[Ibon]

I downloaded Origin of Species by Charles Darwin for .99 cents as an e-book and just finished reading it. It was 35 years since I read the book. What occurred to me this time around was how the observation of macro ecological phenomenon in the field lead Darwin to his theory of evolution and how natural sciences since his time have become more specialized and more micro down to the phylogenetic work on genes that determines evolutionary taxonomy today. Evolutionary biologists today rarely even go out into the field anymore and their level of specialization takes them far adrift from understanding the macro phenomenon of natural history. They know gene sequences but little of bio-geography for example.

I am guessing that this is also true in a suite of other fields from engineering to medicine to economics to sociology, etc. Specialization to the point that you can’t see the forest for the specialized tree you are perched on.
It is no wonder that we are so incapable of acting on the macro consequences of human overshoot when we live in a world of collective blind specialists so to speak. No one is steering the ship with a view of the broad horizon.
Reading original material from a couple hundred years ago really can provide insights into how far we have come at the same time as how far away we have drifted.

I thought this merited a thread of its own, the danger of becoming a bunch of short sighted mice focused on our minutiae where individuals and institutions can no longer act on macro consequences that are becoming more undeniable every day.

To open a discussion on this topic leads to the question, is this direction of specialization also one of those cyclical phenomenon that will one day swing back once we drift so far afield that consequences actually pull us back into the realm of the macro and holistic? Isn’t climate change one of those forces? Here we are 7 billion blind little mice specialized on our tasks as we do damage to the ultimate macro environment, our planet? Does this explain both the lack of collective will and blindness in being incapable of steering us toward mitigations. Or in finance the ever more sophisticated algorithms that go into moving a market and how this is taking us so far afield from a resilient economic system resulting in great disparity of wealth. Or how medicine is recently moving into specializing on the genetic level in offering tailor made therapies for the individual at exactly the time when the vast majority can no longer afford basic health care. It seems these are all examples of disparities and a weakening of collective resiliency that happens when there is over specialization.

Our species seems in exile and adrift in this specialized blindness.

[Timo]

Ibon, the macro disciplines are there, but they've been effectively vilified for their lack of easily useable information. Those disciplines I speak of, and which I think you're suggesting are lacking, are studies such as sociology, and anthropology, and philosophy. When was the last time you had a professor of Philosophy visit Mt. Totumas? Those studies are too human-oriented, and I'm pretty sure the money for these specializations doesn't really care much about humanity, and it's various, twisted exhibitions. You can get the macro view of anthropology on PBS, or A&E, or Nat. Geo. Interesting viewing, but not really anything more than that.

The biological and physical sciences, however, genuinely do offer near-term hope for the applications of new discoveries into medicines, or materials for CO2 storage, or energy storage. In other words, that's where the money is, and technologies are enabling a much finer and smaller view of our world. The hope is that the closer we look into how our world is created, clear down to the smallest quark-level, we'll be able to reconstruct our world in a better way to effectively address the problems we've caused to the planet as a human species. If we can figure out a way to sequester CO2 and other GH gases, the oil and coal industries do not have any reason to cease operations. If we can figure out nuclear fusion, well then, we're almost literally free to do anything we damn well please.

To be blatantly blunt about this, Darwin is old school. We've been there. We've done that. Most of humanity readily accepts the theories of evolution, and the off-shoot disciplines for further study are viewed as less valuable to humanity than the micro sciences that can alleviate the suffering we're causing for our children, and our children's children. Simply put, we have higher priorities right now.

I'm not suggesting that our priorities are right, by any means, but knowledge about how an isolated geographical climate can affect the evolutionary traits of the tufted titmouse is of much less monetary value than the potential use of mercury as a more powerful cathode for the recharge of sulfur/cadmium ion batteries. (BTW, I most certainly am not a chemist, and what I just wrote could easily be, and probably is complete BS!)

