A HEALTHY MIND ON A HEALTHY PLANET: MAKING THE CONNECTION BETWEEN SYSTEMS THINKING AND EARTHS SYSTEMS

Sustainability problems are intrinsically interconnected and interdependent. For example, environmental degradation, economic growth, climate change, population change, and landscape disturbance cannot be understood in isolation from one another. To effectively address such complex problems, systems thinking has to augment long held reductionist and disciplinary approaches; cause and effect have to be seen in cyclic, not linear, terms. This presentation foregrounds landscape issues to explore how interrelationships in complex systems come about and what their implications are for finding solutions. The intertwining of landscape and culture, the human and the natural, is examined using a transdisciplinary approach. Transdisciplinarity “draws on systems and complexity theories to propose a… kind of thinking that contextualizes, starting with the assumption that any system needs to be understood in terms of its larger environment and relationships” (A. Montuori, Complicity, 2013). Within science, this approach follows an ongoing trend to treat earths systems as dynamic and coevolving. But it also calls attention to the context of science within society: its methods, it purposes and its values. Fact-based scientific research has great power to guide rational decisions. But a culture that has systematically destroyed its landscapes, fouled and over-used its waters, mutilated its ecosystems, and is in the process of changing its climate is not behaving rationally. Scientists need to help society find new ethical contexts for science based on preserving the systemic integrity of complex systems rather than destroying them. The most important task is to create new theories and modes of engagement with non-scientists. Formal education is part of this and I provide examples from a systems-oriented introductory course for general education students that explicitly uses landscapes and Leopold’s concept of the land community to motivate systems thinking.