A polyocular framework for research on multifunctional farming and rural development

The paradox of multifunctionality is that, on the one hand, the specialized functionalities of agriculture only arise because of the functional differentiation of social systems and scientific disciplines and, on the other hand, multifunctionality can only enter as a way to mediate between conflicts, interests and fragmented knowledge when different functions and observations of functions combine. The aim of this paper is to contribute to a theoretical and methodological platform for multidisciplinary research on multifunctional farming. With the notions of polyocular cognition and polyocular communication we introduce a second order, interdisciplinary communication process that can meet the challenge of creating a shared view on multifunctional farming. Polyocular communication must be based on other rules than the rules of the involved disciplines. Whereas disciplinary communication is about providing consistent, efficient and precise knowledge in the context of a sharply delimited research world, polyocular communication is about extending a multidimensional space of understanding

Resilience trinity: safeguarding ecosystem functioning and services across three different time horizons and decision contexts

Ensuring ecosystem resilience is an intuitive approach to safeguard the functioning of ecosystems and hence the future provisioning of ecosystem services (ES). However, resilience is a multi‐faceted concept that is difficult to operationalize. Focusing on resilience mechanisms, such as diversity, network architectures or adaptive capacity, has recently been suggested as means to operationalize resilience. Still, the focus on mechanisms is not specific enough. We suggest a conceptual framework, resilience trinity, to facilitate management based on resilience mechanisms in three distinctive decision contexts and time‐horizons: 1) reactive, when there is an imminent threat to ES resilience and a high pressure to act, 2) adjustive, when the threat is known in general but there is still time to adapt management and 3) provident, when time horizons are very long and the nature of the threats is uncertain, leading to a low willingness to act. Resilience has different interpretations and implications at these different time horizons, which also prevail in different disciplines. Social ecology, ecology and engineering are often implicitly focussing on provident, adjustive or reactive resilience, respectively, but these different notions of resilience and their corresponding social, ecological and economic tradeoffs need to be reconciled. Otherwise, we keep risking unintended consequences of reactive actions, or shying away from provident action because of uncertainties that cannot be reduced. The suggested trinity of time horizons and their decision contexts could help ensuring that longer‐term management actions are not missed while urgent threats to ES are given priority

Hard to Cheat: A Turing Test based on Answering Questions about Images

Progress in language and image understanding by machines has sparkled the interest of the research community in more open-ended, holistic tasks, and refueled an old AI dream of building intelligent machines. We discuss a few prominent challenges that characterize such holistic tasks and argue for "question answering about images" as a particular appealing instance of such a holistic task. In particular, we point out that it is a version of a Turing Test that is likely to be more robust to over-interpretations and contrast it with tasks like grounding and generation of descriptions. Finally, we discuss tools to measure progress in this field.Comment: Presented in AAAI-15 Workshop: Beyond the Turing Tes

Bells that still can ring: systems thinking in practice

Complexity science has generated significant insight regarding the interrelatedness of factors and actors constituting our real world and emergent effects from such interrelationships. But the translation of such rich insight towards developing appropriate tools for improving real world situations of change and uncertainty provides a further significant challenge. Systems thinking in practice is a heuristic framework based upon ideas of boundary critique for guiding the use and development of tools from different traditions in managing complex realities. By reference to five systems approaches, each embodying more than 30 years of experiential use, three interrelated features of the framework are drawn out – contexts of systemic change, practitioners as change agents, and tools as systems constructs that can themselves change through adaptation. The ‘bells that still can ring’ refer to tools associated with the Systems tradition which have demonstrable capacity to change and adapt by continual iteration with changing context of use and different practitioners using them. It is in the practice of using such tools whilst being aware of significant ‘cracks’ associated with traps in managing complex realities that enables systems thinking in practice to evolve. Complexity tools as examples of systems thinking can inadvertently invite traps of reductionism within contexts, dogmatism amongst practitioners, and fetishism of our tools as conceptual constructs associated with ultimately undeliverable promises towards achieving holism and pluralism. The heuristic provides a guiding framework on monitoring the development of tools from different traditions for improving complex realities and avoiding such traps

