic, algebra, calculus, statistics, network analysis, simulation
modeling, or any other number of techniques in which the “rules of the game” are
known, repeatable, and result in “isomorphic” mappings. While it is unlikely if not
impossible that two individuals will independently share an identical mental model
and reach the same formal representation, once in its formal representation, a common
language exists for further manipulation and investigation. Rosen (1991) also
wrote about mappings or modeling relations between two formal systems.
The idea that the scientific process and enterprise (including all scientists and
ourselves) are intimately entangled with the world it studies, seeks to understand,
operates in, and seeks to develop technologies and applications for use in provides
a fitting segue to our seven Life Lessons. We jump back in time to gain from
insights of many others including Alfred Lotka. His holistic work we cite below
was first published in 1925, but in our view, it has been sorely underappreciated
for nearly 100 years.
Lesson 1. Coupled Complementary Life has Discrete and Sustained Aspects.
Life’s unique capacities for sustained existence and evolutionary improvement
depend on coupled complementary processes and the functional unity of the discrete
Life of organisms and the sustained Life of ecosystems and the biosphere.
In multiple sections of Chapters 1À3, we have discussed, described, and provided
corroborating references for two distinct and complementary aspects of
Life—the “discrete Life” most applicable to organisms and individuals (and even
species) and the “sustained Life” most applicable to ecosystems and the biosphere.
We also described how this dual-model view of Life is similar to complementary
models of light as either/both particle and/or wave—in both cases, two
disparate yet complementary models are needed for complete understanding, and
the complex aspects of light and Life cannot be reduced to any single model.
These larger scales of Life organization—ecosystem as well as biosphere—are
realms of study most often explored by those working in systems ecology, ecological
networks, and global changeÀrelated fields. Studies at these levels of
LifeÀenvironment organization are different from studies of the life of organisms
and individuals, which can usually be determined as either alive or dead and
where these are distinct states or conditions. Ecosystems and biosphere, on the
other hand, always involve and depend on integration of elements and functions
of both living and nonliving aspects. The discretely living forms have finite lifespans
and necessary death; the sustained living forms, as far as we know, can
continue to exist into the open-ended future. The interdependence of these two is
based in part on the ways dead organisms are recycled via feeding relations,
decomposition, and food web processes that feed Life’s renewal. As we quoted
Berry (1981) in Chapter 1 to say of the discrete Life forms “They die into each
other’s life, live into each other’s death.” We still have not found any other way
to organize a biosphere, as Patten asked us to consider, other than by eating and
being eaten. Thus, we propose to reflect on it, work hard to understand it, and
make the best of this fundamental nature of Life.
137Introduction and Background for the Seven Life Lessons
Recognition of Life’s distinct discrete and sustained aspects becomes powerful
when we consider the radically empirical thought experiment we suggest reveals
the need for a fundamental paradigm shift in sciences of Life and environment.
The experimental question is what happens when one actually separates life from
environment? We used this thought experiment in Chapter 5 to help illustrate the
principle of radical empiricism, and it is useful again here. Unless we actually
perform this experiment, either mentally or physically, we have no easily recognizable
consequences for blurring the lines between, or failing to acknowledge
the need for, the discrete and sustained Life categories. While not easily and
immediately recognizable as consequences, we have proposed that the systemic
symptoms of environmental degradation in Chapter 1 are indirect consequences
of this conceptual choice (and myriad linked actions) to separate Life from environment,
in a zero-sum, winÀlose, finite game of interactions.
One can actually separate Life from environment—such as by placing an
organism in a sealed container. This is where we see the benefit of the thought
experiment relative to the real, physical experiment—there is no need to harm an
organism to understand these concepts. If we actually separated an organism from
its environment, then the organism would die. We propose a holistic interpretation
of this experiment: it reveals that the organism died, that Life was destroyed
because the discrete aspect of Life was isolated, disconnected, cut off from the
sustained aspect of Life.
These experiments are reminiscent of ones done by Priestley (and others) leading
up to his 1774 discovery that air is made of a composition of gases including
oxygen (although he did not use that term). These early scientists subjected mice
and other animals to sealed chambers in which they would either live or die
depending on the experiment and its effect on the oxygen. They also used flames,
which by comparison is better for causing no harm to living things.
If we modify the experiment and inside the sealed container place a more
complete ecosystem as a realization of discrete Life unified with sustained Life—
with plants, animals, and decomposers, for example—then the outcome would be
different. This experiment was much like the Biosphere II project attempted in
the early 1990s in the Arizona desert. But, one cannot avoid the question of scale,
knowing what we do that many of Life’s processes (oxygen formation, climate
regulation, hydrologic cycle, etc.) are truly global. In the modified experiment,
we have maintained the essential unity of discrete and sustained Life forms coexisting
and operating together, and only in this more complete Life system are we
able to see and realize both discrete and sustained aspects of Life. The individual
organisms can only sustain their individual lives by actively participating in the
context of the larger Life of the food web, community, and ecosystem as a functional
whole.
An attempt at sustained Life at a smaller scale is given by the company,
EcoSphere, who developed closed ecosystems that represent physical versions of
this second experimental case—closed and sealed clear glass orbs containing multiple
types of organisms in water. Their website states (www.eco-sphere.com):
138 CHAPTER 6 Life science lessons
Inside each EcoSphere are active micro-organisms, small shrimp, algae and
bacteria, each existing in filtered sea water. Because the EcoSphere is a selfsustaining
ecosystem, you never have to feed the life within. Simply provide
your EcoSphere with a source of indirect natural or artificial light and enjoy
this aesthetic blend of art and science, beauty and balance.
The website also describes how the closed ecosystems started from NASA
research on whether “animal and plant life could be used to sustain humans in
space exploration.” The stakes now hit even closer to home—we imagine a
human in a “sealed jar” instead of the mouse. Their history tab states:
Pioneered by Clair Folsom of the University of Washington research in the
‘60s and then jointly with Joe Hansen of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab in the
early ‘80s, along with other top bio-scientists, it was discovered that diverse
colonies of microbes, [algae], and higher life forms (colonies) could persist
apparently indefinitely in closed lab beakers.
They also tell how these lab beakers became a commercial product:
In 1983 Loren Acker, President of Engineering and Research Associates, Inc. (a
small Arizona based medical research company) and long associate with the U.S.
space program was visiting a NASA official and noticed one of the flasks Joe
Hansen had created. Interested in the idea, Acker obtained a NASA Spin-Off
Technology license for the EcoSphere. Along with a young employee, Daniel
Harmony, they developed the first pilot manufacturing facility for EcoSpheres
where the public and educators could directly benefit from NASA’s works.
We quote at length this current website information for two reasons. First, this
tells the fun and interesting story of research on space exploration as the context
in which arose a radically empirical test of our dictionary and textbook definitions
of Life as fundamentally organismal. Second, this story provides a link to consider
again the Sustainer versus Transcender modes (Chapter 1), and the inherent
complementarity of yet another pair of seeming opposites. These quotes indicate
just how intimately entwined any effort to colonize space—the ultimate act of
transcending Earth’s limits—must be with efforts to sustain Life, both for astronauts
and their essential Life support systems. It will not be enough to send colonizers
out with supplies for the journey and beyond; they will need to sooner,
rather than later, tap in to the Life sustaining properties already observed in full
bloom on Earth. In fact, this shows a new twist that sustaining does not just mean
maintaining but also creating and constructing.
Our original interest in a closely related concept—the idea of coupled complementary
processes inherent in autotrophic and heterotrophic organism types—was
assisted by the work of Lotka (1925) on “coupled transformers.” Lotka wrote:
Coupled transformers are presented to us in profuse abundance, wherever one
species feeds on another, so that the energy sink of one is the energy source of
the other.
139Introduction and Background for the Seven Life Lessons
A compound transformer of this kind which is of very special interest is that
composed of a plant species and an animal species feeding upon the former.
The special virtue of this combination is as follows. The animal (catabiotic)
species alone could not exist at all, since animals cannot anabolise inorganic
food. The plant species alone, on the other hand, would have a very slow working
cycle, because the decomposition of dead plant matter, and its reconstitution
into CO2, completing the cycle of its transformations, is very slow in the
absence of animals, or at any rate very much slower than when the plant is
consumed by animals and oxidized in their bodies. Thus the compound transformer
(plant and animal) is very much more effective than the plant alone.
(p. 330)
Lotka wrote that a plant could exist alone but with a “very slow working
cycle”, and that the coupled transformer of plant-plus-animal is “very much
more effective.” We appreciate his early and holistic recognition of this essential
aspect of Life, but we would modify these last two statements. We do not
think a plant or any autotroph could exist alone—such as isolated in a sealed
container—as eventually some essential nutrient (CO2 or inorganic nitrogen for
example) would run out causing the plant to die before it could be broken down
by abiotic processes. Thus, beyond merely being more effective, we see Lotka’s
“compound transformer” to represent a necessary holistic Life entity. These two
complementary feeding aspects form the core functional components needed for
the realization of sustained Life (autotrophic means self-feeding, heterotrophic
means other-feeding). Lotka himself wrote of the need to see and treat Life
forms holistically and that recognizing their integral unity is the best way to
think about Life. He wrote (Lotka, 1925):
The several individual organisms of one species form in the aggregate one
large transformer built up of many units operating in parallel.
. . . the entire body of all these species of organisms, together with certain inorganic
structures, constitute one great world-wide transformer. It is well to
accustom the mind to think of this as one vast unit, one great empire.
(p. 330À331)
Here, Lotka not only points to the two types of organisms but also includes
“certain inorganic structures” as integral to what he elsewhere called “the great
world engine.” By integrating the environment, Lotka has identified the essential
LifeÀenvironment unity, and the irreducible importance of the biosphere as a
Life unit-model and holon. This recognition fits with work of Vernadsky (1998
after 1926 original) who coined the term biosphere and Lovelock (Lovelock,
1972; Lovelock and Margulis, 1974) who conceived, and with Lynn Margulis
modified, the Gaia hypothesis for how the Earth functions as a self-regulating,
cybernetic system, which some have seen similar to a single living entity.
140 CHAPTER 6 Life science lessons
Lotka interestingly speculated on where we find plant (which he described as
anabolic) and animal (catabolic) functional forms in present-day ecosystems. He
wrote:
It is, of course, conceivable that the anabolic and catabolic functions should, in
their entirety of a complete cycle, be combined in one structure, one organism.
Physically, there is no reason why this should not be, and, in fact, nature has
made some abortive attempts to develop the plant-animal type of organism;
there are a limited number of plants that assimilate animal food, and there are
a few animals, such as Hydra viridis, that assimilate carbon dioxide from the
air by the aid of chlorophyll. But these are exceptions, freaks of nature, so to
speak. For some reason these mixed types have not gained for themselves a
significant position in the scheme of nature. Selection, evolution, has altogether
favored the compound type of transformer, splitting the anabolic and the catabolic
functions, and assigning the major share of each to a separate organism.
(p. 330)
Rather than a process of splitting two anabolic and catabolic functions, we see
Lotka’s observations to reveal that evolution, selection, and the original and fundamental
nature of Life to have unified three functions and realms—the anabolic,
catabolic, and ambient environment—much as in the unified “worldwide transformer”
as “one vast unit” he described above.
We also note that novel methods such as environmental genomics may provide
new insights into this. For example, Chivian et al. (2008) reported the discovery
of a “single-species ecosystem” deep within the Earth.
In Chapter 4, we cited the origin of Life scenario of Odum (1971), which he
described as “ecological system precedes the origin of life.” Instead of anabolic
and catabolic, or plant and animal, Odum wrote of production and consumption
(or respiration) and “adding molecules” and “segmentation.” This scenario
included an essential environmental function provided by “circulating seas” that
provided a closed cycle and worked to move products of production (composed
polymers, anabolic process) to deeper regions in a water body where they could
be consumed (decomposed polymers, catabolic process) and later return products
of consumption back toward the surface and “photochemical zone” for the next
round of production. Adding another variation on the terms for identification of
these various complementary functions in Life, Fiscus (2001À2002) referred to
them as “composers” and “decomposers,” each like the opposite of the other and
again operating in coupled complementary and coupled transformer fashion.
In Chapter 5, in the Life science principle of holism, we saw that Bateson
identified the unified system of lifeÀenvironment, “organism plus environment”
(or “organism-in-its-environment”) as he referred to it, as the best idea for a “unit
of survival under natural selection.” Odum (1971) saw the complete cycle including
two Life functions and the environment as a “choice-loop-selector,” his
141Introduction and Background for the Seven Life Lessons
version of a LifeÀenvironment model for the units of Life and evolution. He
noted that this is the essential functional configuration of the present-day biosphere,
as well as crucial to understanding the original and fundamental nature of
Life. He saw the photochemical reaction in his origin of Life system as a
“random-choice generator” and the abiotic hydrologic circulation cycle to provide
“a reward loop to choose for further use those units capable of the stages of
evolution” at appropriate areas in cycle. These functions all collaborated to
improve the system as a whole: “Increased order is paid for energetically in small
increments.”
Lotka (1925) wrote of a similar view as integrated with his scientific strategy:
It is customary to discuss the “evolution of a species of organisms.” As we proceed
we shall see many reasons why we should constantly take in view the evolution,
as a whole, of the system (organism plus environment). . . . the physical
laws governing evolution in all probability take on a simpler form when referred
to the system as a whole than to any portion thereof. (p. 16, footnote 19)
And later, with more emphasis on the benefit of holistic strategy for finding
fundamentals:
Biologists have rather been in the habit of reflecting upon the evolution of individual
species. This point of view does not bear the promise of success, if our
aim is to find expression for the fundamental law of evolution. We shall probably
fare better if we constantly recall that the physical object before us is an
undivided system, that the divisions we make therein are more or less arbitrary
importations, psychological rather than physical, and as such, are likely to
introduce complications into the expression of natural laws operating upon the
system as a whole. (p. 158)
And later:
. . . the concept of evolution, to serve us in its full utility, must be applied, not
to an individual species, but to groups of species which evolve in mutual interdependence;
and further to the system as a whole, of which such groups form
inseparable part. (p. 277)
An interesting and ironic historical note is that Lotka is perhaps most famous
in ecology and related disciplines for his model of predatorÀprey dynamics, usually
referred to as the LotkaÀVolterra model. Yet, this one useful contribution of
Lotka’s was extracted by taking something out of context, one of the dangers of
unbalanced reductionism and analysis of which we have warned. Had Lotka’s full
theoretical and scientific approach been understood in 1925, we might have no
need for our book at this time, and we might have avoided our current suite of
Life-threatening environmental dysfunction symptoms.
From the two essential complementary functions as integrated with the environment,
we see Life to achieve emergent holistic capacities that are beyond a
mere sum of these parts. This includes the unique capacity for both discrete and
142 CHAPTER 6 Life science lessons
sustained Life, with each aiding the other, and the capacity for Life to improve
itself and its environment as it operates.
In Chapter 8, we will see models for technologies using “differential systems”
that provide special capacities much like the synergy from coupled transformers
and coupled complementary processes here.
While we have just looked at complementarity of two collaborative processes,
we next learn of 10 system-wide tendencies that are complementary in the view
they afford of complex systems.
Lesson 2. Complementarity of Ecological Goal Functions. Ecosystems display
a remarkable tenacity to grow and develop under whatever prevailing conditions
are present in terms of solar radiation, temperature, precipitation, nutrients availability,
and species diversity. This movement away from simplicity to greater
levels of organization, complexity, and diversity is what identifies them as far
from equilibrium systems. Tracking key variables that change over time during
this growth and development has interested ecologists during the past century.
Notably, systems ecologists have hypothesized that ecosystems seek to maximize
biomass storage and to maximize energy dissipation, and these two seemingly
contradictory trends can both increase when residence time is also increasing and
specific dissipation decreasing. The mutual consistency of these and other seemingly
disparate ecological tendencies can be explained due to network
organization.
Fath et al. (2001) worked to compare, contrast, and interrelate a set of 10 ecological
whole-system tendencies that had been proposed to explain how ecosystems
grow, develop, and change over time. They also referred to these principles
as “goal functions,” “extremal principles,” “orientors,” and “attractors,” and they
considered whether ecosystem networks change along trajectories in ways to maximize
(steadily increase) or minimize (steadily decrease) a given goal function
over time. The principles they studied, and the motivating idea to characterize
trends in ecosystem development, were often inspired or informed by the landmark
paper of Odum (1969) in which he hypothesized a suite of such trends. As
with the whole-system Life Lessons above, these principles fully require comprehensive
data from ecosystem networks rather than narrowly restricted studies of
small subsets of communities or ecosystems.
Another motivation for this synthesis study was their recognition that two
classical principles from thermodynamics do not apply to ecosystems. The second
law of thermodynamics does not apply directly, as ecosystems are not isolated
systems. The principle of decreasing entropy production for open dissipative systems
near steady state (Nicolis and Prigogine, 1977) does not apply, as ecosystems
operate under conditions far from equilibrium. While many of the goal
functions they studied apply to material flows, their primary approach was to consider
energy flow and storage in networks of living systems.
The 10 organizing principles they studied are the tendency of ecosystem networks
to (1) maximize power, (2) maximize storage, (3) maximize empower, (4)
maximize emergy, (5) maximize ascendency, (6) maximize dissipation, (7)
143Introduction and Background for the Seven Life Lessons
maximize cycling, (8) maximize residence time, (9) minimize specific dissipation,
and (10) minimize empower to exergy ratio. These system properties were developed
and proposed by a variety of ecologists, biologists, and systems thinkers
including Alfred Lotka, Howard Odum, Robert Ulanowicz, Sven Jørgensen,
Harold Morowitz, and others. After explaining and examining the mathematical
formulations for calculating these whole-system measures, they concluded (Fath
et al., 2001):
Much debate and confusion have centered on the appropriateness of these various
goal functions because, at first glance, the simultaneous realization of [the
ten goal functions] seems contradictory. Further inspection, however, shows
that all these goal functions are in fact mutually consistent. They are all generated
by network processes and they give complementary perspectives on the
spontaneous directions of ecological growth and development. (p. 502)
While Fath et al. (2001) studied the 10 goal functions using network environ
theory, they also noted that only those principles linked to empower and emergy
(terms and measures created by Howard Odum to signify embodied power and
embodied energy) and to ascendency of Ulanowicz were derived explicitly from
network studies. The fact that many of the goal functions came from other methods
of systems analysis yet yielded complementary results led to another realization
from their article, again describing the variety of goal functions and their
sources:
Only those pertaining to empower, emergy and ascendency were originally
conceived in an explicit network context, yet it is global systemic organization
that is behind the similarities inherent in all the studied goal functions. The
implication is that the network perspective is fundamental, and somehow the
originators of the different orientors managed to capture this intuitively in their
concepts. (p. 504)
They also described the interplay of these whole-system functions using this
maxim of the organizing principles of how ecosystems operate:
Get as much as you can (maximize input and first-passage flow), hold on to it
for as long as you can (maximize retention time), and if you must let it go,
then try to get it back (maximize cycling).
They concluded that minimization of specific dissipation is the “most encompassing”
principle as it captures all three of the principles in the maxim above
while also reconciling how maximum storage and maximum dissipation can occur
simultaneously while their ratio is minimizing.
The need for multiple whole-system principles to represent the behavior of
ecosystem networks, and the Fath et al. (2001) approach to find their mutually
consistency, fits with the need for our principle of complexity in holistic Life science
(Chapter 5). These network science goal functions also help to make sense
of the winÀwin environmental outcomes we noted in Chapter 3 as beneficial
144 CHAPTER 6 Life science lessons
outcomes of the LifeÀenvironment relation. For example, both the formation and
maintenance of the oxygen atmosphere, and the formation and maintenance of
soils, reflect the complex interplay of both increasing storage (in the buildup of
stocks) and increasing dissipation (via input, use, metabolic processing, or environmental
flux due to erosion), while network cycling and retention time serve to
unify the two seemingly opposing trends.
The next two Life Lessons come from studies that require comprehensive network
datasets such as food webs. Once above a certain threshold of complexity,
number of interdependent nodes, or wholeness of description, we see quantitative
evidence of the surprising reality of Life in its ecosystem and network form. As
with all of the seven Lessons, these next two results apply to human socioeconomic
networks as well.
Lesson 3. Dominance of Indirect Effects. Indirect relations and impacts
between Life forms are usually greater than direct relations and impacts and are
often of different quality.
Lesson 1, that Life depends on coupled complementary processes, and Lesson
4, that all living things impact each other in measurable transfers of energy and
matter, both indicate results that cannot be obtained from studies more narrowly
focused, on heavily isolated subsets, than a whole ecosystem food web. Said
another way, this lesson from Life science and ENA requires that holistic, comprehensive
studies of whole networks/systems are essential to understanding Life.
We do not suggest that every study must be so holistic and comprehensive; but in
the sense of balance and synergy between analysis and synthesis, and between
reductionism and holism, perhaps one-half of all studies should be comparably
complete in terms of measurements taken on all participants in a given community,
ecosystem, or Life system of study. The level of aggregation is an ongoing
area of research, but at a minimum including the most basic aspects of an ecosystem
would have around six functional groups (Fath, 2004).
Life Lesson 3 is similar in this regard—the next fundamental observation and
discovery from ENA and Patten’s counterpart methods, network environ analysis
(NEA)—cannot be seen from isolated analysis alone; and thus, requires holistic
studies of complete (or as nearly complete as practically possible) communities,
ecosystems, networks, food webs, and Life systems.
This quote from Patten (2016a) helps to describe both Lessons 3 and 4 and to
explain their paradigm-shifting significance:
Ecological systems at all scales are, by their higher order indirect pathways,
more highly inter-connected and interdependent than denoted by adjacent, first
order linkages alone. In ecosystems, in particular: the pathways of food chains
hidden in food webs are much longer, energy cycling is the rule, and food web
constituents are more interrelated than usually described in empirical studies. All
these properties run counter to currently accepted ecological thought. (p. 64À65)
145Introduction and Background for the Seven Life Lessons
Patten (2016a) referred to Lesson 3 as “network nonlocality,” while we are
describing this as “dominance of indirect effects.” He wrote:
Network nonlocality underscores the essential holism of all reasonably wellconnected
transactional systems. Every component in ecosystems, large and
sparse in adjacent linkages though these may be, are richly interconnected to a
multitude of others by interactions at a network distance, only few of which
have direct, or even adjacent links to the one in question. Indirect effects are
the glue of holistic organization. . .. (p. 65)
The paper that Patten notes as the key reference (Higashi and Patten, 1989)
describes the first study in which the dominance of indirect effects was clearly
established. This article built on previous work of Patten (1982) on a network
model of the continental shelf ecosystem in the Gulf of Mexico with nine nodes
(compartments) (Fig. 6.3). This model tracked flows of carbon between aggregated
functional groups such as pelagic planktivores, pelagic omnivores, plankton,
benthos, etc.
Higashi and Patten (1989) describe the mathematical and scientific steps they
took to define and quantify both direct and indirect effects. Their methods are
similar to Ulanowicz and Puccia (1990) above, although with added consideration
of temporal factors related to time lags associated with any transfer of energy or
material between network nodes (food web participants).
In the 9 3 9 cell matrix of possible interactions of the nine-node network,
Higashi and Patten reported the following:
1. 21 had no direct or indirect interactions. These are associated with X3 and
X7, which have no outflow, thus only direct interactions into them are present.
And, X8, Plankton, which has no inflow from within the system.
2. 33 showed positive indirect effects despite no direct effects.
3. 27 have direct interactions, of which 8 (30%) have greater indirect influence
than the direct flow.
They also reported that the total of indirect effects considering all compartments
was 3.1 times (and thus much greater than) the total of all direct effects.
This result, that indirect effects are greater than direct ones, has been corroborated
in models of numerous ecosystem networks (Salas and Borrett, 2011).
Patten (2016a) later credited his primary “cardinal hypothesis” of
Holoecology, network proliferation, as the key reason behind this principle of the
dominance of indirect effects. He wrote that his hypothesis of network proliferation
“concerns the exponential increase in pathway numbers with length between
each pair of nodes (compartments) in an interconnected system.”
There are research articles that explain the technical aspects, but some of the
basics are helpful to get a feel for the approach used here. The first step is to recognize
that any network can be represented by a matrix where the values in the
matrix correspond to whether or not there is a connection in the network. An
adjacency matrix is the term used for the presence or absence of connections
146 CHAPTER 6 Life science lessons
Plankton
Pelagic_Omnivorse
Demersal_Carnivorse
Benthos
Benthic_residents
Switch_Feeders
Reeftype_Schoolers
Pelagic_Carnivorse
Pelagic_Plankitvorse
FIGURE 6.3
This is a typical ecological network showing the flow of energy between compartments.
Each circle represents an ecological functional group (or species) and the arrows
represent the flow of energy between compartments. X1 5 pelagic planktivores,
X2 5 pelagic omnivores, X3 5 pelagic carnivores, X4 5 demersal carnivores, X5 5 switch
feeders, X6 5 benthic residents, X7 5 reeftype schoolers, X8 5 plankton, X9 5 benthos
(after Patten, 1982. Environs: relativistic elementary particles for ecology. American
Naturalist. 119(2), 179À219). This figure was constructed using the online ENA tool
EcoNet http://eco.engr.uga.edu/cgi-bin/econetV2.cgi. Other software tools are available to
perform the network analysis routines described below such as the MATLAB function nea.
m (www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/fileexchange/5261-nea-m) and enaR (https://cran.
r-project.org/web/packages/enaR/index.html).
147Introduction and Background for the Seven Life Lessons
using 0s or 1s. For example, the adjacency matrix, A, for the ecosystem in
Fig. 6.3 is given below (where the interactions are given from columns to rows;
thus, the a21 element corresponds to the direct flow from X1-X2):
A 5
0 0 0 0 0 1 0 1 0
1 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0
1 1 0 0 0 1 0 1 1
1 1 0 0 0 1 0 0 0
1 1 0 1 0 1 0 0 1
0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 1
0 0 0 1 1 1 0 0 1
0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
1 0 0 0 1 1 0 1 0
2
6
6
6
6
6
6
6
6
6
6
6
6
4
3
7
7
7
7
7
7
7
7
7
7
7
7
5
Using this matrix of direct interactions, one can find the number of paths
between any two nodes of any path length.
First, as above, as the length increases between any two nodes—that is, as the
number of intermediate nodes and intermediate links between them increases for
any given pathway—the number of pathways increases combinatorially when the
system is well connected (defined as when the largest eigenvalue of the adjacency
matrix is greater than 1, see Fath et al., 2007). This calculation is easy to make
by taking powers of the direct adjacency matrix, Am
, such that the power is commensurate
with the number of steps. Thus, as the length, m, between two components
X1 and X2 increases from 1 (for the direct link between X1 and X2) to 2,
3, 5, 10, and beyond, the number of pathways connecting nodes X1 and X2
increases exponentially. For example, in the Patten Gulf of Mexico model cited
above, Higashi and Patten (1989) reported 134,280 pathways of length 10.
A2
5
1 0 0 1 0 2 0 2 1
2 1 0 0 0 1 0 3 0
4 2 1 1 1 4 0 5 3
3 2 0 2 0 3 0 2 1
5 3 0 3 2 5 0 3 3
2 1 0 2 1 3 0 1 2
3 2 0 4 3 5 1 1 4
0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0
3 1 0 2 2 4 0 3 3
2
6
6
6
6
6
6
6
6
6
6
6
6
4
3
7
7
7
7
7
7
7
7
7
7
7
7
5
And, the number of pathways that are of length 10 is given by A10
, where:
A10
5
13; 263 6193 0 9397 4260 16; 467 0 13; 083 9397
6014 2810 0 4260 1933 7464 0 5927 4260
41; 273 19; 276 1 29; 238 13; 271 51; 236 0 40; 696 29; 248
21; 998 10; 274 0 15; 591 7069 27; 315 0 21; 696 15; 590
51; 245 23; 931 0 36; 317 16; 467 63; 631 0 50; 548 36; 317
29; 247 13; 657 0 20; 727 9397 36; 317 0 28; 852 20; 727
65; 743 30; 698 0 46; 590 21; 122 81; 635 1 64; 860 46; 590
0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0
42; 510 19; 850 0 30; 123 13; 658 52; 783 0 41; 935 30; 124
2
6
6
6
6
6
6
6
6
6
6
6
6
4
3
7
7
7
7
7
7
7
7
7
7
7
7
5
148 CHAPTER 6 Life science lessons
This shows clearly the rapid increase in the number of pathways over still relatively
short lengths. Note, though, that the third and seventh columns are 0
except the diagonal element. This is because both compartments,
Pelagic_Carnivores and Reeftype_Schoolers, are “sink” compartments with no
outflow. There can be no indirect pathways emanating from these compartments.
In Markov chain terminology, such nodes are referred to as absorbing states.
Also, the eighth row is 0 except the diagonal, because there is no flow into the
compartment from the other compartments in the network. This compartment,
Plankton, only receives energy from sunlight which is outside the system boundary.
Such a node is called a taboo state because no flows enter it. In spite of these
three exceptions, there are very many pathways between the other nodes as the
path length increases. The aij elements in the other cells will all go to infinity as
the path length goes to infinity.
Second, as the length of pathway increases, those “concatenated” pathways
carry less and less substance (energy or material, such as carbon, nitrogen, etc.).
Finally, since there are very many more of the longer pathways, even though
the longer pathways individually carry less substance, cumulatively these indirect
pathways carry more aggregate substance than direct pathways. Using marker
molecules, one could trace the reticulated fabric that weaves through all Life, in
forests, oceans, farms, soils, cities, and any other systems.
Patten (2016a) concludes this principle stating that except for “very small,
minimally connected models,” higher order indirect effects are greater than firstorder
direct effects in ecosystems. As we said above, given that all Life forms
must exist and participate in ecosystems and food webs, this result thus becomes
generic and applicable for all Life.
We mention only one other extension to this very profound result, our Life
Lesson 3. Patten (1981) wrote of the implications for evolutionary theory and
importance of his environ theory as a means to characterize ecological niches:
Evolution proceeds by natural selection of heritable variations of individual
organisms based on direct influences of environment. However, indirect effects
probably vastly outweigh direct ones in ecosystems. Therefore, why is evolution
based on direct effects only? The ecological niche represents the point of direct
contact between organisms and their environments. To encompass indirect influences,
niches are extended to new structures, environs, which are units of
organism-environment coevolution. The motive force for coevolution is closure
of outputs back upon inputs of the organism members of ecosystems. Closure is
achieved by biogeochemical cycling and feedback interactions, direct and indirect,
between organisms. To the extent that closure does not occur, there is no
imperative for organism-environment coevolution. Coevolution at the system
level based on indirect effects is compatible with normal evolution at the individual
organism level based on direct effects. The organism is the unit of the latter,
but environs are the unit of coevolution. (p. 845)
149Introduction and Background for the Seven Life Lessons
And a bit later:
Thus, a paradox arises. If indirect influences are the most important, why is
evolution based on direct effects only? (p. 845)
Thus, the dominance of indirect effects calls into question the fundamental
ideas we have come to take for granted with the theory of evolution by natural
selection. Note also that here Patten touches on other crucial holistic concepts we
have discussed, including system closure and two essential hierarchical scales or
holons—organisms and ecosystems.
We next consider another fundamental result obtained using both ENA and
NEA.
Lesson 4. All Life is Physically and Relationally Connected. Via ENA we can
quantify how the connections, relations, flows of energy and material between
life forms are crucial to understanding Life. These network relations between all
entities are equally as important as more traditional approaches focusing on
dynamics (as in dynamic process models) and measures of materials such as the
numbers, sizes, movements, or masses of individual entities.
ENA has shown the quantifiable, tangible, physical, and material hard evidence
to back a widely stated concept of wholeness and connection. The notion
of environmental unity has been expressed by scientists, naturalists, and poets,
among many others. Isaac Asimov expressed it:
What makes it so hard to organize the environment sensibly is that everything
we touch is hooked up to everything else. (Asimov and Shulman, 1988)
As did John Muir before:
When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything
else in the Universe. (Muir, 1911).
This intuitive notion relative to environment and universe extends to human
interdependence in John Donne’s meditation on death (Donne, 1997):
No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part
of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as
if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend’s or of thine own were:
any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore
never send to know for whom the bells tolls; it tolls for thee. (p. 120)
The scientific methods of ENA, operating with data of food webs to produce
the calculated matrix of total impacts (Ulanowicz and Puccia, 1990; Patten, 1991;
Ulanowicz, 2004), transform these aphorisms into permanent scientific principles
and, as far as we are aware, universally observed aspects of the reality of interconnectedness
of Life. The extension from feeding relations to all of Life is valid,
as all living things eat and are eaten, even if for some life forms (such as plants
and autotrophic organisms), most of their food comes from nonliving environmental
resources (such as sun light, CO2, water).
150 CHAPTER 6 Life science lessons
An important calculated product on the way to holistic network analysis—the
matrix of total impacts—demonstrates that “everything is connected to everything”
very literally and quantifiably. This is demonstrated by a matrix filled with
nonzero values registering measurable impacts between any two organisms or
functional groups in an ecosystem food web. Thus, this idea of radical connection
and interdependence is not just a loose metaphor, romantic notion, or philosophical
speculation. This holism is a bona fide, measurable, and ubiquitous fact.
Ulanowicz and Puccia (1990) stated this fact with exclamation and via the
ideas of pathways and connections (note that a “graph” is another term for network
of nodes and vertices, and a weighted digraph is a quantified food web network)—“One
or more pathways will then connect any two elements in the graph,
so that every node is literally connected with every other in the system!”
