Narratives and transdisciplines for a post-industrial world.

1. Narratives and transdisciplines for a post-industrial world. T. F. H. Allen, Botany, University of Wisconsin

2. A time for complexity and systems thinking • Complexity science is no accident. • Deep uncertainty prevails. • Science is at its limits. • Working out narratives is the hard part.

3. Technology changes scale • Plastic bags and plant field collections. • Efficiency makes things so fast they become different. • Remote sensing. • The hard part is not doing the computation, but is working out what to compute.

4. SCALE NO WAY SCALE B i o s p h e r e B i o m e Landscape Ecosystem These are TYPES Community Population Organism T. F. H. A

5. Community Organism (tree) Ecosystem (decaying log) Landscape (upper surface of log) Population(of mosses on log) T. F. H. A

6. TYPE Identifies what is in the foreground Gives criteria for observation Gives equivalence to a class SCALE Grain Extent Spatial size Natural frequency in time Type vs Scale Allen TFH & TW Hoekstra (1992) Toward a unified ecology. Columbia Press

7. Ecology emerges as a transdiscipline a century ago, under the pressure of a scale change. • All transdisciplines appear through failure in scaling. And they still do now.

8. With Roscoe Pound, Clements tried to link: Biogeography Physiological adaptation They used quadrat data, a new rescaling tool They failed ! Biogeography is too large while the quadrat is too heterogeneous, diverse and far from laboratory control for physiological explanation.

9. But instead he found the Plant Community, which is association between species. The community does not have adaptation as its explanation. Rather it has ecological explanations: succession invasion ecesis, etc.

10. 1890-1920 • Draves & Coates (2004) say in Nine Shift 75% of lives changed unrecognizably. • Where is Frankfort’s nearest opera house? • Farm to Industry. • Rural to suburban. • Boys and values. • Automobile.

11. 1990-2020 Internet = automobile • Work at home • Intranets replace offices • Pyramids collapse • Trains replace cars • Dense neighborhoods replace suburbs • Society flattened $ • Cheating becomes collaboration • 50% learning is online • Education becomes web-based

12. At this time we can expect great scale changes, invoking complexity that will force transdisciplines upon us. Clements and Cowles attempted to get an account of nature before it went under mechanical plows and urban expansion.

13. Complexity • Transdiciplines • Science at its limits • Narratives to the rescue

14. Complexity • Rosen (2000) suggests that a system is complex when it cannot be modeled. • A system cannot be modeled when: • parts have multiple identities – terrorists. • units of measurement are incommensurate • scale changes become so large as to have qualitative implications – gas liquifaction. • adequate description demands more than one level of analysis.

15. Narratives and Analogies Hamilton wrote a dictionary for Newtonian particles into Optical Geometry. (c.f. Voltage ≈ water pressure.) So if we can’t use reduction and models, what to do? Rosen(2000) says we can use analogy and tell narratives. Newtonian particles Optical geometry Reduction Reduction Wave mechanics Quantum mechanics Who says analogy is soft

16. Narrative Simplicity Complexity Hierarchical Many levels of constraint Links: large and small different types fast and slow Highly organized No Paradigm With Paradigm The story you told to make it simple. No! Properties of Complex Systems Hierarchical Many levels of constraint Links: large and small fast and slow different types

17. Rate-dependentprocesses are re-scaled to zero to become rate-independent events A narrative is a series of events A narrative is a set of elaborate scaling operations that make things of different sizes commensurate – earthquake, pestilence, drought Narrative Scale in Time and space Nothingness after the end of the story Time =Scaledevent Narratives T. F. H. A

18. The point of science is to improve the quality of the Narratives it tells. So, what is quality ?

19. The point of science is to improve the quality of the Narratives it tells. So, what is quality ?

20. Development of Quality • Novice - become dexterous • Apprentice – become a craftsman strong on structural quality. • Master – break the framework for structural quality giving dynamical quality

21. Models improve quality of Narratives • Structuralquality • Gives quantified precision to narratives • unequivocal constraints • explicit boundary conditions. • Dynamical quality • comes from the alternatives • challenges the narrative. T. F. H. A

22. Worster Bonnifield Plenty Coups True Narratives • Narratives for science must be compatible with what we know or suspect happened. • But that does not make a story true • A full chronicle would not only be impossible to capture, it would not be a narrative. No narrator decisions, no story!