To your larger point, though, I think humanity is entering a new phase of evolution, or alt least cultural adaptation. As you've correctly observed, no one seems to be interested in studying the big picture anymore. We're all down at the micro level. Well, I think that's because, collectively, the money that funds science and education has pretty much accepted that we're screwed. We're all familiar (too familiar) with the doom scenarios and forecasts that await us in the future. We're not interested in learning more about that because we are now trying to do everything we can to reverse that inevitability. Wildlife biology, in the collective sense for humanity, is a waste of time. Our future is at stake. We should direct our attentions to the problems that affect our survival on the planet, and not the affects of AGW on armadillos. In this sense, we're seeking macro solutions by focusing on the smallest elements of our universe.

While driving down to Southland in NZ several years ago, the welcome sign to the district said something like Welcome to Southland, where we put People First. Someone had written below that with a can of spray paint Bugger Nature!

I hate to say it, but that seems to be the attitudes of most of civilization, these days. People first. Bugger nature.

[Newfie]

"People first, buggar nature"

Yeah,mi see that a lot also. Except, like it or not we are a part of nature. So we buggar ourselves.

Hard to see that at the micro level.

[Newfie]

I'm an engineer. Damned if I know what I do anymore. I'm working on four jobs...a toll highway in ca, a high speed rail job, a people mover and a bus radio design build job. I'm doing an ip addressing scheme, a fo design, managing the interface between a technology supplier and the electrical contractor, and estimating a civil/electrical scope of work. Other times I have written technical problems powwow and done rf simulations.

Yeah, I'm a generalist. Even as a very big company we have trouble keeping specialist employed. And the specialist don't help by being afraid to go outside their specific discipline. It's a huge problem. We have a few folks like myself who never lack for work, but we are hard pressed to keep others fully billable. I'm no smarter than they are. But somehow there is a difference in attitude.

It's a big problem for my company and the one before it.

Just my observations.

[Timo]

Newfie, think smaller. The less you think, the easier it is to fit inside your own personal comfort zone.

Big thoughts are scary! If you think too big, you'll lose your job for not containing yourself within your very small, specific assignments.

Thinking big is like going rogue. Going rogue is bad for contract business.

[Ibon]

Our future is at stake. We should direct our attentions to the problems that affect our survival on the planet, and not the affects of AGW on armadillos. In this sense, we're seeking macro solutions by focusing on the smallest elements of our universe.

Most of humanity readily accepts the theories of evolution, and the off-shoot disciplines for further study are viewed as less valuable to humanity than the micro sciences that can alleviate the suffering we're causing for our children, and our children's children. Simply put, we have higher priorities right now.

The hope is that the closer we look into how our world is created, clear down to the smallest quark-level, we'll be able to reconstruct our world in a better way to effectively address the problems we've caused to the planet as a human species.

What you are suggesting here is that there is some over arching design happening on the micro level that is somehow contributing to resolving the macro problems of human overshoot. This claim seems dubious. Sure you can point to battery technology but I could just as easy point to thousands of other micro specializations that are not at all related to resolving the macro problems of human overshoot.

During Darwin's time his macro observations were enough to challenge a dominant paradigm of human thought that a creator designed the myriad diversity of life. His arguments were impeccable and he didn't even have the knowledge of genetics. In other words, his work on the macro level directly tied to his observations of ecosystems was able to challenge a dominant world view of his time.

I don't see anything we are doing on the micro level opening any doors in quite that way.

One of the amazing things about natural history is how accurately Victorian age naturalists where in correctly placing species and genus's in their proper taxonomic order just by viewing the morphology and macro structures like the reproductive organs. Once micro biologists came along these past 20 years doing taxonomy on the level of the gene (phylogenetics) it is remarkable how few errors they were able to find in the taxonomy of over a 100 years.

I guess the best illustration of the failure of specialization to solve problems can be seen exactly in the example of phylogenetics for this micro specialization in taxonomy is happening exactly at the same time as extinctions are at their maximum due to macro forces. We are keying out some of the final mysteries in the taxonomy of life just when we are ramping up the destruction of the heritage of biodiversity on the planet.

[Ibon]

Newfie, think smaller. The less you think, the easier it is to fit inside your own personal comfort zone.