However, they also noted that “not all connections are equivalent, and it remains
somehow to ordinate the indirect impacts. . ..” We provide a brief narrative summary
of the method they developed to ordinate or quantify the total impacts
including all direct and indirect impacts between all nodes in a food web network.
For the mathematical, graphical, and quantitative descriptions, see Ulanowicz and
Puccia (1990) or Ulanowicz (2004).
They started by observing the need to quantify two forms of impact that occur
every time a predator feeds on prey—the positive impact for the predator, and the
negative impact for the prey. We use this common example of predator and prey,
but the logic, methods, and results apply to all ecosystem transfers of conservative
substances such as energy and material, with modifications as needed and as
described below. They quantified the positive impact for the predator by normalizing
the energy (or nitrogen, carbon, etc. depending on the currencies of the food
web network) gained from the individual prey item in question as compared with
energy gained from all the prey items of the given predator. To normalize the
positive benefit in an item of prey eaten is to set it relative to (divide it by) the
total intake of energy or other sustenance from all items in the diet.
The second step they developed was for weighting the negative impact of
predator on prey. They again normalized or measured this in a relative sense
based on the fraction of a prey species’ total production (output from the prey
compartment, increase in biomass, etc.) that is consumed by a given predator.
They modified this calculation slightly by excluding respiratory output from the
estimate of the total production (the denominator used for normalization and calculating
the fraction). Thus, the denominator is the net output from the prey after
subtracting respiratory costs or losses. One other calculation detail they used is
for cases when the receiving compartment is not actually a predator but a passive
compartment like detritus. For these transfers, the negative impact is set to 0 as
“detrital flows usually do not directly impact their donors to the same negative
degree as do active predators” (Ulanowicz and Puccia, 1990).
The final step for pairwise and direct interactions is to subtract the negative
impacts from the positive impacts. Since the positive and negative impacts are all
normalized, they range between 0 and 1. And after subtracting the negative from
positive impacts, the net impacts range from 21 to 11. Each species or
151Introduction and Background for the Seven Life Lessons
compartment in the network has a net impact value that indicates the net impacts
between all pairs of species or nodes in the network. The resulting n 3 n matrix
is the net impact matrix.
Next, Ulanowicz and Puccia (1990) use the matrix multiplication approach
described above to quantify higher order interactions—the net impacts matrix is
filled with first order, direct impacts between each pair of nodes. To calculate all
direct and all indirect net impacts, they note that “the overall trophic impact of any
concatenation of direct effects is measured by the product of all the [net impacts]
along that pathway.” The normalization scheme used for net impacts ensures that
the infinite series converges to a finite limit, a familiar mathematical result in
inputÀoutput theory by which total indirect effects are calculated. The infinite
series of matrix multiplications produces the total net impacts between each pair of
network participants over all direct and indirect pathways in the network.
While the resulting total net impacts (or total impacts, for brevity) between all
participants, species, or nodes in the network may be very small in magnitude,
and for some additional calculations or ecological interpretations, they are sometimes
ignored when very small (e.g., ,1/10,000), they are nonetheless all nonzero.
These are the methods and results that prove that everything is connected to
everything in the case of ecosystem food webs, which are universal integral
aspects of the context of all Life.
The mathematics shows that the influence of one part of the system on another
is a radical form of relational interdependence. While the physical flows establish
the network, the relations—both direct and indirect—are informational and not
conserved. In fact, it is not uncommon to find examples where the direct and the
indirect relations are not the same. This quite clearly means that what you see is
not always what you get. For example, a biologist making observations and taking
notes in the field might record an act of predation such as an individual alligator
consuming an individual frog. At the scale of the ecosystem food web, the alligator
population can be represented by one box/compartment and the frog by
another, and there would be an arrow indicating the flow of energy from the frog
compartment to the alligators. A reductionistic analysis would stop, content in the
knowledge that a predation relation exists between the two, ignoring the indirect
effects of the entire food web network. The network analysis could show that the
alligator population and the frog population are in fact mutualists, both benefitting
from the presence of the other. Of course, this is no comfort to the individual frog
that ended up in the mouth of the alligator, but it demonstrates a higher order of
organization at the (eco)system level (and, also the important distinction between
Life and life and Death and death). This is precisely the type of indirect relations
that Bondavalli and Ulanowicz (1999) found in a comprehensive study of the
Florida everglades. Overall, the charismatic, iconic, top predator alligator, in turn,
was mutualistic with 11 of its prey items. Clearly, to get an accurate picture of
the role of each population in the food web, and therefore, to conduct proper management
of the ecosystem, it is necessary to consider the entire web of indirect
interactions.
152 CHAPTER 6 Life science lessons
Returning to the network example from earlier, we can see these interdependencies
emerge as all elements of the integral (summed over all direct and indirect
pathways) relational interaction are nonzero. Starting first we construct the
direct relational matrix which shows all the pairwise, zero-sum interactions—for
every plus sign there is a corresponding negative sign (read across the main
matrix diagonal). The notation that has been adopted for this is the D matrix, for
direct relations, given below (note for scale the values are multiplied by 100):
D31005
0 22:9000 21:2 20:2000 20:5 7:0637 0 92:9363 20:9
0:1236 0 22:1 20:1000 20:4 0 0 0:8909 0
1:7935 73:6704 0 0 0 10:5572 0 10:4176 3:5613
1:0510 12:3349 0 0 21:2 85:7141 20:4 0 0
0:0213 0:4003 0 0:0097 0 0:3012 20:3 0 20:8968
20:3 0 20:3 20:6927 20:3 0 20:2 0 0:7156
0 0 0 0:4589 42:4193 28:3905 0 0 28:7313
24:0 20:9 20:3 0 0 0 0 0 20:8
0:0378 0 20:1 0 0:8827 20:7071 20:2 0:7801 0
2
6
6
6
6
6
6
6
6
6
6
6
6
4
3
7
7
7
7
7
7
7
7
7
7
7
7
5
Although the network is generally well connected, there are still some compartments
that do not interact directly. However, when we take the power series
of this matrix, giving the relations over indirect pathways, we see clearly that
indeed all compartments are connected and related to all others, even if the
strengths of the interactions differ. This is given in what is called the integral utility
matrix, U, which sums utilities over all path lengths, below:
U31005
96:373 24:621 21:345 20:233 20:497 6:473 20:007 89:372 21:582
0:056 98:45 22:069 20:097 20:392 20:297 0:002 0:713 20:078
1:336 72:32 98:394 20:147 20:306 10:324 20:0216 12:164 3:464
0:764 11:844 20:516 99:395 21:734 85:027 20:563 0:765 0:431
0:020 0:394 20:008 0:006 99:862 0:229 20:298 0:014 20:980
20:298 20:287 20:288 20:688 20:364 99:298 20:196 20:305 0:652
20:071 0:118 20:116 0:265 42:479 28:458 99:758 0:146 28:49
23:86 20:918 20:222 0:011 0:018 20:281 0:002 96:38 20:746
0:0074 20:076 20:098 0:005 0:799 20:767 20:201 0:775 99:92
2
6
6
6
6
6
6
6
6
6
6
6
6
4
3
7
7
7
7
7
7
7
7
7
7
7
7
5
The principle that all parts of a system are connected through transactions
and/or relations, and the ability to quantify those influences, has profound implications.
This is powerful knowledge that should be of use in a science that
attempts to avoid unwanted and unanticipated consequences. Of course, interaction
strengths diminish with time and distance, but there are real connections that
can have real influence on the outcomes.
Very small forces or influences can at times have great impact. For example,
“the butterfly effect” is a related idea from chaos theory. The butterfly effect
(Lorenz, 1963) says that the impact of a butterfly flapping its wings in one location
on Earth can spawn a hurricane on the other side of the globe. This vignette
is used to emphasize “sensitive dependence on initial conditions” inherent in
153Introduction and Background for the Seven Life Lessons
systems exhibiting chaos. It also plausibly requires something like our Life
Lesson 4 here—perhaps an atmospheric version of “everything is connected” that
transmits and carries the butterfly wing flap influence across the globe to start the
hurricane. This also suggests that despite the smaller interaction strengths after
10, 100, or 1000 food web links, if those interactions impact a chaotic system or
one exhibiting self-organized criticality, the tiny influence could yield dramatic
effect. The ecological vignette might be that a butterfly sipping nectar in one
location can later feed a blue whale or elephant on the other side of the globe.
Lesson 5. Mutualism is Common and Crucial. “Life is beneficent under network
rule.”
One of the key findings that emerged from the network relational analysis
described in the previous Life Lesson is that not only are all parts of the system
connected but also that often the most dominate relation type that occurs is mutualism.
Keeping in mind that the analysis was developed for ecological food webs,
this seemingly flies in the face of the conventional wisdom that nature is dominated
by competitive relations and is best described as “red in tooth and claw.”
Clearly, food webs are full of direct predatorÀprey feeding transactions, but
behind those direct interactions are series and series of complex, indirect pathways
and interactions that overall tend to give the network a mutualistic outlook.
Many of those initial non-interactions in the direct matrix fill in as positive relations
for both compartments. In other words, they both benefit each other by
being part of the same network. One reason is because the transactions keep the
circulation going such that the resources are more evenly and adequately shared
by all the nodes. It is only when we isolate two interacting nodes, such as a predator
eating a prey, out of the complex food web, that we see only the winners and
losers (as we saw in Ulanowicz’ reduced food web, Fig. 3.3). But, as we said in
Lesson 1, just as one organism cannot be isolated from its environmental context,
neither can only two be fragmented out. It’s the interplay of the entire system that
keeps the system going. There is positive feedback and autocatalytic cycling that
spread the energy and benefits to all parts of the network.
Looking back at our concrete example of the 9 3 9 aquatic food web, we can
look at the relation types by focusing on the signs of the elements in the U matrix,
given by
sign Uð Þ 5
1 2 2 2 2 1 2 1 2
1 1 2 2 2 2 1 1 2
1 1 1 2 2 1 2 1 1
1 1 2 1 2 1 2 1 1
1 1 2 1 1 1 2 1 2
2 2 2 2 2 1 2 2 1
2 1 2 1 1 1 1 1 1
2 2 2 1 1 2 1 1 2
1 2 2 1 1 2 2 1 1
2
6
6
6
6
6
6
6
6
6
6
6
6
4
3
7
7
7
7
7
7
7
7
7
7
7
7
5
In this network model, of the 81 possible signs, 43 are positive and 38 are
negative. More specifically, there are 19 mutualistic relations (including the
154 CHAPTER 6 Life science lessons
self-mutualisms on the diagonal), 14 competition relations, and 24 pairs of
consumer-resource “predations.” In this case, the mutualisms arose from the null
direct relations from five pairs:
Pelagic_omnivores and Reeftype_schoolers
Demersal_carnivores and Plankton
Switch_feeders and Plankton
Reeftype_Schoolers and Plankton
Demarsal_carnivores and Benthos
Direct null relations that switched to competition include seven pairs:
Pelagic_carnivores and Demersal_carnivores
Pelagic_carnivores and Switch_feeders
Benthic_residents and Reeftype_schoolers
Pelagic_omnivores and Benthic_residents
Switch_feeders and Pelagic_planktivores
Switch_feeders and Pelagic_canivores
Pelagic_omnivores and Benthos
Here, all the “new” relations emerged from the cases that were not directly
interacting. However, there has been evidence of the relationship type switching
from one type to another more drastically. For example, in some networks, the
consumer-resource (1, 2 ) becomes mutualistic (1, 1 ). Most dramatically, we
have seen examples where the direct (1, 2 ) actually reverses to become (2, 1 ).
In other words, what we observe in the field, flow of energy (or nutrients or
water) from one compartment to another, actually results in, when considering the
network of indirect interactions, a benefit to the compartment being eaten and a
cost to the one doing the eating (at the Life/Death scale, not the life/death scale).
There are numerous examples of food webs that display “beneficial predators”
as common in ecosystem food webs. Ulanowicz and Puccia (1990) reported on
the beneficial impacts of predators in a 36-compartment network for the
Chesapeake mesohaline ecosystem. They found six instances of beneficial predators,
which include spot feeding on crustacean deposit feeders, ctenophores feeding
on bacteria, bay anchovy feeding in phytoplankton, and more. As stated
above, Bondavalli and Ulanowicz (1999) reported that American alligators in Big
Cypress National Preserve in Florida (USA) confer net benefits on 11 of their
prey including invertebrates, frogs, mice and rats. Thus, not only are indirect
effects greater than direct effects in terms of the quantity of effect (linked to the
real amount of physical energy or matter transferred), but also the dominance of
indirect effects can lead to a reversal such that an effect that is negative in the
direct sense becomes positive when all direct and indirect effects are integrated.
Thus, for example, where an alligator predator gains at the expense of the frog
prey in their direct interaction, the Frog (capitalized to signify a typical frog, or
the collective role played by all individual frogs in the ecosystem) actually benefits
in real physical ways (real flows of energy and material) from the presence
155Introduction and Background for the Seven Life Lessons
and role of the Alligator in the ecosystem (capitalized again to the alligator type
or collective alligator role in the ecosystem). In this case, the logic can be
explained that the alligator also consumes other predators of the frogs (e.g., rats,
snakes, etc.) such that absence of the alligator would result in more rats and
snakes and fewer frogs, overall. In other words, this network approach allows one
to simultaneously assess both bottom-up and top-down controls, an important
area of ecological research.
We next examine a whole-system tendency related to ascendency that also
serves to reconcile two seemingly opposing tendencies as is often seen in the dialectical
nature of Life systems.
Lesson 6. Ecosystems Balance Efficiency and Adaptability. The robustness
index of Ulanowicz shows that all ecosystem networks develop to maximize
robustness of system operation by balancing (1) efficiency of flow (by pruning
connections to achieve highly ordered structure) and (2) options for adaptation to
disturbance (by maintaining alternative redundant pathways).
Ulanowicz (1980) used ENA methods based on information theory to develop
the whole-system principle “ascendency” mentioned in Life Lesson 2. More
recently, he modified the use and interpretation of ascendency to speak of a “propensity
for ecosystems to increase in ascendency” (Ulanowicz, 2004) and to portray
ascendency as one half of a balancing act, rather than ascendency itself being
a goal function that ecosystems seek to maximize (Ulanowicz et al., 2009). In his
original paper on ascendency, he wrote (Ulanowicz, 1980):
The ascendency measures in one index the two attributes of system size and
flow organization, i.e. it is a natural descriptor of the combined processes of
growth and development. As we shall see, growth and development of flow
systems are sometimes in conflict, and ascendency then serves to define the
compromise configuration. (p. 227)
In the 2009 paper in which they presented the robustness index as a system
principle able to depict this balancing act, he and coauthors wrote (Ulanowicz
et al., 2009):
Information theory (IT), predicated as it is on the indeterminacies of existence,
constitutes a natural tool for quantifying the beneficial reserves that lacunae
can afford a system in its response to disturbance. In the format of IT, unutilized
reserve capacity is complementary to the effective performance of the
system, and too little of either attribute can render a system unsustainable. The
fundamental calculus of IT provides a uniform way to quantify both essential
attributes À effective performance and reserve capacity À and results in a single
metric that gauges system sustainability (robustness) in terms of the tradeoff
allotment of each. (p. 27)
And later, to explain an equation they presented showing that system capacity (C)
equals the sum of system ascendency (A) plus system reserve capacity (Φ), they
wrote (Ulanowicz et al., 2009):
156 CHAPTER 6 Life science lessons
. . . the capacity for a system to undergo evolutionary change or selforganization
consists of two aspects: It must be capable of exercising sufficient
directed power (ascendency) to maintain its integrity over time.
Simultaneously, it must possess a reserve of flexible actions that can be used
to meet the exigencies of novel disturbances. . . . these two aspects are literally
complementary. (p. 30)
Ulanowicz then calculated the ratio of network ascendency to network
capacity:
a 5
A
C
and introduced an equation for robustness, R, similar to the Boltzmann equation
for disorder:
R 5 2 a logðaÞ
Ulanowicz et al. use this equation to plot robustness (2a log (a)) on the Y axis
as a function of the degree of order (a) on the X axis. This robustness measure
can be calculated using energy and material flow data for any ecosystem network
and is closely related to system sustainability. All comprehensive ecosystem networks
(with clearest results for networks with 12 nodes or more) studied thus far
yield robustness values near the top of the curve showing the universal tendency
for ecosystem networks to self-organize in ways to balance efficiency and adaptability
(see Fig. 6.4). In fact, the distribution of the data for different ecosystems
was so tight that Ulanowicz began referring to the optimum range as the
“Window of vitality,” a tendency for ecosystems to evolve that balances the efficiencyÀredundancy
trade-off. This led to a spin off question of whether socioeconomic
systems would show a similar balancing act, and if not, how could they
“Window of vitality”
Robustness–a*log(a)
Degree of order a = A/C
Optimal balance
Greater
redundancy
Greater
efficiency
Toward brittleness
(too little redundancy)Toward
stagnation
(too little
efficiency)
Data from
ecosystems
FIGURE 6.4
Redrawn from Ulanowicz (2009a) an early paper on the “balancing act” metric.
157Introduction and Background for the Seven Life Lessons
be designed and managed to display these characteristics. Recently, Ulanowicz
and others have begun to study system robustness for economic and human food
system networks (Goerner et al., 2009; Kharrazi et al., 2013; Fath, 2015; Fiscus
et al., 2015; Fang and Chen, 2015). See Fig. 6.5.
In Fig. 6.5, we see that human economic and trade networks studied to date
plot to the left of the robustness curve peak. This is most likely due to the fact
that trade networks are more highly connected; and thus, show more redundant
flow pathways than natural ecosystem food webs. The one data point for an
industrial human food web—a subset of nitrogen flow in the US beef supply
chain—plots to the right of the robustness curve peak. This is most likely due to
the fact that this beef supply network is more highly pruned toward highly efficient
linear flow; and thus, shows fewer redundant flow pathways than natural
ecosystem food webs.
The working hypothesis of Ulanowicz, his colleagues, and ourselves is that
the robustness index is generic and provides valuable insight about any flow network.
Ulanowicz (2009a) provided sensitivity analysis methods by which to
determine the amount that any individual flow link in a network contributes to
Natural food
webs
–a log(a)
Natural networks
Iron and steel trade
OECO+BRIC FDI trade
Commodity trade
Virtual water trade
Oil trade
OECO+BRIC commodity trade
Economic trade
networks
0
Systemrobustness–alog(a)
0
0.05
0.1
0.15
0.2
0.25
0.3
0.35
0.4
0.1 0.2 0.3 0.4 0.5
Degree of order
Nitrogen in beef supply chain
0.6 0.7 0.8 0.9 1
FIGURE 6.5
Robustness measure for various socio-ecological networks. Note, natural food webs
cluster at the optimum trade-off between efficiency and redundancy; economic networks
are overly redundant; and, the nitrogen in industrial beef supply chain is overly efficient.
158 CHAPTER 6 Life science lessons
overall system robustness. This measure enables one to identify those flows that
if altered would most improve overall system balance of efficiency and adaptability.
We also hypothesize that this universally observed network configuration
pattern in natural food webs—systems which have evolved, survived, and
self-sustained despite major disturbances over millennia—provides an excellent
indicator by which to gauge the sustainability and robustness of human networks
of many kinds (Goerner et al., 2018 submitted). This approach is the primary
method driving a new effort called regenerative economics, which is led by the
Research Alliance for Regenerative Economics (see capitalinstitute.org/research-
alliance-for-regenerative-economics).
As for all the other Life Lessons and network science tools in this chapter, to
obtain such systemic insight requires comprehensive data and holistic approaches
such as ecological network analysis and NEA. We see these methods and the
results they yield to support our call for more holism and synthesis in the foundational
paradigm and daily working practices of science to understand Life. We
have just one more Life Lesson, and it is one that may serve to fold many of the
others together.
Lesson 7. A Hyperset Formalism of Life Prohibits Fragmentation of Life from
Environment. We propose a novel science formalism to prohibit fragmentation of
the LifeÀenvironment unity. This formalism employs hypersets to prohibit the
fragmentation of Life from environment and to prohibit the fragmentation of three
necessary and unified Life holons of organism, ecosystem, and biosphere.
As with much of the thrust of this book, the articulation of a need for a holistic
formalism is anticipatory. We present a specific kind of science formalism to
act now toward a specific future ultimate purpose to help solve the sustainability
crisis in service to Life. In prior work (Fiscus et al., 2012), we explained the need
for, and presented an initial version of, a science formalism to facilitate the
winÀwin LifeÀenvironment relation while also promoting holism as balanced
with reductionism. In addition to this anticipatory and problem-solving rationale
for devising this formalism, we also see it to provide a better fit with reality—as
for good, rigorous mainstream science, we assert this model has explanatory and
predictive power, and we expect it to survive experimental tests.
Throughout this book, we have talked of the three unit-models of Life as each
being a holistic, complex entity in its own right (unfractionable holon). However,
we next propose a single “multi-model” (or perhaps a meta-model, a hypermodel,
or a model made up of models) of Life as a fully unified whole integrating the
organism, ecosystem, and biosphere holons.
Our approach uses hypersets as inspired by Kercel (2007) who built on work
of Rosen on the need for impredicativity to model Life as we have mentioned.
Kercel (2007) and Rosen (1991, 2000) invoked such methods to explain Life at
the organism scale, but we also apply them to ecosystem and biosphere unitmodels
of Life, and to the task of unifying all three unit-models.
The use of hypersets requires self-reference and ambiguity (Kercel, 2007), two
concepts which are difficult for other mathematical tools to handle. A hyperset is
159Introduction and Background for the Seven Life Lessons
a set that contains itself as a member. Hypersets represent a more general class
than regular sets, which are not allowed to contain themselves as a member; and
thus, regular sets have no self-reference or ambiguity. Hypersets and what they
contain can be nested to varying depths and display context-dependent ambiguity
in terms of what they represent (Kercel, 2007). Kercel (2003, 2007) used hypersets
to explain one logical resolution of the Liar’s Paradox, to explain unique
aspects of M.C. Escher’s graphic art, and as a means to understand Rosen’s
metabolism-repair model for life. In Kercel’s work, ambiguity is of central importance,
and we employ this feature below.
We next present the initial development of this formalism only slightly modified
from Fiscus et al. (2012). After that, we present more recent conceptual work
to push this approach forward.
In the original work (Fiscus et al., 2012), we often spoke of the “communityÀ
ecosystem” as a holistic Life unit and of the “cell-organismÀindividual” as a unit.
Here, we shorten these to ecosystem and organism, respectively, while keeping in
mind the overlap with other terms and ideas for units of Life. Our starting place
was to propose that something new is needed beyond the typical linear, nested
ecological hierarchy that may be intuitive and conventional wisdom:
The biosphere contains ecosystems which contain organisms
Or, in terms of sets and borrowing Salthe’s (1985) notation for hierarchical
systems:
{biosphere{ecosystems{organisms}}}
This basic scheme has been used in many multi-scale conceptual frameworks
for understanding Life’s hierarchical organization. Barrett et al. (1997) and Rowe
(1961), for example, presented excellent versions of this approach, again what is
essentially a linear hierarchy. All of these have been useful for teaching ecology
and environmental science, and for organizing research and research projects.
But, as we know from the state of the world, they have not yet been successful as
a conceptual model able to facilitate a healthy and positive humanÀenvironment
relation.
Informed by the work of Rosen on complexity and the unique “closure to efficient
cause” feature of organismal life he identified, and the work of Kercel on
impredicativity and hypersets, we sought a new representation and model in
which the relational hierarchy forms a closed loop. This can occur if the top level
of the hierarchy links back around to the bottom level, so the whole forms a continuous
hierarchical loop. Kercel (2007) wrote of a “closed loop hierarchy of containment
of entailment” to describe Rosen’s metabolism-repair model.
To move the familiar linear hierarchy to a closed loop hierarchy, we can start
by describing Life (Life itself, Life as a unified whole, the LifeÀenvironment system)
in words using the idea of containment, and adding the closure twist:
Biosphere contains ecosystems contain organisms contain biosphere.
160 CHAPTER 6 Life science lessons
Or in set notation:
{biosphere{ecosystems{organisms{biosphere}}}}
This is interesting perhaps, but not quite right, so we modify it again.
Following Kercel’s lead, we employ ambiguity—or we could say a contextdependent
identity—for what we mean by “biosphere” in the above closed loop
hierarchy.
In 2012, we wrote:
If we take biosphere to mean the entire planetary environment on one hand (at
the outermost level of the hierarchy) but also to mean any physical, chemical
or molecular subset of that planetary environment on the other hand (at the
innermost level of the hierarchy), then the closed loop hierarchy can make
sense and be of great use. Organisms and cells do not contain the biosphere in
terms of encompassing the entire planet inside their spatial boundaries. Instead,
organisms and cells contain abiotic, physicalÀchemical, environmental elements
and molecules necessary for life, each of which is of the same abiotic,
physicalÀchemical nature as primary elements of the planetary environment.
Substituting “environment” for “biosphere” to make it clearer, we could depict
Life using the closed loop hierarchy this way, with another hyperset:
Life 5 {environment{ecosystems{organisms{environment}}}}
The potential benefits and ultimate implications of this holistic, self-referential
multi-model of Life are profound. These benefits and implications are the same
ones we have touted as the focus and need for this book—to change our system
of ideas and then heal our relationship with our environment. The above hyperset
equation needs more explanation, development, contextualization, and corroboration,
but we see it as opening a new path and vista for holistic modeling of
LifeÀenvironment.
Consider this quote which may help explain the two inner most levels in the
hyperset equation and hierarchy, “organism” and “environment” inside it.
Olomucki (1993, cited from Lahav, 1999: 62) wrote of the necessary ambiguity
and complexity well:
When we attempt to define life, or living, we immediately come up against a
fundamental and apparently irreducible paradox: living organisms are composed
of inanimate molecules. . .. Must we then say that ‘life’ is the interaction
of all the inanimate components of this whole? In other words, that nothing is
alive in a cell except the whole of it?
In the hyperset model, as well as conventional wisdom, “environment” has an
inherently and perhaps predominantly “abiotic,” nonliving, inanimate, physicalÀ
chemical nature. Water, water vapor, clouds, and rain, for example, as configurations
of H2O molecules in and of themselves, are not alive. But, at both the
outermost and innermost levels of the hierarchy, these abiotic elements,
161Introduction and Background for the Seven Life Lessons
components, laws, forces, and features of the physicalÀchemical environment
have come under the influence of Life in ways that benefit Life in both its discrete
and sustained forms. We can think of multiple examples of the “inner environment”
inside organisms and cells that are primarily of physicalÀchemical
nature—pick any collection of basic molecules. And, we know from the thought
experiment of tracing individual carbon or oxygen atoms (as in Chapter 5) that
the major Life elements flow and cycle continually between organism, ecosystem,
and biosphere realms. Furthermore, in a relation similar to autocatalysis, each of
these Life holons “feeds,” augments, enhances, and improves the others. The
higher redox potential of the oxygen atmosphere of the “outer environment”
became integrated into the inner most metabolic processes of all aerobic cells and
organisms. The ecosystem holon in the middle, with its food webs, nutrient
cycling, and radical network interdependence, serves to channel the materials and
energy of dead organisms into improved soils and future generations of discrete
Life forms. As a unified system, LifeÀenvironment improves both Life and environment
over time.
If this proposed formalism stands the tests of critique and scrutiny, then it
would depict a relational closure that fully unifies all three Life levels. Viewed
and modeled this way, organisms, ecosystems, and environment (or biosphere)
are not separable or independent. The inherent paradigm shift would mean that all
prior fragmentation of Life—perhaps a series of useful analytical simplifying
assumptions that became reified or taken to be actually true rather than consciously
chosen models (since no synthetic counterpart process qualified it)—
would be repaired. Such fragmentation would also be explicitly prohibited going
forward. The primary mode of action by which this formalism helps is that by
prohibiting any fragmentation of Life from environment, this prohibits any devaluation
of environment relative to Life. If we understand the value of environment—as
essential Life support and context—to be primary, then the scientific
paradigm, research, technology, applications, and policies can follow to protect
and realize this value. If we do, then we fully expect better outcomes, as there is
literally no possibility for any “Tragedy of the Commons” to occur.
As supported by our work, the works of many we have cited, and we hope
concisely with the hyperset formalism, Life cannot be meaningfully identified or
defined at any single scale. With these others, we see the LifeÀenvironment system
as inherently multi-scale, requiring a multi-model, complex in the sense of
Rosen (containing impredicativities), and unfractionable in the sense of Rosen
(components cannot be understood, analyzed, or managed independently). This
unfractionable nature of Life is synonymous with the wholeness of “organic systems”
of Life as depicted by Ulanowicz (2001).
In Chapter 5, we saw that Rosen asserted that organisms are self-defined, selfcausing,
and self-making during a single discrete lifespan. But, for Life to persist
long term requires an inherent capacity to bring new self-making organisms into
existence in perpetuity. This additional, “trans-organismal,” and self-referential
functional relationship we referred to before as the “self-making of the selfmakers.”
This fundamental concept of a closed loop hierarchy can also be seen in
162 CHAPTER 6 Life science lessons
food webs and trophic levels—“top level” predators die and their material bodies
are recycled back through the “bottom level” soils and decomposers and pass
through and feed plants and thus around the biogeochemical cycle, ad infinitum.
It is important to note that this sustained Life capacity requires the abiotic,
physicalÀchemical environment as an active participant, and, for truly
open-ended and perpetual existence the environment must improve over time.
This model, “simple” and brief to write down, holds potential to change
much. The dictionary definition of Life, views of the origin of Life, our shared
cultural mental model of Life, the paradigm of Life science, the values of Life
and especially environment, policies, actions and behaviors as they relate to Life,
sustainability of human life—all these can and should change for the better. We
believe this approach works objectively in that it is compatible with and better
explains empirical evidence and real observations. And, we believe it works subjectively
and in anticipatory fashion since it aids human change toward ideas and
actions to enhance Life and its necessarily integral environmental context. This
model is also falsifiable—any observation of a single organism, species or functional
type self-perpetuating in isolated relationship with the environment would
potentially falsify this hyperset model. Thus, we plan to examine closely the work
of Chivian et al. (2008) and the “single-species ecosystem” they report to have
found. Such a finding would collapse the second and third holons to one, but still
would not overcome the self-referential aspect of the environment. A new hyperset
model, assuming there is a single cell ecosystem, would be
Single cell ecosystem Life5 {environment{ecosystem-organism{environment}}}
To develop our hyperset model beyond the 2012 introduction, we have
explored existing mathematical approaches that are potentially compatible and
mutually supporting. For this effort, we have sought mathematical tools with any
of these features: recursion, self-referential, holistic, cybernetic, complex, generative,
relational, and multi-scale. We identified a set of five associated mathematical
formalisms and have begun to develop methods to integrate these. The allied
holistic formalisms, many of which we have already discussed, are as follows:
1. Fractals, which arise from recursion yet remain bounded
2. Network models used in ENA, including
a. Autocatalytic loops of Ulanowicz
b. Network enfolding of Patten
3. Category theory and Rosen’s unfractionable metabolism-repair model for life
4. Impredicative logic—as associated with hypersets and as represented in
graphs by Kercel
5. Graph theory—to represent hypersets in a graph or network construct
We plan to develop necessary paths and intermediate steps to integrate hypersets,
fractals, networks, category theory, and graph theory as applied to the hyperset
formalism for LifeÀenvironment above.
In future work, we plan to make the model more rigorous and testable, to generate
testable hypotheses, and to propose experimental tests. Next steps include
163Introduction and Background for the Seven Life Lessons
simulations, visualizations, and identifying natural systems that can serve to test
the hyperset formalism. We are hopeful that this holistic model, along with other
progress in holistic Life science, will allow us to manage the unified
LifeÀenvironment as a systemic whole to achieve true and systemic environmental
sustainability.
SUMMARY AND SYNTHESIS OF CHAPTER 6
Referring back to where we started, in Fig. 1.3, we presented a simple cartoon
model with two instances of human self, world environment, and the relation
between. One of these instances is the “real” (physical, ontic) world—how we
humans actually exist, what our planetary environment is really like, and how the
relationship occurs, manifests, and unfolds. The other instance is a mental (epistemic
realm) version of the same triad—as in the thought bubble, we also have our
ideas, beliefs, worldviews, mental models, and science of self, world, and selfworld
relation. Despite the cartoon depiction, we assert this internal arena is the
primary place we need to examine, work and change to solve the crisis we now
face. And in this chapter, we have shown seven lessons, tools, methods, and conceptual
approaches that provide pragmatic extensions of a new way of thinking
and help corroborate the need for fundamental reform in science.
Another ally for this work is Frances Moore Lappe´, including her book
EcoMind: Changing the Way We Think to Create the World We Want (2011). She
similarly identified cultural mental models and mindsets as pivotal for environmental
sustainability. She described seven “thought traps” as part of the “dominant
frame” of conventional wisdom—including views within the “environmental
movement”—that cause and continue to enable environmental degradation. Much
like Donella Meadows, who identified the paradigm and the power to transcend
paradigms as our most powerful forms of leverage for change, Lappe´ wrote how
a mental shift can yield access to new forms of power:
In the dominant coherent, yet self-defeating way of seeing, the “environment”
is something outside of ourselves that needs help, really fast. From this standpoint,
one perceives oneself as joining and enlisting others in an environmental
movement to rescue the planet.
