Permaculture Database

[Paul Cereghino <paul.cereghino@comcast.net>]

STORY AS ORGANIZING METAPHOR

When I'm teaching I often use storyline metaphors.  Characters are the 
dynamic elements of the system, the system architects.  The setting is 
everything from latitude down to microtopography and everything in 
between, and is ruled by the big interactive mess of hydrology-soils and 
disturbance regime.  Now there is grey area... some characters are so 
regular in their habit that they start to be part of the setting.. 
distrubance regime, the scythe, seasonal water maniuplations.  At some 
scale of smallness (at around the earthworm) characters fade into 
setting.  This is related to both our bias in observing large things, 
but it is also real... At some scale we are simply unable to control or 
predict beyond general terms... we dump organic matter on the surface or 
drag a blade at 12", and then watch the microcosmos reorganize into a 
new kind of 'soil' in response.  I am happy to allow some to try 
organize this microscale into a coherent design process, but I am dubious.

So can we or should we divide setting from character for the purposes of 
data structure?  (I say yes). 

If not we need to somehow cleave setting into [objects], and although I 
subscribe to the philosophy of complexity, I don't know how to model it 
accurately  in a publically generated dataset.