Read an Excerpt
A Third Window
Natural Life beyond Newton and Darwin
By Robert E. Ulanowicz Templeton Foundation Press
Copyright © 2009 Robert E. Ulanowicz
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-59947-154-9
CHAPTER 1
Introduction
"If I am right, the whole of our thinking about what we are and what other people are has got to be restructured.... If we continue to operate on the premises that were fashionable in the pre-cybernetic era, ... we may have twenty or thirty years before the logical reductio ad absurdum of our old positions destroys us."
—Gregory Bateson, Steps to an Ecology of Mind
A Self-Destructive Avenue?
The late Gregory Bateson seemed convinced that society is on a suicidal course and that we can be saved only by eschewing our modernist hubris in favor of "an ecology of mind." In effect, Bateson was arguing that the fundamental assumptions that support how we presume the world to function are categorically wrong—not simply askew or in need of amplification or clarification—but outright wrong! His assertion surely will strike many readers as preposterous. A look in any direction at any time over the past three centuries reveals major advances and benefits that have accrued to society from adopting the scientific, rationalist perspective. How could such marvels possibly have derived from mistaken foundations? How could continuing to look at the world through the same helpful lens possibly lead us astray? Surely, Bateson was delusional!
But Bateson may seem delusional only because his view of nature originated from within the scientific community. As C. P. Snow (1963) observed, society is pretty much divided into two cultures with clashing opinions as to whether science affords a beneficial window on reality. Any number of writers, romanticists, and humanists have warned society over the years that the scientific viewpoint illumines only the road to perdition, and, for many, the horrors of the twentieth century proved that point. Goethe (1775) even went as far in Urfaustus as to compare placing one's faith in the Newtonian approach with selling one's soul to Evil. More recently, this attitude has drawn succor from postmodern deconstructivists such as Feyerabend (1978). So Bateson has quite a bit of company, it would seem. What distinguished Bateson from most of his fellow critics, however, was that he set out to construct a rational, alternative picture of nature.
That ecology played such a prominent role in Bateson's alternative is highly significant. To be sure, the ever-burgeoning catalog of ecological ills could be taken as part of the very decline that Bateson had prophesied, and he was grieved by these natural maladies. But Bateson made abundantly clear his distance from the attitude that "technological thinking caused the problems; technology can solve them." Such would represent what Bateson called a "pathology of epistemology" (Bateson 1972, 478). Rather, he was calling for a complete overhaul of how we look at the world, one informed by the image of the ecosystem rather than that of a machine. During his lifetime, he made progress toward articulating this new direction by invoking the nascent science of cybernetics and showing how counterintuitive phenomena could be understood in terms of indirect effects resulting from feedbacks and the connectedness that is characteristic of ecological systems.
Bateson was daring in his suggestion that nature was dualistic, albeit not in the sense of Descartes. Borrowing (perhaps unadvisedly) from Jung's neo-Gnostic vocabulary, Bateson identified as pleroma those entities that were homogeneous, continuous and governed by matter and energy—the normal "stuff" of science. Living systems and similar physical analogs that were characterized more by individual differences (information) and reflexive actions he called "creatura." Although he eschewed the transcendental, he nonetheless despaired of how the modern mind-set denies one access to the "sacred" in the natural world around us (Bateson and Bateson 1987). Despite these contributions, it cannot be said that Bateson achieved a full description of what, for want of a better term, might be called an "ecological metaphysic." It is my aim in this book to continue Bateson's agenda and to suggest a complete but rational replacement for those foundations that first initiated and subsequently sustained the scientific revolution. This latest revolution is a call to rational metanoia, a thoroughgoing conversion of mind.
Bateson sensed that ecology was not merely a derivative science, one wholly dependent on physics and chemistry for its explanations. Rather, to him ecology afforded a truly different way of perceiving reality. Others have sensed that ecology is fundamentally a different endeavor. Arne Naess (1988), for example, emphasized that ecology was "deep," and he purported that encounters with the ecological affect one's life and perception of the natural world in profound and ineffable ways. Jørgensen et al. (2007) likewise point to a number of attributes of ecosystems that deviate from the conventional and prefigure the discussion that will follow. The complexity of ecological dynamics has prompted some investigators to recognize the necessity for complementary narratives of the same phenomena (Jørgensen 1992). Even outside the discipline, there are those who recognize that ecology offers special insights into other natural and even artificial phenomena: witness, for example, books on the "ecology of computational systems" (Huberman 1988) or the establishment of institutes devoted to the "ecological study of perception and action" (Gibson 1979).
