ABSTRACT

Can scientists really predict the future, understand the forces that influence it, guide engineers and resource managers to correctly alter those forces, and plan for better times? This has been the dream of natural scientists since Francis Bacon nearly half a millennia ago. In economics, policy, and planning this mode of thinking has not simply been a dream; it has been a presumption. History, of course, has only occasionally turned out as economists have expected. Continual policy adjustments to manage new causal mechanisms affecting the economic system, most of them unforeseen, are required to offset completely unexpected phenomena. Frequently, natural scientists, as well as economists, argue that the systems and their dynamics simply need to be better understood, as if economies, or natural systems, had knowable fixed properties and dynamics. Natural scientists and economists just need to understand their respective systems better. Biological scientists, of course, know that species evolve, that whole new properties can emerge. Few biologists keep this at the forefront of their thinking, typically presuming that evolutionary process occur over longer time periods than those relevant for human planning. Insects and bacteria have proven difficult to manage precisely because generations are short and evolution happens quickly. Evolutionary and coevolutionary thinking directly yet constructively juxtaposes the dominant perspective of a world that is ultimately knowable. Partly for this reason, the coevolutionary perspective can be especially important for understanding the implications of being in a world dominated by human activity (Gowdy, 1994; Kallis and Norgaard, 2010; Norgaard, 1981; 1984; 1994; 2009).