7 Emerging Frontiers of Problem and Theory-Driven
Science: Modelling Biodiversity-Ecosystem Linkages
‘Earth is presently undergoing a major loss of biodiversity that is often referred to as sixth
extinction by analogy to the five great extinctions preceding it… This loss began thousands
of years ago as humans became sufficiently organized to dominate and change their
environment. With the growth of this organization the loss of biodiversity accelerated to
reach an extraordinary level at the beginning of the twenty-first century. Humanity is now
so dominant that the destruction of small biomes such as wetlands through drainage and
mangrove swamps by dredging is commonplace. However, some of the biomes now
threatened are so large that their destruction may cause substantial local, and possibly
global, climate change as exemplified by the huge Indonesian rainforest fires of 1997
(Lincoln 2006, p. 20)’.
Knowledge resources dynamics, a newly introduced research tool (Pandit and
Meusburger 2015), focuses on the strategic interface-building among many sciences to accelerate the scientific response to the challenges humanity is confronted
with at the newly emerging frontiers. At best, knowledge resources dynamics takes
off horizontally. It is about how best the different disciplinary sciences, on the one
hand, and the relevant branches in the humanities, on the other hand, might create a
wider knowledge environment for enhancing their capacity to find long-term wise
solutions to global problems and challenges at the newly emerging frontiers. The
local interactions, among the various scientific groups, scientific-minded humanities
groups and epistemic communities as well as among the institutions of scientific
research, can serve as an engine of knowledge resources dynamics. In this sense, as
a methodological framework, knowledge resources dynamics is more about
building innovative strategic interfaces horizontally, that includes frontier-crossing
and breakdown of disciplinary boundaries. The knowledge resources dynamics may
not always be necessarily driven by the discoveries within a particular science. On
the contrary, it can serve humanity best if it is driven by ethics and wisdom inquiry,
as I will indicate below.
Unlike the individual reductionist sciences, knowledge resources dynamics
recognizes the unknown and unknowable complexities in Earth’s biodiverse world.
Just think across the diversity of the levels of biological complexity: e.g. how in
molecular biology the genetic regulatory pathways impact the health of organisms;
how in ecology environmental changes impact the gene pool of an ecosystem across
the species diversity (Marean 2015); and how neuroscientists correlate the
cell-to-cell communication with behaviour. Identifying the many threats to Earth’s
biodiverse world and, therefore, to biodiversity’s role not just in maintaining
resilient ecosystems/environments and ecosystem complexity but in drug development, in biomedical research and in understanding the infectious diseases and
best practices for agriculture assumes crucial importance.
One might ask why have the STS, including the philosophy and methodology of
science, failed in their most important yet most neglected task of enhancing the
public understanding of the challenges of stabilizing climate change and decarbonising the global economy. The centrality of public understanding of science to
150
G.L. Pandit
Science: Modelling Biodiversity-Ecosystem Linkages
‘Earth is presently undergoing a major loss of biodiversity that is often referred to as sixth
extinction by analogy to the five great extinctions preceding it… This loss began thousands
of years ago as humans became sufficiently organized to dominate and change their
environment. With the growth of this organization the loss of biodiversity accelerated to
reach an extraordinary level at the beginning of the twenty-first century. Humanity is now
so dominant that the destruction of small biomes such as wetlands through drainage and
mangrove swamps by dredging is commonplace. However, some of the biomes now
threatened are so large that their destruction may cause substantial local, and possibly
global, climate change as exemplified by the huge Indonesian rainforest fires of 1997
(Lincoln 2006, p. 20)’.
Knowledge resources dynamics, a newly introduced research tool (Pandit and
Meusburger 2015), focuses on the strategic interface-building among many sciences to accelerate the scientific response to the challenges humanity is confronted
with at the newly emerging frontiers. At best, knowledge resources dynamics takes
off horizontally. It is about how best the different disciplinary sciences, on the one
hand, and the relevant branches in the humanities, on the other hand, might create a
wider knowledge environment for enhancing their capacity to find long-term wise
solutions to global problems and challenges at the newly emerging frontiers. The
local interactions, among the various scientific groups, scientific-minded humanities
groups and epistemic communities as well as among the institutions of scientific
research, can serve as an engine of knowledge resources dynamics. In this sense, as
a methodological framework, knowledge resources dynamics is more about
building innovative strategic interfaces horizontally, that includes frontier-crossing
and breakdown of disciplinary boundaries. The knowledge resources dynamics may
not always be necessarily driven by the discoveries within a particular science. On
the contrary, it can serve humanity best if it is driven by ethics and wisdom inquiry,
as I will indicate below.
Unlike the individual reductionist sciences, knowledge resources dynamics
recognizes the unknown and unknowable complexities in Earth’s biodiverse world.
Just think across the diversity of the levels of biological complexity: e.g. how in
molecular biology the genetic regulatory pathways impact the health of organisms;
how in ecology environmental changes impact the gene pool of an ecosystem across
the species diversity (Marean 2015); and how neuroscientists correlate the
cell-to-cell communication with behaviour. Identifying the many threats to Earth’s
biodiverse world and, therefore, to biodiversity’s role not just in maintaining
resilient ecosystems/environments and ecosystem complexity but in drug development, in biomedical research and in understanding the infectious diseases and
best practices for agriculture assumes crucial importance.
One might ask why have the STS, including the philosophy and methodology of
science, failed in their most important yet most neglected task of enhancing the
public understanding of the challenges of stabilizing climate change and decarbonising the global economy. The centrality of public understanding of science to
150
G.L. Pandit