A system is more than its parts

During my dissertation defense, I got into a mild argument with one of my committee members. He was a GIS remote sensing technologist, I was a tree-hugging hippie ecologist. The disagreement centered around how many 30 x 30 meter (this was the early 2000s) cells represented a portion of Earth defined as forest.

What is a forest? What is a tree? The endpoints of this continuum are easy to describe, but what happens in the middle?

What if a square mile area is in the middle of a city filled with scattered scraggly vegetation, trying not to die? Is that a forest?

The point is that a satellite doesn’t know the difference. Humans assign it a category. And humans can be wrong.

Humans can be wrong

Though I had been in academia for nearly 12 years when I defended my dissertation, I didn’t realize how adamant academics are about modernity. Everyone thinks they are right about their beliefs. My fellow ecologists believe humans can repair the damage we have done to ecosystems to render them pristine again. I disagree.

During a discussion about reforestation and forest cover on the landscape, I heard myself say aloud,

“A stand of trees does not a forest make.”

I can be pretentious, but I don’t know where this statement came from, but it did illustrate my point. One of my committee members suggested that planting some trees in a 10 x 10-meter plot of urban land would allow the landscape to perform its’ natural role again. I disagree.

Science and technology are not the answer to human problems. These elements of modernity create as many problems as they solve. Yes, germ theory is helpful. Yes, lower childhood mortality is awesome. Yes, we have the Clean Air and Clean Water Acts in the US to reduce pollution (ostensibly). Wait, that last one illustrates my point precisely. For all the good we do, bad is created. Solutions solve problems but also create new ones. It’s just the way it is.

Structure vs. Function

One of the most important things scientific training taught me is the difference between structure and function. For example, our inner ear bones have a structure. They are bones. In this reductionist form, they are just tiny little calcium formations. When considered in the context of the human system and our environment, our inner ear is part of a complex system designed to help us interpret information from our environments.

If nothing else this is evidence illustrating how connected we are to everything and suggests even minor tweaks to this system could have cascading effects across the human species and Earth. But you may not see that if you are adamantly blinded by a pro-technology or pro-modernity viewpoint like my committee member.

Pro-modernity, pro-technology advocates will argue that a stand of trees performs the same function as a 20-hectare forest not harvested for hundreds of years. They will pat themselves on the back for solving a problem. This is impossibly wrong.

I am not a Luddite. I believe in finding solutions to problems. Where I differ from the pro-modernity, pro-technology folks is that I also believe in a thorough assessment of what we commonly refer to as side effects.

When we focus on a structure we are taking a reductionist viewpoint. While this approach can help us learn more about the parts, it seems to also blind us to the system to which it belongs. Unfortunately, the scientific revolution has for the past 500 years shielded us from the systems approach our ancestors naturally followed.

Reductionism oversimplifies our world. When used to solve problems, this approach requires a re-complexification (sorry, new word) to get back to where we started. This is great for isolating mechanisms and figuring out how parts work. But few scientists or engineers understand this. A better approach would be to understand the reduced piece, and then think or engineer the piece back into the context of the system to which it belongs. Without this, we guarantee ourselves all the side effects. And most often we choose to ignore them and pat ourselves on the back.

Scientists are terrible at closing the loop. I have heard more than one tenured professor proclaim that their work takes no responsibility for humanity. Most, if not all, of the scientists I know can’t see past the next grant, publication, or accolade. Once the paper is published, in their opinion, the job is done. This is understandable, given the competitive nature of academia, but it also creates more problems than their findings solve. This is one of the complexities I am talking about. The tendrils of reductionism permeate every facet of our existence.

Reductionism did us an incredible disservice when we became blinded by structure over function. Without consideration of the system-level meaning our solutions are rendered short-term band-aids likely to be overwhelmed by whatever new problem is created in their discovery.

Humans can be right

Fortunately, the majority of human evolution was not reductionist. If you believe Homo sapiens has been around for 300,000 years, Modernity for 5,000, and the scientific era 500, then we have only been wearing blinders for a fraction of our existence. We don’t have to learn anything new; we only need to remember.

Indigenous cultures are much more connected to the systems within which we exist. Humans seemed much more connected to each other and the Earth before recorded history. Yes, they also suffered from similar and unique problems, but they certainly weren’t savages as history remembers them.

Of course, any discussion of prehistory is purely speculative and based on little or no evidence. But it sure can be fun. And we don’t have to restrict ourselves to the scientific method — we are free to think and be curious. We can learn a lot from these types of thought experiments. The period between the most recent glaciation and the Egyptian empire is especially interesting. Current interpretations indicate this period to be between 12,000 and 5,000 years ago.

Classic arguments about this period include our transition from nomadic hunter-gatherers to more sessile agriculture-based villages. Many speculate that this ability to hoard resources led to caste systems, religion, government, and most of the elements of Modernity we see today.

Most discuss the ‘advancements’ (what a judgmental word) we made away from the ‘primitive’ (again, better to use terms like ‘derived’ and ‘ancestral’) ways of old. Science and technology are contemporary artifacts of this lineage, as are colonialism and patriarchy. Are we proud of those? And what about the systems and beliefs we used to have that were beneficial or even superior to modern ways?

Despite the modern belief that they were ‘savages,’ our ancestors were on to something. Many, including myself, believe they lived more in harmony and less discord with their surroundings. Their spiritual beliefs and customs almost always reflect this. Outside the realm of speculation, I argue that Homo sapiens wouldn’t have persisted without a positive relationship with the environment because this is how evolution works.

Species persist due to positive interactions with their ecological circumstances. Energy processing, nutrient cycling, interactions with other species, and homeostatic relationships with the environment interact to determine fate. If a species persists, things must be going well. If a species disappeared, parts of that relationship didn’t work.

The problem is lag time. How long does it take a maladaptive condition to drive a species extinct? The only estimate I have heard was from Daniel Christian Wahl on ‘The Great Simplification’ podcast who put this number at 5–10,000 years. Isn’t it interesting how lines up precisely with the period of interest here?

Reframing our focus

The scientific revolution has run its course. As with many novel concepts, humans tend to go ‘all in’ early on. As the honeymoon period wanes, what seemed revolutionary becomes one of many tools. Science is a wonderful way of answering some questions. Other methods are more appropriate for different concepts. To solve our current problems, we need all the tools. As the saying goes, if all you have is a hammer everything looks like a nail.

The time has come to embrace the whole of human ability. Instead of putting all our eggs in one analytical basket, why not broaden our viewpoints to include methods that have stood the test of time? Why did we throw the indigenous baby out with the ‘primitive’ bathwater when we created the scientific method?

Singling out one tree isn’t going to help us any longer. Reductionism has provided some interesting and useful information, but insisting it is the superior approach will ensure our demise. A holistic approach is not mutually exclusive. Like the creationism vs. evolution argument, it’s a non-sequitur or red herring distracting us from actually getting anything done.

If we continue to want to be right and consider a handful of Virginia pines a functional forest ecosystem, we might as well give up. Fighting over the minutia of reductionism is a lost cause. Our ancestors would be disappointed by our superficial squabbles around meaningless allegiances.

The time has come to recognize the systemic nature of our existence. We must embrace connectivity and understand the ecosystem concept. A necessary element is releasing our attachment to our modern ways and accepting that our ancestors may have also been right.

Our future depends on our ability to connect the dots. To detach from being right. We cannot manipulate ourselves and our planet into something better or even as good as it was before we changed it all. Our only choice is to stop, reassess, and improve our approach to existence.

We owe it to ourselves, our ancestors, and our children.