But as we rethink the premises underlying this worldview, we move to a different
place altogether À a place where we experience ourselves and our species
embedded in nature. (p. 16)
And a bit later:
With an eco-mind, we move from “fixing something” outside ourselves to realigning
our relationships within our ecological home. (p. 16)
164 CHAPTER 6 Life science lessons
She provided an excellent book with many insights for mental shifts that can
yield tangible improvement. She explained how our species, with its capacities
for imagination and creativity, are very much capable to create the world we truly
want—if we are able to examine and challenge some of our most closely held
ideas. We mention this in conjunction with recognizing that humans exist primarily
at the organism holon of our hyperset model, but currently are the dominant
driving force in all three holons in most locations on Earth. That model again is
Life 5 {environment{ecosystems{organisms{environment}}}}
We are the dominant force altering the planetary environment and biosphere—this
has led to the term “Anthropocene” to describe the current unique
epoch of Earth history. And, in most ecosystems, such as local communities,
watersheds, and regions, we also shape most of the energy and material fluxes
and processes. Thus, human imagination and creativity are primary forces in
every aspect of this holistic LifeÀenvironment system.
Lappe´’s general solution, “to think like an ecosystem,” fits with the conscious
choice to form, envision, and operate with holistic mental models of selfsustaining
Life forms and LifeÀenvironment relations, as we have proposed.
Lappe´ (2011) also wrote about how this is very different from a mechanistic and
reductionist worldview. In Chapter 7, we return to work of Robert Rosen for strategic
guidance on how to bridge from science to applications and technology,
keeping his critique of the machine metaphor in mind.
165Summary and Synthesis of Chapter 6
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CHAPTER
7A bridge not too far:
Spanning theory to science
to application
INTRODUCTION
In Chapter 6, we described seven lessons learned about Life and the
LifeÀenvironment relation gleaned from decades of holistic science using network
analysis and related methods. We also advocated the view of science as an
active participatory process with multiple impacts on the systems of study and the
world environment as a whole. Conversely, we urged against any misconception
of science as a passive one-way process of information moving from Nature into
our minds in the form of new or refined knowledge. As we move to discuss and
recommend technology and applications for sustainability, we will again promote
a view toward a complex, multiway flow, and holistic interdependence between
four realms—science, technology, culture, and the world environment. In this
chapter, we present ideas we see as crucial for understanding the bridge or conduit—perhaps
even better seen as a looping, cyclic, or spiral pathway—between
the holistic Life science we have described in past chapters and the applications,
technologies, and solutions we examine in Chapter 8. We referred to the “root
metaphor” and “system of ideas” of industrial culture in Chapter 1, and in this
chapter, we examine the identity, roles, and implications of the root metaphor and
system of ideas we create, promote, and employ.
The two most important concepts we develop are:
1. Both the “encoding” (like reading in, observation, and measurement) and the
“decoding” (like writing out, predictions, and experimental tests) modes of
Rosen’s modeling relation and model for science are always operating in
concert. Rosen also described “fabrication” as this relation running in
reverse—to start with a formal model in mind and then realize that model in
material form in the real world. Rather than separate sequential processes of
forming and refining science knowledge vs the fabrication or realization
counterpart—we assert that this is a single integrated process with
interdependent two-way flow between the science/mind/idea and physical/
material/environmental realms. Science and culture, like Life, are dual
operating as receiver and transponder (as Patten’s Janus hypothesis, Patten,
2016b) and we make a mental model of this reality.
Foundations for Sustainability. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-12-811460-5.00007-8
Copyright © 2019 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
167
2. Idea 1 can be generalized as our mental models change the world. Next, given
the dominance of the machine metaphor as root metaphor in both our science
paradigm and basis of industrial culture, we propose that we are in essence
making the world into machine. We see industrial science, technology, and
culture as actively altering the world to fit our preconceived image of a
fundamental mechanistic unit of reality. This in turn helps explain and
provides a coherent story for how and why we see the most essential Life
support services of the world, the fundamental integrity and health of Life
itself, breaking down, wearing out, “running out of steam” (or gas)—
symptoms which only apply to machines and make no sense as behaviors of
living systems which normally do the opposite. We have seen in this book
how all Life systems self-organize, self-repair, self-improve, and self-sustain,
as long as we consider them holistically as integrated organism, ecosystem,
and biosphere holons within the LifeÀenvironment holon.
We next recap and expand our discussion of Rosen’s modeling relation. We
also review Rosen’s characterization of the machine metaphor (which he traced to
Descartes) and its inherent problems. We highlight corroborating work from
Hornborg, Ulanowicz, Goerner, Lappe´, and others who support and provide further
insights into the power and implications of this metaphor as well as aiding
the creation of a better metaphor. We frame options for what an alternative root
metaphor—or a suite, set, or system of root metaphors—would be like. Finally,
we segue to how these ideas can guide and inform the qualities we need most in
applications, technologies, policies, and related actions.
The lens through which we now view the need for an integrated bridge (such
as a spiral staircase) and interlocking interface between science and applications
(technology and culture) fits with our start in Chapter 1. There, we mentioned the
main book idea to help reform the closely integrated system of ideas in culture
and the paradigm in science. Here, we learn more of how and why mental
models are so powerful, and by extension how powerfully they serve as sources
of leverage for change. A key set of working assumptions for our next steps are
stated below.
We assume (hypothesize) that the current root metaphor, main theme, narrative,
motivating idea of human self, world, and self-world relation have been
infused by science with ideas about machines and mechanisms. We adopt the
view, as Rosen, Ulanowicz, Hornborg, and others have shown (and as they show
more below), that use of the metaphor of mechanism as a fundamental unit of
how the world works—applicable to Life, humans, and natural systems—starting
from Descartes, Newton, and others hundreds of years ago—determines many
critical aspects of how we do science, how we do technology, and by extension
how we think and live, and how we get the world we ultimately end up with.
Of the many details we can study on the impacts and implications of mechanistic
science, the main issue we treat in this book as “actionable” for transformative
change now, is that by treating Life forms, humans, and the world as
168 CHAPTER 7 A bridge not too far
mechanisms, we have come to expect that we and our world will necessarily wear
out and break down. This is in essence a kind of modern industrial “world myth”
that all machines, all Life, and all of existence in the universe are headed
down the ultimate one way, dead-end pathway required by the second law of
thermodynamics (which mandates the tendency toward increased entropy for
isolated systems).
One additional ramification of this dominant mechanistic and entropic narrative
we read in mainstream science and integrated industrial culture is that, since
environmental, world, and even universal decay and degradation are treated as
inevitable and absolute (scientific law), it then is acceptable and to be expected—
in fact, one has no choice at all—that the impacts of day-to-day science activities,
campuses, and enterprises must also lead to decay, degradation, and dissipation of
higher quality energy and resources as the world, and all actors in it, march to
inevitable heat death. We note the daily activities and operations of science here
first, as we want to focus on the integrated paradigm-action of science as both
source of our problems and our solutions. But, the same assessment of degrading
impacts applies to all other industry, commerce, development, transportation, etc.,
in our industrial culture. Each and every sector is “allowed” or assumed to “do
work,” contribute or aid progress at the expense of exporting entropy and leaving
the environment depleted, exploited for energy and materials, and thus worse off
by necessity.
A final word on this hypothetical and roughly sketched science-culture plot
and story line is that the overemphasis within mainstream life science on the “life
as organism” model plays a critical supporting role. Just as all machines wear
down, and any isolated physical system winds down, all organisms die. After
early growth and development, mature organisms are, like machines, in a constant
process of senescence, aging, and loss of physical vitality. Thus, the shared cultural
story of the fate of self and world, and of Life and environment, are thematically
consistent and unified—both must decay and die. And, the relationship
between them is thus fittingly colored by mutual influences of harm, threat, damage,
and antagonism. Given this individualistic cultural story, and the ultimate
survival stakes, it is “us against them” as we humans and other Life forms relate
to the environment, to each other, to other species, and to the world as a whole.
As we have seen and will continue to develop next, this linked system of
science paradigm, root metaphor, “world myth,” and the culture and technology
they drive has two strange aspects currently arising:
1. The real evidence of environmental decay and threats to essential life support
services provides a stark wake up call for us to examine our subconscious,
unconscious, or collective (perhaps buried, repressed, or walled off by fear or
economic pressure) belief systems (ideas, epistemic realm). One way to
interpret this is to ask if we have gotten ourselves trapped in a kind of selffulfilling
prophecy. And then, we can ask if this is really what we want, and if
this is really the only way? Can we not do better? Or, even define differently,
169Introduction
what “better” means in a LifeÀenvironment worldview. This trap—perhaps a
form of “cognitive dissonance”—relates to the internal mental models (our
mindsets) as in Fig. 1.3.
2. Real evidence of nonhuman systems (and some nonindustrial human systems)
shows clearly that the environment and Life in its ecosystemic and biospheric
modes need not degrade over time—the oxygen atmosphere, continually
improving soils, high biodiversity, creation of those carbon-rich deposits that
yield fossil fuels, and other real effects show that a nonentropic progression is
fully possible and perhaps the norm for Life (Life as a unified whole). This
relates to the real-world instances of self, world, and relation between in
Fig. 1.3.
This part of the book sheds additional light on our critique so far of what an
unbalanced, inaccurate, or inappropriate science paradigm, root metaphor, and
linked techno-culture can do. We can see ideas spread via the modeling relation
and science-culture conduit to infuse the whole world with our most closely held,
most often revisited, and continually manifested images of ourselves, Life, the
environment, and how the world works. If this organic unity of mind and nature,
an idea we adopt from Bateson (1988), has worked to cause harm (an unintended
consequence of the machine metaphor which has produced many great gains),
then with a new image in mind, it can now begin work to heal, repair, and regenerate
Life systems.
ROSEN’S MODELING RELATION REVISITED—A DOUBLEEDGED
SWORD
Rosen criticized the machine metaphor, the dominant working model for science,
because he saw it as limiting and even dysfunctional for his most passionate quest
to understand What is Life? or answer the question, Why Life? His synthetic
idea to identify the machine metaphor as culprit blocking his progress is closely
tied to our main thesis of this book:
The dominant mental model of the mainstream science paradigm works to alter
the environment in detrimental ways and blocks progress toward true
sustainability.
Borrowing again from Rosen, we go more in-depth here into how this
relationship fits with the modeling relation he used to represent and understand
the process of science.
As noted in Chapter 6, Rosen wrote that the encoding and decoding processes
of his modeling relation, as well as our sensory and perceptual apparatus we use
to encode and decode, sit between natural and formal systems, between the self
and the ambience of the environment. He wrote that encoding and decoding are
ambiguously part of both natural and formal system realms. This ambiguity or
170 CHAPTER 7 A bridge not too far
dual-nature allows these two portions of his modeling relation to serve as a conduit
or interface by which the formal systems of individual mind (and collective
science) act to mold the material world. Via this mode of operation of the modeling
relation, our ideas become manifest in real, physical systems.
Rosen (1991) described the interface not only as active but also with a kind of
inherent flaw, repeating one of his quotes:
. . . what we observe are phenomena, which are to an equally unknowable
extent corrupted by our perceptual [sensory and mental] apparatus (which of
course sits partly in the ambience). (p. 56)
The “corruption” aspect is linked to the common philosophical dilemma that
we cannot perceive or know anything about the natural world in any perfect,
noise free, or exact way. This is also related to the mindÀbrain and mentalÀphysical
problems—we still have no single, unified, consensus theory of the interface
between the organic, material, biological construction of our brains and bodies
and the abstract seemingly immaterial ideas, symbols, words, and images they
can conjure, create, manipulate, and communicate. The quote gets at the recursive
aspects we try to capture in the hyperset equation of Chapter 6 because we reside
in the same environmental ambience that we try to understand and formulize.
Practically, this dilemma appears in mathematical modeling of ecological systems,
in that the perceptual apparatus is different for all investigators, and thus,
the conceptualization of the phenomena into quantifiable systems will differ
markedly based on the observer. This is even referred to as the modeling problem,
and there is surprisingly little theory to deal with this foundational problem. Yet,
models are made, often fragmented in structure and function; they remain useful
to solve immediate problems, while they typically fail to address the deeper root
problems. As we show below, Rosen has probably gone farther than most in
addressing this. While it is impossible to know the unknowable or avoid
completely the corruption, addressing the core issue of fragmentation in the
current systemic humanÀenvironmental crisis may yield new insights to help
understand the perennial mindÀbrain question.
We already presented Rosen’s modeling relation in Chapter 6, but we need to
examine more the various modes of action between formal and natural systems.
Figs. 7.1 and 7.2 will help.
In Fig. 7.1, we changed the depiction of the formal system to be like a tank or
reservoir that can increase in content as knowledge is gained. We also added a
main flow of action arrow moving from left to right, and we changed the caption
to describe the mode of operation of doing science, or systematic human learning
about the natural system, which represents the real world. While the caption suggests
that science starts with step 2, encoding as in observation, we could also
start the process with step 4, decoding as in making a prediction, or with step 3,
inferential entailment as in forming a hypothesis. Wherever we start, progress
proceeds counterclockwise in this simplified, yet unfragmented, version of how
science gains knowledge of the natural world.
171Rosen’s Modeling Relation Revisited—A Double-Edged Sword
Natural
system
1
4
2
3Causal
entailment
Inferential
entailment
Formal
system
Encoding
Decoding
Main flow of action—gain of knowledge
FIGURE 7.1
Rosen’s modeling relation modified again from our Fig. 6.1. In Rosen’s representation of
the scientific process, science operates with a main flow from left to right in clockwise
steps and can be thought of as starting at step 2, encoding, which is the realm of
measurement and observation. As work proceeds counterclockwise, the formal systems
(science models, theories, etc.) are successively and progressively formed, refined, and
improved and knowledge increases. Thus, the formal system is shown as a reservoir that
can gain in content.
Natural
system
1
4
2
3Causal
entailment
Inferential
entailment
Formal
system
Encoding
Decoding
Main flow of action—gain of physical realization
FIGURE 7.2
The process of “fabrication” modified after a diagram of the modeling relation (Rosen,
1991). The main flow of action now is the gain of a physical, material realization—a new
construction in the natural system, the real world, based on an idea, mental model, or
design in the formal system.
172 CHAPTER 7 A bridge not too far
A related idea we see as crucial and profound is that in the standard science
process, the formal system is assumed to change substantially (much new knowledge
is gained, the collective reservoir of science grows deeper) while the natural
system is assumed to change minimally, if at all. This assumption is linked to the
foundational mainstream science tenet of objectivity, which we examined in
Chapter 5 (where we discussed the alternative principle of internalism).
We think this is a fair assessment of the mainstream model and daily operations
of science—progress made by increased knowledge is essentially the sole
focus of the totality of the social and cultural science enterprise, and the individual
daily actions of the vast majority of all scientists. The impact of the science
process on the natural system, on the real world, is ignored and treated as either
nonexistent or as an “externality” in the economic sense, arbitrary external
impacts that do not enter into the focal accounting or calculus of costs, benefits,
expenses and gains, and profit and loss in both monetary and knowledge realms.
Scientists work to construct experiments and studies to be objective—as if their
“corrupt” sensory, perceptual, and motor apparatus (of encoding and decoding)
could interact with the natural system while leaving it completely intact and
untouched.
A related idea is that the natural system is infinite and inexhaustible, both in
terms of physical material aspects (such as energy, resources, and space to absorb
human industrial wastes. See Chapter 5 about the empty world metaphor of
Goodland and Daly, 1996), but also in terms of the knowledge of the world, all
that could be known, myriad, and unexplored aspects of reality. Thus, in Fig. 7.1,
the natural system has no “fill level” indicated—gains or losses, increments, and
accounting are not considered.
What we are saying is also needed, and what Rosen suggested, is seeing that
the flow, relation, mode of action, and impact is always both ways. And, we
assert that conscious awareness of this dual action is critical to success with
humanÀenvironment sustainability.
Rosen wrote about two separate paths in his diagram, and the numeric step
labels still apply to Fig. 7.1:
Path 1—causality in the natural system. This is how the world works.
Path 2 1 3 1 4—the integrated process of scientific knowledge generation and
testing.
Rosen (1991) wrote that the ideal is for this modeling relation to “commute”
(obey a commutative property) such that
Path 1 5 Path 2 1 3 1 4
If the inferential entailment, with its associated formal system (model), does
commute—that is, if we can successfully decode it back to the real world (make
predictions) and successfully encode it again (observe that the predictions held
true)—then by one or more cycles of this process, we have built and confirmed a
reliable representation of the natural system.
173Rosen’s Modeling Relation Revisited—A Double-Edged Sword
Rosen noted that one key power gained from successful use of this modeling
relation and science process is that we are able to learn about the natural system
by asking questions about the formal system. Another key power we see to be
gained is that we are emboldened to believe that we understand how the world
works and we can create new models, new designs, that once constructed and
realized in the physical material world will work properly, will function, and
operate successfully to achieve the goals and ends we have designed into them.
We want to examine more of what Rosen wrote about this process operating
in both directions. First, we look again at what he said of the ambiguous nature of
the links between formal and natural systems. He wrote of the encoding and
decoding arrows (Rosen, 1991):
The encoding and decoding arrows in this case are still unentailed, but it is no
longer clear how they could be entailed, or from what. These arrows are not
part of the natural system, N, nor even of its environment; although they pertain
to the ambience, they do not belong to it. Neither do they belong to the
formal world of the self either; they look like mappings, but they do not compare
formal objects; hence they cannot be mappings in any formal sense. Thus
these arrows, which play the central role in comparing causal and inferential
entailment . . . turn out to possess a new and ambiguous status, equally within,
and outside of, both the self and its ambience. (p. 62)
He wrote about encoding as “associated with the notion of measurement” and
as “encoding phenomena in N into propositions of F.” And decoding as “predictions
about N” and also “decoding propositions of F back to phenomena in N”
(Rosen, 1991, pp. 59À62).
His comment in the quote above—that encoding and decoding “possess a new
and ambiguous status”—becomes important below.
Rosen (1991, 2000) wrote of “fabrication” and how this is the realm of life.
This is the complementary half of the modeling relation as a two-way process.
One can make a model of a natural system in a formal system, and/or one can
realize a physical system based on a formal model. The latter route is fabrication,
and he went so far as to say that when we practice biology as based on his relational
theory (Rosen, 1991):
. . .we enormously enlarge the scope of biology itself. Biology becomes identified
with the class of material realizations of a certain kind of relational organization,
and hence, to that extent divorced from the structural details of any
particular kind of realization. It is thus not simply the study of whatever organisms
happen to appear in the external world of the biologist; it could be, and in
fact is, much more than that. Biology becomes in fact a creative endeavor; to
fabricate any realization of that essential relational organization (i.e., to fabricate
a material system that possesses such a model) is to create a new organism.
(p. 245)
174 CHAPTER 7 A bridge not too far
Rosen’s big idea here is that the modeling relation, which he says is the essence
of science, also works as a conduit or transformation route by which ideas (in the
form of relational models) become realized in the physical world. He speaks of fabrication
and creative endeavors when the model is his unique relational one (with
the “closed to efficient cause” feature) and suggests that one can create life
forms—“create a new organism” as he says. But what happens, or what possible
things can happen, if the formal system in mind is a mechanical model rather than
his complex relational model of life? What happens when we fabricate or manifest
in the world realizations of the machine model that we have in mind?
OUR IDEA—FORMAL SYSTEMS (SCIENCE, KNOWLEDGE) AND
NATURAL SYSTEMS (FABRICATION, TECHNOLOGY) ARE
ALWAYS CO-CREATING EACH OTHER
One obvious answer is when we consciously and intentionally design technological
machines, devices, or tools, we first conceive of the design in mind (a model,
or formal system, aided by mathematics, life sciences, physics, and other science
and engineering methods) and then build a prototype and eventually a finished
machine or device as a real physical, material object. For this standard process of
technological development, we may traverse the modeling relation many times—
building the device, measuring its performance, learning more, changing the
design, building the new version, testing performance yet again, and so on indefinitely.
And, at times, the wheel of the modeling relation cycle spins the other
direction—the technological development process can go onto a tangent of more
research, new learning, and gaining new science knowledge on a path inspired by
something learned on the journey to develop a new device.
However, we propose that this realization of a machine model can also occur
unconsciously and unintentionally. We can unintentionally realize a physical manifestation
of the machine metaphor which dominates the formal system (science
paradigm) when we forget that the machine metaphor is just an idea of our own
construction. What started with Descartes and Newton was an analogy or useful
simplifying assumption—what if we treat the world as if it were a clock or mechanism?
But, this seems to have become reified or ossified as in a hard habit in the
sense that we skip the “what if . . .” and “as if it were” parts and short-circuit this
so as to “treat the world as a clock or mechanism.” This becomes less like encoding
and decoding, prediction and testing, and more like projecting, fabricating,
and actuating. This is more like considering the one-way flow of Fig. 7.2, but we
urge considering both flows simultaneously.
In Fig. 7.2, the natural system is portrayed with reservoir status—it can gain
in content of new inventions, devices, and technologies. Here, the formal system,
exaggerated to the extreme of only representing a single dominant machine metaphor
at the heart of the current science paradigm, is infinite and unchanging. The
175Our Idea—Formal Systems (Science, Knowledge)
machine metaphor is inexhaustible and seems universally applicable in every
context and for every need. It can be used, employed, realized, built over and
over and it never gets depleted or degraded—or even challenged—due to the
absolute way in which it is trusted and habitual throughout all corridors of
science, technology, and culture.
The unconscious or unintentional use of the machine metaphor we have
described can be seen in many examples and cases such as the way we treat land
during conventional industrial agriculture. A recent article in science explained
that plants could be “tricked” to grow faster and longer under artificial light. The
manner of presentation was only positive that this may be a good breakthrough to
increase food supply for a growing human population, but without any reflection
that it further treats the plant as an object or tool to be manipulated and industrialized,
without any context of how that plant fits into the ambience of its environment.
We explore the case of agriculture and others below in the section of this
chapter on “We Are Making the World into a Machine.” Before that, we see what
others have to say about the machine metaphor.
THE MACHINE METAPHOR—MORE VIEWS ON THE LEGACIES
OF DESCARTES AND NEWTON
While we have relied heavily on Rosen in this book, he is joined by a chorus of
harmonious thinkers and researchers in a variety of fields in his focal critique of
the machine and the machine metaphor as a crux issue for understanding and
solving the sustainability crisis. Alf Hornborg, a cultural anthropologist also
working in human ecology, wrote a book, The Power of the Machine (Hornborg,
2001), in which he examines the machine metaphor and related ways that
machines and technology figure into the cultural as well as material dynamics of
the environmental crisis, social inequality, economic inequity, and sustainability.
One of his strengths is his interdisciplinary training and research in natural
sciences, cultures, and social sciences. He presents an authoritative perspective
that corroborates Rosen’s and our statements above that science and the realm of
ideas and models, and the natural, physical, material world, are inextricably
entangled. He wrote about how this can also be confusing to sort out and
described the focus of his book (Hornborg, 2001):
In very general terms, I argue in this book, the problem is our way of conceptualizing
the relationship between sociocultural constructions and material processes.
We seem to have difficulties understanding exactly in which sense
human ideas and social relations intervene in the material realities of the biosphere.
Rather than continuing to approach “knowledge” from the Cartesian
assumption of a separation of subject and object, we shall have to concede that
our image-building actively participates in the constitution of the world. Our
176 CHAPTER 7 A bridge not too far
perception of our physical environment is inseparable from our involvement in
it. (p. 9À10)
Hornborg goes into great detail to reveal hidden, “mystified,” and reified
aspects of machines, technology, and unequal exchange of natural resources
including a major critique of ideas about money and the current predominant
money system in industrial culture. We discuss money in Chapter 8 and
Chapter 9, but for now focus on the inseparable and interdependent relationships
between the “image-building” of our science process and involvement in the
physical biosphere. Hornborg (2001) also wrote:
If, since Newton, the machine has served as a root metaphor for the universe,
an advocate of a less mechanistic worldview might begin by demonstrating
that even the machine is an organic phenomenon. (p. 10)
Note that he did not say the machine is “physical” or “material” but organic.
We interpret this adjective as his recognition of the necessary role of humans in
the idea, design, construction, operation, and use of any machine, as well as the
interdependencies of machines and technology with living systems and natural
resources of the world. He also wrote of his book and its title:
If the word “power” in the title is ambiguous, so also perhaps, ultimately, is
the word “machine.” My concern with modernity and the social consequences
of abstraction finally addresses modernist rationality as a machination in the
widest sense. Although my primary argument is that the machine is social, it is
embedded in reflections about the inverse observation that our modern social
system functions like a machine. (p. 5)
Here, Hornborg echoes our views above that modern abstraction—such as
modeling, scientific inference, and related processes—has social consequences
and that we see human culture (with science and technology playing lead roles)
operating like the machine he, and we, identified as the root metaphor. He also
helps to show how the social system of industrial culture, as machine, can directly
explain environmental and social degradation (Hornborg, 2001):
The sum of industrial products represents greater entropy than the sum of fuels
and raw materials for which they are exchanged. The net transfer of “negative
entropy” to industrial centers is the basis for techno-economic “growth” or
“development.” In other words, we must begin to understand machines as thoroughly
social phenomena. They are the result of asymmetric, global transfers
of resources.
A cynic might conclude that the growth in the developed, industrial
centers is predicated on the extraction, transfer, and continued impoverishment
of the resource rich, yet industry poor, regions. In other words, the
asymmetry is a design feature and not an unintended consequence. Can recognition
of this connection and fairer valuation of those resources help mend
177The Machine Metaphor
this fragmentation, injustice, and unsustainable relationship? Soon after,
Hornborg continues:
Inversely, the non-industrial sectors experience a net increase in entropy as natural
resources and traditional social structures are dismembered. The ecological
and socioeconomic impoverishment of the periphery are two sides of the same
coin, for both nature and human labor are underpaid sources of high-quality
energy for the industrial “technomass.” (p. 11)
As we proposed above in this chapter, Hornborg connects the supporting role
of entropy and the second law of thermodynamics, other key pillars in the mainstream
science paradigm, in this shared cultural story that accepts environmental
degradation as unavoidable as well as acceptable in return for the benefits of
industrial technology. This defeatism turns a technomass into the “technomess”
that we have today. We return to Hornborg below when we discuss alternative
root metaphors, and later when we address the role of money in these processes,
but we next hear more views on the machine metaphor.
We have studied in detail how Ulanowicz showed autocatalysis and indirect
mutualism to refute the validity of a monolithic mechanistic model for living systems
and nature, to challenge the primacy of competition in neo-Darwinian evolutionary
theory and to indicate the need for his ecologically-based root metaphor
in the science paradigm. We have seen how Ulanowicz developed an ecological
metaphysic as an alternative to the prevailing machine metaphor in science and
culture. Prior to developing his three tenets of the “third window” he recommended
as a needed improvement beyond the dominant vistas of Newton and
Darwin (Ulanowicz, 2009b), he had previously challenged five founding pillars of
the mechanistic paradigm of science. He showed these five working assumptions
as unable to provide a coherent framework for understanding Life in its ecosystem
and network forms. He wrote (Ulanowicz, 1999a):
If one wishes to understand the development of biological systems in full hierarchical
detail and is not content with the abrupt juxtaposition of pure stochasticity
and determinism found in neo-Darwinism (Ulanowicz, 1997), then one
must abandon the assumptions of closure, determinism, universality, reversibility
and atomism and replace them by the ideas of openness, contingency, granularity,
historicity and organicism, respectively. That is, one must formulate a
new metaphysic for how to view living phenomena.
The five main concepts that Ulanowicz (1999a) proposed serve to differentiate
the Cartesian, Newtonian, mechanistic metaphysic of mainstream science from his
ecological metaphysic that is compatible with our holistic Life science in this book.
This is how we summarized his alternative pillars of science (Fiscus, 2007):
His openness refers to ontic or causal openness and suggests that chance is real
and active, not merely a source of “noise” or “error,” and thus not all is determined
or determinable. His contingency relates to that qualified answer so
often heard in ecology, “it depends. . ..” Most if not all events arising from
178 CHAPTER 7 A bridge not too far
cause-effect relations are not static but are contingent on other outcomes, relations
and the context in which they occur. Granularity is his antidote to unrestrained
universalizing. A granular extent to a science law, model or principle
would admit limits to domains of applicability, would seek to “renormalize” or
reconsider frames of reference in vastly different systems, and would be compatible
with locally unique forms of place-based science institutions as suggested
for locally environmentally sustainable science. Historicity is
irreversibility and the importance of the time course of events À what happens
and when it happens both matter, and many processes show hysteresis and do
not run the same way backward as forward (e.g., soil wetting vs drying).
Organicism is the operating assumption of unfractionability and wholeness of
living systems, the opposite of or counterbalance to reductionism. (p. 52À53)
In this and other works, Ulanowicz helps to provide more nuanced understanding
of what we have been referring to as the machine metaphor. He makes the
distinct point that mechanisms are found in living systems, or we could say that a
mechanistic model is appropriate in many cases for understanding nature. His
objection and his reason for developing his ecological metaphysic are due to his
sense that mechanisms are not able to tell the full story and are insufficient to
explain Life as whole.
Ulanowicz accepts treating the first two Aristotlean causes—material and efficient
cause—as mechanical forms of agency. He describes mechanical behavior
as those cases that are deterministic, rigid, and inflexible: “If A, then B—no
exceptions!” (Ulanowicz, 1997) Real processes in natural systems that are likewise
strictly determined by material or efficient causes make sense for employing
a machine metaphor. In the realm of medicine and human health, he uses this
distinction to describe how the function, diagnosis, and treatment for the heart in
many cases make sense to use the mechanical analogy—the heart can be thought
of gainfully, and treated as if, a mechanical pump (albeit, linked to a larger circulatory
system, kept functioning by energy of the digestive system, maintained by
an endocrine system, and protected by a skeletal systems, etc.). Cancer or immune
system disorders, however, cases with systemic causes and factors spanning more
if not the whole of the human Life system, do not fit a mechanical analogy. For
these more complex realms, the formal cause (and perhaps final causes) of
Aristotle comes into play, as well as flexibility, contingency, and indeterminacy,
and render the machine metaphor ineffective and even dangerous.
In a fun, scholarly, and highly informative debate on the pages of the journal,
Estuaries, Bob Ulanowicz, and Bernie Patten debated the relative merits and
flaws in the mechanical and deterministic worldview. One of many great parts of
this dialogue came from Bernie’s use of the case of flying an airplane, knowing
that Bob is a pilot (as was Bernie), to evoke gut instincts to help compare the
alternatives of mechanical and nonmechanical perspectives. Bernie (Patten, 1999)
started it near the end of his review of Bob’s book. Here, one needs to know that
Bob employed Karl Popper’s idea of propensity as a better fundamental and less
deterministic/mechanical precept that Newtonian force:
179The Machine Metaphor
Let me put it this way for my amicus who is a pilot. Sometime, perhaps near
the middle or end of the next century, when some of the ascendency principles
enunciated in his book have pruned. . .the world’s airlines down to two giant
international carriers, will you choose, at a premium price, the staid organization
that gets you where you want to go the old fashioned way À Newtonian
Airlines, or will you pick instead, at considerable savings, the cut-rate, flashier,
and certainly more exciting carrier of the in-crowd À Popperian Air, whose
planes have a well-known propensity to fly? (p. 342)
Bob replied (Ulanowicz, 1999b):
I have often joked about how I go from my office, where I rant against the
idea of nature as machine, to the cockpit, where I pray I am seated in the most
finely-tuned clockwork that ever existed! My appraisal of the two airways is
different from Bernie’s however: Newtonian Airways believes their machines
are guaranteed by law to fly. Popperian Airways, chastened by the conviction
that their machines only have a strong propensity to fly, invest in much redundancy
so as to increase the probability that, when novel and threatening circumstances
do arise, their planes will fail-safe. (p. 343)
This exchange is both entertaining and enlightening, and we learn at the end
one major way in which Bob sees his ecological metaphysic as an improvement.
By anticipating novel events and disturbances, he recommends a science paradigm
able to inform the construction of needed and functional redundancy
sufficient to allow adaptation and system reconfiguration to survive otherwise
Life-threatening surprises. This redundancy, pervasive in the pathways of ecological
networks, we have seen him document as critical, especially in the balancing
act quantified by his robustness metric (see Chapter 6). His systemic measure of
trade-off of these two key attributes—efficiency and redundancy—is one of the
best single metrics for sustainability that we have encountered.
Sally Goerner provides another corroborating and expert view on the machine
metaphor and the need for transformation in our ways of thinking. With advanced
degrees in computer science, psychology, and nonlinear dynamics, she is another
interdisciplinary scholar able to synthesize new ideas across multiple domains. We
see her insights as particularly helpful as we seek to bridge between science and
applications, between models in mind and realizations in the real world. Sally is also
a masterful communicator, and her books, articles, words, and pictures have served
to help communicate the most complex ideas in clear and readily accessible ways.
