Geology Reference
In-Depth Information
calls 'systems thinking', involves shifting our focus from objects to processes and re-
lationships, from hierarchies to networks and from objective knowledge to contextual
knowledge.
What does this mean? A key insight in systems thinking is that we can understand
a great deal more about a system if we focus on the patterns of relationship between
the parts rather than on the parts themselves as isolated entities. We come to realise that
the properties of the parts depend upon how they relate to each other and to the larger
whole that they help to constitute. We also come to understand that there are no funda-
mental building blocks, such as subatomic particles, at the base of a hierarchical order-
ing of nature, but that nature self-organises into multi-levelled sets of networks within
networks, such as cells within tissues within organs within organisms within ecosystems
within Gaia, and that no one level is fundamental. Finally, we realise, as did Werner
Heisenberg, one of the great physicists of the early part of the last century, that
“what
we observe is not nature herself, but nature exposed to our method of questioning”
; that
our knowledge depends on how we interact with the world.
When we focus on relationships between the parts rather than on the parts in isolation
we very quickly encounter the principle of
emergence,
in which surprising properties
appear at the level of the whole that cannot be understood through focusing on the parts
alone. A common adage which expresses this insight is that the 'whole is greater than
the sum of the parts'. Emergence is widespread in nature. Good examples abound in
the realm of social insects, where interactions between individual bees, ants or termites,
each obeying simple rules for when to engage in activities such as searching for food,
tending the brood or nest building, give rise to complex behaviours at the level of the
colony that defy reductionist explanation. Individual ants of the genus
Leptothorax
are
active or inactive according to a basically erratic schedule, but when they interact to-
gether at the right density the colony throbs with collective rhythmic activity. The com-
plex, baroque labyrinths that constitute the interior of termite mounds are built by in-
dividual termites, each depositing little dollops of mud saturated with a pheromone, or
chemical signal, that gradually evaporates away into the surrounding air. Termites are
attracted to the pheromone, and deposit new dollops of mud wherever they encounter it
at high concentrations. Computer models of this process show that an initially random
pattern of mud dollops soon turns into an emergent, regular array of pillars and columns
which look remarkably similar to the insides of real termite mounds. None of the ants or
termites had the 'blueprint' for the right behaviour or mound structure—they emerged
out of the interactions and relationships between the members of the insect social group.
Systems thinking involves stepping away from the notion that it is possible to predict
and control nature, at least in anything but very limited ways. This insight has come
in part from the practical experience of inventors and physiologists who have found it