Big thoughts are scary! If you think too big, you'll lose your job for not containing yourself within your very small, specific assignments.

Thinking big is like going rogue. Going rogue is bad for contract business.

Yes. You just said it better than all the words I used on my opening post.

[Cog]

Technological advances force specialization whether it has an overall desirable outcome or not. Specialization works more efficiently in a high technology society. If you think back to primitive cultures, being a generalist(jack-of-all-trades and one where everyone must cooperate for the tribal survival, would be a preferable model.

In a high tech culture, if that even has meaning, I can fit into that culture quite easily by utilizing my own specialized talent. Others, with their own specialized talent provide the survival skills that insure my own survival and those of culture at large. No one looks at the big picture, because no one really needs to anymore. There is a lot of redundancy. At least as long as the technology can be sustained. If that fails, as you alluded to, we will be forced to cooperate more closely as a social group. But until then, I expect nothing different.

[Timo]

What you are suggesting here is that there is some over arching design happening on the micro level that is somehow contributing to resolving the macro problems of human overshoot. This claim seems dubious. Sure you can point to battery technology but I could just as easy point to thousands of other micro specializations that are not at all related to resolving the macro problems of human overshoot.

Understood. My only retort would be with reference to the words "over arching design." I don't think there is any such thing in the world, other than natural laws and physics and chemistry. What I was suggesting, though, is that I do believe there is an over arching control that is happening that indirectly dictates how each and every one of us lives. We're provided choices among a set of pre-determined alternatives. I am free to choose any alternative I want, but those alternatives are controlled by the laws of society, and society is controlled by the .0001%. To put that in better perspective, how much influence have Bill Gates or Steve Jobs had in your life? How many widgets that you use on a daily basis are due to their control? How much of your personal finances are do to the control of the policies of the Federal Reserve?

Back to your original post, though, our choices are currently set within the confines of the structures of the societies we live in. Times were different in the 19th Century, and every century before that. If you think Charles Darwin was stunningly accurate in his studies, I agree, but what would you say about George Orwell?

[Timo]

BTW, Ibon, my wife just told me she downloaded Origin of Species for FREE!

[jedrider]

Science-wise, specialization has been necessary and very good for science. I remember people worrying about careers at the PhD level where you pick something and know more about it than anyone else. It didn't seem very appealing to me, so I just went out there in the workforce to see what I LIKE to do, or could get a job doing, actually

However, recently, if you follow science, the generalists are having their day, because they can draw on so much work already done and so much data already accumulated by the specialists.

As a way of life, it is good to have the big picture in mind, but it may not pay the bills.

[Newfie]

Newfie, think smaller. The less you think, the easier it is to fit inside your own personal comfort zone.

Big thoughts are scary! If you think too big, you'll lose your job for not containing yourself within your very small, specific assignments.

Thinking big is like going rogue. Going rogue is bad for contract business.

I'm retiring in December. Actually, all I need to do is to stay until November 1 to be fully vested in the ESOP. It's not a lot, but will come in useful as Evan emergency fund.

It's funny because this is the best job I've ever had. I'm appreciated and well paid. And you should see the way I look, I haven seen a razor in a couple of years.

I'm tolerated because we have something of a rogue mentality in my work group, from the top. This situation could easily change and I'd be a goner. All in all I think I am having a rare experience.

As good as the job is my "best if used by" date is long gone.

[Newfie]

The effects of specialization are many. Think about language. Anyone with some degree of specialization has learned at least one vernacular in addition to our core common language. I try to read my wife's psychobabble journals and they are difficult. My engineering stuff is as bad for her. And we are relative generalist.

I suspect it is not only the language but the cultural references of the specialization. Once y go sufficiently down the rat hole you become so deeply ensconced into the nuances of you peer group that it may become difficult to relate to adjacent study groups. Let alone society at large.

[Ibon]

BTW, Ibon, my wife just told me she downloaded Origin of Species for FREE!

The best things in life are free Timo. A very big part of the reason I enjoyed reading The Origin of Species this time around was that since I already know the content quite well I was able to step back while reading and absorb the nuances of the time when Darwin wrote this. Kind of like when you see a movie the second time. The first time the story dominates. The second time you marvel at how the director put it all together.