23. Tragedy If a piano falls on your head, It is not a tragedy It isonlyunfortunate! A tragedy is: He didn’t know it was his mother

24. A narrative or great music should not be predictable but it should feel inevitable Cellist, Janos Starker Tragedy

25. Non-equivalent observers and semantic identity

26. Level N-1 Formal identity: Finite set of relevant attributes for one observer

27. Shared Experience

28. Level N+1 Semantic identity within the culture. Past/present

29. Replicants die in 4 years, and have no memories or culture. But they are good in extra- terrestrial battles. They have no narrative.

30. Anticipated decline in resources influences plan Thermodynamics Physical system processes Linguistic planning element. Internal to System, external to thermodynamics Plan Holon Actual External Gradient

31. Anticipated decline in resources influences plan Thermodynamics Heat ! Cold Structured by emergence to look to environment for resources Monitors internal elements to save capital Plan System boundary Actual External Gradient

32. Aristotelian Causality

33. Aristotelian causes Final cause Semantic Identity (meaning) at N+1 Thermodynamics Level N Material Cause Formal Cause N-1 Efficient Cause Immediate actor

34. Thermodynamics Linguistics/Meaning N+1 Efficient cause Final cause Emergent self-organization Meaning N Material cause Planning Mechanism N-1 Formal cause Control

35. Thermodynamics Linguistics/Meaning N+1 External force making gradient Significance in the context N Physical system emerges Ego N-1 Planning e.g. DNA Molecular elements

36. System visits multiple causes Final cause Thermodynamics N Material Cause Formal Cause N-1 Efficient Cause Immediate actor

37. N+1/ N Semantic Identity Formal Identity N/ N-1 Plan Past vs Present Present vs Future Different causes come out of the fog in a continous loop Thermodynamics Experience Get more efficient Unplannedadjustment in dissipation "Better" Degradation External Gradients

38. But it gets worse • Each level of causality has its own time frame dt dT dθnv dθnr dT

39. Becomingdt Narrative dq Simple time dt EXPERIENCED3 EXPERIENCED2 Transduce ESSENCE EXPERIENCED1 ESTABLISHED3 ESTABLISHED2 Act ESTABLISHED1 EXPECTED3 Represent EXPECTED2 EXPECTED1

40. Becomingdt nv EXPERIENCED3 Narrative dq movesforward EXPERIENCED2 Transduce ESSENCE EXPERIENCED1 ESTABLISHED3 dθ ESTABLISHED2 Act ESTABLISHED1 EXPECTED3 Simple time dt Represent EXPECTED2 Narrator changes dθnr EXPECTED1

41. dT Plan and after that nothing happened Narrativedq Experience Becomingdt Get more efficient Unplannedadjustment in dissipation "Better" Degradation Simple time dt External Gradients Simple time dt

42. dT evolutionary time Life expectancy of the observer/observation complex And after this nothing happened . . . Plenty Coups Chief of the Crows referring to the history of USA after the buffaloes “went away” Death, Extinction, Societal Collapse

43. dT evolutionary time Life expectancy of the observer/observation complex And after this nothing happened . . . Plenty Coups Chief of the Crows referring to the history of USA after the buffaloes “went away” The end of the grant

44. OK, Allen, isn’t all this just a model • No ! It’s a narrative. • The different causes and different time frames are incommensurate. • So if I model with different time steps, am I too only telling a narrative? • Not if you link the time steps formally, then there’s internal consistency. You’re modeling. • But in the end even you need a narrative, because models only serve the ultimate story.

45. Narratives Rule • They develop commensurate experience, not of an external observed, but of unifyied observer-observation complexes. • They link incommensurate situations. • Modeling without a narrative is dangerous. • Systems thinking links narratives to models, so as to find transdisciplines to address a complex, post-modern world.

46. And that is the end of my story And after this nothing happened Plenty Coups Chief of the Crows referring to the history of USA after the buffaloes “went away”