Concepts and criteria for the measurement of sustainability in the human ecosystem: a case study on local indicators [Inga Krattli, ISSS 1998 Plenary Session, July 23/98]

These notes are a rough transcription, prepared as each individual presenter and/or commentator spoke at the ISSS 1998 conference. Gaps and errors have likely occurred. For more accurate citations, please consult the original presenters. These notes have been contributed to the ISSS by David Ing, of the IBM Advanced Business Institute (sabi@systemicbusiness.org).

chaired by Yong Pil Ree -- former present

• hosted ISSS conference in Seoul, last year

Inga Krattli -- International Science for Interdisciplinary Science, in Germany

• Forensic medical doctor
• Deals with measurement criteria and sustainability

• Planetary ecosystem
• Social problems can't be separated from eco-problems
• Probabilistic models don't work, need a viable model of ecology, with feedback to systems of global change.

• Symptoms appear as time-space configurations, and make little sense
• Symptom analysis must be based on qualitative factors, and the proper culture of a context.
• Living systems say the context is based in the theory of thermodynamics.
• World population as maximized pressure effects.
• Unlike Newtonian physics, need quantum theories.
• Quantum theories leave vague the connection between roots and symptoms, as probabilities.
• Have unpredictable individual events.
• Early environment such as Duncan's POET model and (?) say nothing about social actions in functions.
• Parson's and Merton's models have response to exogenous change.
• Stability, inertia, social integration show has systems minimize effects of change.
• Miller's led to synergetic studies.
• Components of the function serve survival of the whole.
• Mere functionalism replaced by view far from equilibrium and General Systems Theory.
• Bailey: dual synthesis

• Einstein's vision of a model of everything did not mean explanations reflect the way things are.
• Ideal limit of knowledge says every occurrence in the real world will have a corresponding final theory.
• The supertheory was expected to be consistent within itself.
• David Deutsch 70 years later says there will be no more unification.
• Observation of effects of phenomena has become the foundation of modern science.
• Quantum theories are based on the prediction of probabilities.
• Deutsch: Specification of the initial state, plus probability.
• However, must avoid the reductionist view: misrepresents the structure of scientific knowledge.
• Classification of subjects and theories in a hierarchy, depending on how close they get to the most fundamental events.
• Also time-frame as cause-effect, which doesn't allow for synchronicity.
• Want to observe emergence: higher level complexity from lower level simplicity.
• Emerging foundations based on life, thought and computation.
• Many sciences, e.g. math physics, have been focused on how things work, rather than why things work.
• Doesn't provide us with indicators and measurement approaches.
• David Deutsch's experiment on traveling light: multiple realities.
• Moving towards understanding agreement and disagreement in participation.
• Quite important in medicine.
• Assume that Homan had same root: true explanation only at the psychological level.
• Parallel universes as multiple realities.
• Most significant quantum effect is not quantization, but interference.

• Measures of effectiveness:
• Socio-Economic: GNP, GDP are only data, don't reflect the complex character of an ecosystem.
• Use ISEW: Index of Sustainable Economic Welfare.
• Social indicators: Human Development Index combines major criteria, but rarely get a story from the index due to parameter weighting.
• Ecological depend on current and target: Usually local measurements, not necessarily useful globally.
• Need to consider interactions been all three variables.
• U. Washington proposed the Sustainable Seattle Model.

• Germany Advisory Council on Social Change works with 80 symptoms
• Iterative process, structuring large amounts of information.
• Syndromes can be decoupled into archetypal patterns.