Ecology, the Propitious Theater
What, then, is so special about ecology, and is it indeed as ineffable as Naess would have us believe? I hope I am not spoiling the plot when I state at this early stage that a penetrating read of ecology reveals that it completely inverts the conventional assumptions about how things happen in the natural world. Furthermore, while recognizing the essential mystery surrounding all things living, I would submit that the reasons that ecology is so special are nowise as ineffable as Naess contended. It is possible to identify in perfectly rational fashion where, how, and why ecosystems behaviors depart from conventional dynamics (Ulanowicz 1999a) and to use those essential differences to build a more logical and coherent perspective on the phenomenon of life than can possibly be achieved by looking through the Newtonian glasses.
As the title of this book suggests, I am proposing that, if we are to understand and to survive, it becomes necessary to open a new window upon reality—a third window, so to speak. Without ignoring contributions out of antiquity, one could argue that the first modern window on nature was framed by key figures, such as Hobbes, Bacon, Descartes, and especially Newton, during the era leading up to the Enlightenment. As we shall argue, what one sees out this window was shaped largely by the ideas of Plato and the Eleatic school of fundamental essences. The second window signaled a shift from "law" to "process" and introduced secular history into the scientific narrative. It was opened in two stages, first by Sadi Carnot (1824) and again later by Charles Darwin (1859).
In contrast to these first two windows, the third panorama, that of ecology, has opened more gradually and, some would say, more fitfully. Ecology arose in the latter nineteenth century as certain ideas originating in the then-burgeoning field of physiology were extended beyond the scale of individual organisms. It took a particularly radical (some would say, subversive) turn during the early twentieth century when American Frederic Clements (1916) described ecological communities as akin to organisms. (Clements' detractors are wont to focus upon his chance and somewhat offhanded comment that ecosystems can be regarded as "superorganisms.") Clements' hint that top-down influence might be at work in communities did not at all sit well with conventional thinking, and a contemporary of Clements, one Henry Gleason (1917), countered that ecological ensembles come into being more by chance than by existing regularities. Gleason's view eventually supplanted Clements' during the 1950s, when society focused emphasis upon the action of individuals (Hagen 1992).
Clementsian notions were never entirely eliminated from ecology, however. G. Evelyn Hutchinson (1948), at about the time that cybernetics came into vogue, pointed to circular configurations of causal action as being a key driver behind system-level behavior in ecosystems. In making the case for circular causality, Hutchinson drew upon the work of one of his students, Raymond Lindeman (1942), who gave didactic form to interrelationships within ecosystems by portraying them as networks of transfers of material and energy. Lindeman's graphical approach to ecosystem dynamics was adopted and elaborated by another of Hutchinson's students, Howard T. Odum (1971), who also echoed Hutchinson's opinion that the role played by reward loops in ecosystem development is a highly significant one.
Backing into a New Road
It was precisely this heady mix of whole-system behavior, stochasticity, cybernetics, and networks, as attractively summarized by Eugene and Howard Odum (1959) in their popular textbook Fundamentals of Ecology, that first beckoned me and so many other physical scientists to become systems ecologists. To me, ecology seemed such a vibrant and fecund domain in comparison with the nonliving systems that had been my preoccupation as a chemical engineer. Still, it remained a rather inchoate brew to me, and I daresay even to the leading thinkers of the time, as we will see with Bateson. I would like to claim that all these elements fell rapturously into place during one flashing moment of insight, but it did not happen that way. There was a decisive moment, but, rather than being one of insight, it came as a singular juxtaposition of several ideas that led to an exciting phenomenological discovery. Phenomenology, as used in science, means the encapsulation of regularities into a quantitative formula, achieved in abstraction of any eliciting causes. Hence, phenomenology does not imply understanding, although it often leads in that direction.
I had the good fortune to read two papers in close succession (Atlan 1974; Rutledge, Basorre, and Mulholland 1976) that together provided me with a method to quantify the degree of organization inherent in any collection (network) of interacting processes. This discovery itself proved to be highly useful for assessing the status of an ecosystem, but there was more. The mathematics used to quantify organization was borrowed from the discipline of information theory. The measurement of information is accomplished in a strange, converse fashion whereby, in order to assess how much is known about a situation, it is first necessary to quantify its opposite, i.e., how much is unknown. (See chapter 5 in Ulanowicz 1986.) Thus it was that my utilitarian search for a measure of dynamical order brought me into contact with a way of parsing reality that has significant philosophical implications: using information theory, it becomes possible to decompose the complexity of any scenario into two separate terms, one that appraises all that is ordered and coherent about the system and a separate one that encompasses all that is disordered, inefficient, and incoherent within it. Furthermore, the mathematics of the decomposition reveals that these two features are strictly complementary. That is, under most conditions, an increase in either implies a decrease in the other. This agonism revealed for me a fundamental feature of reality that remains absent from virtually all scientific narratives, namely, that nature cannot be regarded in monist fashion. Overwhelmingly, scientists concentrate on elucidating the rules that give rise to order and coherence, but, in complex situations (such as living systems), such explication is never independent of the related dynamics of chance and arbitrary phenomena.
