Algemeen

Humanity has evolved as a member of the biotic community through the evolution of life on Earth. We live in systems and we are systems. At the same time, humanity now lives at such a scale that we contribute to the character and quality of the systems within which we live and those that we create at a scale never seen before in our history. As a species, humanity has a unique capability to be consciously aware of our individual and our collective impact on the world around us; our actions shape the future by how we live today and…

‘Man is destined by his reason to live in a society with men and in it to cultivate himself, to civilize himself, and to make himself moral by the arts and sciences. No matter how strong his animal tendency to yield passively to the attractions of comfort and well-being, which he calls happiness, he is still destined to make himself worthy of humanity by actively struggling with the obstacle that cling to him because of the crudity of his nature.’ – Immanuel Kant Humans are biophysically connected to the biosphere through the flows of materials and energy appropriated from ecosystems….

The Universe is immense, estimates suggest at least two trillion galaxies. Our galaxy holds 100 to 400 billion stars. One of those stars, our sun, has eight planets orbiting it. Planet Earth has a biosphere, a complex web of life, at its surface. The thickness of this layer is about twenty kilometers. This layer, our biosphere, is the only place where we know, for now, life exists. The existence of life on Earth depends on the distance from the Sun, neither too close nor too far away, to receive enough energy to allow water to exist as a liquid on…

The challenges that lie before us is unlike any other ever faced by humankind. As a society we must acknowledge humanity’s greatest existential threat, bend the curve, avert the impending disaster and opt instead to embark on the fastest and most exciting ecological, social and economic transformation in human history The evolution of intelligent life on a planet requires not only that planetary conditions are conducive to life at the start, as it first evolves, but also that the planet remains habitable subsequently, without interruption. This is because there has to be enough time to allow life to increase in…

Earth is a 4.5-billion-year transformation is driven by physical, chemical, and biological processes. The richness of the world around us is due, in large part, to the miracle of self-organization. The Earth is a highly complex system formed by a large variety of sub-systems (biosphere, atmosphere, lithosphere, as well as social and economic systems etc.), which interact by the exchange of matter, energy and information. Most processes in the system Earth are characterized by complex spatio-temporal dynamics. Earth is a complex system because it instantiates life—and therefore an autopoietic, metabolic repair organization—at a planetary scale. Earth’s complexity has formal equivalence…

We have pushed our species (and many others) to the brink of extinction by misguided actions informed by a limited point of view. This epistemological blind-spot created by an exclusively quantities-focused science informed a technologically driven civilization measuring success through inadequate economic indicators like Gross Domestic Product (GDP) while externalizing the qualitative damage to human communities, ecosystems and the biosphere from the balance sheets. There is an international consensus that our generation is facing a convergence of multiple crises and that the same mindset that has created this convergence is incapable of solving it. Paradigms evolve and shift when the prevailing frameworks are unable…

In physics that which is called a complex system is the one that exhibits a large range of spatial scales, and modelled as exhibiting non-linear chaotic response dynamics, turbulence, and power-scaling laws. Complex systems have characteristic emergent properties that cannot be predicted and therefore are impossible to control. They are novel characteristics of the system that emerge out of interactions and relationships which are governed by non-linear, iterative processes that drive the behavior of complex systems; the arising of novel and coherent structures, patterns and properties during the process of self-organization in complex systems. In general, complex systems, man-made or…

The history of the Earth system is a story of change. Some changes are gradual and benign, but others, especially those associated with catastrophic mass extinction, are relatively abrupt and destructive. It is generally agreed that the Earth system is complex and that this complex character must be appreciated when modelling it and taking decisions that may influence its evolution. The Earth’s complexity resides in its causal organization, which is self-referential. The road to demonstrating that the Earth qualifies as a complex system thus passes through a consideration of the Gaia hypothesis: that the Earth is an instance of life…

We are all on a lifelong journey to improve ourselves, spiritually, mentally and physically. Unfortunately, the lifelong part of that statement can sound like an awfully long process for many, especially for those born into rough circumstances or with a mental or physical disability. However, through using the developing biotech advances that will become mainstream over the next few decades, it will become possible to quickly and fundamentally remake yourself. Whether you want to become part machine. Whether you want to become superhuman. Or whether you want to become an entirely new species of human. The human body is about…

WE ALL KNOW IT. THIS IS THE DECISIVE DECADE. SUSTAINABILITY 3.0: REGENERATION Humanity has pushed our species (and many others) to the brink of extinction by misguided actions informed by a limited point of view. This epistemological blind-spot created by an exclusively quantities-focused science informed a technologically driven civilization measuring success through inadequate economic indicators like Gross Domestic Product (GDP) while externalizing the qualitative damage to human communities, ecosystems and the biosphere from the balance sheets. Traditionally organized around an extraction-based production system, based on hierarchical, centralized control and distribution of scarce resources. This system has come with a set of beliefs about the…