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  • From: Paul Cereghino <paul.cereghino@comcast.net>
  • To: permaculture <permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [permaculture] Permaculture as science
  • Date: Fri, 26 Jan 2007 10:06:59 -0800

Thanks Jedd & Greg -- perhaps I am just distracting myself from spending time
working on the garden...

Permaculture practitioners and scientists .. do you mean?

Good clarification. It reduces the importance of generalities. I recently went through a 3 year intensive science training and have been working in a 'science-driven' legalistic resource management policy world ever since. I have met scientists that are open minded and closed minded, but as a group they seem both open-minded and reflexively doubting.

slightly disturbed by the faith-based approach
adopted by some people,
I have had interesting discussion with horticultural scientists who ridicule "faith-based gardening". Not because of what garden techniques they employ, but rather because they pretend to be 'science-based' but have no data or their experimental designs are seriously flawed.

This may be based on my desire for it to be science based, and for it to
appear science based.

I have encountered the term 'science-based' in many policy circles as well. It is a term I increasingly distrust. Scientists simply do science -- to gradually and incrementally grow a body of theory that explains how things work. Then cultural groups with some material interest other than 'the truth' takes that information and uses it to develop policy. They call their policies 'science-based'. However, when you freeze that policy and the power games, and take the time time time to break it down, and track back to the science... the science doesn't necessarily support the policy, but the policy solution just used science to gain cultural legitimacy. Permaculture practitioners can follow the same path.

There is a world of difference between saying "science says I'm right" to saying "science suggests this course of action may work, but we are going to move forward humbly and continue assessing the situation so we can continue to learn". The latter is a more mutually useful relationship between science and policy be it regulatory policy, programmatic policy, or permaculture policy.

I'd also suggest that scientific theories (or rather the developers
of same) aspire to be useful in all situations
I'd adjust this by saying that people who do science aspire to finding mechanisms and explanations that are big and important. However, in studying ecosystem dynamics, where there are multiple factors interacting to form patterns, theories are increasingly small and situational. An observed pattern is relevant to the combination of circumstances that shape that pattern. The results of individual studies are not earth shattering -- and many mistakes are made by extrapolating from one setting to another. It brings to mind a series of studies I read related to recruitment of conifer seedlings in shrublands. These folks observed that were there was thick salmonberry (Rubus spectabilis; rhizomatous cane fruit) new conifers were not coming. They then inferred that competition (for light?) from the rhizomatous shrubs was preventing conifer seedlings recruitment. Another scientist looked closer and looked for patterns of conifer recruitment in these floodplain shrubland, and found that seedlings did pop up, but only within around 80m of seed trees -- dispersal was also a strong control. But in a drier climate perhaps competition (for water) would be a bigger factor. And these observations are all averages across a population of places, and don't tease out the secondary patterns that cause deviation from the master pattern (microclimate effects, soils, herbivory etc...). So in acting on a piece of land you are necessarily in the world of intuitive 'policy development'. We make decisions between alternatives based on available information. I have not met many permaculture practitioners who do science... make systematic replicable observations (perhaps quantitative) within a theoretical context for the purposes of infering how things work. This is a problem in ecological restoration as well. When the people who are doing the work are not helping build the theory on which the work is built this is a weakness... in permaculture terms, the experiential output of the worker is not connected to the inspirational input of the scientist. I have heard some on this list point at academia and say they are disconnected from reality.

This is very bad news for anyone who's ever read a permaculture book,
or done a course, and then tried to replicate or transfer what they've
learnt to their own plot of land !

That's not exactly what I ment. In my experience, permaculture teaches people to develop intimate relationships to places, and to creating patterns based on an intuitive OR emperical understanding that place to retain and reuse resources, energy, water, nutrients, etc... Permaculture also teaches us to look at natural systems for those life increasing patterns and to replicate functional patterns in our creations. If someone goes out and makes a herb spiral in the shade... they will be dissappointed in the muted microclimate effect. If they spend lots of energy creating earth structures to infiltrate surface water when infiltration of surface water is not an issue in their system they will be dissappointed. The practical nature of a place keeps you humble. Observe place... than apply humbly... keep learning... all news is good news.

Observation is one of the cornerstones of both pursuits. Not sure
how well intuition...

I would expand this to say that observation and intuition are fundemental human resources, critical in ALL endevors.

I'd happily argue that most
scientists are intimately aware of things going on in their field of
research .. it's a bit of a necessity.

I think there is a substantial difference between understanding of a 'field of research' and 'understanding a place' encouraged by permaculture. I regularly work with fish scientists working in forested environments but who are not aware of what is going on in forest research. Threads of science move forward in isolation, often to their detriment, while permaculture is integrative. It can be that integrative because it moves fast, scavenges useful information, and leans heavily on intuition.

It's a bit early on to be deferring to Godwin's Law, isn't it?

What is Godwin's Law?

the altruism doesn't really exist
theory, and all that.

Eeek! lets not go there... :)






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