In her book, After the Clockwork Universe (Goerner, 1999), and in her other
works, she has studied virtually all of human and cultural development and cosmic
evolution to search for recurring patterns and general systems principles. As
we assert in this book, she has targeted the paradigm, worldview, or shared cultural
story as a fulcrum point on which to place a big lever for change. From her
studies across multiple fields of human endeavor, she sees a “coming Great
180 CHAPTER 7 A bridge not too far
Change,” or Big Change, much like the shifts we propose as needed in science
and culture. She wrote:
We have built our society around clockwork beliefs, but these are simplistic
and inadequate. We believe so strongly that our science is immune to Big
Change, that we have a terrible time imagining how any other view could be
valid À much less more powerful. We are like our ancestors. We need a new
story, but we have a hard time seeing past the one which dominates now. This
is why making the new science clear and relevant is so important. (p. 85)
And soon after:
Beneath a calm, confident exterior, classical scientific images based on simple
causality are crumbling. In their place a new science based on web dynamics
(interdependence) and its organizing tendencies are emerging. In this
completely understandable shift, all things change. (p. 85)
Here, we see again links between the machine metaphor with its simple causality
on one hand, and what Goerner is calling the “web” metaphor, aligned with
our holistic Life science, with its complex causality on the other hand.
After quoting John Muir, as we did above, Goerner (1999) went on to describe
our “current” situation, which has spanned several centuries:
In 1997 as in 1700 most educated people look out on a clockwork universe, a
passive, essentially dead universe in which events are accounted for by
mechanical forces. Throughout this century people have looked to scientific
breakthroughs to end this view. Yet, despite many prophesies, none of the
major scientific revolutions of this century À quantum mechanics, relativity,
origins of the universe À have budged this core machine view. Some, like
genetics, have tended to intensify it. Today more than ever the machine worldview
seems unchallengeable and unchangeable.
The machine view will end, however, because of a fatal flaw that is so simple that
it is invisible. . .right now, the belief that things are fundamentally non-dependent
(separate, separable and not connected) permeates our reality. (p. 85À86)
And a bit further on in the same book, she says this worldview will go away
because it and its attendant specific beliefs, “are all based on assumptions of
‘how the world works’ in separate and disconnected pieces À and not together.”
Goerner presents a concise pictorial model to contrast the two worldviews and
their different approaches to causality. We reproduce her Figure 3 as our Fig. 7.3.
Referring to these diagrams, and to the way current world circumstances call
for change, Goerner (1999) wrote:
. . .simplistic approaches to complex problems create dysfunctional answers
and these dysfunctional answers are coming home to roost in societies the
world over. This is creating pressure to find something better.
181The Machine Metaphor
. . .it is increasingly obvious that most causality looks like Figure 3 [b]. In complex
systems such as the body À not to mention economies, societies and the
weather À causes blend and loop back on themselves. In such systems following
single threads does not lead to the cause, but at best, a loop of causality
and at worst, a hopeless confusion. (p. 91)
And in a passage that fits with our idea of the two-way bridge between science
and the real world, and the dangers of unintentional overuse of the machine metaphor,
she added:
Scientists have known that the world is interwoven for a very long time. The
problem is that the interwoven nature of the world can be overwhelming. It is
overwhelming for scientific tools, social resources, and our merely mortal
minds. The tools scientists use shape how they see the world. We all know the
refrain: “if all you have is a hammer, then the whole world looks like a nail.”
Yet, researchers can only use the tools available. . .
. . .today we are stuck in perspectives that have passed their time. People’s
awareness of complex causality (webs) has been growing for years. A whole
host of groups in every field imaginable have attempted to get other scientists
and the public at large to realize that you can’t understand much until you realize
that everything really is a web À and that webs don’t work like machines.
Ecologists have been the most successful at this which is why people the world
over are beginning to recycle and green movements are a force to be reckoned
with. (p. 91)
Mutual
Networked
(a) (b) Complex causalitySimple causality
(one main cause)
FIGURE 7.3
Concise contrast of the machine metaphor (a), and its rigidly deterministic simple
causality, “If A, then B—no exceptions!,” as paraphrased by Ulanowicz (1997) vs. a
nonmechanical metaphor Goerner calls “web dynamics” compatible with our principles of
holism, complexity, and Life lessons, and the propensities and conditional probabilities of
Ulanowicz, all gleaned from studies of ecosystems and networks. Redrawn from Goerner,
S.J., 1999. After the Clockwork Universe: The Emerging Science and Culture of Integral
Society. Triangle Center for Complex Systems. Chapel Hill, NC. USA. 452.pp. ISBN
9780863152900.
182 CHAPTER 7 A bridge not too far
Goerner’s analogy of the available hammer tool influencing one to see nails
everywhere is the same as one of the main ideas in this chapter—if you only have a
single dominant scientific metaphor in mind, a mechanism or machine model, then
the whole world and all problems or human needs appear as if they can be solved
using a mechanistic approach. This leads to “dysfunctional” answers, solutions, technologies,
policies, infrastructure, habits everywhere, and all the symptoms of systemic
environmental degradation we depict in Fig. 1.2 are indeed “coming home to
roost” as Goerner states. She also points to a pragmatic step for solution—we need
more “tools” available. Thus, we propose several alternative metaphors and seek to
qualify when the mechanical metaphor can be OK (as Ulanowicz noted for the
human heart) and when nonmechanical models are fully necessary.
Frances Moore Lappe´, who we have cited before for contributions to these
topics, echoes the view of Goerner just above about the lead role of ecology in
this transition of root metaphors. She wrote of the main theme of her book, which
is about “changing the way we think to create the world we want” (Lappe´, 2011):
. . .it starts with getting our thinking straight. Since we create the world according
to ideas we hold, we have to ask ourselves whether the ideas we inherit
and absorb through our cultures serve us. We can only have honest, effective
hope if the frame through which we see is an accurate representation of how
the world works. (p. 173)
Her focus on how we “create the world according to ideas we hold” matches
the fabrication, realization, and technology application mode of the Rosen modeling
relation (Fig. 7.2). Lappe´ and Rosen both are indicating how human ideas
linked to our myriad action capacities can literally form a case of “mind over
matter.” Action and agency in this Anthropocene Era starts in our individual
minds and collective intelligence and proceeds to transform the world.
Throughout her book, she shared her sense of hope that we can solve our
systemic problems, but with the qualification that “honest hope” is not just naı¨ve
idealism or optimism. A bit later, in her final chapter that included her central
concise recommendation for a solution to our interwoven social and environmental
crises—“thinking like an ecosystem” (A title clearly in homage to Aldo Leopold’s
essay, “Thinking like a Mountain”), she wrote:
Now we are realizing that ecology is not merely a particular field of science; it
is a new way of understanding life that frees us from the failing mechanical
worldview’s assumptions of separateness and scarcity. (p. 174)
Lappe´’s emphasis on separateness here matches the focus of Goerner’s
critique of simple causality above and fits with our critique of analysis as an overused
half of a full scientific process which requires synthesis for balance. Lappe´
goes into detail in her book on why ideas and fears of scarcity are connected to
this mechanical worldview and linked shared cultural story. We highly recommend
Goerner’s and Lappe´’s books as essential reading for success in the
humanÀenvironmental sustainability transformation.
183The Machine Metaphor
Capra and Luisi (2014) provide the last set of corroborating ideas for the critique
of the machine metaphor that we address here. In a comprehensive and
valuable book that shared many of the goals and methods of this book, Capra and
Luisi touch on Kuhn and the process of revolutionary scientific paradigm shifts,
the moral responsibility of scientists in addition to the intellectual responsibility
for their science, and many more profound topics. They chronicle and critique the
ideas we have inherited from Rene´ Descartes. They acknowledge and appreciate
many of the revolutionary insights and contributions of Descartes and his enormous
impact on all the science that followed. They portray Descartes as a brilliant
mathematician, an original thinker on par with Aristotle and Plato, a paradigmshifting
scientist and philosopher. The “crux of Descartes’ method,” as they saw
it, is “radical doubt.” We can see great value in continuing this practice, and we
seek, as Descartes did, to radically doubt conventional knowledge and the current
understanding of how the world works. “Radical doubt” fits comfortably alongside
our founding holistic Life science principle of radical empiricism.
They also point to ideas they say Descartes got completely wrong, although
admitting some errors were not known to be errors for hundreds of years. The
first error they note is Descartes’ “belief in the certainty of scientific knowledge”
(Capra and Luisi, 2014). This, they say, has been corrected by the results of
20th-century science from Heisenberg to Plank to Go¨del, which “has shown very
clearly that there can be no absolute scientific truth, that all our concepts and theories
are necessarily limited and approximate.” Before this more recent scientific
humility, Descartes believed that through exact mathematics, he could describe
the world perfectly. As Capra and Luisi quote Descartes as boasting, “My entire
physics is nothing other than geometry.”
To describe both his strengths and how they can turn into problems, Capra and
Luisi (2014) wrote:
Descartes’ method is analytic. It consists in breaking up thoughts and problems
into pieces and arranging these in their logical order. This analytic method of
reasoning is probably Descartes’ greatest contribution to science. It has become
an essential characteristic of modern scientific thought. . .and the realization of
complex technological projects. It was Descartes’ method that made it possible
for NASA to put a man on the moon. On the other hand, overemphasis on the
Cartesian method has led to the fragmentation that is characteristic of both our
general thinking and our academic disciplines, and to the widespread attitude
of reductionism in science. . . (p. 24)
Here, we hear again many of the same themes of our book and this chapter,
including the dangers of unbalanced analysis. On the topic of the bridge between
modes of thinking and “great” technological achievements, we must include both
the great successes like getting to the moon, and great unintended technological
side effects, like threatening the Life support capacity of Earth.
Descartes also played a key role in how we think about how we think, and
how we imagine the mental and physical realms, as in the two main arenas of
184 CHAPTER 7 A bridge not too far
Rosen’s modeling relation—the formal system and the self, and the natural system
of the world environment. Capra and Luisi wrote that from his famous starting
point, that was the rock bottom he hit after taking his radical doubt to its
extreme:
Thus he arrives at his celebrated statement, “Cogito, ergo sum” (“I think, and
therefore I exist”). From this Descartes deduces that the essence of human
nature lies in thought, and that all things we conceive clearly and distinctly are
true. (p. 24)
And soon after:
Descartes’ cogito, as it has come to be called, made mind more certain for him
than matter and led him to the conclusion that the two were separate and fundamentally
different. The Cartesian division between mind and matter has had
a profound effect on Western thought. It has taught us to be aware of ourselves
as isolated egos existing “inside” our bodies; it has led us to set a higher value
on mental than manual work. . . (p. 24)
They go on to list many ramifications of this split of mind and matter, of mental
from physical worlds, in physics, medicine, psychology, and even the marketing
of products to seekers of an “ideal body.” The dichotomy Descartes created
as the basis of his massive program of scientific and mathematical analysis bears
a striking resemblance to the modeling relation of Rosen. Capra and Luisi wrote:
Descartes based his whole view of nature on this fundamental division between
two independent and separate realms; that of mind, or res cogitans (the “thinking
thing”), and that of matter, or res extensa (the “extended thing”). Both
mind and matter were creations of God, who represented their common point
of reference, being the source of the exact natural order and the light of reason
that enable the human mind to recognize this order. (p. 24)
This division of realms and of topics of study, they tell us, led to the division
between humanities and natural sciences in nearly all educational institutions that
have followed.
Capra and Luisi also report Descartes’ role in establishing the machine metaphor
in science. They wrote:
To Descartes the material universe was a machine and nothing but a machine.
There was no purpose, life, or spirituality in matter. Nature worked according
to mechanical laws, and everything in the material world could be explained in
terms of the arrangement and movement of its parts. This mechanical picture
of nature became the dominant paradigm of science in the period following
Descartes. It guided all scientific observation and the formulation of all theories
of natural phenomena until twentieth-century physics brought about a radical
change. The whole elaboration of mechanistic science in the seventeenth,
eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries, including Newton’s grand synthesis, was
185The Machine Metaphor
but the development of the Cartesian idea. Descartes gave scientific thought its
general framework À the view of nature as a perfect machine, governed by
exact mathematical laws. (p. 25)
They next describe how this shift ignited by Descartes came after an older
worldview in which the world was seen more as a living thing than a machine.
This new view of mechanistic science, they report, also led to changes in the
value system and attitudes toward the natural environment. As they wrote:
The Cartesian view of the universe as a mechanical system provided a “scientific”
sanction for the manipulation and exploitation of nature that became typical
of modern civilization. (p. 25)
As we have noted, the interface from science to culture is a fast-acting portal,
and Capra and Luisi documented how the scientific innovations of Descartes can
be traced as actively transforming all of modern civilization and culture.
Capra and Luisi explain how Descartes also applied his machine metaphor to
all living things. “Plants and animals were considered simply machines,” and
humans could be understood as having an “animal-machine” body “inhabited by
a rational soul.” As they and we have recognized, this metaphor can be appropriate
and has yielded great achievements. The danger was in becoming too
impressed with the success; as they described it:
The Cartesian approach has been very successful, especially in biology, but it
has also limited the directions of scientific research. The problem has been that
many scientists, encouraged by their success in treating living organisms as
machines, tended to believe that they are nothing but machines. The adverse
consequences of the reductionist fallacy have become especially apparent in
medicine. . . (p. 26)
They go on to note that the limitations in this “fallacy” and shortcut of seeing living
organisms, and other natural systems, as “nothing but machines” have been
recognized in all the sciences.
This terminology from Capra and Luisi fits with our hypothesis in this chapter
that the dominant machine metaphor in science has led to a kind of amnesia, perhaps
ironically analogous to a fog induced by successive shocks to the collective
head from observing just how successful this model can be. Imagine a proverbial
hard palm slap to the forehead thousands of times—“It worked again!” Despite
the jubilant successes (albeit ones that ignored full ramifications and externalities),
we maintain with Capra and Luisi and the others we cite above, that it is a
mental mistake with grave consequences if we apply the machine model everywhere
and always while forgetting it is actually nothing but a model, and only
one of multiple available models at that.
Capra, a physicist and systems theorist recently leading work in “ecoliteracy,”
and Luisi, a biochemist who has researched the origin of Life and self-organization
of synthetic as well as natural systems, reach in their book many of the same
186 CHAPTER 7 A bridge not too far
conclusions and recommendations we make. Their book—another we add to the
required reading list for the “coming Great Change” foreseen by Goerner—employs
the metaphors and methods of systems as their central strategic approach. Their
impressive and innovative book proceeds to apply the “systems view of life” to first
biological realms, and then to cognitive and social fields, and includes a “conceptual
framework that integrates these three dimensions” via systems thinking. In their
final section of the book, they integrate “the ecological dimension in our synthesis
of the systemic conception of life.” Here and throughout the book, we see that their
approach and ours are fully complementary and compatible. Late in the book, they
echo our strategy and mindset (Capra and Luisi, 2014):
The importance of studying, within the general framework of ecology, the pervasive
influence of human activities on ecosystems, as well as the reciprocal
influence of their deterioration on human health and well-being, also makes it
clear that ecology, today, is not only a rich and fascinating area of study but is
also highly relevant to assessing, and hopefully influencing, the future fate of
humanity. One of the great challenges of our time is to build and nurture sustainable
communities, and to do so we can learn many lessons from ecosystems,
because ecosystems are, in fact, communities of plants, animals and
microorganisms that have sustained life for billions of years. (p. 342)
Among many memorable and essential ideas in this passage, note especially
that they suggest an option for another metaphor we can add to our “tool box” or
“model repertoire” for understanding how the world works, and for guiding our
interactions with it, and the technologies, applications, and behaviors we do in it.
This alternative metaphor is the community. We return to this below as one of
multiple options we propose can improve on and diversify our model repertoire
toward the ultimate goal of sustaining and aiding Life itself.
But first, another bit of fun—our anachronistic reimagination of Descartes and
the end point of his famous journey of radical doubt and inward reflection. Imagine
how his insights, and the course of history, might have changed if ecology and the
knowledge of ecosystems and the human place of interdependency in them were
already well known at the time of Descartes’ revolutionary work (somehow—perhaps
if Priestley had come before and had used people instead of mice in the sealed
chambers of his oxygen experiments!). Given this scenario of an altered knowledge
and ecological awareness context, further imagine Descartes might have applied to
thought our ideas about discrete Life and sustained Life. If in his radical doubting
and precise thinking he focused more on continuous or “sustained thought” vs a
short-term or “discrete thought” process, then he might have concluded:
I think, therefore I exist. That is, I think now, therefore I exist now. But I think only
as long as I have a steady input of oxygen, water, and food to sustain my thinking
via my life. And, after I am done thinking with aid of these vital materials, they are
transformed and expelled not so much as waste but as food for the plants and other
living beings that in turn create and supply my material needs.
187The Machine Metaphor
I think only as long as I exist in concert with the existence of these other life
forms, and vice versa.
I think, therefore, I am. . .we are. . .an ecosystem.
We could play for hours with this rewriting of history, but we move on after
noting how it helps highlight the core ideas in this chapter. With the actual historical
timeline that occurred, including deep old ideas fully operative today of the
separateness and fundamental difference of the mental and material realms, we
have seen, observed, and have mounting evidence of the actuality that the
machine metaphor threatens Life and by extension the continued thinking of
Life’s great human inventors, thinkers, and technologists. Since we have no mode
of time travel and cannot change the Cartesian fork in history, we are left to heal
this rift now and quickly remedy the situation.
Models, and ideas in general, while abstract, mutable, and unknown as to
full details of their existence and workings, have very real impacts on the world.
And, based on the necessity of a living human to create and use models and
ideas, we also know that models can help or hinder the survival of those who
think and use those models, and thus the survival of themselves as models.
Models themselves can, in a sense, live or die; they can be “fit” and effective
and thus continue to exist, or they can go extinct due to an inability to adapt to
their environment, and to evolve new forms of their own model kind. If making
the world into the machine image in mind is not working, or if the negative
social and environmental side effects have surpassed the positive benefits, then
fortunately we have powers of creativity and imagination to change our minds.
This in turn can change the world we live in and co-create, and the course of
history going forward. In fact, we assert a change in our mental model is the only
way forward to reach our goal of organizing around sustained Life, since a single
machine model is deeply incompatible with this goal. Furthermore, this change can
be more immediate than searching for an as yet unidentified technological or political
fix to right the ship to sustainability. We can begin today as we have the tools
and knowledge to do so, and following in the shadow of that transformation, the
ancillary issues will be easier to achieve. In the next section, we address some
ways that transition has begun and other suggestions to further its appearance.
OUR SYNTHESIS IDEA—WE ARE MAKING THE WORLD INTO
A MACHINE
It makes for longer reading and more time commitment, but we hope the direct
quotes of the corroborating (and some dissenting) thinkers above is worth it—we
see beauty and power in hearing the ideas expressed in the actual words of these
allies themselves. As a combined concert of voices, we hear the chorus to ring
188 CHAPTER 7 A bridge not too far
loud and true—we have taken a good thing too far, we have mistaken our favorite
model for the thing itself.
We think the growing worldwide evidence, and supporting insights from
diverse unique observers, fit with our summary story:
Based on an unbalanced, monolithic, dominant root metaphor at the foundation of the mainstream
science paradigm, which prioritizes analysis over synthesis and reductionism over holism, we are
accidentally manifesting that model, and, via the fabrication channel of Rosen’s bridge,
transforming the world through our mechanism-like technologies and industrial cultures, breaking
the cycles of nature and fragmenting humans into an adversarial role with each other and the
environment. We now realize that the world is breaking down, suffering stress and strain, and
grinding to a halt like the mechanism we have unconsciously treated it to be for hundreds of years.
To grasp this full story requires many of the plot elements we have presented
as in gestalt—the devaluation of Life, the fragmentation of Life from environment,
the unbalanced overuse of analysis, externalization of environmental costs,
and many more. The solution, then, likewise will require coordinated changes on
many fronts—really a system of solutions spanning science, technology, and culture
rather than any single solution in any one realm.
Near the end of his book, Essays on Life Itself, Rosen (2000) presented ideas
on technology and “craft” linked to the fabrication half cycle of his modeling
relation. In one section, he uses the example of a thermostat to illustrate how
application of the machine model by itself leads to a slippery slope—technology
that potentially can create more problems than it solves.
In his vignette, he describes adding a thermostat to the heating/cooling system
of a room. This provides the added function of a control signal and loop as a
“kind of dynamic insulator that closes our room from the effects of ambient temperature”
(Rosen, 2000). The common human goal and intention is to create an
intelligent device to regulate automatically the temperature of the room despite
change in the temperature outdoors. This situation calls up the general incentives
for convenience and comfort, for creating machines to do mundane and repetitive
work, thus potentially freeing up the time of people for more creative, rewarding,
fun, and enriching experiences, all of which are fine as starting points.
But, Rosen cautions and notes that adding the control loop—the material
device of the thermostat and attendant parts in the temperature regulation system—also
adds a new source of noise to the system of the room. This new noise,
which also acts like friction to add an entropic and dissipative channel to the system,
did not exist and was not an issue prior to the construction of the thermostat
loop. Rosen comments on how the thermostat “closed,” insulated, or buffered the
room and humans occupying it to the noise and friction of ambient temperature
fluctuations but at the same time opened the system to noise and friction impinging
on the thermostat and its system and parts, creating new relations and dependencies
on them. His example considers corrosion of the thermostat due to
humidity and oxygen in the room.
189Our Synthesis Idea—We Are Making the World Into a Machine
Pushing this parable further, he observes that we could add another control
loop to correct for the new source of noise, error, and friction, but quickly summarizes
that this process as a whole leads to an infinite regress—such a technological
strategy would have to add control loops forever. We propose that
Rosen’s short fable of the infinite regress and vicious cycle in this small example
of the thermostat scales up globally to help us understand the world we now see.
The layer upon layer of added control loop complexity all come with costs. Vast
energies are devoted to managing control loops far divorced from and perhaps
unaware of the original intent, leading to the proverbial situation of the “tail wagging
the dog,” taking us farther and farther from a sustained solution that exhibits
process integration and closure to efficient cause. To understand another key facet
of this situation, and how living organisms are similar yet different than the
machines in terms of their entropy production, we return to Hornborg.
Hornborg (2001) also went back to Descartes in his work to understand and
help solve the sustainability crisis and its connections to the machine. He noted
that Descartes’ machine model started as a model for a living organism. As the
story goes, Descartes saw organisms work and appear much like automata, playful
machines of his day, made to act in lifelike ways. Hornborg also addressed
another angle on this landscape of many crisscrossing metaphors. Writing about
how the metaphor of growth is confused between living systems and economics,
Hornborg (2001) gives his own answer to What is Life? which is an excellent one
that helps with the context we need for Rosen’s infinite regress of mechanical
control loops:
To clarify how organic and economic growth differ, we must consider by
which means these two kinds of “orderliness” (structure, organization) incorporate
negentropy from their environments. For organic growth, the point of
departure is the highly organized flow of energy that reaches Earth in the form
of solar radiation. Life is the process by which the negentropy of sunlight further
“informs” and animates Earth’s thin surface layer of congealed matter-asinformed-energy.
As the sun winds down by reconverting its own stock of
matter-as-informed-energy into radiation, a very small fraction of this radiation
transmitted in all directions is received by Earth and temporarily reconverted
into structure being refracted into space in the degraded form of heat. This
structure is the biosphere, a momentary, whirlpool-like by-product of the irreversible
dissipation of the sun. (p. 123)
And a bit later:
Because we can consider the input of sunlight available to the biosphere as a
practically unlimited starting point, the closest thing to genuine “production” is
photosynthesis, and plants are appropriately called “primary producers.” From
this point, each human act of energy conversion (from pasture and other crops
through meat, human labor and technology to manufactured products) entails a
net degradation of negentropy. (p. 123)
190 CHAPTER 7 A bridge not too far
Negentropy may be a heady thermodynamic term for most, and the engineer’s
usage of the concept of similar term exergy doesn’t help, but it becomes clearer
when we think of it as work energy capacity. While energy is the ability to do
work, the work done “degrades” its ability to do further work. Thus, while total
energy is conserved (first law), its capacity to do further work is not conserved
and in fact diminishes (second law), as evident in a decrease in exergy. Viewed
on one extreme, this is the origin of the dreaded heat death scenario, but that
angle omits the beauty and complexity of the LifeÀenvironment organization that
arises out the work that is done.
Hornborg contrasts this context for the operation of Life forms with machines
and industrial technology. His uses two facts to conclude that the “growth,” “production,”
and overall effects are categorically different for Life compared to machines.
We had similar conclusions in our Flourishing within Limits to Growth: following
nature’s way (Jørgensen et al., 2015). The book took an approach that limits
exist in natural systems but are not impairments to their success, complexity, diversity,
or sustainability, etc. Human systems can learn to accept and flourish within
these limits by recognizing and incorporating management strategies that consider
14 recognized ecological principles that deal mostly with energy, material, and
information flows and organization. We compared and contrasted how and when
socioeconomic systems are like ecological ones, with the following observation:
First, machines and industrial technology exploit and degrade nonrenewable and local (Earth)
resources rather than renewable sources like sunlight arriving from outside Earth. Second,
machines and industrial technology “feed on distant ecosystems by means of world trade” and thus
are not constrained by local (community, ecosystem) negative feedbacks that check growth of a
species population as its carrying capacity is reduced.
Hornborg, as well as perhaps all biologists and ecologists, recognize that living
organisms are entropic in the same basic way as machines when single units
of either are considered in isolation. Both depend on inputs of higher quality
energy, both transform energy and materials to do work, and both export
degraded and lower quality energy (among other exports). Thus, both organisms
and machines do increase the entropy of their environments as they live or operate,
respectively. However, the comparative similarity stops there, and
Hornborg’s two factors above reveal the essential distinctions.
Since the dawn of the age of Descartes and machines, we have fabricated many
units, the machine has been replicated and realized billions of times, with each unit
providing a useful function, but at the expense of increasing the entropy and degrading
the quality of the environment. We assert this is directly correlated to degradation
of planetary environment and the dozens of symptoms we depict in Fig. 1.2.
In stark and telling contrast, we do not see this same global impact with
organisms. Billions and trillions of life forms have been produced, and they have
existed and performed their individually entropic biological life functions.
However, taken as a whole, and scaled up to the global spatial extent and full
191Our Synthesis Idea—We Are Making the World Into a Machine
time history, we see just the opposite ultimate impact on the environment—all
these organisms, integrated with their ecosystemic and biospheric super-systems,
acted so as to improve the quality of the environment.
This nonentropic environmental impact is due to aspects Hornborg noted, and
the many principles we have assembled in this book—organisms and Life are different
because their primary energy source is both renewable and nonlocal to
Earth; the unique Life capacity of improving material organization over time and
via ecosystem and food web networks; material cycles and circulation aided by
the biosphere; coupled complementary processes of autotrophic and heterotrophic
forms; autocatalytic loops and their positive feedback and motive force; network
mutualism and synergism; and the capacity for sustained life. Embodying and
existing in all these ways, Life works to improve the local and planetary environment
in syntropic fashion. It is true that highly degraded waste heat energy is
emitted, but overall, Life units—in unified relation to Life itself—do work that
alters the planetary environment for the better, so that the environment can do still
more work to aid Life.
If we confuse the machine model for the world itself, and if we use living and
environmental resources inside technological systems that are built on the
machine model, then we can get more harm from the industrial systems than the
living components are able to repair. Here are four brief examples of the repeated
pattern of a short-term gain (like room temperature control) at the expense of longer
term costs (like noise and entropic degradation added from the control loop
and the incipient infinite regress of perpetual new problems):
Industrial agriculture—The “green revolution,” gas powered mechanical
plows and harvesters, genetically modified crops, nitrogen and other
fertilizers, and many other machine advances have increased the amount of
food we can produce in any given year on any given hectare. But this comes
at the expense of degrading the necessary environmental basis for food
production in the future—stable climate, healthy soils, species diversity,
pollinator insects, and more.
Industrial food system—We likely now have more foods of more varieties
available in more places than ever before. These are more convenient and less
expensive (when considering money and market-assigned food costs as they
currently exist, which are dysfunctional for communicating anything close to a
“true cost” considered holistically). Yet, by many holistic studies, we are burning
about 10 units of fossil fuel energy for every one unit of dietary energy delivered
to a person. We also have huge problems with diet-related diseases and health
degradation in industrial cultures like the United States In many places, obesity is
a problem as expensive as, and causing harm similarly as negative as, hunger.
Industrial medicine—Using the machine metaphor beyond those cases that are
appropriate, mechanistic medicine and its linked pharmaceutical industry have
added an infinite series of treatments and pills (like control loops trying to
regulate health) while the noise, system degradation, costs, and attempts at
192 CHAPTER 7 A bridge not too far
still more silver bullet micro-solutions all spiral out of control. This arena of
mechanistic science and technology is also paradoxical. The whole enterprise
treats individual human organisms as if they are “nothing but machines,”
working to swap out damaged or worn out parts or fluids, and to graft in new
and technologically improved parts, but it also seeks to extend the lifespan
and perhaps ultimately defeat death entirely. In so doing, this collective
enterprise at times seems to have forgotten that all organisms die and all
machines wear out and break down.
Industrial education and media—While the internet has been heralded as the
backbone of the new Age of Information, and a new chapter in the history of
modern education, during its recent explosion in use we have seen an erosion
in understanding, civility, and democracy. Many universities provide massive
online courses for free; huge collections of knowledge are available to answer
questions in an instant, and world news is updated by the second, instantly,
everywhere. And yet, we would be hard-pressed to say that knowledge,
intelligence, or wisdom have actually increased. We are learning now that the
brute force work of moving information around does not necessarily link to
human mental, emotional, and spiritual processes of making sense of it and
using it for the good of self and community.
If these examples show the unintended consequences of a single dominant
machine metaphor in science, technology, and culture and also reveal the fluid
conduit by which the machine metaphor as idea has power to transform the physical,
material world and threaten all Life forms, then what strategy can work
toward a holistic system of solutions able to affirm Life value and maintain Life
itself and its environment context for being?
One of the best strategies we have sought to employ, and now recommend for
the challenge at hand, is dialectical thinking as characterized by Peter Elbow.
Working in the humanities, engaged with teaching literature and writing, and
understanding learning, Elbow’s brilliant approach employs models in a constructivist
framework. In the passages below, Elbow (1986) grappled with the “structural
difficulty inherent in knowing,” which we see to apply to our current world
situation. Not only have our own best modern ideas seemingly backfired and
turned against us, but also we are in the predicament of trying to use a science
still locked in the mechanistic worldview to diagnose, understand, and prescribe
remedies for its own self-caused afflictions. This extended quote by Elbow (1986)
addresses related issues. Just after addressing how observers can alter their own
experiments, and confusions about objective vs subjective knowledge, he wrote:
This epistemological dilemma has shown up particularly vividly in particle
physics. Physicists cannot get information about a particle alone. They can
only get a package of information about the interaction of the particle and the
“observer” (i.e., the equipment). They can know the velocity of a particle, but
not its location, or its location but not its velocity; but they cannot know both.
193Our Synthesis Idea—We Are Making the World Into a Machine
The dialectical pattern of thinking provides some relief from this structural difficulty
inherent in knowing. Since perception and cognition are processes in
which the organism “constructs” what it sees or thinks according to models
already there, the organism tends to throw away or distort material that does
not fit this model. The surest way to get hold of what your present frame blinds
you to is to try to adopt the opposite frame, that is, to reverse your model. A
person who can live with contradiction and exploit it À who can use conflicting
models À can simply see and think more. (p. 241)
Elbow here provides a view of a new more self-conscious access to the model
we use and tells the reward for employing at least one additional model to our
most cherished one—this more flexible use of models allows us to see, think, and
know more. He went on to describe even greater benefits—this same dialectic
thinking can assist with revolutionary shifts, transformation in systems of ideas
and structured ways of thinking. Two pages later, he wrote:
Searching for contradiction and affirming both sides can allow you to find both
the limitations of the system in which you are working and a way to break out
of it. If you find contradictions and try too quickly to get rid of them, you are
only neatening up, even strengthening, the system you are in. To actually get
beyond that system you need to find the deepest contradictions and, instead of
trying to reconcile them, heighten them by affirming both sides. And if you
can nurture the contradictions cleverly enough, you can be led to a new system
with a wider frame of reference, one that includes the two elements which
were felt as contradictory in the old frame of reference. (p. 243)
He continues with a description of how this breaking out of one system to find a
new and wider frame of reference fits with the way Einstein transformed the inherited
classical science based on Newtonian mechanics. Elbow wrote about an early
example of this method of “embracing contraries” in Geoffrey Chaucer’s work. In
The Knight’s Tale, “Chaucer uses contradiction . . . to uncover the limitations of the
system in which he is working (chivalry) . . .” and “. . . to suggest a new, larger system”
of values. This new larger system expands into a broader set of capacities
beyond chivalrous “courage, loyalty, honor” to include “feeling for others, humor,
irony, forgiveness, the ability to change one’s mind, and the ability to grow and
change through suffering instead of just socially enduring it” (Elbow, 1986).
We borrowed this dialectical method to get to the ideas in Chapter 1—rather
than “neatening up” the current cultural and academic system that pits those
focused on sustainability against those focused on growth and development, we
sought to amplify the contradictions and find a wider frame in which the two
schools of thought, previously seen as contradictory, are both valid and potentially
complementary. This general pattern also aided our work on discrete vs sustained
Life, and it matches the thesis, antithesis, synthesis approach of Hegel.
In the introduction to his book, Embracing Contraries, Elbow (1986) wrote of
aspects of his quest to understand fundamental dynamics in teaching and learning.
