These sources explore the complex nature of ecological systems, emphasising that human observation and scaling are what define our understanding of nature rather than an objective reality. The authors critique conventional hierarchical models, arguing that they are often too rigid to account for the fluid, messy exchanges of material in real ecosystems. By distinguishing between structural complicatedness and organisational complexity, the texts suggest that social and ecological collapse can result from the diminishing returns of solving problems through increased infrastructure. They propose a “supply-side” approach to sustainability that prioritises managing the underlying ecosystem functions rather than just the resources they provide. Scientific inquiry is presented as a narrative process, where choosing the correct spatial and temporal scale is essential for creating predictive models that reflect biological truth. Ultimately, the works advocate for a unified ecology that integrates various criteria—from populations to biomes—to better manage a world defined by interconnectedness and surprise.
Sources
• A Last Hurrah for Modernist Realism in Ecology, https://academic.oup.com/bioscience/article/60/3/238/257104, DOI: 10.1525/bio.2010.60.3.10 • Confronting Economic Profit with Hierarchy Theory: The Concept of Gain in Ecology, wileyonlinelibrary.com, DOI: 10.1002/sres.1058 • Laws, Theories, and Patterns in Ecology, https://doi.org/10.1525/bio.2010.60.3.10, DOI: 10.1525/bio.2010.60.3.10 • Narratives and Transdisciplines for a Post-Industrial World, www.interscience.wiley.com, DOI: 10.1002/sres.792 • Resource Transitions and Energy Gain: Contexts of Organization, http://www.consecol.org/vol7/iss3/art4 • Studying innovation ecosystems using ecology theory, Technological Forecasting and Social Change • The Loss of Narrative, Chapter 15 in Ecological Paradigms Lost: Routes to Theory Change, Academic Press: New York • Insights into the Relationship Between Products and Services Coming from Biology, wileyonlinelibrary.com, DOI: 10.1002/sres.2216 • Complex Ecology (Introduction), Cambridge University Press, ISBN: 978-1-108-41607-8 • The Confusion Between Scale-defined levels and conventional levels of organization in ecology, Journal of Vegetation Science • Supply-Side Sustainability (1999), Systems Research and Behavioral Science 16: 403–427 • Dragnet Ecology—“Just the Facts, Ma’am”: The Privilege of Science in a Postmodern World, BioScience 51: 475–485 • Distinguishing ecological engineering from environmental engineering, www.elsevier.com/locate/ecoleng, DOI: 10.1016/j.ecoleng.2003.08.007 • Type, Scale, and Adaptive Narrative: Keeping Models of Salmon, Toxicology and Risk Alive to the World, www.astm.org, ASTM STP 1458 • The epistemological predicament associated with purposive quantitative analysis, www.elsevier.com/locate/ecocom, DOI: 10.1016/j.ecocom.2007.02.005 • The nature of ecological complexity: A protocol for building the narrative, www.elsevier.com/locate/ecocom, DOI: 10.1016/j.ecocom.2006.06.002 • Holons, creaons, genons, environs, in hierarchy theory: Where we have gone, www.elsevier.com/locate/ecolmodel, DOI: 10.1016/j.ecolmodel.2014.06.017 • The Observer in Complex Systems: the Gateway Papers, ESA Centennial • Mapping degrees of complexity, complicatedness, and emergent complexity, DOI: 10.1016/j.ecocom.2017.05.004 • The Landscape “Level” is Dead: Persuading the Family to Take It Off the Respirator, Chapter 3 in Ecological Scale: Theory and Application, Columbia University Press: New York • Integrating Economic Gain in Biosocial Systems, wileyonlinelibrary.com, DOI: 10.1002/sres.1060 • An ecosystem approach for sustainability: addressing the challenge of complexity, www.elsevier.com/locate/futures • A Framework for Systemic Design, www.FORMakademisk.org • Applications of Complex Systems to Operational Design, Booz Allen Hamilton • Social complexity and sustainability, www.elsevier.com/locate/ecocom, DOI: 10.1016/j.ecocom.2005.07.004 • Complexity and the Productivity of Innovation, wileyonlinelibrary.com, DOI: 10.1002/sres.1057 • Energy, complexity, and sustainability: A historical perspective, www.elsevier.com/locate/eist, DOI: 10.1016/j.eist.2010.12.001 • Complexity, problem-solving, sustainability and resilience, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09613218.2014.850599, DOI: 10.1080/09613218.2014.850599 • Energy Gain and the Evolution of Organization, www.oxfordhandbooks.com, DOI: 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199672691.013.31 • Resources and Cultural Complexity: Implications for Sustainability, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/07352689.2011.553539, DOI: 10.1080/07352689.2011.553539 • Concepts of Scale and Scaling, J. Wu and H. Li • Hierarchy Theory: An Overview, https://www.researchgate.net/publication/300652614, DOI: 10.1007/978-94-007-7470-4_24 • Hierarchy Theory: A Vision, Vocabulary, and Epistemology, Columbia University Press, ISBN: 0-231-08480-3 • Hierarchy: Perspectives for Ecological Complexity, University of Chicago Press, ISBN: 0-226-01431-2 • Toward a Unified Ecology (Second Edition), Columbia University Press, ISBN: 978-0-231-16888-5