Bissell here
(snip)>Complexity does not always mean stability. A deck of cards in the box
is
>highly stable, made into a house, very unstable. Probably not a good
>analogy, but all I could come up with on the spur of the moment.
Chris replies: "Well it's an interesting analogy.Complexity can surely mean
incresed
instability, e.g. the internet and computers become ever more complex, but
if the
electricity stops, that's the end, contrasted to a simple wood fire.
Bit surely there must be something else going on. A random collection
of species thrown together is going to look a lot different to the amazing
complexity of a
forest, with interrelationships like ants that protect trees against insects
in
return for a safe home, ants and fungi, all those many examples of
codependent
and symbiotic subsystems ?"
Bissell here: How can you tell the difference between 100 random species and
100 species with an evolved interrelationship? The answer is only with time.
The trouble with ecology is that it seldom is a long term study. I was
reading this morning about forest "regeneration" (I almost said auotpoeisis)
near my home. The gist of the study is that an old mixed forest burned about
6 years ago, but it is coming back to an meadow now. Other areas burnt about
the same time are coming back to different forest types. Over time random
associations will evolve relationships, and those evolved relationships will
be random as well. Looking at a snapshot of the system will indicate
organization, but if you were able some how to look over time, it would be
chaotic. Chaos theory is now being used to describe fast changing ecosystems
(bacteria mostly) because none of the old linear models will work. I know
this is a somewhat heretical view, many ecologist believe in "rules" of
organization, it is just that when it is studied, the organization seems to
disappear.
>From an ethical standpoint, so what? We don't live in evolutionary time, we
live in real time and have to develop ethics for that time scale. An ethical
system for geologic time boggles my mind, but my first question would be, so
what?
sb
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