194 CHAPTER 7 A bridge not too far
Introducing the book, and describing what he had learned about his own development
along the way, he wrote:
A hunger for coherence; yet a hunger also to be true to the natural incoherence
of experience. This dilemma has led me more often than I had realized to work
things out in terms of contraries: to gravitate toward oppositions and even to
exaggerate differences À while also tending to notice how both sides of the
opposition might somehow be right. My instinct has thus made me seek ways
to avoid the limitations of the single point of view. And it has led me to the
commonsense view that surely there cannot be only one right way to learn and
teach: looking around us we see too many diverse forms of success. Yet,
surely, the issues cannot be hopelessly relative: there must be principles that
we must satisfy to produce good learning and teaching À however diverse the
ways in which people satisfy them. (p. x)
Following Elbow’s inspiration, we move next not to a single alternative root
metaphor for science, and not to a single prescription for how to bridge holistic
Life science to a holistic Life technology able to achieve humanÀenvironmental
sustainability. Instead, we present a multitude of alternative metaphors for the
world and its workings which we hope may help stimulate “many diverse forms
of success” in new ways of modeling and developing technologies and
applications.
FROM MONO-METAPHOR TO POLY-METAPHORS:
BLOSSOMING DIVERSITY IN THE TOOLKIT FOR LIFE SCIENCE
As we were drafting this chapter, one of us (Fiscus) had a father in heart surgery.
The machine metaphor and the science around it, the vast enterprise that has
grown and developed for centuries, has led today, among scores of other successes
globally, to an 82-year-old man receiving the aortic heart valve made from
cow heart tissue combined with mechanical parts to replace his own failing valve.
The surgery was successful, and hopes are that Wilbur Guy Fiscus will benefit
from many more years of life, and better quality of life unhindered by limited
physical capacity, shortness of breath, and occasional heart failure in times of illness.
In very personal, as well as scientific and philosophical aspects, we are not
interested to discard the machine metaphor or mechanistic science as a whole.
We do hope to suggest pathways for future innovation so that the gains accrue
not only to fortunate individuals and their families, but also to all humanity, all
Life, and all corners of our entire planetary home. While the machine metaphor
works well for mending a human heart that is similar to a pump, we must honestly
admit that this same heroic metaphor is terribly bad for addressing a broken
heart from the complexities of human relations—since the control levers are so
multitude and diffuse—let alone its ability to apply to Life as a whole including
195From Mono-Metaphor to Poly-Metaphors
the intricacy of the biosphere with all its sentient beings, communities of diverse
Life forms, interwoven webs of relations, and branching networks and loops of
interdependencies.
As we propose a range of metaphors—like lenses of varying foci, or colored
wavelengths of light that coalesce into what our everyday eyes see as visible
white light—we build on all the principles of holistic science (Chapter 5), all the
Life lessons (Chapter 6), and other core concepts we have covered. We don’t
need to review many of those here, but we do mention two topics again.
Given that we seek alternatives to the machine, a key property of the holistic
Life metaphors we suggest relates to the internalism that von Forster et al.
employed in their quest to develop a bridge for understanding nonhuman, very
alien, but potentially autonomous beings in the cybernetic and artificial intelligences
they sought to create and with which they sought to build pragmatic relationships.
This same internalist approach was promoted by Salthe et al. toward
better understanding of complex, hierarchical living systems.
Internalism helps to correct a profound liability of the machine metaphor that
relates to the distinction between instrumental value and intrinsic value. A
machine, such as a hammer, car, rocket ship, or other tool, has instrumental
value—it is primarily a thing used to achieve some other end or purpose. This
assumption of instrumental value is appropriate for true machines and tools, but
highly problematic in nearly all other cases. All of the metaphors we suggest next
are the opposite—these modes permit a view to see living things and the world
not as instruments to achieve some other purpose, but primarily as beings with
value in and of themselves. By extension, the task becomes not a project to use
the world or any “other” to our own selfish ends, but to relate to and coexist with
the world as a valued and respected “other,” ambience, fellow community member,
ally, and/or home.
The second topic we recall to guide the bridge between science and technology
is the dichotomy between Sustainers and Transcenders. Since we have
described these as fundamentally different worldviews and approaches to the current
humanÀenvironment crisis, we recommend an initial step to clarify and
choose consciously the worldview and associated cultural program within which
one plans to operate. The crux difference, again, is that Transcenders may accept
the idea of environmental limits, but their response is to transcend those limits, to
innovate, grow, develop and use human technology, ingenuity, industry, and all
capacities to alter the environment in any ways needed to allow continued human
growth, development, increase, and expansion. Sustainers interpret signals and act
categorically differently. They accept the idea of environmental limits, but their
response is to live within those limits and to focus solutions and efforts for
change on finding a “prosperous way down.” This phrase from Odum and Odum
(2001) describes the descent or “soft landing” by which industrial culture reduces
its energy use, materials extraction, waste emissions, global footprint, and consumptive
ways while also increasing quality of life, freedom, social equality, and
economic equity for people.
196 CHAPTER 7 A bridge not too far
Some distinctions can help to describe the differences in the bridge between
science and technology, and the technology and applications, for these two hypothetical
camps. The Transcenders are likely to continue to need and benefit from
the machine metaphor and mechanistic science and technology. The most obvious
example of this is the space exploration, space travel, space stations, and eventual
space colonization program that is ostensibly led by the Transcender faction.
(Also, recall that while we have posed these factions as truly different and important
to separate, we also pose them as fully interdependent, complementary, and
both needed in Life as well as human Life.) But, other projects under the
Transcender banner will likely continue to benefit from machines; ideally, these
would be used mostly for those purposes and cases where the machine metaphor
is most beneficial and with fewest negative side effects, like the human heart as
pump scenario and many more. Continued use of machines—like a blend of trying
to sustain the Transcender program—would require creativity, discovery, and
substitution as materials and energy sources run out, and negative side effects
accumulate. Or, perhaps conversion of machines to run on (and with manufacture
based on) renewable energy and recycling materials processes will be adopted as
a hybrid way to sustain the use of entropic machines as long as possible. As we
have seen, continued use of the machine metaphor and mechanistic technology
will also require attention to costs and repair of environmental degradation.
The new candidate root metaphors we describe next are primarily intended
for use in the Sustainer program. This effort, as we have justified in this book,
is now the appropriate main mode of action for Life on Earth. As such, the
lenses and colorful diversity of approaches we propose—not just rose-colored
glasses of naı¨ve idealism but also a suite of radically empirical views to help us
see and achieve pragmatic transformation—are nonmechanistic metaphors and
ways of framing systems of study, research and development projects, technological
applications, education, and more. Individually, and as a whole, these
metaphors and the “bridge” they form in concert are inspired by Life—Life
itself, Life as a unified whole, Life-and-environment in winÀwin and mutually
beneficial relation.
If the Sustainers and Transcenders can achieve a synergistic peace accord,
then we look forward to ultimate success, truly grand human and Life achievements,
on both fronts. Life will be Sustained and the corner turned quickly so that
environment and Life support systems begin immediately to heal and regeneration
proceeds quickly. And, we continue to Transcend those appropriate and challenging
limitations as inspired by the spirit of exploration, discovery, and creativity.
Clarified thinking and full cooperation will be required, as continued fighting
drains essential resources, delays progress, creates new unnecessary problems,
and threatens both programs with failure. Discord thus threatens Life in both its
Earth and beyond-Earth potential futures.
Rosen confronted the machine metaphor as limited by an “impoverishment of
entailment,” and he described how and why this makes questions like What is
Life? impossible to answer using the mechanistic paradigm. We likewise
197From Mono-Metaphor to Poly-Metaphors
confronted the sustainability crisis and problem of humans-in-the-environment
and see the mechanistic paradigm unable to provide effective answers or solutions.
Rosen also showed how relational modeling inspired by biology is better
and has a richer and more general capacity to understand and describe entailment.
His model for organismal Life had a nonmechanistic feature of closure to efficient
cause, and he also described ways in which life forms are built in ways that differ
from machine construction (see his example of a bird and bird wing compared to
an airplane and airplane wing; Rosen, 1991, 2000). Aspects of complex causality
and entailment including self-reference, impredicativity, ambiguity, and inclusion
of efficient, formal, and final causes are all features in the metaphors we list next.
Rosen also suggested that relational biology is more generic, more widely applicable
than the mechanical paradigm, which he saw as only applicable to rare,
constrained, special, and artificial cases. If this insight holds true, in addition to
opening vistas and projects to achieve humanÀenvironmental sustainable, then
the science and technology able to resolve the paradox of human action in the
environment should lead to new leaps forward in science itself.
Our candidates for new root metaphors as guide to technology and application
for holistic Life sustainability are:
1. Life—Organism (but not alone), ecosystem, biosphere, Life itself. This
metaphor applies to any living system, and we urge use of all holistic Life
science aspects as above in this book. As applied to physical and material
subsets of the universe, this approach to use Life as metaphor can focus on
Life support (atmosphere, oceans, hydrological cycle, geological processes,
etc.). It can also be useful to understand and inform those capacities inherent
in the physical-material universe that are lifelike or hold potential to aid, as
well as threaten, Life. These include self-organization at multiple scales,
interplay between solar (or stellar) radiation and planetary gravity, ways in
which energy can be seen to relate to information, etc.
2. Network, web, or ecosystem—As we have seen, the network metaphor and
model, as employed in ecological network analysis and network environ
analysis, has yielded multiple insights and discoveries of how Life is
organized, functions, and successfully achieved self-sustained operation over
millions and billions of years. Goerner employs the web version of this
metaphor often. And, many references to the ecosystem metaphor are used
now—people speak of the “healthcare ecosystem,” “media ecosystem” and
many other cases where diverse participants interact and coexist.
3. Community—Closely aligned with the ecological metaphors just above, the
community is useful in its accessibility in the sense of a human community.
Many people can grasp how dynamics in a human community (which also
apply to other Life communities) depend on a diversity of roles, complex
webs of interdependency, resolution of conflicts, achievement of synergy, and
many more nonmechanistic and fully necessary Life-affirming capacities and
attributes. Ironically, the early colonial days in America were characterized by
198 CHAPTER 7 A bridge not too far
the rugged individualist. And, while there is no doubt some of those
individuals existed, the real success of the small frontier town rested on
community and the functioning of roles and responsibilities in that ecosystem
(in both the natural and organizational sense). Success of small town America
is often, reductionistically, attributed to a lack of government regulations
which meant that unencumbered free market principles controlled decisions.
This revisionist history overlooks the role of the community in these
communities. Each small town had one baker, one butcher, one candlestick
maker, etc., because those were essential products for survival. Each was a
monopoly, but prices were constrained by a community embrace not an
invisible hand. In a truly local economy, what good does it do for the butcher
to raise prices? First, there is no hiding in a community so that there are
immediate personal condemnations, but even from an economic perspective,
the price hikes return as the other businesses raise theirs in a pointless
inflationary exercise. Community relations can be extended beyond
peopleÀpeople and peopleÀgroup interactions to include the
peopleÀenvironment ones, such that local place and resources—plants,
animals, streams, and hills—take on real meaning and relations.
4. Family—Yet another slight modification on 2 and 3, and again well suited to
striking a chord of awareness with people. It has become more commonly
known that all humans form a single family of related kin (or, in biological
taxonomy, a species), all descended from the first Homo sapiens. This
metaphor can extend beyond humans to Life as we see the same unifying
kinship and relation as we continue to understand how all Life has descended
from original Life forms. Another positive attribute of the family metaphor is
that it helps with awareness that race is an artificial division with no
meaningful implications for any differences in rights, treatment, or equality
among unified family members.
5. Mind—This metaphor borrows from Gregory Bateson and others who focus
on the inherent intelligence, or capacity for information and intelligence, in
the natural world and the universe. This metaphor has grown via pathbreaking
work of scientists like Jane Goodall who helped us better get inside
the mind of chimpanzees and our other great ape relatives. It may be useful in
scaling up to imagine how individual minds, unique and diverse intelligence
of many individual people, can combine to form collective intelligence even
greater than the sum of the “parts” as in contributing minds. This positive
outcome would help to counteract some aggregation problems we see now
such that national governments may be more fearful and militaristic than the
many compassionate, generous, and kind individuals in the country as a
whole. The same might be said of paradoxical lack of intelligence, wisdom,
and capacity for decision-making of the US government despite the myriad
skills and mental prowess of its individual members.
6. System—This is the most abstract nonmechanistic metaphor, but very useful
as Capra and Luisi, the fields of systems ecology and general systems, and
199From Mono-Metaphor to Poly-Metaphors
many more have shown. Systems are excellent in their flexibility and
adaptability—their abstract nature allows them to fit to ecosystems, social
systems, economies, corporations, cultures, cities, states, and many more
organizations in need of modeling, understanding, and guidance for
sustainability. We could include holons in this category, too. By design, this
metaphor is holistic, looking for leverage points and anticipating unwanted
consequences.
7. Sacred—Our only transcendental metaphor, we see potentially great value in
using a metaphor based on ideas of a higher power when interacting with
either living or nonliving subsets of reality. This metaphor would be useful by
acknowledging mystery, the unknown, and those areas that may be inherently
unknowable to humans. As with Schweitzer’s reverence for Life ethic, this
metaphor would involve approaching any system of study, research,
development, or technology with humility and respect for that system as a
creation of a supreme being (or at any rate, a creation of something other than
humans). Clearly, this metaphor would be best if nondenominational, and thus
it would also face challenges due to different religions and spiritual traditions.
However, we see the potential benefits to outweigh the risks or downsides
(albeit requiring great wisdom and tolerance). Examples of generic principles
amenable to such modeling of “world as God” (or godlike) include creator/
destroyer (or creation/destruction) aspects inherent in all systems.
Panentheism is an interesting example approach that sees such normally
godlike capacities in everything, or one could say unfractioned unity between
God and the universe (Shani, 2014). Bob Ulanowicz has also written of
ecology as a “natural middle” between spiritual and material approaches to
understanding the world.
We also see these metaphors as useful to blend and mix as needed—they can
be modified with multimetaphor, hierarchical combinations, nested arrangements,
or other hybrid metaphors to suit studies or applications as needed. Any of the
above nonmechanistic metaphors can be combined, and we can combine any of
the above with the machine metaphor. We are also aware of others that could be
added to this list—fractal, forest (as in the story, “The Word for World is Forest”
by Ursula K. LeGuin), relation or relationship, lover, and self (as in the book,
World as Lover, World as Self by Joanna Macy), and the Tao are a few more
examples of models focused on things or entities. We could also add learning,
inquiry, dialogue, conversation, and relationship as holistic nonmechanistic metaphors
focused on change and process rather than object or objective.
SUMMARY AND STEPS TOWARD CHAPTER 8
Our preceding Chapters 3À6 were efforts to propose a holistic Life science, and
Chapter 8, which comes next, is our outline of technology and applications able
200 CHAPTER 7 A bridge not too far
to truly solve the humanÀenvironmental sustainability problem. In this chapter,
we have proposed a necessary holistic bridge to unify the science and the applications,
like a means to integrate thought and action so that both are tuned individually
and harmonious in concert to serve Life and benefit humanity. As with most
other topics in this book, we have been informed and inspired by Life itself in all
of this work.
While we could have included this example below in Chapter 4, on holistic
concepts of Life’s essential nature and origin, we can use it now to help summarize
our current discussion. Alf Hornborg, though primarily an anthropologist and
human ecologist as stated above, also provided an answer to What is Life? He
wrote (Hornborg, 2001):
Life is the process by which the negentropy of sunlight further “informs” and animates
Earth’s thin surface layer of congealed matter-as-informed-energy. (p. 123)
This is a useful short answer and it unifies the major principles of ecosystem
ecology—energy flow and material cycling. It also fits with the complementarity
of ecological goal functions, and with our quest in this chapter for a Life system
with intelligence that integrates matter, energy, information, and self-sustaining
behavior all in concert with the natural operating principles of the planetary and
solar system environmental context.
We have mentioned before two additional models that match this ultimate
objective of intelligent, holistic, unified thought-action, like unified sciencetechnology.
Odum (1971) wrote that his own scenario for an ecological origin of
Life was an example of a “choice-loop-selector.” Bateson also wrote of a “trialand-error
system” as linked to both a unit of survival (and Life, and evolution)
and as a unit of mind (Grossinger, 1978). Bateson later (1988) contributed a list
of criteria by which a system could be determined to qualify as a “mind”, and
thus, require treatment as such. His criteria overlap with many of our principles,
and they include “interaction between parts of mind are triggered by difference,”
“mental process requires collateral energy,” “mental process requires circular
chains of determination,” and more. He then wrote of his list:
I shall argue that the phenomena which we call thought, evolution, ecology, life,
learning, and the like occur only in systems that satisfy these criteria. (p. 98)
Hornborg, Odum, Bateson, and we envision the potential for humans to mimic
this full integration of mind, learning, environmental context, and Life-affirming
thought and action. These three independent views are mutually corroborating
and they also help support our idea that Life’s great intelligence and capacity
includes the ability to improve the environment over time so that the environment
is better able to support Life. This ultimate outcome of Life’s integrated
intelligence-action is clearly nonmechanistic—no machine is able to leave its
environment in better condition. All machines export degraded energy and materials
and leave the environment with greater entropy over time. Machines are very
useful, but not for the systemic task we have at hand.
201Summary and Steps Toward Chapter 8
Another important topic relates to final cause. Some researchers and thinkers
treat entropy production and the second law of thermodynamics as if these provide
an appropriate final cause for Life and humans as well. While we accept that
entropy increases in a closed system as required by the second law, we also see a
concomitant self-organization and negentropic process always involved as well.
Ulanowicz (personal communication) has written that while it is true that you
cannot do work without dissipation, the inverse is also true—dissipation cannot
occur without associated work being done and orderliness increasing. These two
tendencies appear unfractionable and in dialectical and complementary coexistence.
It thus seems possible that syntropy, negentropy, and self-organization
could be equal to, and at times even greater than, entropy and dissipation.
We think the hope and optimism required, as well as the pragmatic science
and technology for implementation of the solutions, call for some other ideas of
final cause for Life and humanity beyond merely aiding entropy. To learn and
evolve; to nurture, sustain, and develop Life on Earth; and to strive to extend Life
beyond Earth—these are ultimate or final causes that go far beyond machines and
the entropy they inevitably produce.
When we integrate our Life value and Transcender/Sustainer typology, we
could build on Hornborg and say that Life is the process of harnessing sunlight so
as to continually inform and improve matter to both sustain Life on Earth and
work toward the potential to Transcend the Earth and colonize Life beyond Earth.
Any industrial process, and any scientific, economic, or cultural system, that
harms or threatens these core Life projects must be seen as ultimately detrimental
to Life and humanity. Any proximate or currently accepted ideas of benefit (like
profit, fame, or power) from such Life-degrading enterprise must be seen as
delusional, dysfunctional, unjust, and in need of immediate remedy. A recently
discussed idea, including a patent for which Walmart has filed, to create robotic
micro-drones to do pollination services in place of bees that are now declining
provides one of many examples that help us make our case (Hetherington, 2018).
Andy Clark, a philosopher and cognitive scientist, developed and has promoted
the idea of the “extended mind” that is compatible with our vision of ecological
intelligence that extends into human culture. His idea is based on his
awareness that cell phones, calendars, tools and even people, books, and academic
talks all can serve to allow us to think thoughts we could not think without these
natural extensions of our minds. MacFarquhar (2018) reported on Clark’s recent
ideas and advancements including his status as “one of the most cited philosophers
alive” whose ideas have influenced fields of neuroscience, psychology, linguistics,
artificial intelligence, robotics, and more. The original 1995 paper, “The
Extended Mind,” he co-authored with David Chalmers. Just after publishing it,
Clark “began thinking that the extended mind had ethical dimensions as well.”
(MacFarquhar, 2018). She elaborated on this aspect of Clark’s work:
If a person’s thought was intimately linked to her surroundings, then destroying
a person’s surroundings could be as damaging and reprehensible as a bodily
202 CHAPTER 7 A bridge not too far
attack. If certain kinds of thought required devices like paper and pens, then
the kind of poverty that precluded them looked as debilitating as a brain lesion.
Moreover, by emphasizing how thoroughly everyone was dependent on the
structure of his or her world, it showed how disabled people who were dependent
on things like ramps were no different from anybody else. Some theorists
had argued that disability was often a feature less of a person than of a built
environment that failed to take some needs into account; the extended-mind
thesis showed how clearly this was so.
We see our current suite of systemic environmental problems as a similar
form of “disability” in our built environments, thus also implicating the science
and technology that helped construct them.
Clark also interestingly admitted that his extended mind theory isn’t primarily a
factual claim—“you can make a case either way.” MacFarquhar (2018) reports,
“No, it’s more a way of thinking about what sort of creature a human is.” Our holistic
Life science and the nonmechanistic bridge to technology may also be more
about “a way of thinking”—not really an argument, and with no absolute right or
wrong decidability. But, we have presented multiple new metaphors from which to
choose with evidence of their utility and help, different costs and benefits, and
potential to yield different ultimate outcomes. Much like scenarios, these alternative
ways of thinking can provide a structured and systematic way to consider the
future and to help us in choosing positive futures and avoiding negative ones.
The choice and the alternative path it implies do not come without significant
costs as well. Not only must we accept, adopt, and work with the death of individuals
as normal and natural, but we must also become almost schizophrenic in
the sense of having at least two senses of self. The first self is the current and traditional
idea of the human self as bounded by our skin—an individual person as
an instance of discrete Life, with a finite life span, with a certain death ahead,
and who, like a machine, must succumb to the second law of thermodynamics.
But, a second necessary self is the ecosystemic, biospheric, or “ecological self”
(Arne Næss term) of sustained Life. By identifying with sustained Life, that need
not decay or end, that can and has lived on for billions of years, we gain the
power to make a new kind of choice based on the newly elevated value of Life.
We can choose to serve Life and its improvement in quality and order even as
this process leads to sacrifice and decay of our individual selves.
We next describe the technology and applications including the qualities in
them we seek for sustainability, and we present case studies that demonstrate
these qualities in action. As we continue to understand the Anthropocene Era in
which humans now shape the planet more than geological forces, the stakes
increase that we shape the planet for the better. Life, mind, and their extensions
into human culture can in some real ways be more powerful than the physics and
chemistry of matter. As we accept such awesome responsibility, successful planetary
stewardship will require courageous choices, great creativity, and many more
of the best traits that we have developed as humans.
203Summary and Steps Toward Chapter 8
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CHAPTER
8Technology and applications
in the context of holistic
lifeÀenvironment
INTRODUCTION
In this chapter, we look at technology and applications with break-through capacity
to contribute solutions to the systemic humanÀenvironment problem. We
focus on existing examples and case studies as these provide specific information
and context by which to discuss successful instances of translating holistic Life
science into real-world projects, systems, and creations. Not that we pretend to be
science-fiction writers, but we also discuss several potential or hypothetical applications
and technology beyond what exists now, knowing that history has shown
often technologies are anticipated in such a manner.
Our first distinction is between (1) applications and technologies that explicitly
use the value and philosophical foundations and holistic Life science we have
presented versus (2) those that are compatible to varying degrees and successful
with pushing humanÀenvironment relations toward winÀwin outcomes. Of
course, there is a sundry of other technologies available that do not honor the
LifeÀenvironment principles, many fall into the category of geo-engineering
(e.g., seeding the oceans to promote algae growth for carbon sequestration, or
release of stratospheric sulfur aerosols to induce global dimming)—all of which
employ a machine metaphor without full accounting of unintended consequences.
We do not address those technologies here since they are inconsistent with the
aims of the LifeÀenvironment perspective.
The first category of applications and technologies fully founded and based on
holistic Life science has very few examples (but see below for closely compatible
examples). In making this distinction, we are strict in requiring near total overlap
with our major conceptual framework, six principles, and seven Life lessons. In
many ways, since this school of thought and paradigm is new, it is most likely to
exist and operate in the realm of education or research rather applications and
technology. The few examples of which we are aware include the continuing scientific
and written works of Patten, Ulanowicz, and Goerner. The main organization
we can cite is the Research Alliance for Regenerative Economics. Even
these, our closest collaborators, allies and like-minded folks, and ourselves
included, do not have, as well as utilize, several resources which we see as necessary—for
example, new textbooks with a different conceptual approach to the
Foundations for Sustainability. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-12-811460-5.00008-X
Copyright © 2019 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
205
origin of Life and the answer to “What is Life?”. Also needed are new textbooks,
dictionary definitions, and references that begin the study of Life science with an
understanding of the full integration of LifeÀenvironment and the essential
winÀwin relation such that environmental quality improves over time. We hope
that this book can serve as one starting point and, by integrating other holistic
Life science works, can help with the processes of generating these necessary
educational resources soon.
The second category includes options that share a very high degree of overlap
with holistic LifeÀenvironment science in the concepts, values, metaphysic, science,
and educational programs. The Center for Ecoliteracy and Schumacher
College are two leading examples in this category.
This chapter will NOT be about “low-hanging fruit”—the common environmentalist
approach of seeking primarily those changes that are easy, inexpensive,
and require minimal effort, such as changing light bulbs, increasing fuel efficiency
for cars, etc. Instead, we seek to focus on and work at the level of the
“deep tangled root” (Fiscus, 2013) to transform the model, template, image,
vision, and mission of technology itself, not merely to tweak it cleverly for profit,
incremental improvement, or worse, a false “feel-good” sense of accomplishment.
These are all examples of reducing unsustainability but not necessarily becoming
truly sustainable. Furthermore, there is much evidence and many papers written
about the rebound effect that such incremental improvements actually increase
resource use and environmental degradation over the long run. Technologies that
provide greater efficiencies are typically not used only to produce the same
amount with fewer inputs but to produce more with the same inputs, until positive
feedbacks reinforce even greater uses of the technology and resources. In fact, in
a nutshell, this is the story of growth in civilization (particularly since the industrial/fossil
fuel revolution). Our cause is against powerful forces, but our aim is
not simply at minor tweaks that are just “neatening up” the system but rather
breaking out of the paradox completely (Elbow, 1986). Another tree in the forest
improves the overall health of the forest ecosystem by organically fitting into it
LifeÀenvironment context. How can humans do the same?
While only partly overlapping in stated or explicit terms with our foundations
in this book, many organizations, individuals, groups, and agencies are doing
excellent work in applications and technology. The general principles, qualities,
and unique features of a holistic Life-affirming technology include the following:
1. Unlike machines and technology based on the scientific machine metaphor,
holistic Life technology will result in net improvement in the material and
energetic capacity of the environment to support Life. While the machine
metaphor can work at times, no subset of Life on Earth is actually machine,
and thus nothing is simple for science or modeling. We must relate to and
manage all LifeÀenvironment systems differently, and we must treat them as
complex in the sense of Rosen and use multiple and nonmechanistic models
as described in Chapter 7.
206 CHAPTER 8 Context of holistic lifeÀenvironment
2. Similarly, holistic Life technology will lead to a net increase in the orderliness
of the natural and built environment and thus tend toward increased syntropy
and decreased entropy. This effect is achieved primarily by (1) operation
based on renewable energy; (2) systems with a very high degree of material
recycling; (3) mimicry of the other processes, principles, and holistic
relationships integrating organisms, ecosystems, biosphere, and environment
as we have described in this book and our prior book (Jørgensen et al., 2015);
and (4) whole system network connections that result in process couplings. An
observable change related to points 1 and 2 is that holistic Life technology
will result in an increase in functional gradients in environmental systems just
as we see Life systems to build functional gradients in vertical profiles in
soils, concentrations of atmospheric gases, very high levels of diversity, and
surplus energy as in fossil fuels.
3. Holistic Life technology is anticipatory and serves long-term goals and
ultimate Life value by protecting Life and its essential environmental context.
In the near term, it will also enable and catalyze a transition during which
past environmental damage is restored and regenerated.
4. Holistic Life technology is self-referential and uses an internalist orientation
to account for its own impacts on the environment, to conserve and plan for
its own needed inputs and waste emitting capacities, and to treat other living
systems and the environment as having inherent value and autonomy. Thus,
holistic Life technology not only helps sustain Life but also sustains itself, and
the science that supports it. Internalism is important, too, in that we
understand that we are not outside (not really objective), and we are not able
to control any system of study when that system is autonomous. This new
orientation requires new ideas, methods, applications, and technologies that
get beyond the ideas and goals of control, having power over, and treating
LifeÀenvironment as purely of instrumental value. This can include
cooperation, synergy, biomimicry, mutualism, interdependence, community,
coevolution, winÀwin relations, and more.
The applications and technology we propose, and for which we discuss existing
case studies below, also will integrate the six principles of holistic Life science
and the seven Life lessons in the supporting holistic science that develops
and serves to refine, modify, upgrade, and evolve the technologies going forward.
While technology that reverses the current trend of damage and degradation to
the environment of existing industrial technology is an ideal, we have shown that
it is not naively idealistic, romanticized, or unobtainable. In Chapter 3, we have
shown solid evidence that a net result of environmental improvement over time is
not only possible but is also the norm for Life systems. Self-organizing, selfsustaining,
and self-enhancing impact on atmosphere, soils, biodiversity, and
those deposits that became fossil fuels—all of these prove that it is fully and practically
possible to operate a large scale, complex Life system while continually
preserving and enhancing the Life support capacity of the planet.
207Introduction
In Chapter 7, we also presented an explanatory narrative that what we see
now—the degradation of atmosphere and soils, the destruction of biodiversity, the
depletion of fossil fuels—symptoms analogous to “breaking down,” “wearing
out,” and “running of out gas”—are symptoms that apply primarily to machines.
As such, these symptoms make most sense as observations of the living world
when we realize they have been generated by humans, by our single-minded
application of the machine metaphor in science and technology. This creates a
vicious cycle in that we observe outcomes emanating from the worldview which
to now only reinforces the worldview to double down on machine metaphor solutions.
These symptoms of systemic decay we see now make no sense as observations
of healthy LifeÀenvironment systems, which naturally do the opposite.
The fact that the closely intertwined scientific, technological, cultural, and environmental
realms all mold each other, while problematic in the recent past and
present, can be of benefit in the future. By transforming science as with the new
foundations in this book, and transforming the bridges to technology and culture,
we can begin the systemic change, Great Change, and Great Transition processes
we need to eventually heal our relation to the environment. This will depend on
science and technology in which we no longer have such extreme imbalance
between analysis and synthesis and no longer treat the world as a machine. These
changes will allow our planetary home to restore its own natural Life processes
including the essential winÀwin LifeÀenvironment relationship. If fully developed
and tested, then this holistic Life technology we propose has the added benefit of
making it possible to develop sustainable and self-enhancing Life support systems
off-Earth—during space travel, on space stations, and for colonizing other planets.
HOLISTIC LIFE TECHNOLOGIES DIFFER FOR SUSTAINERS AND
TRANSCENDERS
In addition to the major contextual conditions above (need for science paradigm
reform, pragmatic possibility of winÀwin environmental relation, internalism,
understanding the machine metaphor, etc.), we can also benefit from zooming out
in time to consider the very unique quality of this moment in history from an
energy perspective. With energy, as with everything about the planetary and
species-level “phase transition” we are moving through, we need to clarify the
self-world (and humanÀenvironment) context for two seemingly opposite yet necessarily
complementary worldviews, the Transcenders and Sustainers.
In Fig. 8.1, M. King Hubbert in 1976 (citing his own prior work, Hubbert,
1962) depicted the fossil fuel era as a very dramatic and very brief event in
human history when considering a long-term perspective. His choice of 10,000
years is an interesting time frame, as this is about the length of the Holocene, the
period of stable climate during which most of human agriculture, technology, and
cultural development has occurred. Hubbert has shifted the time frame, however,
208 CHAPTER 8 Context of holistic lifeÀenvironment
to look at a period in which the fossil fuel era is in the middle of the 10,000-year
period.
Hubbert, a petroleum geologist who worked for Shell Oil in Texas, became
famous for correctly predicting the peak in US domestic oil production long before
it actually occurred. He was doubted, dismissed, and ridiculed for years until the
data showed he was correct, if off by a year or two in the timing of the US production
peak. (Note, peak oil production concerns are currently out of vogue given the
recent rise in domestic supply from fracking, but this unconventional source does
not refute the continuing decline of conventional sourced production. Also, fracking,
tar sands, and other unconventional supplies are nonrenewable, cause greater
environmental damage and some unknown risks, and yield less net energy than
conventional supplies. These supplies do not alter Hubbert’s 10,000 years curve
and provide no hope or steps toward solution. They are another example of kicking
the can down the road and denial of the inevitable.)
Hubbert’s three scenarios in Fig. 8.1 (labeled I, II, and III) for events after the
correlated spikes in energy consumption, energy consumption per capita, and
global population, had to do with possible futures for energy, technology, and
human population after the fossil fuels are gone. In his original report (Hubbert,
1962), he explained the high energy, high population scenario (I) as a case in
which nuclear power and other energy sources were harnessed to fully match and
RATE OF WORLD
ENERGY CONSUMPTION
ENERGY CONSUMPTION
PER CAPITA PER YEAR
WORLD POPULATION
TIME, IN THOUSANDS OF YEARS FROM THE PRESENT
–5
0
8
16
0
50
100
0
200
400
FOSSIL
FUELS
–4
BILLIONS103
KWH/YR1012
KWH/YR
–3 –2 –1 0
I
II
III
I
II
III
I
II
III
1 2 3 4 5
FIGURE 8.1
Key variables of energy consumption and world population over 10,000 years and under
three future scenarios.
