Panarchy: a scale-linking perspective of systemic transformation
One of the major lessons we learn from the unique complexity of life is the following: the only thing we can always expect when manipulating the living world is that there will be unexpected consequences. By definition, those consequences are rarely aligned with the initial goal of our intervention. Climate change, biodiversity loss, and our curren... See more
Understanding Living Systems
This region of the dynamic spectrum, where outdated order dissolves into a creative and responsive chaos from which novel order can emerge, is often referred to as “the edge of chaos.” Stuart Kaufman suggested: “The best place for a system to be, in order to respond appropriately to a constantly changing world, is at the edge of chaos.” He explains
... See morePerhaps the greatest “phase transition” in our thinking that such an approach could engender is the maturation in our willingness to live with relatively high levels of uncertainty in the domains of complex phenomena—and thus give up on ideas like complete “cures,” the elimination of “risk,” the design of perfect “stability,” and achieving total “s
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