If unity is assumed, then the only coherent approach is to work backwards from it. This is not about sentiment or abstraction but about logical necessity: if there is unity, then every relation already participates in it, and our task is to discern how those connections reproduce the whole. Unity is not an optional conclusion […]
James Lovelock (1919–2022) was as pioneering as he was resisted. Uniquely famous for proposing the Gaia hypothesis—the idea that Earth behaves as a self-regulating system—he faced deep scepticism, dismissed by many as mystical or unscientific. Yet it was Daisyworld, his elegant simulation of a planet populated by simple black and white daisies, that provided a […]
Navigating Complexity: Embracing Indeterminacy, Uncertainty, and Openness in Global Policy In an increasingly interconnected and rapidly changing world, global challenges such as climate change, economic instability, and social inequality defy simple solutions. Traditional policy approaches often struggle to address these issues effectively because they rely on predictability and control. However, complex systems inherently involve indeterminacy […]
Are autonomous vehicles solving the correct problem? Under any well-informed definition, urban sprawl is environmentally costly. Should we be moving people to places or in some as yet unrealised and aspirationally renewable sense, might we also be moving places to people?
Thousands are protesting in Ladakh, India, demanding constitutional provisions to protect the region’s ecology and autonomy over land and agriculture decisions. The region, affected by climate change and territorial disputes, is seeing worsened conditions due to militarisation. Activist Sonam Wangchuk is leading a “climate fast” in freezing temperatures to highlight these issues. The protesters seek statehood and […]
Metacrisis complexity reflects the deep interconnections among global systems, where socioeconomic, technological, geopolitical and environmental factors are intricately interdependent. Each regulatory response to these integrated crises, while intended to mitigate challenges, often becomes a functional microcosm in the runaway complexity it aims to address, amplifying the signal of entropy it seeks to navigate. This dynamic requires adaptive governance, focusing […]
I spend a lot of time considering abstract, complex and the many aspirationally “real” systems that exist between our ears and upon the surface of our planet. My acquired suspicion in this context is that neither “growth” nor “degrowth” represent sufficiently sophisticated concepts with which to effectively engage this vast and multidimensional problem we are […]
The generative indeterminacy of (a) living diversity is orders of magnitude more sophisticated than the variously atavistic legal frameworks with which we might frame them. Discontinuities between law and activism are, in this context, the result of a false dichotomy. That is – the differences and environmentally unsustainable if not outright and questionably unethical outcomes […]
Entity and context, system and environment, part and whole. Behaviour and purpose is not bounded or purely or completely encoded in an entity, regardless that our linguistic (as much as cognitive or technologocal) teleologies and intuitions reinforce and validate such a belief. Symbiosis also occurs at the level of whole systems. Entity and environment both […]
The breadth and depth of the systemic (i.e. Global) changes we need to seed to sustain biodiversity and ecological resilience are far beyond the aptitude of contemporary political and economic practices. How to transform the many heroic yet isolated efforts of conservationists into the broad and consequential systemic changes we need without frightening the political […]
Astonishing beauty and entirely natural, expressed in the harmony and resonance of the (very) many parts with the whole. I enjoy this kind of photography because it also reminds us, much as does astrophotography, that wherever (and whenever) we look into the natural world we are staring into our own deep history. Contrast this with […]
Context: JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon: ‘Why can’t we get it through our thick skulls?’ America boosting oil and gas production is ‘not against’ climate change I suspect that his opinion is, much and in one way or another as are all systems of belief, a function of the extent to which language as abstraction has […]
Daedelus Kite 