Deep Ecology and nonlinear dynamics
To address the complex nature of living things, scientists and mathematicians have developed a body of concepts known as non-linear dynamics (or complexity theory). Non-linear equations were resistant to solution until recently as high-speed computers have been developed. Now, with modeling and other novel techniques, a new and exciting science has emerged.
Deep Ecology
Concurrent with (or perhaps because of this), new disciplines have come forth such as eco-psychology, eco-feminism, and of particular interest to us: transpersonal ecology and social ecology.
Concepts associated with these might be expressed in language such as phase portraits, attractors, bifurcation, and fractals.
Important to these new disciplines is the extension of the conceptual into the domain of physical space and matter. The dimension of Time will be found to be symmetrical, with material causality operating from the historical present and projecting causality forward in time, while consciousness and intuition will be retro-causal, pulling us forward into the future via intangible backward in time poiesis.
Thus systems are not as self organizing as we now believe (but are self adjusting, at least in the sense of a living self who is sentient). This, of course, means that systems are alive. There is still a major role for the observer yet there will be found a plurality of witnesses which constitute, as it were, interconnected societies of observers, nested within communities of systems.
It also implicates matter in the sociology of life, meaning in other words, that matter is alive. Distinctions like ‘organic and inorganic’ will become irrelevant because everything is organic, Processural, dynamic and evolving… and conscious. Physical matter will be described as semiotic information just as the current notion of assemblage will transform to include systemic organs.
The grand purpose of social design will be to facilitate low-imprint and sustainable communities that nurture nature’s true way and her ability to support and sustain life. Nature has developed finely tuned principles that contribute to the health of her web of life and sociology must rise to the occasion and lead our society and its legal, political and economic structures toward harmony with this cosmic reality.