THE SPIRALING PROPENSITIE S OF MIND: TOWARDS AN ECOLOGICAL THEORY OF HUMAN MEANING SYSTEMS WITHIN A PANARCHY OF ADAPTIVE CYCLES OF HUMAN CONSCIOUSNESS

摘要

The initial conceptualization of the adaptive cycle of complex ecosystems (Holling, 1986) has led to the theory and analysis of adaptive cycles within social, cultural, political, and economic dimensions, beginning with the original panarchic considerations of these human dimensions (Holling & Gunderson, 2002; Berkes & Folke, 2002; Westley, Carpenter, Brock, Holling & Gunderson, 2002; Scheffer, Westley, Brock & Holmgren, 2002; Gunderson, Holling & Peterson, 2002). A decade later, however, the difficult inquiry into the complex systemics of human thought itself and of thought's ostensible purpose - meaning - is still largely absent from the work done within panarchic frameworks. The need to include an ecological theory of meaning has begun to be understood as critical to the progression of socio-ecological systems theory (Varey, 2010). This paper proposes a truly ecological (i.e., non-metaphorical) definition of meaning and outlines a panarchic theory of human meaning systems (HMS) that includes a consideration of the original sources of difference in the universe, then obeys Jorgensen's "Fundamental Laws in Ecology" (Jorgensen, 2009) as HMS emerge, develop, and collapse, and demonstrate rigidity, resilience, and unpredictability in complete relation to the identification, acquisition, and degradation (i.e., the processing) of exergy. The present theory of HMS proposes three "energetic orders" - ⅰ) local, ⅱ) medial, and ⅲ) permeative - that emerge as irreducible propensities for human life and encompassing human ecologies. These orders span the entire spectrum of human life, from the first necessity of maintaining thermal disequilibrium in the local order; to manifesting ecosystemic dynamics of optimization in the medial order, variously described as the degradation of exergy gradients (Schneider & Kay, 1994), self-organization for maximum emergy use (Odum, 1988), the maintenance and optimization of exergy (Jorgensen, 1992; Nielsen, 1995), and "centripetality" (Ulanowicz, 1997); to that ineluctable aspect of the human experience that is not only to aspire beyond what we understand but indeed to be constantly drawn to the unknown/unknowable in the permeative order, described variously as "uncertainty" (Gunderson, Holling & Light, 2005), the "adjacent possible" (Kauffman, 2000) and "the absential" (Deacon, 2012). Some conclusions of this paper are: ⅰ) the individual's or collective's bias among the three energetic orders depends upon the perceptions of threat to survival (local), ecosystemic integrity (medial), or the need for greater interconnectivity beyond its perceptions (permeative); ⅱ) natural language emerges from a constant and fluid negotiation among the binary (local), communal/recurrent (medial), and the unknown/unknowable (permeative) orders that occurs simultaneously at multiple scales and in relation to other "organism-niches" (Maturana & Mpodosiz, 2000) and the larger, nested adaptive cycles, such that ⅲ) "meaning" phenomena -from individual and collective narratives, histories, and identities to the whole of natural language itself- are emergetic (Odum, 1983) products and recursive tools to enable further emergetic processes within human ecologies. Thus, language is merely a catalytic system that accelerates the processing of matter-energy for the human organism-niche. Because there is usually a "bias" toward one of the three orders at any given moment and scale - depending on the perceived position vis-a-vis the larger-scale adaptive cycle - what would otherwise seem to be a "linear" negotiation between the three "energetic orders" becomes cyclical and adaptive within the encompassing adaptive cycles. Holling's adaptive cycle is partially renamed as "Adaptive Cycle of Human Consciousness" in order to emphasize the need for this new line of panarchic thinking that could unite "what we do" with "what we are," as meaning-creating, meaning-acquiring, meaning-destroying homoiothermal organisms on Earth. Efforts have been made to ground individual aspects of the present theory in recent advances of systems ecology research. As with any such theoretical proposal, gaps and inconsistencies are anticipated, and possible solutions to these are invited and welcome.