A Report to the Committee on Natural Resources of the National Academy of Sciences-National Research
Council (1962)
209Holistic Life Technologies Differ for Sustainers and Transcenders
replace the fossil fuel energy capacity. Note, that even this techno-optimist future
scenario showed stabilizing trends in terms of energy use and population (around
14 billion people), which is still in sharp contrast of today’s dominant neverending
growth approach and mentality (in spite of the U.N population projections
that anticipate a leveling off between 10-12 Billion; it contradicts the growth
imperative of debt-based economy; and no evidence exists of any country willingly
and proudly aiming for stable population as national policy). His intermediate
scenario (II) was a case in which nuclear and other energy sources are only
able to replace about one-half the energy of the peak in oil, coal, and gas energy
consumption and an associated drop by about one-third in world population due
to “confusion and chaos” and catastrophe like nuclear war. The third scenario
(III) was a possible future with greatly reduced energy and a huge drop in population
to levels like preindustrial times. This scenario has been well envisioned by
James Howard Kunstler in his “World Made by Hand” novels.
Hubbert (1976) concluded his paper with a balance of realism and hope:
Since the problems confronting us are not intrinsically insoluble, it behooves
us, while there is still time, to begin a serious examination of the nature of our
cultural constraints and of the cultural adjustments necessary to permit us to
deal effectively with the problems rapidly arising. Provided this can be done
before unmanageable crises arise, there is promise that we could be on the
threshold of achieving one of the greatest intellectual and cultural advances in
human history. (p. 84)
Today, more than 40 years later, we are still in a similar place with respect to
the need to “deal effectively with the problems rapidly arising.” Just before the
passage above, Hubbert had written:
Our principal impediments at present are neither lack of energy or material
resources nor of essential physical and biological knowledge. Our principal
constraints are cultural. During the last two centuries we have known nothing
but exponential growth and in parallel we have evolved what amounts to an
exponential-growth culture, a culture so heavily dependent upon the continuance
of exponential growth for its stability that it is incapable of reckoning
with problems of nongrowth. (p. 84)
This too fits with our current circumstance, and our view (corroborated by
Lappe´, Meadows, Goerner, and many others) that the cultural mindset, root metaphor,
mental model, paradigm, value system, and links between science and society
are critical for change.
However, relative to Hubbert, we think our framing of the two worldviews,
Sustainers and Transcenders, plus the other major principles of this book, provide
a different and even more hopeful perspective on the possible scenarios. We push
Hubbert’s optimism further and believe firmly that we are indeed “on the threshold
of achieving one of the greatest intellectual and cultural advances in human
history” (albeit decades later than he may have hoped).
210 CHAPTER 8 Context of holistic lifeÀenvironment
Without considering that Sustainers and Transcenders are truly and categorically
different, that both are needed, and that neither one is likely to “win,”
eliminate, overpower, or convert the other, we would be left with scenarios only
related to Life on Earth, and assuming futures within other existing human and
LifeÀenvironment constraints, like Hubbert’s three above. But given our framing
of these two cultural types, on top of advances in space travel and technology
and other novel innovations since 1976, we can add in the issue of
transcending environmental, spatial, and human limits on Earth. We can potentially
integrate the human cultural projects of transcending environmental and
human limits. Such projects include the main example we have used, colonizing
Life beyond Earth, but could potentially include others such as transhumanism
or genetic engineering. Such high-tech and mechanistic endeavors may seem at
odds with reverence for Life, but in the effort to embrace even antithetical opposites,
we must stretch to accept and understand both sides fully. If and only if
such Transcender projects can be done as complementary to the Sustainer focus
of LifeÀenvironment value and quality for all people, then they pose no inherent
threat.
Look again at Hubbert’s diagram and the spike of very high quality energy
lasting for only a brief moment in human history, and please accept for discussion
purposes our framing of the necessity of the Transcenders from Chapter 1. Given
these, we propose that from a species and planetary level, we should apply some
of Hubbert’s recommended “serious examination” to ask:
How much of the unique and precious fossil fuel resource should be devoted to
space exploration, travel, and colonizing, plus other Transcender interests,
relative to efforts for cultural transition, regeneration, and sustaining Life on
Earth?
One current thinker and writer on topics of sustainability and the environment,
Nate Hagens, promotes the idea of the “Great Simplification” as a necessary coming
transition and transformation required given our energy, mineral, and other
resource and environmental limits (Hagens, 2018). This is an excellent notion,
and it is compatible with the Prosperous Way Down (Odum and Odum, 2001)
and the Great Transition scenarios. However, we think these types of futures—all
under our umbrella heading of Sustainer projects and futures—are only about
one-third of the story. Another one-third is the necessary Transcender project and
future, and the final one-third is the relation between these two coupled complementary
worldviews and action plans. We see it as critical that the relation
between be mutualistic, complementary, synergistic, and cooperative rather than
antagonistic.
If we consider that the Transcender mindset is normal, natural, valuable,
and integral to Life—given that we have examples during every period in
Life’s history of growth, expansion, innovation, and transcending of environmental
limitations and not only in the human species but also with all Life—
then we could develop two modified scenarios. Here, we are addressing only
211Holistic Life Technologies Differ for Sustainers and Transcenders
the allocation of the fossil fuels in two additional scenarios to Hubbert’s
figure above:
IV. 50% of all the remaining fossil fuel energy supply is devoted to the
Transcender programs of space exploration, space travel, and colonization of
Life beyond Earth (and Earth-based Transcender projects). Or,
V. 100% of all the remaining fossil fuel energy supply is devoted to the
Transcender programs of space exploration, space travel, and colonization of
Life beyond Earth (and Earth-based Transcender projects).
Scenario IV makes sense if we consider an equal allotment of fossil fuels to both
the Sustainer and Transcender projects. This type of material equality, as with philosophical
aspects of equality, we see as necessary for cooperation to be possible.
Scenario V, while too extreme but used for discussion purposes, makes sense
if we consider that since Sustainers (if successful) will eventually achieve a culture
that runs on 100% renewable energy, this hypothetical group, worldview, or
cultural type of people might as well begin this 100% renewable energy existence
immediately.
If it seems odd that we of the self-proclaimed Sustainer worldview would
advocate for the Transcenders to get either 50% or 100% of all the fossil fuels,
remember what Peter Elbow suggested as the way he learned for breaking out of
one system into a new and expanded one (a partial repeat of key Elbow quotes in
Chapter 7):
Searching for contradiction and affirming both sides can allow you to find both
the limitations of the system in which you are working and a way to break out
of it. . . .
To actually get beyond that system you need to find the deepest contradictions
and, instead of trying to reconcile them, heighten them by affirming both sides.
And if you can nurture the contradictions cleverly enough, you can be led to a
new system with a wider frame of reference, one that includes the two elements
which were felt as contradictory in the old frame of reference. (p. 243)
We use this same method in what may seem a paradoxical capitulation or surrender
to the Transcender camp—but note that this is “affirming both sides.” We
think it leads to a crucial insight, opening, and much greater potential that results
from “embracing contraries” as Elbow urged, and seeking winÀwin as Covey
recommended.
Our goal is to break out of the system we are (stuck) in so that we can resolve
our systemic humans-in-the-environment problem. Rather than fighting adversaries,
or seeking to reconcile the contradictions superficially, we, like Elbow, see value in
first nurturing, heightening, deepening, and amplifying the contradictions.
Without “affirming both sides,” understanding and seeing equal value in both
sides—and this may be surprising to consider—we run the risk that we might get
212 CHAPTER 8 Context of holistic lifeÀenvironment
success on NEITHER front, we might fail at BOTH Sustainer and Transcender
programs. The Sustainer program to sustain Life on Earth living within the real
physical limits of Earth, and the Transcender program to transcend the real and
physical limits of Earth, could both plausibly fail if these two camps continue to
fight and undermine each other. Each a great Life urge; each also presents a formidable
adversary and foe to any opponent. Neither will die nor surrender without
a wicked battle. Thus, without consciously and intentionally affirming both sides,
acknowledging the value and authentic authority of each view, we cannot hope
for peaceful resolution and synergy of equals. We would get confusion, conflict,
and what we have now—petty fighting, stalemate, no progress, severe, and potentially
irreversible damage impacting both sides.
Miraculously, by accepting both sides, by letting go of either as a cherished or
righteously superior worldview (Meadows’ #1 source of leverage for change—the
power to transcend paradigms) is perhaps the only way to open the potential that
we succeed at BOTH Sustainer and Transcender programs, missions, narratives,
and futures. If leading adherents of these camps can likewise find equality and
acceptance, then we achieve the “super power” that comes with cooperation,
coordination, and synergy. In a bit more specific terms, this would entail success
with two seemingly contradictory programs:
1. Sustainer program success—healing environmental damage to Life support
systems and transitioning to a complete reversal of humanÀenvironment
relationship such that self-reinforcing and self-organizing processes enable the
environment to improve in quality over time and Earth-based human culture
to operate within the real physical and environmental limits of the Earth. We
admit and note again that this is a huge, lofty, ambitious, and also plausibly
attainable goal with prior Life precedent. And we add,
2. Transcender program success—transcending the resource and environmental
limits of the Earth to allow continued expansion of human creativity,
innovation, development, and advancement. This will involve beyond-Earth
human culture that expands beyond the real physical, environmental, and
spatial system boundaries of the Earth. It may also involve Earth-based
Transcender success, perhaps generally related to transhumanism and genetic
engineering, as examples. Yet another huge, lofty, ambitious, and also
plausibly attainable goal (if we have faith in existing science and science
fiction, human ingenuity, and the unquenchable drive to explore and expand;
and if we get very skillful with LifeÀenvironment relations).
CASE STUDIES IN HOLISTIC LIFE TECHNOLOGY
Below, we briefly describe four leading examples (Table 8.1) of frameworks for
technology and application that we see as compatible with holistic Life science.
We also describe one generalized strategy for land development that illustrates
213Case Studies in Holistic Life Technology
how the foundations in this book lead to fundamentally different real-world applications.
And, we describe in-depth how a focus on conversion of science enterprises
and their facilities to sustainable operations is a crucial leading edge for the
transformation wave front we propose.
As we examine these cases, we have in mind the ideal goal to avoid the systemic
problem that Rosen identified with machine models and mechanistic technology—we
seek to avoid the issue of adding one control loop, like a thermostat
in a heating/cooling system, only to buy ever greater degrees of noise and thus an
infinite series of control loops. The new kind of “craft” or “fabrication” as Rosen
described, it will require a new combination of understanding and skill to design
and construct systems that embody the kinds of self-making, self-healing, and
self-improving capacities seen in organisms, ecosystems, and the biosphere.
These new forms of knowledge and skill must draw on the primary Life value
basis, all the principles and Life lessons in this book, and the awareness that science,
technology, culture, and the environment are intimately entangled, cocreating,
and interdependent in all places and at all times and timescales.
To add loops in a system is a common step. Given our holistic, long-term, and
LifeÀenvironment quality goals, we need practical methods to gauge if adding a
given loop leads to net gain and correct progress overall or leads to increased problems
elsewhere which we are no longer allowing to be ignored or externalized.
The loops we see as more effective than traditional control loops include autocatalytic,
network flow, and feedback loops. Examples of the metrics we can use to
gauge if a given system loop functions successfully include an assessment of net
energy or energy return on energy invested (Hall, 2017). While this focuses on
energy, it is holistic in accounting for all the energy that must be used, added,
transformed, or invested to generate and supply the energy as input to the system.
Estimates of net energy for various fuels and energy sources are very powerful
for revealing just how high the quality of fossil fuel energy is, and to enable comparisons
between various energy sources.
Another general way to gauge net Life benefit of a technology or application
design, or a new system loop being considered, is the triple bottom line. This
method accounts for costs and benefits to environmental, social, and economic
assets for any given enterprise. We have already mentioned other holistic metrics
that can be used to assess net Life benefit—Genuine Progress Index, ecological
footprint, planetary boundaries, Index of Social Economic Welfare, Human
Development Index, and Millennium Ecosystem Assessment. The Sustainable
Table 8.1 Technologies Reviewed Here That are Compatible with Holistic
Life Science
Cradle-to-cradle design
Biomimicry
Permaculture
Ecological engineering
214 CHAPTER 8 Context of holistic lifeÀenvironment
Development Goals are another useful reference for describing crucial areas of
performance for integrated social, environmental, and economic systems. And, we
note again that impacts of an application should lead to building of functional
gradients such as vertical gradients in soils (carbon, nitrogen, organic matter, etc.)
and atmosphere (stratospheric ozone, greenhouse gases, etc.), maintenance of
high biodiversity, and net gains in energy capacity.
Considering these many options for metrics and assessment tools, we see the
need for collaborative effort to streamline and provide easy access to a comprehensive
set of indicators. For example, the German Environmental Ministry publishes
an annual report of key environmental indicators, which are used to direct
policy initiatives (www.umweltbundesamt.de/en/data). In another approach, Kate
Raworth has overlaid the planetary boundaries on a social foundation to create an
indicator scheme referred to as doughnut economics (see Fig. 8.2). There are
other creative indicators and tool kits that convey our current situation and trends.
One could think of it as a set of readings on a “dashboard for Spaceship Earth.”
food
health
education
peace &
justice
social
equity
political
voice
gender
equality
income
& work
water
energy
housing
networks
oz
one layer
climate
ocean
chemical
biodiversity
nitrogen&
freshwaterland
d
epletion acidifica
tion
pollution
airpollution
change
loss
conversion withdrawals
phosphorusloading
OVERSHOOT
SHORTFALL
SOCIAL FOUNDATIONthe safe and just space for humanity
REGEN
ERATIVE AND DISTRIBUTIVE
EC
O
NOMYECOLOGICAL CEILING
FIGURE 8.2
Doughnut Economics which combines upper bound for planetary limits and lower bound
for social foundation.
Used with permission.
215Case Studies in Holistic Life Technology
Or, for a bit less mechanical analogy, we might consider a set of vital signs for
evaluating holistic health of LifeÀenvironment in its organismal, ecosystemic,
and biospheric realms. Such vital signs would be a blend of those that are global
and those that are customized for each unique local and regional context.
With the case studies we have chosen, we seek to point out crucial systems
principles for holistic Life technology. For example, our first case study on
cradle-to-cradle (CtC) design is based on a strategy of design and manufacturing
in which the construction and deconstruction processes are designed, developed,
and implemented together, as interdependent and mutually supporting in a single
unified production-use-reclamation cycle. Thus, this specific example system is
directly compatible with and borrows from the generic LifeÀenvironment principle
of coupled transformers and coupled complementary processes in which the
“composer” and “decomposer” functions co-arise, cooperate, and coevolve. We
next examine more details on this case and the others.
CRADLE-TO-CRADLE DESIGN
McDonough and Braungart (2002) described their CtC design process in a book
by that name, with the subtitle “Remaking the Way We Make Things.” This
approach is clearly in response to the standard paradigm of cradle-to-grave, which
in manufacturing terms means raw materials to landfill. This linear thinking has
led to unnecessary resource acquisition and the accumulation of waste piles that
otherwise may still have useful capacities. This is another legacy from a time
when resources were plentiful (not only the mineral raw materials but also the
energies to extract, transport, transform, market, and trash those materials). The
CtC, closed-loop approach was promoted by an American architect and German
chemist, respectively. These two authors and entrepreneurs proposed a coherent
strategy that goes beyond merely trying to be “less bad” environmentally toward
“a radically different approach to designing and producing the objects we use and
enjoy, an emergent movement we see as the next industrial revolution” (p. 6).
Their visionary approach starts with McDonough’s realization that “design is a
signal of intention.” The two collaborate and add to this awareness the intention
to “love all the children, of all species, for all time.” This clearly is aligned with
our Life value as primary basis for thought and action. They propose a design
philosophy that completely does away with the idea of waste, and they base this
potential on the recycling capacity observed in natural ecological systems. The
book itself embodies their approach—it is made of a synthetic “paper” that is
“made from plastic resins and inorganic fillers.” The book thus proves the practical
application of their theory (McDonough and Braungart, 2002):
This material is not only waterproof, extremely durable, and (in may localities)
recyclable by conventional means; it is also a prototype for the book as a
“technical nutrient,” that is, as a product that can be broken down and
216 CHAPTER 8 Context of holistic lifeÀenvironment
circulated infinitely in industrial cycles—made and remade as “paper” or other
products. (p. 5)
Their proposed and well-developed system includes conceptual distinctions
between biological nutrients and technical nutrients, and the way these flows are
processed in ecological and industrial cycles, respectively. This clarification and
priority issue corroborates Rosen’s distinction between Life and machine and our
recommendation to be fully aware of the models and metaphors we use and their
ultimate impacts.
Operating via McDonough Braungart Design Chemistry at mbdc.com, these
two continue to collaborate and have built a large organization that includes CtC
certification process (with variable ratings attainable, Silver, Gold, etc.) Their
stated philosophy reads (MBDC, 2018):
Cradle to Cradle encourages us to step back from the routines of daily
problem-solving and rethink the frame conditions that shape our designs.
Rather than seeking to minimize the harm we inflict, Cradle to Cradle reframes
design as a beneficial, regenerative force—one that seeks to create ecological
footprints to delight in, not lament. It expands the definition of design quality
to include positive effects on economic, ecological and social health. Cradle to
Cradle rejects the idea that growth is detrimental to environmental health; after
all, in nature growth is good. Instead, it promotes the idea that good design
supports a rich human experience with all that entails—fun, beauty, enjoyment,
inspiration and poetry—and still encourages environmental health and
abundance.
As with many case studies, and the complex ideas in this book, language and
ideas are complex and require highly developed understanding and skills for integration,
synthesis, and evaluation. We can accept McDonough and Braungart’s
promotion of “growth” above given that the growth is of the same holistic form
as growth in “nature” as in Life. In this context, growth is a regenerative process,
replacing and renewing a previous system, not an increase in accumulation.
Furthermore, it is always accompanied by use of renewable energy, recycling
materials processes, and net improvement of Life and its environmental context.
If this is true, then we can agree that kind of growth is good.
McDonough and Braungart and their CtC design have partnered with very
large corporations such as those in textiles, skin care, food and beverage, packing,
and more. As such, their impact and reach is great. Whether their incremental
steps to improve industrial design and product cycles can scale up to systemic
change for environmental sustainability remains to be seen. It may be aided in
success by some of our next case studies.
217Case Studies in Holistic Life Technology
BIOMIMICRY
A term popularized and promoted by Benyus (1997), biomimicry, is what its
name implies—an effort to mimic biology. The Biomimicry Institute website provides
additional information on the intention toward “innovation that seeks sustainable
solutions to human challenges” and their strategy of innovation based on
mimicry:
A sustainable world already exists.
Humans are clever, but without intending to, we have created massive sustainability
problems for future generations. Fortunately, solutions to these global
challenges are all around us.
Biomimicry is an approach to innovation that seeks sustainable solutions to
human challenges by emulating nature’s time-tested patterns and strategies.
The goal is to create products, processes, and policies—new ways of living—
that are well-adapted to life on earth over the long haul.
The core idea is that nature has already solved many of the problems we are
grappling with. Animals, plants, and microbes are the consummate engineers.
After billions of years of research and development. . .what surrounds us is the
secret to survival.
Biomimicry.org (2018)
The Biomimicry Institute provides many educational resources on biomimicry,
they sponsor and support the Biomimicry Educators Network, and they have a fellows
program for faculty and administrators. A few of the specific examples they
promote as proof of the concept, from their website:
1. Learning from humpback whales how to create efficient wind power. At
40À50 ft long and 80,000 pounds, they say “the whale’s surprising dexterity
is due mainly to its flippers, which have large, irregular looking bumps called
tubercles across their leading edges.” They explain how this incidence of
mimicry has spawned a commercial enterprise, WhalePower, a company that
“is applying the lessons learned from humpback whales to the design of wind
turbines to increase their efficiency. . ..”
2. Learning from prairies how to grow food in resilient ways. A prairie they
assert, like “any natural ecosystem [is] a remarkable system of food
production: productive, resilient, self-enriching, and ultimately sustainable.”
The example they provide overlaps with our links from permaculture below.
The Land Institute, according to Biomimicry.org:
. . .has been working successfully to revolutionize the conceptual foundations
of modern agriculture by using natural prairies as a model: they have been
218 CHAPTER 8 Context of holistic lifeÀenvironment
demonstrating that using deep-rooted plants which survive year-to-year (perennials)
in agricultural systems which mimic stable natural ecosystems À rather
than the weedy crops common to many modern agricultural systems À can
produce equivalent yields of grain and maintain and even improve the water
and soil resources upon which all future agriculture depends.
3. Learning from termites how to create sustainable buildings. Closed, cramped,
and often found in very hot climates, termites have developed sustainable
methods for cooling their homes. The website reports one case where this has
been mimicked successfully:
. . .the Eastgate Building, an office complex in Harare, Zimbabwe, has an internal
climate control system originally inspired by the structure of termite
mounds. Further research is revealing more about the relationship between
mound structure and internal temperature and could influence additional building
designs as our understanding grows.
The Biomimicry Institute conducts an annual design competition, the
Biomimicry Global Design Challenge, and an annual entrepreneur competition,
the Biomimicry Launchpad, which they say “is the world’s only accelerator program
that supports early-stage entrepreneurs working to bring nature-inspired
solutions to market.” They also state (Biomimicry.org, 2018):
We need proven, focused, regional solutions to address global social and environmental
issues, like those in the United Nations’ Sustainable Development
Goals. Biomimicry can unlock new insights for how to develop a more resilient
future for people and planet.
At the end of the Launchpad competition, one team is awarded $100,000 to
support their project, funding provided by the Ray C. Anderson Foundation.
There are numerous exciting and unexplored ways that biomimicry can be further
integrated into design and engineering of human systems. Our only criticism
of this approach is the emphasis primarily on organismal innovations from nature
and less attention to mimicking processes at ecosystemic and biospheric
LifeÀenvironment systems scales. However, the Biomimicry Institute already
cites the example above of mimicking prairies to redesign agriculture based on
natural ecosystems. To integrate the ecosystem and biosphere scales more fully,
as with our three holons and the hyperset formalism, would be toward an allied
approach we might call “ecomimicry.” This new line of research is open and
waiting for readers to further develop it.
PERMACULTURE
There is a noticeable sea change in Americans’ awareness of alternative agriculture
and food, characterized by the rise of organic farming, local food movements
such as community supported agriculture, the importation of the slow food and
219Case Studies in Holistic Life Technology
real food movements, and the popularization of food systems by authors such as
Michael Pollan and Dan Barber, to name a few. This awareness encompasses
human health, animal rights, and environmental concerns in one fundamental
interaction that humans have with nature. In fact, it is through consumption,
metabolism, and egestion, that the inseparable embeddedness of nature in humans
becomes evident, which we try to capture elsewhere in terms of a hyperset formulation.
Therefore, growing and eating food is one area that has profound ability to
capture holistic LifeÀenvironment principles. One major historical transition in
agriculture is when humans moved away from polyculture based on perennial
plants to monoculture based on annual plants. The annual plants reward the
farmer with greater yields (investing energies in larger seeds rather than longer
roots) but are more needy in terms of nutrients and do less to build and maintain
soils.
The modern farming approach called Permaculture is returning to a way that
promotes polyculture and perennials, with the added benefits of advanced techniques
to retain high yields. The term comes from a combination or “permanent”
and “agriculture.” Bill Mollison started this holistic practice with the idea to produce
food like natural ecosystems he observed studying rainforests in Tasmania.
Mollison (1996) wrote of the strongly ethical motivation for his proposed form of
sustainable humanÀenvironment relation:
The Prime Directive of Permaculture
The only ethical decision is to take responsibility for our own existence and
that of our children. Make it now.
This concise principle fits with the other holistic Life ethics we have seen
including Schweitzer, Leopold, and more.
The community of permaculture practitioners has also spread to include a
global network of training and certification programs. Many have successfully
implemented permaculture and developed off-shoots and allied extensions
inspired by permaculture, including Alan Savory’s Holistic Management, Joel
Salatin’s Polyface Farm, and the Land Institute in Kansas (which was cited above
as a biomimicry example). Permaculture applies to other land uses as well as
food production and improves the sustainability of homes, communities, landscaping
around buildings, and more. In each case, those employing the permaculture
principles balance specific efforts tailored to the details of the local natural
community-ecosystem with universal principles of sustainable and winÀwin
LifeÀenvironment relations.
ECOLOGICAL ENGINEERING
In some ways, similar to the biomimicry approach, a group of progressive,
ecologically-oriented engineers have set out to include ecological principles into
220 CHAPTER 8 Context of holistic lifeÀenvironment
engineering projects. The emerging field of ecological engineering is a fusion
field that holds great promise for human applications given its basis in ecological
science. For example, rather than building a physical infrastructure wastewater
treatment plant, a constructed wetland can serve the same purpose at lower cost
and more in tune with natural biogeochemical processes. We discuss only the
approach of Pat Kangas at the University of Maryland for our specific case study.
Other leading faculty and centers include Bill Mitsch at Florida Gulf Coast
University, and Bhavik Bakshi works in the closely allied field of industrial
ecology.
In the preface to his 2004 textbook for graduate level study, Pat Kangas gave
this description of ecological engineering (Kangas, 2004):
The Earth’s biosphere contains a tremendous variety of existing ecosystems,
and ecosystems that never existed before are being created by mixing species
and geochemical processes together in new ways. Many different applications
are utilizing these old and new ecosystems but with little utility, yet.
Ecological engineering is emerging as the discipline that offers unification
with principles for understanding and for designing all ecosystem-scale
applications.
Kangas credits H.T. Odum’s teaching for his writing of this book of principles
and practices of ecological engineering. In his textbook, he covers three major
principles: the energy signature, self-organization, and preadaptation. He
describes these principles:
Energy signature: The set of energy sources or forcing functions which determine
ecosystem structure and function.
Self-organization: The selection process through which ecosystems emerge in
response to environmental conditions by filtering of genetic inputs.
Preadaptation: The phenomenon, which occurs entirely fortuitously, whereby
adaptations that arise through natural selection for one set of environmental
conditions just happen to be adaptive for a new set of environmental conditions
that the organism had not previously been exposed to. (p. 17)
Using these three major principles, Kangas examines ecological engineering
as applied to wetlands designed for water treatment, soil bioengineering in urban
and agricultural systems, restoration ecology of saltmarshes and artificial reefs,
and control of and learning from exotic species. Kangas’ faculty web pages at the
University of Maryland describe many other ecological engineering projects he
has done, including a floating solar-powered lake restoring system to improve
water quality (Yaron et al., 2000), and the Greenhab Project of the Mars Desert
Research Station (MDRS) including “the construction and implementation of a
new greenhouse, an experimental living machine for wastewater treatment and a
221Case Studies in Holistic Life Technology
recycling loop that returns treated greywater back to the MDRS habitat’s toilet”
(Blersch and Kangas, 2003).
His major principles and his case studies in ecological engineering share many
of the principles and concepts we have promoted, including anticipatory
approach, the importance of how we draw a system boundary, the ecosystem as
crucial model system, and more. The MDRS project helps to demonstrate how
the holistic Life science and technology we see as effective for sustainability on
Earth is likewise helpful for Transcender and space efforts. While Kangas, John
Todd, and others use the term “living machine” for their ecologically engineered
systems, we recommend keeping these as categorically separate, again following
Rosen and also McDonough and Braungart. We admit that machines can have lifelike
and Sustainer qualities, such as running on renewable energy and recycling
materials processes. And, machines can be made to mimic other Life capacities.
Humans can also design and embed machines and the associated construction, use
and recycling processes within a Life-valuing culture as in industrial ecology.
Many other inspiring and innovative examples exist, but we cannot cover all
types of the great diversity now arising. One last hopeful example combines environmental
education for children and teachers with the highest standard for sustainable
buildings. The Alice Ferguson Foundation recently constructed a meeting
and educational building that conforms to the Living Building Challenge criteria.
This augments their transformative hands-on experiences, experiential education,
and agriculture education with a feature of their built environment that demonstrates
for the children, teachers in training, and visitors how to “walk the walk”
and lead by example. Their website states:
The net zero energy, net zero water, carbon neutral, and non-toxic component
requirements of the Living Building Challenget will not only enhance and
upgrade our structures but also serve as tools for teaching Science,
Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) concepts, as well as augment our
core ecological curriculum.
And
Living Buildings are designed to function like species in an ecosystem and
mimic the beauty, resourcefulness, and efficiency of nature’s architecture.
Living Buildings are designed to regenerate, not deplete, their surroundings.
www.fergusonfoundation.org
The Living Building Challenge comprises an even more stringent set of design
and functional sustainable building criteria compared to LEED standards. Case
studies of certified Living Buildings can be found online at https://living-future.
org/lbc/.
222 CHAPTER 8 Context of holistic lifeÀenvironment
A HYPOTHETICAL APPLICATION—HOLISTIC LAND
DEVELOPMENT
Our next case study is a generalized, hypothetical, and potential application. The
example also shows a case of reversal of approach relative to the existing conventional
method that fits with the Great Change, paradigm shift, and sea change we
have suggested is necessary. This is a contrast of two approaches to land development
that we presented in a prior article (Fiscus et al., 2012). In a nutshell, the
current practice and recommended alternative approach to land development are
as follows:
1. Current practice—add people and built environment to the landscape and
simultaneously remove, degrade, destroy, or diminish natural systems that are
Life support at that site
2. Alternative holistic Life practice—add people and built environment to the
landscape and simultaneously add, enhance, increase or regenerate natural
systems that are Life support at that site
We described the crux of the distinction before (Fiscus et al., 2012) as linked
to our founding principles of drawing system boundaries wisely, and the unfractionable
LifeÀenvironment relation. We wrote that the critical issue is
. . .how we split human life from environmental life support in thought and
action is that when we look at a parcel of land, we are able to think of it as
occupied by either humans or some natural system.
A bit later we described the alternative mental model and how it radically
transforms how we develop land:
Now imagine that we instead operate from the proposed unified paradigm. In
the revised scenario, we understand and treat life and environment as necessarily
unified and interdependent. Thus, our “unit of development” shifts in systemic
fashion—instead of a focus merely on units of land, or buildings,
corporations or people, we must also integrate unit-models at the ecosystem
and biosphere scales to actualize continual attention and value for energy flow,
materials cycling, biodiversity, primary production, decomposition, soil formation,
atmospheric regulation and other essential ecosystem services which all
people need for life.
We then explained how the holistic Life science and holistic Life applications
views integrate Life and environment:
. . .when we look at a parcel of land, we are NOT able to think of this unit of
the environment as occupied by either humans or some natural system but are
only able to think of this unit as necessarily occupied by both humans and
some natural environmental system.
223A Hypothetical Application—Holistic Land Development
This modified approach, compatible with employing the hyperset formalism
of Chapter 6, prohibits fragmentation of LifeÀenvironment, and in that holistic
mandate also prevents any externalized damage to environmental Life support.
This anticipatory approach in turn prevents a debt that someone else, perhaps in
some other place in the world, or at some future date in time, must pay for the
damage done to a LifeÀenvironment system ultimately more valuable (since Life
value is fundamental and is of the greatest value) than any short-term profit or
even functional benefit (housing, business, etc.) gained on that landscape location.
Scale becomes important in this new approach. The land, whether we occupy
it or not, has a certain productive capacity depending on the climate, rainfall,
geology, and biodiversity, etc. When we see ourselves as integrated into a specific
place, our aim becomes to maintain and promote that productivity for ourselves.
In this case, our interest aligns and also supports productivity for the larger
LifeÀenvironment system. A main pathology that interferes with this approach is
the loss of connection to place, the ease of portable capital, and a growth-oriented
paradigm that promotes short-term exploitation over long-term stewardship. The
importance of scale is not simply the spatial one from local to global, but also a
temporal one from short term to long term. Societies or groups that easily forget
the past are likely to also ignore the future.
Looking at the Chesapeake Bay watershed and its regional landscape, as just
one example of many in the United States, we see the ultimate impact of the current
development paradigm based on the current mainstream paradigm of science
and life science. In terms of environmental quality, carrying capacity, and sustainability,
the Bay and its watershed suffer from chronic and systemic environmental
degradation (IAN, 2012; Hyslop, 2012; Town Creek Foundation, 2018), and the
costs for restoration and remediation are so high that governments and environmental
groups have stopped publishing estimates.
To achieve a different ultimate outcome for land and environmental quality,
as development plays out, if we plan to add people, we now know we must add
more Life support capacity, not reduce it. Instead of being removed, the necessary
environmental complement to people must be grown, developed, and nurtured,
intentionally. And, the integrated development of land for people and Lifesupport
must be done in concert and in close coordination. This necessary integration—a
form of internalization that is the exact opposite of externalization—may
be accomplished by adding Life support capacity at local, regional, and/or global
scales. However, holistic Life science and technology makes the accounting and
the actual implementation essential. Policies and regulations which require no net
loss of wetlands serve as a compatible example, but we assert this approach must
be extended to ensure no net loss and even increase and enhancement to match
population growth, of the full suite of essential ecosystem services and Lifesupport
capacity.
224 CHAPTER 8 Context of holistic lifeÀenvironment
FOCUS AND PRIORITY CASE STUDY—SCIENCE FACILITIES
A central theme and reason for being of this book is science reform. Just as we
have attempted to present coherent value, conceptual, and methodological foundations
for holistic Life science, we assert that sustainable physical foundations for
scientific operations are equally essential. Science supports most if not all of the
other example technologies and applications for sustainability we have cited—
design, manufacturing, agriculture, engineering, buildings, land development—and
in order to provide consistent, effective, and long-standing support for all these and
sustain itself, science facilities in academia, government, and nonprofit sectors
must transform themselves first in an effort to lead by example.