Sustainability and Food: a Text Analysis of the Scientific Literature

The paper analyses the evolution of the research debate related to sustainability and to the relation between food and sustainability. A number of text analysis techniques were combined for the investigation of scientific papers. The results stress how discourse analysis of sustainability in the pre-Rio period is mostly associated with agriculture and with a vision where the ecological and environmental aspects are dominant. In the post-Rio phase, the discussion about sustainability, though still strongly linked to environmental issues, enters a holistic dimension that includes social elements. The themes of energy and the sustainability of urban areas become central, and the scientific debate stresses the importance of indicators within an assessment approach linked to the relevance of planning and intervention aspects. The focus on the role of food within the debate on sustainability highlights a food security oriented approach in the pre-Rio phase, with a particular attention towards agriculture and third world Countries. In the post-Rio period, the focus of the analysis moves towards developed Countries. Even though food security remains a strongly significant element of the debate, the attention shifts towards consumers and food choices

Ecological conversations and systems thinking

Ideas like ‘ecosystems approach’ or ‘complex adaptive systems’ are often invoked as a panacea for addressing the complex interrelationships and interdependencies associated with issues of climate change. But thinking about nature through ‘systems’ invokes different perspectives, and therefore limitations on our understanding of nature. Systems are maps – conceptual devices for making sense of complex realities and communicating with others about improving those realities. Worthwhile enthusiasm for the study of living systems by complexity scientists and chaos theorists can sometimes distract attention away from this basic premise behind systems thinking. The semiotic idea of confusing the map for the territory is significant particularly when systems are used not only as (inevitably partial) representations of reality, but also as mediating devices for effective ecological conversation with the purpose of generating meaning and value. Fritjof Capra’s ideas on ecoliteracy provides an example of a well-intentioned systems-informed approach towards better informed conversations on environmental issues, but how politically sensitive is this framing device? Building on other systems philosophers - West Churchman, Werner Ulrich and Humberto Maturana - a critical systems approach towards supporting ecological conversations is explored identifying three distinct systems framing – frameworks for understanding (fwU), frameworks for practice (fwP), and frameworks for responsibility(fwR). Whereas fwU can help appreciate the holistic realities of the natural world, fwP can support constructive engagement with multiple perspectives, and fwR reminds us of the limitations of any fwU and fwP whilst keeping attention to improving our framing devices to suite demands of environmental responsibility. Although the gift of framing is one shared by all humans, some frameworks of reference are inevitably given primacy over others, particularly in formulating policy and guiding action. This raises questions about who constructs the framing devices and what legitimacy they have

A holistic multi-methodology for sustainable renovation

A review of the barriers for building renovation has revealed a lack of methodologies, which can promote sustainability objectives and assist various stakeholders during the design stage of building renovation/retrofitting projects. The purpose of this paper is to develop a Holistic Multi-methodology for Sustainable Renovation, which aims to deal with complexity of renovation projects. It provides a framework through which to involve the different stakeholders in the design process to improve group learning and group decision-making, and hence make the building renovation design process more robust and efficient. Therefore, the paper discusses the essence of multifaceted barriers in building renovation regarding cultural changes and technological/physical changes. The outcome is a proposal for a multi-methodology framework, which is developed by introducing, evaluating and mixing methods from Soft Systems Methodologies (SSM) with Multiple Criteria Decision Making (MCDM). The potential of applying the proposed methodology in renovation projects is demonstrated through a case study

Recent Conceptual Consequences of Loop Quantum Gravity. Part II: Holistic Aspects

Based on the foundational aspects which have been discussed as consequences of ongoing research on loop quantum gravity in the first part of this paper, the holistic aspects of the latter are discussed in this second part, aiming at a consistent and systematic approach to eventually model a hierarchically ordered architecture of the world which is encompassing all of what there actually is. The idea is to clarify the explicit relationship between physics and philosophy on the one hand, and philosophy and the sciences in general, on the other. It is shown that the ontological determination of worldliness is practically identical with its epistemological determination so that the (scientific) activity of modelling and representing the world can be visualized itself as a (worldly) mode of being.Comment: 20 page