[Fis] Sustainability through multilevel research

[Nikhil Joshi]

Dear Pedro, and Bob,
Thank you for your responses, references and questions. In view of the 2 emails per week restriction on this group, I have consolidated my responses to both of your messages in this one message. 

I will begin with Pedro’s message: 

I agree with Pedro’s view that the systems treatment presented here is simplistic, and that this view could be reformulated to accommodate the much more complex nature of reality. 

Today the need for non-reductionist approaches is widely accepted (and appreciated) in the scientific community. However, regrettably much of our current research on complex living systems still remains within specific domains of research. In a way, confining research within specific domains itself is reductionism. One of the main aims of this effort is to put out a scaffolding of ideas that can integrate research domains and encourage researchers to collaborate to help build a multilevel view of important complex problems. One of the key challenges in such multilevel research, is that it requires a scaffolding of ideas that are simple enough for researchers across disciplines to understand. Hence this rather simplistic initial set of  initial ideas that present a “gist” of a multilevel view to researchers across disciplines. It is believed that further collaborative research will naturally lead to the development of more complete (and perhaps more complex) multilevel view of the systems. 

Having said that, I would love to hear from the group on recommendations for alternative formulations that are not too complex that could be adopted. Your views are much appreciated, and would help set the direction for further research. 

This also brings me to Pedro’s second point about the “work-in-progress” nature of the similarities between modulator systems at three different levels. A number of  well documented “high-level” similarities between these modulator systems have been presented here (section 2.2 and 2.3, Part III). This serves to establish an initial basis for this claim. The claim is inherently multi-level, and current line of research within individual research domains would not help in ascertaining this claim. In presenting it here, it is hoped that this multilevel view motivates researchers to look into these multilevel possibilities as well. However, I agree with Pedro that further research is required to settle this argument. It is the stated aim of this article to encourage researchers to explore these multilevel similarities. 

From Pedro’s and Bob’s message: 

May thanks to Pedro and Bob for pointing out opportunities and areas for further research in aligning ecosystems and economics.

Bob brings out an important point- one of stability in ecosystems and economic systems and the need for systemic ways to build redundancy in such needs. Bernard Lietaer and his group have explored the use of "local currencies" to improve the stability of  financial systems. 

The ideas presented here present a new possibility- can such “local currencies” be based on natural systems? could they take the form of digital currencies that allow exchanges with subsoil phosphorous in mycorrhizal networks? Ecosystems are known to have different species compositions, and productivity measures in different regions. Could such natural differences between local ecosystems be captured in such natural local currencies?

These are areas for further research that we hope to undertake through collaborative research in the next stage of this effort. I would love to have the groups view on these possibilities, and ideas to further integrate economics and ecosystem dynamics. 

Thanking you,
Warm regards, 
Nikhil 



-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://listas.unizar.es/pipermail/fis/attachments/20151126/e9e7fca9/attachment.html>