Studying the complexity of origins-of-life has led me to read more ecology. While my research reading is mostly scientific articles, it’s nice to take a step back for a broader view by reading a book aimed at a general audience. For a non-ecologist such as myself, this provides a helpful vista. The book is catchily titled A Natural History of the Future. The author is ecologist Rob Dunn.
The key idea is this: Assuming that life involves complex systems (rather than complicated ones that in essence can still be reduced systematically), attempts to exert some measure of control over the system inadvertently lead to unforeseen circumstances that are hard to control. When the machines attempt to exert control to maintain their energy sources and flows (via incubated human batteries) in the Matrix, an anomaly arises. Actually, it’s probably multiple anomalies – but the focus of the movies is on The One anomaly. (And yes, it turns into two anomalies thanks to Agent Smith in the third movies.) A pithy encapsulation of all this: “Life finds a way.”
Dunn’s book begins with an interesting observation. The majority of humans today live clustered in very narrow environmental conditions. I was surprised to read this. Haven’t we humans, with our fancy technology, allowed us to “colonize” and live in harsher and harsher parts of the globe? We have heat in our homes, water in our pipes, electricity for our air-conditioners, and humidifiers for the dryness. True all that. Haven’t we spread all over the globe, like a pestilence to other creatures? We’ve certainly grown in number, and we have extinguished many other species in our quest to get more energy and control it. Today, most of us live in cities, concentrated in areas that are overall more “live-able” from a physical environment point-of-view. As a percentage, only a small proportion of humankind lives in places where the mean temperature is rather high or rather low. (The qualifiers in italics are key to Dunn’s statement.) In earlier times, before the human population explosion, humans lived far more spread out in different climes.
Exerting control isn’t a bad thing. One might argue that to some extent it is necessary for a living organism to survive and possibly even thrive. The evolution of life likely proceeded with increasing layers of control to maintain and streamline energy transduction – without a constant input of energy, the second law of thermodynamics is a life-killer. Energy is needed not just for maintenance, but for growth, and for whatever else the organism does to keep its organization going. Biochemistry is chock-full of control switches and circuits at the molecular level.
Ecology also has controls, but we’re less cognizant of them and how they work. I expect these are complex and not easily reduced to switches and circuits (a model based on electricity). We humans in our cleverness (or stupidity, perhaps both sides of the same coin) attempt to identify such controls and, well… control them. If I do X and Y, that should lead to Z. And then we’re surprised when A, B, C, and more show up and confound our original plan for control. It’s humbling to be reminded how much we don’t understand when it comes to the complexity of ecosystems. But important lesson here is that it’s the act of exerting control that results in the unpredictable “side” effects.
We don’t even understand the ecosystems we’ve created for ourselves. Take the education system for one – it’s what I’m entrenched in, what I’m most familiar with, and probably where I have multiple reductionist blind spots. In my little world, I have control over my syllabus, what goes on in my classes, what I ask my students to do, and how I assign their grades. Students might accede to my control because they want to get good grades. Grades themselves are part of a larger system related to societal measures of success, life opportunities, and much more. I don’t have control over the fact that my class must formally meet three hours each week for the three credit hours it is assigned. To some extent, what I teach is constrained – agreed upon by chemists as to what constitutes a course in general chemistry or physical chemistry. I do have some room for play, but not much. I don’t have control over the classroom I’m assigned, the time slot I get (although my preferences are taken into consideration), or when the semester begins and ends.
I’ve personally felt constrained by a textbook and have worked on ways to lift that constraint. Is the best way to learn chemistry to take a three-credit-hour course that meets three times a week for an hour each? Is that the best way to teach chemistry? Should you instead use a block system? Should we do fifteen-week semesters? Or ten-week quarters? Or something different? Or maybe it doesn’t matter because we just try and adapt to the constraints even if they are sub-optimal. That’s what we ask our students to do in each of our classes. They adapt to our idiosyncracies as instructors. Those who are adept at adapting tend to do well. Those who don’t, well… that’s another story.
My classes are highly organized. My students would agree with that statement. What we don’t talk about: being highly organized might be a proxy for exerting higher degrees of control. I think about being organized as being clear about expectations so that students aren’t surprised and so they can better prepare for class. I think that’s a good thing for their education, especially since learning chemistry is biologically secondary. I also suspect that my students see me as less flexible (which may be true). I force them to adapt to me while I don’t adapt much to them – simply because I don’t get asked to (most of the time). The adept ones are those who are “successful” in negotiating all these human-constructed controlled systems we’ve put in place that have accreted over time. Ensconced in my own bubble, I’m not sure I would thrive or survive outside my comfortable little ecosystem. Perhaps I’ve become lazy, specialized, and no longer adept to adapt.
No comments:
Post a Comment