These considerations about the dual nature of reality will be discussed in greater detail toward the end of chapter 4; suffice it for now to remark that they are cogent to Bateson's (1972, 164) dismay over our usual approach to problem solving. Our contemporary predilection is to define a problem, formulate a desired endpoint, and then calculate in monist fashion how most directly to achieve that endpoint. All this is attempted without regard for the dynamics of countervailing aleatoric phenomena, the effects of which propagate over the same network of relationships as do the dynamics that build structure. Everyone is familiar with the unexpected and/or counterintuitive results that can occur when one neglects indirect causal pathways within a complex network of interactions: for example, the DDT used to kill agricultural pests winds up decimating populations of predatory birds. To a degree, such indirect effects can be written into the monist calculus of contemporary problem solving. What is more subtle, however, and absent from the conventional approach is the necessary and somewhat paradoxical role that chance and disarray play in the persistence of complex systems, because, without them, a system lacks the flexibility necessary to adapt and becomes defenseless in the face of novel perturbation. This relationship between the complementary dynamics of organization and chance is akin to a Hegelian dialectic. They remain antagonistic within the immediate domain, but they become mutually dependent over the larger realm. Our inclination under the monist approach is to drive the aleatoric to extinction, but to do so beyond a certain point is to guarantee disaster.
Turning Around and Going Forward
If we wish to avoid a bad end, then maybe, just maybe, we should pause and reconsider our directions. The foregoing considerations suggest that we may harbor an inadequate or inaccurate image of reality, and so we might begin by scrutinizing our (mostly unspoken) assumptions concerning how nature acts. Although a legion of books is available describing the scientific method, works that elaborate and critique the underlying postulates (metaphysics) of conventional science remain scarce by comparison. This book is an attempt to help redress that imbalance. As the first step toward correcting this bias, I will attempt in the next chapter to delineate the assumptions that frame the two great windows through which we currently regard physical reality—the Newtonian and Darwinian worldviews. With respect to the Darwinian narrative, I will argue in favor of the little heralded shift whereby Darwin's focus on indeterminate "process" effectively replaced the Newtonian concept of "law" as regards living systems. I will argue further that neither window provides an adequate resolution of the complementary (conflicting) questions "How do things change?" and "How do things persist?"
If the conclusion that the conventional windows do not provide an adequate aspect on the world seems too pessimistic to some readers, I would ask them to be patient. This book is not an antiscience screed. In the chapters to follow, I will attempt to construct a rational basis for what I consider to be a more realistic approach to the study of living systems. Should that goal sound ridiculous and hubristic to some, I would beg them consider the precedent set by Tellegen's theorem in thermodynamics (Mickulecky 1985). Bernard Tellegen worked with network thermodynamics, where systems of processes are represented as networks. Each node in the net is characterized by a potential (such as voltage or pressure), while the transfers connecting the nodes (the arcs or links) are quantified by the magnitude of the associated flow (amps, m3/s, respectively). In the conventional view, agency resides in the nodes, and flows are driven from nodes of higher potential to those with lower values. Thus, electrical current flows in a radio circuit at the behest of the differences in electrical potential (voltage) between components, while drinking water flows in a municipal distribution network in response to differences in hydraulic pressure.
Tellegen discovered that, whenever the relationships between potentials and flows are strictly linear, system dynamics become entirely symmetrical as regards the potentials and the flows. That is, nodes and flows become completely interchangeable; there is no reason that flows cannot be considered to be the causes of the given potentials. From this perspective, the convergence of electrical currents drives up the potential at that intersection (node). Water pressure may rise at an intersection of lines in a municipal system because water is arriving there faster than it is flowing away. In brief, Tellegen showed that throughout the realm of linear dissipative systems, there are always two identical and inverse (dual) perspectives on the same problem.
Of course, ecology is hardly a linear world, and no one should expect to achieve a fully equivalent description of ecosystem behavior by considering flows as causes. This is not as much of a loss as it first seems, however, because full equivalence would actually provide no new insights. If, however, a description of a nonlinear system should become possible whereby flows serve as causes, it follows that the ensuing picture would differ (possibly markedly so) from the one drawn with the focus on objects. Furthermore, those differences would not have been visible through the conventional lens. The new perspective affords the opportunity to view situations that are wholly new. Such a new vision is exactly what I am trying to convey in this book: an alternative (dual) description of our natural world can indeed be made in terms of processes as causes.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from A Third Window by Robert E. Ulanowicz. Copyright © 2009 Robert E. Ulanowicz. Excerpted by permission of Templeton Foundation Press.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