In the Conclusion section of his book, Walden, Thoreau (1854), one of the
early American environmental thought leaders, wrote:
If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where
they should be. Now put the foundations under them. (p. 215)
To reimagine and then transform science, Life science, environmental science,
and related facilities to run fully on renewable energy, integrate operations within
recycling materials processes, adapt, and coevolve with the local environment, yield
net improvement in air, water, soil, biodiversity, and atmosphere quality and the
other winÀwin relational impacts we have described, admittedly, entails great challenges.
Science enterprises require large amounts of energy, often employ toxic substances,
and use high-tech materials like computers and other equipment that can be
very hard to recycle. However, if science is serious about assisting and even leading
the way forward to lasting and systemic solutions to the humanÀenvironment crisis,
then we have no alternative. To follow the six foundational Life science principles—
to be anticipatory and holistic, to affirm Life value, to internalize our own impacts,
to embrace complexity fully, and to be radically empirical—is to get to the root of
the matter and help industrial culture reverse our current unsustainable trajectory.
Thoreau also wrote in his Journal (Walls, 1999):
There is no such thing as pure objective observation. Your observation, to be
interesting, i.e., to be significant, must be subjective. The sum of what the
writer of whatever class has to report is simply some human experience,
whether he be poet or philosopher or man of science. The man of most science
is the man most alive, whose life is the greatest event. (p. 60À61)
And
As science which is poetry professed by the civilized state—measuring the
unfathomed with its telescope—& microscope—but feebly and partially—we
want something more comprehensive & assertive which may be called conscience
perhaps—and signify a practical growth. (p. 9)
Here, we find insights from a radical and pragmatic thinker who lived and
worked before the word “scientist” even existed. Thoreau adds poetic energy to
225A Hypothetical Application—Holistic Land Development
our previous calls for the integration of ethics with science, for the unity of subjective
and objective perspectives, and for a science that aspires to and lives up to
the highest of standards. Surely, such ideals call for realization in our facilities
functional and elegant sustainability that matches the greatest of our insights,
knowledge, and wisdom gained from the centuries of science in practice.
Prior chapters have described how we need to change the “idea-tools” we
think with, to transform our science paradigm, to integrate the most complex
advances in theoretical modeling, and simultaneously to move toward Leopold’s
“thinking like a mountain” or Lappe´’s Ecomind. Science is very much like the
collective mind of society, and as such it must be clearly focused on what matters
most in order to best serve people and Life itself. But, we also know from Rosen
that formal systems of science process and active fabrication or realization go handin-hand
and co-create each other. Construction occurs in the mind (ideas) and in real
world (publications, experiments, measurements, etc.), simultaneously. Contrary to
the common lament, “We can’t change the system,” we see evidence everywhere
that we can’t help but to change the system. With every thought and action, or
thoughtÀaction, we change ourselves and the world in a seamless process.
Donella Meadows was aware of the imperative for science to lead by example,
and she wrote of the need for what she called a “think-do tank” to replace the
idea of a think tank as focused on abstract ideas or science disconnected from
grounding in reality. Thus, she and partners created Cobb Hill, a co-housing community
and organic farm integrated with the Sustainability Institute so that the
thinking and the doing would be in very close physical and cooperative communication.
Some of the organizations she founded have changed names since her
death, but her holistic systems and modeling work, leadership, and legacy of publications
continue to teach and to serve us in our efforts.
An ambitious and creative cohort of other institutions provides a contagious
sense of success that this transformation to sustainable science is not only possible
but yields multiple great rewards. Here, are a few of which we are aware.
Schumacher College in England, led by Stephan Harding and with visiting scholars
like Fritjof Capra and more, offers one of the few graduate degrees in Holistic
Science. Their facilities at Dartington likewise model sustainable practices and help
the scientists, teachers, and students participating to experience mutually beneficial
relationships to the land for growing food and to nature for renewing the spirit.
The College of the Atlantic in Maine offers just one bachelor’s degree—
Human Ecology. One of the colleges and universities in the United States leading
the change to sustainable operations, they have been climate neutral for several
years. They achieved this by reducing energy usage, utilizing renewable energy,
and offsetting emissions through verified offset programs.
At Pennsylvania State University, in the 1990s, professor Christopher Uhl was
instrumental in studying the environmental performance of his own university.
On his faculty website, he reports that he “used ‘sustainability indicators’ to track
the performance of Penn State in areas such as water use, energy consumption,
waste generation, and recycling efficiency.” This work led to his publication in
the journal, Conservation Biology (Uhl et al., 1996), in which he and his
226 CHAPTER 8 Context of holistic lifeÀenvironment
colleagues described sustainability as “a touchstone concept for university operations,
education, and research.” Today, Penn State hosts the Sustainability
Institute, which since its founding in 2013 has grown to support an extensive
staff, associated faculty, student-led initiatives and multiple efforts in education,
research, and campus operations. Uhl has continued his work in this area and has
published books on developing ecological consciousness (Uhl, 2003) and reform
of education culture to support “teaching as if life matters” (Uhl and Stuchul,
2011).
At the University of New Hampshire (UNH), sustainability is promoted as a
key strength on the main web page and at the set of pages devoted to sustainability.
Here, one quickly learns of UNH’s leadership role and clear commitment via
a set of statistics; for example, UNH:
1. is one of only three US institutions of higher education to earn an AASHE
STARS Platinum rating,
2. has a main campus that is 100% powered by renewable energy,
3. is home to the first endowed sustainability institute at a university in the
United States, and
4. has the first organic dairy research farm.
In 2017, UNH introduced the Sustainability Indicator Management and
Analysis Platform (SIMAP). SIMAP is a resource available to any college or university,
and “is a comprehensive footprint reporting tool designed for campuses”
that provides campuses “a simple and affordable online platform for tracking,
reporting, and managing their carbon and nitrogen footprints.”
Aber et al. (2009) published a book about the community and the process of
UNH’s efforts to become more sustainable.
The stories of self-transformation at colleges and universities, and the innovative
and concerned leaders who have charted the course of change, has many
more chapters we cannot cover here. David Orr at Oberlin, a team at Chatham
College—alma mater of Rachel Carson—and many more are worth finding and
learning from their experiences.
Inspired by these champions of sustainable leading by example, we believe
that scientists are integrated with and serve as representatives for their institutions
and facilities. Scientists and their science enterprises cannot continue to provide
consistent and trusted leadership if we act as if we are special or have some
exemption from the imperative to be sustainable and value Life. Such a claim of
exceptionalism can be found tacitly if not explicitly with many mainstream sectors
of society, organizations, and individuals. In essence, they are saying “I am
allowed to be unsustainable because my work in my sector is so important.” This
argument, if allowed anywhere, must be allowed everywhere. Thus, it cannot be
allowed—it is a false dichotomy and results in dangerous demotion of Life value
relative to lesser values. Each sector, field, discipline, and enterprise must accept
the new Sustainer terms—do whatever you do AND improve the environment as
you do it. Imagine the growing sense of pride and accomplishment as we are
227A Hypothetical Application—Holistic Land Development
more and more able to say and show—“We do science in ways that value Life.
And, here is how we do it.”
CHALLENGES TO HOLISTIC TECHNOLOGY TRANSFORMATION
Science facilities, food production, buildings, manufacturing, and other forms of
technology and culture can and must be transformed to improve rather than damage
environmental quality over time. We have shown how this can be done effectively,
and many case studies and success stories support this view. We also
acknowledge challenges, complexity, and inertia that must be overcome.
One challenge has to do with technologies that impact human life and survival.
The heart valve that we mentioned in Chapter 7, for example, raises interesting
dilemmas. We described this technology as beneficial and a case where
applying mechanistic models to living beings makes sense. This acceptance and
positive view was based on (1) the similarity between a human heart and a
mechanical pump and (2) the clear and profound impact on extension of lifespan
and improvement of quality of life. This assessment was done with a relatively
narrow system boundary—we only considered the life of one person. If we
expand the system boundary and use a more holistic approach as we have said is
necessary, then the story becomes more complex. Is this technology still a net
positive application when we consider all people and their social and environmental
context? If my father gets a heart valve, but the energy, money, expertise, and
other costs of his heart valve prohibit, impede, or delay three other people from
getting the same surgery, is it truly sustainable? Does it lead to a real net increase
and benefit in Life value? In addition to considering the ecosystem services
involved, we here also integrate economics and social justice as in Agyeman’s
“just sustainabilities.” Social justice is equally as important to consider as the
LifeÀenvironment sustainability concepts. Thus, while we do feel strongly that
sustainable technology is necessary and possible, we do not suggest that it will be
easy to implement at the level of all industrial culture.
In global industrial culture, we are constantly confronted with new books, scientific
publications, videos, websites, and other media where innovations and
ideas are promoted. To digest this massive flow of information can feel like trying
to sip from a fire hose. Add to this the pace of life and the constant rush and
it becomes difficult to make time to reflect and consider fully which ideas, innovations,
and technologies can be traced back to solid foundations such as those
based on Life value and holistic Life science. We hope that the primary distinction
between Sustainer and Transcender perspectives, and the other criteria in this
book can make this process more practical and streamlined.
Several counter examples, some of which represent negative technology to us,
are worth mention. We do not propose to evaluate good versus bad technology
from the Transcender perspective. We do see it as necessary to always assess
228 CHAPTER 8 Context of holistic lifeÀenvironment
clearly whether a new technology or conceptual approach abides by a primary
Life value basis. For example:
1. Ray Kurzweil’s “singularity” ideas. The techno-optimist vision of exponential
growth in computing nanotechnology and robotics, that foresees a merger with
humans so that humans “transcend biology”, is clearly part of the Transcender
program as we have depicted it. This, and other Transcender ideas and
technology, could be beneficial or at least neutral if and only if it does not
conflict with or hinder the Sustainer program. We see the next and more
important LifeÀenvironment dynamical system singularity as a bifurcation
into Sustainers and Transcenders.
2. Walmart drones for pollination. This appears extremely infeasible, misses the
core Life principles and lessons, and could do great harm. Such a mechanical
model applied to such an elegant biological and ecological context would
entail not just adding one extraneous control loop but millions. This evokes
the concerns with infinite regress that Rosen warned about, and we anticipate
increased energy use and LifeÀenvironment damage. Overall, this is not a
wise alternative compared to protecting the biodiversity and healthy
environments of our natural pollinators. See Hetherington (2018) for news
coverage of this idea.
3. Nanotechnology developed and involving manufacture of products and
materials without a coupled complementary decomposition process. Unless
a “CtC,” full circle, composerÀdecomposer system as in Life is
employed, this runs great risk of poisoning essential Life-support systems
and is irresponsible. To use the precautionary principle, and the principles
of anticipatory science and primary Life value necessitates the
decomposition process be integrated so that no nano-materials escape or
accumulate.
4. Geo-engineering projects mentioned earlier. Seeding oceans with iron or
limiting nutrients to increase algal growth and sequester CO2, for example.
Given the scale on which many of these have been proposed, and the
complexity of ocean ecosystems, a valid assessment of the multiplicity of
intended and unintended consequences seems impossible. If we cannot have
confidence that a technology will lead to net benefit for Life, then we should
not develop or employ it.
While sustainable and regenerative net impacts of technology are possible,
these and many other challenges exist for achieving full transformation successfully.
The money system, which as now designed is dependent on growth and
thus on negative forms of economic growth (resource extraction, etc.), is another
crucial obstacle. Goerner et al. (2009), Hornborg (2001, 2011), Lietaer et al.
(2012), Mellor (2010), and others have put forward practical ways to reform the
monetary system that would support the transition to holistic Life technology.
The complex arena of human values is another area of challenge and change
needed—through better environmental, ecological, and holistic Life education and
229Challenges to Holistic Technology Transformation
other means, we must build consensus that Life value is the primary basis for
value. The need for maturity and complex self-awareness, beyond simple either/
or, true/false thinking is another challenge. The holistic Life science and story we
have developed in this book promises a better future for ourselves and our environment,
but only if the human sense of self evolves to embrace both a discrete
self and a sustained self. This entails a new acceptance of death as a necessary
aspect of the larger, integrated LifeÀenvironment system by which individuals,
organisms, and other discrete Life forms, die, decompose, are recycled, and feed
other Life forms and soils so that Life itself, Life as a unified whole, can learn
and improve from generation to generation. We predict that as holistic Life applications
and technologies increase the pace of change should accelerate. The multiple
benefits to human quality of life; environmental Life support; and
sustainable and resilient food, water, and other ecosystem services reduced costs,
and thus, more resources available will provide feedback and incentive to further
increase research, development, and new applications.
230 CHAPTER 8 Context of holistic lifeÀenvironment
CHAPTER
9Sustainability: A goal for all
INTRODUCTION
We started this book with the goal to describe science reform efforts to help solve
the sustainability crisis. Remember—some change will be required, as, by definition,
an unsustainable system cannot continue along its current ways. Whether the
change is planned and orderly or forced and chaotic depends on the level of anticipation
and effort to be proactive. Our working assumption and intuitive insight
from a combined 50 years of research and applications in systems and network
ecology was that the existing science paradigm and analytical methods based on
it have not worked. Thus, from that starting point, in order to address the crisis,
we did the opposite of analysis—we enlarged the problem context rather
than picking out a reduced subset of the system-of-systems complexity to tackle
in isolation.
The previous chapters have sought to present an alternative holistic, Lifecentered,
non-mechanistic science as a complement to existing analytical,
reductionist, and mechanistic mainstream science. We have sought to build the
foundational framework for holistic Life science with a coherent, logical, stable,
and long-lasting organizational structure. The layers for this structure began with
values. We showed that a conscious choice to set Life as the primary basis for
value has the power to form the most universally relevant and thus the most
stable foundation for Life science and the methods, technology, applications, and
policies that can later flow from the Life value foundation. We then described six
founding principles of holistic Life science and seven Life lessons and methods
developed from past work, which are relevant for future work. We also developed
the coherent narrative, again corroborated by workers in diverse disciplines, that
the systemic environmental degradation we now experience has been caused
largely by the dominant mechanistic root metaphor at the heart of science. Lastly,
we described several existing allied works and innovative leaders who are already
implementing technology and applications that are compatible with the science
we propose as well as a hypothetical holistic approach to land development based
on our framework.
In this chapter, we address several additional conceptual and scientific perspectives
to help further illustrate the framework and better weave together the
many complex threads, ideas, and methods. These final thoughts seek to build yet
Foundations for Sustainability. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-12-811460-5.00009-1
Copyright © 2019 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
231
another bridge linking the holistic Life science paradigm to the everyday realm of
common sense, conventional wisdom, day-to-day activities, and intuitive sensibilities
by which we normally think about Life, environment, human culture, and the
myriad relations between. As a final set of parting words, we hope this chapter
serves to inspire hope and optimism that the reformed scientific foundations we
have presented hold true potential to catalyze lasting and systemic change for
humanÀenvironment sustainability.
TWO SUCCESSFUL FUTURES ARE BETTER THAN ONE
Our holistic and systemic approach began by looking at what may be the most
difficult and seemingly intractable conflict in our current crisis. Instead of
continuing the conflict by trying to argue for superiority or primacy of the
Sustainer worldview and program, we sought to “embrace contraries” and
“amplify both sides” in the spirit of Elbow (1986) in order to break out of the
stuck system we are in and to help bring into being a new system in which
these two seemingly contradictory worldviews—sustainers and transcenders—
can be mutually beneficial and complementary. This approach also follows the
thought leadership of Stephen Covey and his principles to “start with the end in
mind” and “think winÀwin.” By employing the concepts and methods in this
book, we see it as practically achievable that we can indeed succeed on both
future paths that both Sustainers and Transcenders can win. We have tried to
portray how these two groups can, and in fact must, help each other achieve
Great Change, a Great Transition, and ultimately Great Life success. A stark
way to frame our current moment in history is that we can choose to
succeed together or fail separately—united we stand, divided we fall.
In our 2015 book, Flourishing Within Limits to Growth, we presented a case
and a collaborative vision by a team of systems and network ecologists showing
how by “following nature’s way” we humans can exist with rich lives and
culture while also preserving environmental quality. That book has many recommendations
and practical steps that are compatible with this book. These include
renewable energy, recycling materials, Pigovian taxes, investments in education
and family planning, and the promotion of research, development, and innovation.
We continue to believe those recommendations taken together are essential
for a “system of solutions” solving the entangled “system of problems” that
comprise the humanÀenvironment crisis.
The main ideas we have added and expanded upon in this book include an
explicit foundation of the Life value proposition and to embrace the opposite
worldview, belief system, or system of ideas relative to the humanÀenvironment
interface. Flourishing primarily addressed the perspective of the Sustainers, while
in this book, we acknowledge the equal validity of their complementary counterparts,
the Transcenders. Our ambitious ideal goal is assistance so that both camps,
232 CHAPTER 9 Sustainability: A goal for all
thus ideally all humans in a leadership and stewardship role aiding all Life, can
flourish—the Sustainers flourishing on Earth within the physical, material, spatial,
and Life support (carrying capacity) limits to growth, and the Transcenders flourishing
on the different yet necessarily cooperative project to grow and develop
beyond these environmental and planetary limits, whether on Earth (for certain
types of non-material growth) or beyond (for colonizing Life in space and on
other worlds).
Our choice to reverse the trend and habit of continual splitting, reducing, fragmenting,
and analyzing is intentional. We see the imbalance and extreme bias
toward the analytical mode as very much part and parcel with the root cause of
environmental degradation that is the glaring signature and unintended negative
consequence of industrial culture. Going back to the origin, we have shown it
possible to reverse the standard biology textbook approach that separates life
from environment when describing the original and fundamental nature of Life.
And, in the present moment of our global community, we choose to unify rather
than further polarize differences between people based on cherished ideas, worldviews,
politics, and ideological “tribes.” This is not an unidentified third way
option that looks to reconcile all dissimilarities, but rather a way forward
that retains the distinctions and advantages of both approaches. It is not a new
discovery that a functioning dialectic—where two sides continually oppose each
other—can be stable particularly when there is balance in ascendency of the two
sides. The environmental crisis is one manifestation of the asymmetric imbalance
toward Transcenders and away from Sustainers, and toward reductionism away
from holism. Our book aims to reposition and stimulate the role of Sustainers and
holism, but not to eliminate the opposites.
The ultimate destination we foresee from an endless series of splitting, fragmenting,
and division is that we will cut ourselves off from each other and from
the Life support context of the world, and then we will cease to exist. The
evidence for a trend of such impacts and consequences is already here and abundantly
clear, and every crucial aspect of our shared planetary home most valuable
for sustaining Life is under threat of destruction and has shown quantifiable
damage for decades. Add to these ills the increasing economic volatility and systemic
risk, increasing military and civil conflict within and between nations, and
it is overwhelmingly clear that we need radical solutions with power to transform
mindsets, to heal land and people, and to bring people together.
Thus, we must change course. We have shown the need for a compensating
focus on unifying and bringing together, which, after a corrective transition
period, can lead to a balanced scientific program of equal parts analysis and
synthesis to help foster a balanced culture. In this new era, we imagine we will
achieve an organic unity and empowerment by which we and our planetary environment
co-develop and co-evolve in mutually beneficial synergy such that
human Life and Earth environment both improve in quality over time. Does this
sound naively optimistic and idealistic? Perhaps, from the old mechanistic mindset
and current framing. But we know now it is the trajectory that Life on Earth
233Two Successful Futures Are Better Than One
has followed during its long-term development as evidenced by increasing its
complexity, diversity, and interdependencies. Why should adding humans be
so different?
The path of unifying and wholeness, as we have described several times, can
be supported with evidence, results, and methods of science, and it can be corroborated
by perennial philosophy, wisdom traditions, and Eastern philosophies and
religions. Thich Nhat Hanh, a Buddhist monk from Vietnam, has written about
“inter-being” as one of the most important teachings of Buddhism. He has written
“We are here to awaken from the illusion of separateness.” The radical empiricism
of Thich Nhat Hanh, other Buddhists, Native Americans, and people with
diverse viewpoints can serve to disrupt our old habits and ways of thinking just as
we have sought to do with new holistic science perspectives. Take, for example,
this approach to understand the fundamental nature of things such as a flower:
There is no permanent entity within us, there is only a stream of being. There
is always a lot of input and output. The input and the output happen in every
second, and we should learn how to look at life as streams of being, and not as
separate entities. This is a very profound teaching of the Buddha. For instance,
looking into a flower, you can see that the flower is made of many elements
that we can call non-flower elements. When you touch the flower, you touch
the cloud. You cannot remove the cloud from the flower, because if you could
remove the cloud from the flower, the flower would collapse right away. You
don’t have to be a poet in order to see a cloud floating in the flower, but you
know very well that without the clouds there would be no rain and no water
for the flower to grow. So cloud is part of flower, and if you send the element
cloud back to the sky, there will be no flower. Cloud is a non-flower element.
. . .if you continue, you will see a multitude of non-flower elements in the
flower. In fact, a flower is made only with non-flower elements. It does not
have a separate self.
A flower cannot be by herself alone. A flower has to “inter-be” with everything
else that is called non-flower. That is what we call inter-being. You cannot
be, you can only inter-be.
Thich Nhat Hanh (1998)
His Buddhist view of Life as “streams of being” and his views of all entities
as non-separate but always “inter-being” fits with what we know of Life that is
simultaneously organism, ecosystem, and biosphere, all enfolded together. We
know this from the hard science of tracer studies just as clearly as we know it
from Buddhist radical clarity of thought. No organism is separate from its surroundings.
It is not simply an independent genetic code that prints sui generis an
organism as if from a 3D printer. For example, a bear is not separate in any ultimate
sense, as we saw in Jan Heath’s beautiful glimpse of inter-being in Fig. 5.2.
The bear we see and draw as bounded in space and time is really a stream of flies
enfolded in fish, clouds, rains, and rivers enfolded into mountains, and oxygen,
carbon dioxide, and other gases enfolded into wind and flowing masses of air
234 CHAPTER 9 Sustainability: A goal for all
across continents. The hyperset formulation is at work again across scales,
embedding one another.
We humans are also in the process of inter-being. We can look inside ourselves
and see ecosystems (such as the gut microbiome) and deeper still we see
the environment (basic molecules and elements of physics and chemistry, energy
quanta, and other building blocks). And, we can look outside and see manifestations
of ourselves—the imprint of our ways of thinking and acting changes the
world profoundly. To borrow another practice from Buddhism, meditation and a
focus on one’s breath, we have instant access to solid evidence of our unity with
all Life. To breathe in and focus on one’s inhaling breath is to be aware that
invisible oxygen unites us with the green plants that are necessary extensions of
every second of our living existence. To breathe out and focus on one’s exhaling
breath can foster awareness that invisible carbon dioxide is one way we return the
favor and are in a process of mutually beneficial inter-being with green plants. If
we want both the inner and outer realms to be beautiful, healthy, and balanced,
then we can start by mindfulness and understanding how they are unified, interdependent,
and intertwined across many orders of magnitude of space and time
from milliseconds to millennia and microns to mountain ranges.
Another message of sustainability and holistic Life science is that place matters,
and that investment in and commitment to place and the integration and
stewardship of the local natural environment are essential to human personal and
social well-being. Fig. 9.1 is a photograph of an old hillside town named Vranov
nad Dyji, which is in the Czech Republic just across the Austrian border. The castle
on the hill, overlooking the Dyji River (Thaya in German), dates from c. 1100,
FIGURE 9.1
Vranov nad Dyji, Czech Republic.
Photo credit B.D. Fath.
235Two Successful Futures Are Better Than One
and the human edifices emerge out of, fit in well with, and complement the natural
landscape. The area has been able to provide a sustainable, continuous home
to humans for almost 1000 years. Possibly, we could say humans have improved
the LifeÀenvironment system of this region and made the place better and more
productive through their actions rather than consuming and exploiting it.
Protecting and enhancing an integrated socioÀecological system returns us to a
core value of love of life. We assume that the multigenerational denizens of
Vranov nad Dyji love, respect, and take pride in their place. This is a place worth
investing in, renewing, and defending, which it has surely had to do numerous
times in its existence.
In fact, if one looks carefully, perhaps squinting with our mind’s eye, we can
see the overlapping and interconnected holons at various scales—organism, ecosystem,
and biosphere—which give rise to the autocatalytic cycles that maintain
the region’s sustenance (Fig. 9.2). This is a living example of what we are aiming
for in a winÀwin human and LifeÀenvironment relation and the opposite of
many more recent places that lack distinction, life, value, or conviction, the socalled
modern built environments referred to as “The Geography of Nowhere”
(Kunstler, 1994). No wonder these places that belong nowhere are neglected and
disabused, because they have no sense of space, no investment in lasting gradient
formation, and no connective time thread woven through them. They are treated
as a commodity where resources (including the space itself) are to be siphoned
off until any value is gone and then prompting a move to the next place; lather,
rinse, repeat, again and again—the very definition of unsustainability.
FIGURE 9.2
Conceptualization of the holons of Life or “flexons” at work in a real landscape. Organism,
ecosystem, and environment hexaflexagon images from Sarah McManus.
236 CHAPTER 9 Sustainability: A goal for all
While the real, unique, and specific details of local environment have been
integrated in the Vranov nad Dyji landscape, the same technologies, applications,
policies, rules, practices, infrastructure, and processes would not work if
we attempted to transfer them directly to other local environments. Likewise,
what has worked in the pictured landscape for a small population may not be
scaled up to continental or global scales as is. Perhaps, we have already exceeded
the global carrying capacity for this way of small-scale living. However, our challenge
is to take the lessons learned so that they could be scaled up, generalized,
abstracted, and then remodeled for unique application in each unique local context.
Thus, we also need the universal and global principles of LifeÀenvironment
and these must also be understood, aligned, and successfully integrated. So, we
find yet another set of dialectics of local versus global, and real/specific versus
abstract/generic, involved in learning how to live in a winÀwin relation with our
Life-support context.
THE ROADS AHEAD, THE ROAD MAPS, AND THE DRIVERS
Yogi Berra, the major league baseball player famous for his oddball insights,
once said “If you don’t know where you are going, you will probably end up
somewhere else.” This is a humorous analogy to what we brilliant humans may
inadvertently be doing with respect to our relationship to our environment, home,
and collective futures. As we have worked to illustrate from multiple angles,
unless we start, proceed always, stay focused, steer effectively, and strive for outcomes
with clearly articulated Life value, we run the risk that we will end up
somewhere else—we may not be able to continue the good Life we have come to
assume and take for granted. We also see the added challenge of having the wisdom
and clarity to know when we need to chart two distinct futures to match the
fundamental natures of two distinct groups of people. If this seems like an act of
splitting or fragmenting, then remember that we have always described the
Sustainer and Transcender camps as necessarily complementary and both united
in the larger unifying project of Life itself.
Possible rewordings of Berra’s funny aphorism could be that “If the landscape
has changed since the time your map was made, then by following it you
may end up somewhere you did not intend to go.” This fits with the story we
have developed in which our science paradigm, economics, and other cultural
“road maps” or systems of collective intelligence were developed at a different
time in history, and the world has changed in fundamental ways since. Some of
this change has to do with the scale and scope of the human enterprise with
respect to the scale of the planetary environment, its material and energetic
resources, and the real physical aspects of carrying capacity and Life support.
Other aspects of the change have to do with what we have learned—under this
heading, we must include eco-literacy (how Life is organized and functions),
237The Roads Ahead, the Road Maps, and the Drivers
and the double-edged sword of over-using mechanistic models in science as our
only road map.
A version of the Berra adage focused on two distinct groups and futures might
be “If you have two drivers and they fight over which direction to go, you could
wreck your car (or bike, or train), injure both drivers, and get nowhere.” Given
our current circumstances, which we suggest is analogous to this, it is important
to stop, reflect, assess the situation, and find a path to peaceful resolution. Only
after such resolution and clarification should we get back in the vehicle and proceed
to move forward. Given our proposal for two distinct futures, this analogy
requires either two separate vehicles for Sustainers and Transcenders or taking
turns with one group driving and the other group enjoying the ride in supportive
solidarity. The alternative car wreck or train wreck—a fitting analogy for our
current crisis—should not be an option due to the obvious downside risk and permanent
harm done.
We showed in Chapter 1 that our Sustainer/Transcender framework is compatible
with the cultural theory distinction between Egalitarians and Individualists,
which Thompson et al. (1990) viewed as groups with opposite emphasis on managing
human needs versus managing natural resources, respectively. While this
cultural classification scheme fits well with past and present humanÀenvironment
conditions and relations, we think our categories are more forward compatible.
This is because we see the Sustainer/Transcender dichotomy to be informative
and relevant into the future and to help anticipate and understand a hypothetical
coming bifurcation we foresee in humanÀenvironment cultural types. As the center
of cultural intelligence, we again discuss the imperative that science instigate
and lead this peaceful bifurcation revolution so that the two differentiated worldviews,
systems of ideas, and action programs of Sustainers and Transcenders can
differentiate while remaining in closely coordinated complementarity.
DISRUPTING THE SCIENTIFIC PARADIGM
The paradigm shift we propose with this book shares some similarities with “disruptive
innovation” that has become more common in the business world in
recent decades with business innovation like Netflix, Uber, Twitter, and other
smaller firms that have upset dominant mainstream corporations in a given sector.
Disruption in the business world was described well by Christensen et al. (2015).
“Disruption” describes a process whereby a smaller company with fewer
resources is able to successfully challenge established incumbent businesses.
Specifically, as incumbents focus on improving their products and services for
their most demanding (and usually most profitable) customers, they exceed the
needs of some segments and ignore the needs of others. Entrants that prove disruptive
begin by successfully targeting those overlooked segments, gaining a
foothold by delivering more-suitable functionality—frequently at a lower price.
238 CHAPTER 9 Sustainability: A goal for all
Incumbents, chasing higher profitability in more-demanding segments, tend not
to respond vigorously. Entrants then move upmarket, delivering the performance
that incumbents’ mainstream customers require, while preserving the
advantages that drove their early success. When mainstream customers start
adopting the entrants’ offerings in volume, disruption has occurred.
Instead of a smaller company, we see holistic Life science as a smaller system
of ideas compared to the current mainstream science paradigm. We see the mainstream
paradigm as “ignoring the needs” of the majority of people, and we are
targeting those unfulfilled needs with the “more-suitable functionality” of holistic
Life science including ecological network analysis, and the many other principles
and methods we have demonstrated have unique capacity for understanding and
problem solving beyond the reductionist, mechanistic mainstream. Similar to the
passage above, we see the mainstream “not to respond vigorously”—excellent
holistic and synthetic ideas and tools, sharing minority status with our views,
have been widely ignored for decades. However, if we can “move upmarket” by
“delivering the performance,” we may in fact achieve disruptive innovation in the
marketplace of scientific theories and practices.
In analogous fashion, Holling (e.g., Gunderson and Holling, 2002) presented
and has continued to develop his synthetic idea of the adaptive cycle as a graphical
means to understand growth, development, and disruption in natural ecosystems.
In Fig. 9.3, we show a recent version of his adaptive cycle that describes
the dominant process in an ecosystem as it proceeds through the four quadrants:
Orientor
Connectedness
K
r
α
Ω
Reorganization
Conservation—mature stage
Exploitation—pioneer stage
Release—
creative
destruction
FIGURE 9.3
Modified version of Holling’s four-stage adaptive cycle.
Reprinted from Burkhard, B., Fath, B.D., Mu¨ller, F., 2011. Adapting the adaptive cycle: hypotheses on the
development of ecosystem properties and services. Ecol. Modell. 222, 2878À2890.
239Disrupting the Scientific Paradigm
1. Bottom left, labeled r—This is the beginning of ecosystem development on a
site, like early succession. This period is characterized by exploitation of
natural resources and rapid growth of colonizer and pioneer species
populations and biomass.
2. Top right, labeled K—This is late stage succession on a site, like mature
forest, prairie, or other long-lasting and stable community-ecosystem. This
period is characterized by conservation of natural resources and slow growth
of late succession species populations and biomass.
3. Bottom right, labeled Ω- the end—This period, described as “release,” is a
period of disruption and reset. Catastrophic and systemic change can come
from outside and be massive and widespread (e.g., fire, insect pest, or storm)
or it can come from within and be small scale and piecemeal (e.g., deaths and
destructive falls of very large trees creating forest gaps). This disruption
releases some of the biomass and resources that had been tied up in the large
stock of biomass and other LifeÀenvironment structures such as soils.
4. Middle left, labeled α- the beginning—This period, described as
“reorganization,” is the renewal and establishment of a novel communityecosystem
following the disruptive events of the release stage. The
reorganization may lead to a system very similar to the previous one, or it
may be very different based on contingencies and new conditions such as
invading species, altered landscape or climate context, or other factors.
The conceptual framework of Holling’s adaptive cycle has been applied successfully
to numerous natural ecosystems. The ideas for this conceptual model
first formed when he was studying for many years the spruce budworm outbreaks
that occur periodically in Canadian forests (Holling, 1973). These outbreaks decimate
the forests, particularly balsam fir. However, the outbreaks are rare, with
only six since the early 1700s. Furthermore, without the outbreaks, the fir would
dominate the forest, but the opening provides opportunity for other species of fir
and spruce to be established and grow. In this manner, the ecosystem remains
adaptive to the prevailing conditions following stages of growth, stasis, crisis, and
reorganization. Another recent example is given by Angeler et al. (2015) who
have quantified the stages of development along the cycle for Baltic Sea phytoplankton
communities. In this research, they are able to use multivariate analysis
to confirm predictions about the adaptive nature of the phytoplankton communities
as they cycle through adaptive and conservative states. As we have expressed
throughout this book and supported by insight from many others (eloquently by
Wendell Berry, among others), living systems progress through inseparable stages
of birth, growth, maturity (conservation), and death. This dynamic change seen in
nature also has powerful applications in many human and socioeconomic systems
as well (Folke et al., 2002).
The adaptive cycle has been applied to the growth and development of social
institutions and firms (Fath et al., 2015) such that a resilient system is one that
navigates the entire cycle successfully (Fig. 9.4). In addition to the r, K, Ω, and
α, we add Klim, which represents times during which crisis planning keeps the
240 CHAPTER 9 Sustainability: A goal for all
system above a critical threshold. However, one important message of viewing
the system as a repetitive cycle is to anticipate and even welcome each stage as
part of an interconnected whole. In other words, it is not just about always growing
or always remaining on top, but being prepared and adaptive to changes that
inevitably come. In particular, we addressed the pathologies that occur to keep
the system stuck in one stage or inhibit it from entering another—two barriers
that are not the same. For example, growth-oriented paradigms, policies, and
practices—that debt-based money requires—favor the r-stage at the expense of
reaching a conservative equilibrium in K-stage—there is a right time to grow but
it is not always. The Ω-stage free-fall collapse will continue without redirection
and reorientation in a new direction that could have come from contingency planning
and capital accumulation during the previous K-stage.
Holling’s approach to understanding systems dynamics in ecosystems shares
generic similarities with the release, reorganization, and renewal that we see to be
necessary in the science paradigm. The current dominant mainstream paradigm is
much like a mature ecosystem—many resources are tied up in massive academic,
government, and corporate structures, growth is very slow, certain highly competitive
“species” of scientists reign atop the food chain, etc. An analog of a disruptive
catastrophe from outside this science ecosystem would be global
environmental catastrophe. Given the harm that this would cause, we seek to
spark a release and reorganization from within so that we might be better prepared
for and even prevent a global environmental catastrophe.
Status quo ante
Crisis
Confusion
Institutionalization
Innovation
Resources
Vertical zone of tolerance
Horizontal zone
of tolerance
Critical threshold
KlimK
r
Ω
α
© FASresearch 2014
Rise above threshold
Sink below threshold
- Deepened proven solutions
- Standardize, training routines
- Buffers, reserves, create storage
- Routines, follow crisis plans
- Access to reserves
- Return to status quo ante
- Improvization
- Old roles and hierarchies are overruled
- Acceptance of “natural” authorities
New growth
- Implementation and rollout of “the new”
- Abolish “the old” and “dysfunctional”
- Fast exploration of alternatives
- Testing
- Prototypes
–
–+
+
FIGURE 9.4
The adaptive cycle applied to the growth and development of social institutions and firms
(Fath et al., 2015).
241Disrupting the Scientific Paradigm
Goerner (2013) contributed a similar conceptual approach with a focus on
development within human culture and civilization. In Fig. 9.5, we show a modified
version of her diagram for understanding crisis and Great Change in stages
of civilization.
Goerner wrote of Fig. 9.5 (her Fig. 1):
ENS [energy network science] places today’s events within a natural development
process called self-organization. In human systems, the standard selforganizing
cycle of development proceeds as follows: 1) pent-up frustration
leads to pressure for change; 2) some naturally-occurring diversity—an electrifying
idea or a galvanizing leader—serves as a seed crystal around which
momentum begins to organize; 3) some insightful group of individuals develops
a demonstrably better way of doing business, economics, politics, education,
etc., that provides a way out of the crisis; 4) the human system
reorganizes in a way that relieves the pressure and advances societal development;
5) the new pattern of organization grows because energy, resources, and/
or information flows more robustly than before; 6) eventually the system
reaches the limits of this pattern of organization, new pressure builds, and the
pattern repeats leading to a new stage of development. The catch is that progress
is not guaranteed; should any part of the process [be] suppressed, pressure
will build into a snowballing series of calamities that may cause the society to
regress or even collapse.
We see a very strong mapping of this generic scenario on our current crisis
and when taking a radically empirical and critical hard look at mainstream science.
The “pent-up frustration” comes from the failure of the current science
enterprise to successfully address, understand, and solve the systemic environmental
and cultural crises. This book and the extensive community of holistic and
synthetic thinkers we have cited provide the “naturally occurring diversity,” and
FIGURE 9.5
System dynamics from growth and development to conservation and stasis. Crisis can
spur new ideas and stages. Modified from Goerner (2013), whose figure caption was “The
Cycles of Civilization as Self-organizing Development.”
242 CHAPTER 9 Sustainability: A goal for all
we also believe many “electrifying ideas.” As we continue to develop and apply
holistic Life science, we are confident we will collectively realize a “demonstrably
better way” of doing science and of living on Earth that simultaneously
embraces both Sustainer and Transcender worldviews and action programs.
Note in Fig. 9.5 where a branch splits off to show two paths at the peak of the
civilization development curve. We differ somewhat when applying Goerner’s
model to the present moment and the future where we foresee a coming bifurcation
into complementary Sustainer and Transcender groups. Where Goerner shows
“Regression or Collapse” after the peak, we would imagine something more like
Odum and Odum’s Prosperous Way Down and our own Flourishing Within
Limits—a managing of human needs and a successful effort to live well within
the real physical limits of the Earth that is the Sustainer future path.
But, it is also exciting and hopeful to examine the other path—the arrow
upward that Goerner labeled “New Stage of Civilization.” While we have to
remember that both paths are unified and necessarily mutually aiding and interdependent,
one aspect of the New Stage of Civilization must integrate the
Transcender mode as well as the Sustainer mode. Whether transcending existing
limits on Earth in nonmaterial progress, or by transcending Earth itself on the
necessary project of helping Life advance into space, the deep and unstoppable
Life urge of growth and innovation is just as important.
Brokering the peace accord between currently antagonistic Sustainer and
Transcender tribes will not be easy, but it can be done. Transcenders might gain
50%À100% of all remaining fossil fuels, if they can agree that environmental
Life support—atmosphere, soils, species and more—is sacred and inviolable for
their new allies the Sustainers and their successful winÀwin future or Earth. This
is just one rough example of concessions that could be imagined—but no such
peace deals will be possible unless we reform our science to prepare the individual
and collective intelligences that will come to the table at the summit.
We see a similar complex adaptive cycle like Holling’s, and civilization development
curve like Goerner’s, needed for science so that it can participate in and
lead the cultural bifurcation for two successful futures. This book, the many supporting
references and authors we cite, and the community of holistic Life science
leaders, can provide the “disruptive innovation” as an intentional paradigm shift.
We need this shock in science to jump-start the process of waking up, clarifying
values and thinking, leaping into action, and leading by example.
We see no alternative—science must lead. Hypocrisy and exceptionalism
within academic, corporate, nonprofit, and government science is perhaps the single
worst infection of our systemic disease. You need not take only our word for
it. Aldo Leopold (Leopold, 1993) wrote as much:
One of the penalties of an ecological education is that one lives alone in a
world of wounds. Much of the damage inflicted on land is quite invisible to
laymen. An ecologist must either harden his shell and make believe that the
consequences of science are none of his business, or he must be the doctor
243Disrupting the Scientific Paradigm
who sees the marks of death in a community that believes itself well and does
not want to be told otherwise. (p. 165)
The consequences of science are our business. We must transform our externalizing
of our own environmental impacts—like a form of claiming science is exceptional
and thus allowed to cause environmental damage. While this mismatch of
knowledge and action exists, while the center of our societal wisdom is confused
and schizophrenic, we can have no hope that some other sector will do a better
job, figure things out, and deliver solutions. As Thich Nhat Hanh might say, there
is no way to sustainability; sustainability is the way. The means and ends must be
unified, much as the many other fragmented and disjointed threads we have suggested
weaving back together.
We must affirm Life value now, and we must protect and reinforce it heavily
at every step in our scientific enterprises, so that the technology, applications, policy,
and governance that diffuse out from and coexist with science result in
winÀwin humanÀenvironmental relations. Reward structures in academia, as
well as taxes, regulations, rituals, celebrations, monuments—all aspects of culture
must collaborate and assist to value and sustain Life for it to improve rather than
degrade due to lack of understanding, lack of care, and lack of attention. We can
do science and improve the environment. Life has already shown us this is possible,
and Life teaches us how to accomplish it. Science is one step in many that
need reconsideration and transformation. From this, we envision other possibilities
such as:
We can cultivate agriculture and improve the environment.
We can build cities and improve the environment.
We can be human and improve the environment.
Since science informs, guides, and supports all of these human endeavors and
more, it has an especially great responsibility for self-consistent theory and action,
principles and behavior, knowledge (science) and ethics (con-science as Thoreau
referred to it).
THE ECOLOGICAL SELF AND THE PARTICIPATORY UNIVERSE
Another problem we face is that even with the understanding and motivation to
change, inertia of societal forces can quickly impede and thwart actual change.
The ideal conditions would entail a context in which action for change would be
supported, rewarded, and amplified by society and economy. Two views of this
ideal of spontaneous, organic, effortless, or frictionless change can help to imagine
how we can create and foster such a supportive context for Great Change and
sustainability.
Arne Næss’s deep ecology and ecological self (1987, 1988, 1989) provide
insight that aligns with both the Buddhist views of Thich Nhat Hanh and the
mathematical hyperset formalism of LifeÀenvironment as unfractionable and
244 CHAPTER 9 Sustainability: A goal for all
unified whole. Næss’s deep ecology is compatible with the principles in this
book, the ecological metaphysic of Ulanowicz (1999a), and a holistic mental
model of Life and self as extensive in space and continuous in time beyond the
body and life span of the individual human organism. Næss (1987) wrote:
The requisite care flows naturally if the ‘self’ is widened and deepened so that
protection of free nature is felt and conceived as protection of ourselves.
If reality is like it is experienced by the ecological self, our behaviour naturally
and beautifully follows strict norms of environmental ethics. We certainly need
to hear about our ethical shortcomings from time to time, but we change more
easily through encouragement and through a deepened perception of reality
and our own self—that is, a deepened realism. (p. 40)
Providing a “hard” scientific basis for these views, and promoting these
widely through educational and media enterprises, should complement and help
amplify the other evidence, intuitive appeal, and ethical power of Næss’s
“ecological self,” deep ecology, and other work. This, in turn, could help with
practical development of socioeconomic context so that actions like recycling,
composting, using solar energy, or biking to work can be rewarded rather than
penalized, and that they occur in the natural act of carrying out one’s activities,
process enabling process, resulting in closure to efficient cause. The linking of
supporting processes will be the key to achieving a sustainable way.
The Story of Change is an excellent video produced by The Story of Stuff
Project (storyofstuff.org/movies/story-of-change/). This animated video explains
how unless mainstream socioeconomic “flow” changes to support self-change for
sustainability, actual progress comes at a great cost and effort for the change
agents and leaders who have to swim against a larger and stronger tide. They also
suggest how policies and values can be aligned to aid rather than hinder correct
action and emphasize the importance of engaged citizens who actively participate
in the democratic governance process. To achieve a “level playing field” would
be a step in the right direction. To tilt the playing field in favor of rewarding
those who transform themselves and their organizations to renewable energy,
recycling materials processes, ensuring environmental quality improvement, and
related Life-valuing actions would be even better. Full accounting and internalizing
all environmental and social costs would be an essential aspect of this correction
of the tilt of the playing field.
These are examples of the influence of the ideas in this book on some of the
day-to-day thoughts and actions we may experience as we grapple with our systemic
humans-in-the-environment crisis. Another idea within current conventional
wisdom that has diffused out from science is that entropy and the spontaneous
trend toward disorder is the dominant trend in the behavior of all systems. This
deeply ingrained idea is part of why we learned to accept environmental degradation
as somehow in line with the necessary workings of the universe. We have
already shown this to be false with respect to the many ways the Life has
improved its environment, increased order, and built rather than dissipated
245The Ecological Self and the Participatory Universe
gradients and stores of high quality energy. While much more abstract, far off,
and thus the opposite of practical solutions for near-term improvement, a thought
experiment may help us to challenge several more components of the societal
working assumption of the dominance of the second law of thermodynamics.
One of the ways that biology and ecology textbooks explain Life’s nonentropic
capacities is by reference to the continual stream of high-quality energy
from the Sun that fuels all Life activity. To extend this explanation to one logical
extreme would be to accept that Life on Earth is forever dependent on incoming
energy from the Sun. But, this also provides an interesting avenue by which to
imagine a test of the dominant entropic tendency. If we could escape from the
solar system—if we could successfully colonize Life beyond Earth in some space
station or on some other planet so as to be free from any dependency on the Sun,
then this would call into question if not outright falsify the hypothesis (now treated
as law) that entropy is greater in influence than syntropy or the inherent selforganizing
capacity of the universe.
Frances Moore Lappe´ and the Story of Change folks have demonstrated how
participatory engagement in democratic society and governance is essential for
societal transformation for sustainability. We maybe able to generalize and extend
this radically to consider a participatory universe in which via science, technology,
and culture we make predictions, set up experiments, test theories, and even
have a participatory hand in determining the balance of syntropy and entropy tendencies
in the universe.
CLARITY OF MIND AND PURPOSE
The conventional wisdom ideas of “looking out for number one” and “survival of
the fittest” that have diffused outward from the neo-Darwinian scientific paradigm
are in need of major update for a postmodern anthropocene world in which
humans have filled and now dominate the planet. As Gregory Bateson pointed out,
and as we quoted him earlier, any organism that operates under that narrow and
selfish organismal principle will destroy its environment and then destroy itself.
Given the science of networks, webs, and interdependent flows and processes, we
have shown multiple times, and that can be found in even greater abundance and
richer detail in the publications of systems and network ecologists, we know well
that no individual self can be fragmented from its environment without fatal damage.
Updated mottos that embody this relational wisdom would be:
Looking out for #1 À where #1 is Life as a unified whole
Survival of the fittest self-world and LifeÀenvironment relations
Spoils go to the victor who promotes self-sustaining (autocatalytic) cycles
These principles are not self-sacrificing or naively selfless—ask any of the
millions of species and billions of individual organisms on Earth, essentially all
246 CHAPTER 9 Sustainability: A goal for all
Life outside of industrial culture. The same integrated ethics of self-improvement
in the context of environmental home improvement can allow us to act for the
good of ourselves and for our children, grandchildren, and future generations
simultaneously. And, in this well-founded ethic and holistic science that balances
the smaller self-interest of the individual with the interest of the larger ecological
self, we can have the best of both worlds. As if material and physical improvement
(atmosphere, soils, biodiversity, and more) is not great enough reward for
holistic thought-action, we gain yet another reward—the spiritual sense of acting
for something larger than and longer lasting than ourselves. This provides a team
sense of purpose and togetherness which embraces not only all of humanity, but
also all living beings and our shared living home.
We see humans as unique and crucial member species of Life as a whole,
with unique capacities and important roles to play in service to Life. Homo sapiens
is the only species able to develop the machines we will need to explore
space and eventually colonize Life beyond Earth. We are the only species that
can scan the skies for potential impactors and imagine scenarios to protect Earth
against the catastrophic damage they could inflict. We are the only species able
to understand, synthesize, and interpret knowledge of the entirety of Life—its full
span in time and its full extent in space. We are the only species able to ponder
and have a chance to comprehend Life “from origin to destiny.” We are the only
species able to harness the planetary gift and motherlode of fossil fuels—and we
should use this power responsibly, and on behalf of Life itself. The list of our special
skills, capacities, and responsibilities is very long and profound.
But we cannot achieve these great accomplishments while we remain confused
and in conflict. In service to Life, let us begin the clarity and cooperation now.
247Clarity of Mind and Purpose
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Index
Note: Page numbers followed by “f” and “t” refer to figures and tables, respectively.
A
Abiotic activity, 63
Adaptation to disturbance, balancing, 156À159,
157f, 158f
Aerobic respiration, 85À86
Agency, 44
Aggression, level of, 145
Alice Ferguson Foundation, 222
American College and University Presidents
Climate Commitment (ACUPCC), 126
Anabolic functions, 141
Anaerobic metabolism, 58À59
Analysis, defined, 50
Analysis plus synthesis, 127À128
Anthropocene, 165
Anticipatory science, 100
Anticipatory strategy of systemic change, 32À37,
32f
Aristotle, 34, 56, 75À76
Armed conflicts, 2
Artificial intelligence (AI), 113
Ascendency, 44
Asimov, Isaac, 150
Association for the Advancement of Sustainability
in Higher Education (AASHE)
Sustainability Tracking, Assessment, and Rating
System (STARS) of, 118
Astrobiology, 81À82
Autocatalysis, 77, 78f, 92
nonmechanical properties of, 74À76
Autocatalytic centripetality, 77, 96
Autocatalytic loops, 67, 73, 77À79, 91
Autotrophs, 123À124
Axiology, 31
B
Bakshi, Bhavik, 220À221
Barber, Dan, 219À220
Bateson, Gregory, 103À106, 246
Berra, Yogi, 237À238
Berry, Wendell, 46
Biomimicry, 35, 218À219
Biomimicry Educators Network, 218À219
Biomimicry Institute, 218À219
Biomimicry Launchpad, 219
Biosphere, 140, 161À162
Biosphere II project, 138
Biotic community, 41
Buddhism, 85À86, 103, 234À235, 244À245
Buffett, Warren, 102
Butterfly effect, 153À154
C
Capra, Fritjof, 226
Carson, Rachel, 227
Cartesian view of the universe, 186
Catabolic functions, 141
Cellular life, origin of, 82À83
Center for Ecoliteracy, 206
Chalmers, David, 202À203
Chaos theory, 153À154
Chaucer, Geoffrey, 194
Chesapeake Bay, 102, 224
Chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), 60À61
Chronic environmental degradation, 52À53
Circulating seas, 82À83, 141
Clarity of mind and purpose, 246À247
Clark, Andy, 202À203
Climate deniers, 14, 18
Cobb Hill, 226
Coding, 167
Cognition, 15À16
Cognitive dissonance, 169À170
College and University Presidents’ Climate
Commitment (ACUPCC), 118
College of the Atlantic, Maine, 226
Community metaphor, 198À199
Competition, synergy of, 70À80
Conbiotic activity, 63
Contingency, 178À179
Control loop, 189À190, 192À193
Cooperation, synergy of, 70À80
Coupled complementary life, 137
Coupled transformers, 79, 139À140
Covey, Stephen, 232
Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, 22, 34
Cradle-to-cradle (CtC) design, 216À217
Cultural biases, 17
Cybernetics, 113
D
Dalai Lama, 46
Daly, Herman, 112
Darwin, Charles, 178
261
Death/death, 29
heat, 96À97
systemic, 28À29
Decoding, 167
Deep ecology, 46
Dependent co-arising, 86
Deep truths, 19À25
Descartes, Rene´, 184À188, 191
Devaluation of Life, 189
Dialectical thinking, 22À23, 70, 193À194
Dialectics and internalism, similarities between,
115
Discrete life, 9À11, 28À29, 38, 64, 85, 91,
125À126, 137, 142À143, 187À188
defined, 11
Donne, John, 150
Dual-model view of life, 10À12
Dynamic range of applicability, 12À14, 13t
E
Earth Day, 103À104
Ecological engineering, 220À222
Ecological footprint, 118, 134, 214À215
Ecological goal functions, complementarity of,
143À145
Ecological metaphysic, 1
Ecological narrative, 43
Ecological network analysis (ENA), 4, 12,
128À131, 145, 147f, 150, 156, 163
Ecological networks, principles of, 143À144
Ecological self, 46, 97, 203, 244À246
Ecological succession, 61
Ecomimicry, 35, 219
EcoSphere, 138À139
Ecosystem, 43, 87À88
adaptation to disturbance, balancing, 156À159,
157f, 158f
defined, 89À91
efficiency of flow, balancing, 156À159, 157f,
158f
healthcare, 198
media, 198
Ecosystemic life hypothesis, 82
Efficiency of flow, balancing, 156À159, 157f,
158f
Efficient cause, 179
Egalitarians, 17À18, 22, 238
Einstein, Albert, 110, 194
Elbow, Peter, 212
Endangered Species Act, 109À110
Enemy, 28À29
Energy flow, 201
Energy network science (ENS), 242
Energy signature, 221
EntityÀenvironment duality, 68À70, 69f
EntityÀenvironment synergy, 68À70, 69f
Entropy, 65À66, 207
Environment, 85À86. See also LifeÀenvironment
relationship
Environmental decay, 169À170
Environmental degradation, 65À66, 177À178
chronic, 2, 52À53
systemic, 2, 52À53
Environmental genomics, 141
Environmental sustainability, 4, 45
Environs, 93À94, 94f
characteristics of, 69À70
defined, 69
Equal standing, 109À110
Essential cyclic nature of Life, 45À46
Estuarine turbidity maximum (ETM), 83
Externalism, 113
Externalist objective perspectives, 103
Externalities, 112, 173
Externalization of environmental costs, 189
F
Family metaphor, 199
Fatalists, 17À18
Fine-grained reductionism, 51À52
Fiscus, Wilbur Guy, 195À196
Fitness of the environment, 91À92
Flexons at work, 236f
Food chain, 108À109, 109f
Food-linked holism, 109
Formal systems, 175À176
Fossil Fuel Revolution, 32À33
Fouling, 58
Fragmentation of life from
environment, 159À164, 189
G
Gaia Hypothesis, 59À60, 140
Gaia theory of a living biosphere, 77
Gates, Bill, 102
Generic system modeling approach, 66
Genetics Revolution, 32À33
Genuine Progress Index, 214À215
Genuine Progress Indicator (GPI), 118, 134
Geo-engineering projects, 229
German Environmental Ministry, 215À216
Global ecological crisis, 1À2, 2t, 4
Glycolysis, 58À59
Goerner, Sally, 6, 180À183, 182f, 186À187,
242À243, 242f
262 Index
Gradient building capacity, 92, 93f
Granularity, 178À179
Great Oxygenation Event, 58À59
Greenhab Project, 221À222
Green revolution, 192
H
Hagens, Nate, 211
Harding, Stephan, 226
Healthcare ecosystem, 198
Heat death, 96À97
Heterotrophs, 123À124
Hierarchists, 17À18
Historicity, 178À179
Holism, 134
balancing and synergizing reductionism with,
103
food-linked, 109
systemic, 108À109
Holistic land development, hypothetical
application of, 223À228
Holistic Life science, 49, 81, 99, 129À130, 132
as anticipatory and oriented toward a sustainable
humanÀenvironment relation, 100
as basis of value, 100
balancing and synergizing holism with
reductionism, 103
complexity, 120, 122f
core principles of, 99À127, 132
impredicativity of, 122
ingrained assumptions and structures,
questioning, challenging, and transforming,
124
internalist self-referential and externalist
objective perspectives, 103
modeling, 120, 123f
Holistic Life technologies
biomimicry, 218À219
case studies, 213À222
challenges to, 228À230
cradle-to-cradle design, 216À217
ecological engineering, 220À222
permaculture, 219À220
Sustainers versus Transcenders, 208À213
Holistic metabolism-repair model of organismal
life, 79
Holistic perspective
on origin of life, 81À87
on “what is life?”, 87À97
Holling’s four-stage adaptive cycle, modified
version of, 239À241, 239f, 241f
Holoecology, 130À131
cardinal hypothesis of, 146
Holons of Life, 236f
Homo sapiens, 247
Hornborg, Alf, 176À178, 191À192
Hubbert, M. King, 208À212
Human Development Index, 214À215
HumanÀenvironment relationship, 1, 3f
systemic crisis, 32À33
winÀwin relationship, 4À5
Human socioeconomic networks, 44
Hydrological cycle, 82À83
Hyperset formalism of life, 159À164
I
Imperfect modeling, 67
Income inequality, 2
Index of Social Economic Welfare, 214À215
Indirect effects of life, dominance of, 145À150
Individualists, 17À18, 238
Industrial agriculture, 192
Industrial education and media, 193
Industrial food system, 192
Industrial medicine, 192À193
Industrial Revolution, 32À33
Information Revolution, 32À33
Instrumental value, 196
Internalism, 103, 196, 207
and dialectics, similarities between, 115
Internalist self-referential perspectives, 103
Intrinsic value, 109À110, 196
J
Janus hypothesis, 167
Jorgensen, Sven, 143À144
Just sustainabilities, 35
K
Kangas, Pat, 220À221
Kant, Immanuel, 116
Kantian whole, 94À95
Kuhn, Thomas, 184
Kuhnian science revolution, 34
Kunstler, James, 209À210
Kurzweil, Ray, 229
L
Land-community, 41
Land ethic, 40À43, 42f, 109À110
Land Institute, 218À220
Lappe´, Frances Moore, 5, 23À24, 164À165,
183, 246
Leopold, Aldo, 37À38, 45, 58, 183, 243À244
land ethic, 40À43, 42f
263Index
Liar’s Paradox, 159À160
“Life as organism” model, 169
Life/life
as basis of value, 27
as complex and dual modeled, 10À12
discrete, 9À11, 28À29, 38, 64, 85, 91,
125À126, 137, 142À143, 187À188
as greatest common denominator, 9À10
multi-model of, 87, 95À96, 96f
operational definition of, 88À89
organismal, 28, 89, 125À126
origin of life, holistic perspective on, 81À87
reverence for, 38À40
sustained, 9À11, 28À29, 41, 64, 85, 87, 90À91,
137, 142À143, 187À188
unit-model of, 87, 95À96, 95f, 107f
“what is life?,” holistic perspective on, 87À97
Life-cycle assessment, 119
LifeÀenvironment interface, 63À70
LifeÀenvironment relationship, 37À38, 57À58
holistic science of, 81
winÀwin relationship, 63
LifeÀenvironment science, core principles of,
99À127
Life on Earth, sustainability of, 82
Lotka, Alfred, 137, 139À141, 143À144
LotkaÀVolterra model, 142
Lovelock, James, 59À60
Luhmann, Niklas, 95
M
Machine metaphor, 168, 176À188, 182f, 206
unintentional overuse of, 182À183
Macy, Joanna, 200
Mars Desert Research Station (MDRS)
Greenhab Project, 221À222
Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, 29
Material cause, 179
Material cycling, 201
McDonough Braungart Design Chemistry
(MDBC), 217
McManus, Sarah, 95À96, 95f, 96f
Meadows, Donella, 164, 226
leverage points, 20À21, 21t, 34, 37, 213
Media ecosystem, 198
Metabolism-repair model ((M, R)-system), 89, 96,
159À160
Metaphysics, defined, 45
Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (MEA), 118,
214À215
MindÀbrain problem, 171
Mind metaphor, 199
MindÀphysical problem, 171
Mitsch, Bill, 220À221
Modeling relation, 134À136, 135f, 167À168,
170À175, 172f
Molecular string “composers”, 79, 82À83, 141
Molecular string “decomposers”, 82À83, 141
Mollison, Bill, 220
Mono-metaphor, 195À200
Morowitz, Harold, 143À144
Muir, John, 150, 181
Multi-model of Life, 87, 95À96, 96f
Mutualism, 4, 72À73, 130, 154À156
ontological role of, 77
N
Naess, Arne, 203, 244À245
Nanotechnology, 229
NASA, 16
Astrobiology, 81À82
Office of Space Science, 81À82
NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC)
Program, 81À82
NASA Institute for Advance Concepts (NIAC).
See NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts
(NIAC) Program
Natural system, 175À176
Negentropy, 96À97, 191
Neo-Darwinian evolutionary theory, 178
Netflix, 238À239
Network analysis, 108
Network cycling, 144À145
Network ecology, 129À130
Network enfolding, 108À109
Network environ analysis (NEA), 145, 159
Network environ theory, 144
Network nonlocality, 108, 146
Newton, Isaac, 178
Nonhuman systems, 170
Normal science research, 57, 67
O
Objectivism, 103
Odum, H.T., 143À144, 221
Openness, 178À179
Organic farming (OF), 62À63
Organicism, 178À179
Organismal life, 28, 89, 125À126
Organism plus environment, 141À142
Original system boundary, 66f
264 Index
Origin of life, holistic perspective on, 81À87
Orr, David, 227
Oxygen atmosphere, 58À60
Ozone layer, 60À61
P
Paradigms, 6, 19À25
Paradigm shift, 101
Participatory universe, 244À246
Patten, Bernie, 11À12, 46, 64, 68À71, 69f, 80, 87,
93À94, 96À97, 107À109, 130À131, 134,
137, 145À146, 148À150, 163, 167, 179À180
Pennsylvania State University, 226À227
Permaculture, 219À220
Photosynthesis, 58À59
Physical connection of life, 150À154
Physiological needs, 29
Planetary boundaries, 118, 134, 214À215
Pollan, Michael, 219À220
Poly-metaphors, 195À200
Popper, Karl, 179À180
Preadaptation, 221
Precautionary principle, 102
PredatorÀprey interactions, 67, 142, 151À152
Predictive science, 100
Pre-Life Earth environment, 83À84
Primordial ooze, 57À58
Propensity, 179À180
Protoecological cycles, 11, 87
Proximate interactions, 4
R
Radical empiricism, 138
Raworth, Kate, 215À216
Ray C. Anderson Foundation, 219
Reduced system boundary, 66f
Reductionism, 152
balancing and synergizing holism with, 103
Reductionist science, 50À51
Regenerative agriculture, 62À63
Relational biology, 197À198
Relational connection of life, 150À154
Relational model of organism, 123À124
Relational property, 114
Relational reasoning, 83
Research Alliance for Regenerative Economics,
205À206
Resource homogenization, 108
Retention time, 144À145
Reverence for life, 38À40
Rights, 109À110
Risk aversion, 102
“Robbing Peter to pay Paul” approach of
unintended consequences, 33
Rodale Institute, 131
Root metaphor, 6, 177À178, 189, 197À200
Rosen, Robert, 67, 79, 89, 93, 96, 103, 120À126,
122f, 123f, 130À131, 133À137, 135f,
159À160, 162À163, 165, 167
S
Sacred metaphor, 200
Salatin, Joel, 131, 220
Savory, Alan, 131, 220
Scale of analysis, 55
Schumacher College, 206, 226
Schweitzer, Albert, 37À38, 43, 45
reverence for life, 38À40
Schweitzer, Albert, 58, 118
Science
anticipatory, 100
facilities, 225À228
holistic. See Holistic Life science
predictive, 100
Scientific paradigm
disrupting, 238À244
shift, 56À57
Second Law of Thermodynamics, 22, 65À66,
78À79, 168À169
Second-order ecology, 117
Self, ecological, 97, 203
Self-organization, 114, 221
Self-reference, 86, 103, 159À160, 207
Self-referential loops, 124
Self-referential process, 133
Self-world model, in mind, 18f
Shakespeare, William, 109
Shared mental model, 2
Social degradation, 177À178
Social relations, 17
Soil Health Institute (SHI), 62À63
Soils, 61À63
Spaceship Earth, 82
SpaceX, 16
Story of Change, The, 245À246
Story of Stuff Project, The, 245
Sustainability
environmental, 4, 45
overlapping and nested realms of, 53, 54f
Sustainability Indicator Management and Analysis
Platform (SIMAP), 227
Sustainability Institute, 226
Sustainability Tracking, Assessment, and Rating
System (STARS), 118
265Index
Sustainable Development Goals, 214À215
Sustained life, 9À11, 28À29, 41, 64, 85, 87,
90À91, 137, 142À143, 187À188
defined, 11
Sustainers, 14À18, 17t, 22, 131À132, 137À139,
196À197, 232À233, 238, 243
Holistic Life technologies for, 208À213
Synergism, 4, 130
Synergy
of cooperation and competition, 70À80
entityÀenvironment, 68À70, 69f
Syntropy, 96À97, 207
System
of life, 29À30
value, 30À31
Systemic change, anticipatory strategy of, 32À37,
32f
Systemic death, 28À29
Systemic environmental degradation, 52À53
Systemic holism, 108À109
Systemic social dysfunction, 2
System metaphor, 199À200
System of ideas, 5À8, 7f, 133
Systems ecology, 129
T
Tansley, Sir Arthur, 89À90
Taoism, 85À86, 103
Theory of change, 32f
Theory of the socialized actor, 30À31
Thich Nhat Hanh, 234À235, 244À245
Tragedy of the commons, 3f, 7f, 45À46
Transcenders, 14À18, 17t, 22, 131À132,
137À139, 196À197, 232À233, 238, 243
Holistic Life technologies for, 208À213
Triple bottom line methods, 119
Twitter, 238À239
Typology, 14À15, 17
U
Uber, 238À239
Uhl, Christopher, 226À227
Ulanowicz, Bob, 179À180
Ulanowicz, Robert, 1, 7À8, 37À38, 45, 55, 57, 64,
66f, 67, 71À79, 78f, 91, 93À94, 96, 101, 106,
130À131, 143À144, 146, 150À152,
154À159, 157f, 162À163, 178À179, 182f,
202, 244À245
ecological metaphysic, 43À47
Unbalanced overuse of analysis, 189
United States, 2, 14
Unit-model of Life, 87, 95À96, 95f, 107f
Unit of selection, 91
University of New Hampshire (UNH), 227
Sustainability Indicator Management and
Analysis Platform, 227
US Environmental Protection Agency, 103À104
Us versus them, 51, 169
V
Value, defined, 31
Value system, 30À31
Value theory, 30À31
Vranov nad Dyji, Czech Republic, 235À237, 235f
W
Walmart, 229
Watts, Alan, 105À106
Ways of life, 17
Web metaphor, 181, 182f, 198
WhalePower, 218
“What is life?,” holistic perspective on, 87À97
WinÀwin relationship
between humans and environment, 4À5
lifeÀenvironment, 63
Working assumptions, 49, 53, 55
266 Index