The Victorian naturalists of the 19th century and early 20th century looked with depth into life forms and tried to tease out form and function and the inter relationships at a time when most of humanity just thought a creator did it all.

Here is a passage from the book.

It is interesting to contemplate a tangled bank, clothed with many plants of many kinds, with birds singing on the bushes, with various insects flitting about, and with worms crawling through the damp earth, and to reflect that these elaborate constructed forms, so different from each other and dependent on each other in so complex a manner, have all been produced by laws acting around us. These laws, taken in the largest sense, being Growth with Reproduction; Inheritance, which is almost implied by Reproduction: Variability, from the indirect and direct actions of the conditions of life, and from use and disuse; A Ratio of Increase so high as to lead to a Struggle for Life, and as a consequence to Natural Selection, entailing divergence of character and the Extinction of less improved forms. Thus, from the war of Nature, from famine and death,the most exalted object which we are capable of conceiving,namely, the production of the higher animals, directly follows. There is a grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed by the Creator into a few forms or into one, and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been and are being evolved.

[SeaGypsy]

Yeah funny most people think Darwin was an atheist, merely for defying sanctioned positions within a dogmatic schism. Same with Nietzsche, spent most of his life trying to define God in obscurity, discovering greatness only when he finally looked within for God. The cycles of stories repeating eternally, the really good ones, 'Chinese Ghosts'.

[hvacman]

The late Garrett Hardin points out in many of his writings that "whole system" scientists who look at the interrelatedness of all the various scientific specializations are called "Ecologists". He says a truly well-educated person in today's society should be:

Literate (understand the words)
Numerate (understand the numbers)
Ecolate (understand the inter-relationships)

Basically, be both scientifically near-sighted (be able to see the trees) and far-sighted (be able to see the forest). And be literate enough to have the ability to filter the words funneled to you by those who would rather convince you that you are looking at a desert and grains of sand.

[Ibon]

The late Garrett Hardin points out in many of his writings that "whole system" scientists who look at the interrelatedness of all the various scientific specializations are called "Ecologists". He says a truly well-educated person in today's society should be:

Literate (understand the words)
Numerate (understand the numbers)
Ecolate (understand the inter-relationships)

Basically, be both scientifically near-sighted (be able to see the trees) and far-sighted (be able to see the forest). And be literate enough to have the ability to filter the words funneled to you by those who would rather convince you that you are looking at a desert and grains of sand.

Great comment and I agree completely. When Darwin and his colleagues were not contemplating the inter relationship they were busy pinning insects and looking under glass at the morphology of tiny structures. It was through the dissection and observation of tiny parts that gave gravitas to their holistic ecological thinking. Measuring with calipers the beaks of finches.

There is surely a lesson here that is sorely needed and relevant to our current crisis. We lack completely ecological thinking in a world of short term thinking and greed for profit.

On another front if you read Darwin, as Sea Gypsy pointed out, he held life in reverence and believed ultimately in a creator. He lived in a time when polarity did not dumb people down to simple equations. Today we have vast amounts of information at our disposal and yet paradoxically we are ideologically blinded by the way we polarize ideas like science and religion and economics. Some might say in the passage I quoted above that Darwin was just throwing a bone to the religious by mentioning a creator who started life. Even if this is so, he spoke to them in their language as an attempt not to convert but to enlighten.

In a polarized world everyone talks past each other trying to convert each other instead of being held within a common bond and sharing information with the objective to enlighten.

This is part of the problem of over specialization.

[onlooker]

I will offer a little variant upon the comments in this thread. As humans we have built a cocoon which are our cities. Within those cities we are born and die. This disconnect with nature can be viewed as a specialization in regards to our immersion in a urban environment without a need to account for or appreciate nature. So this lack of involvement has meant that mankind did not 'NEED" to know about nature and how to live within it to survive. It recalls that infantile adage that you ask a teenager where does food come from and she/he replies the supermarket. So this narrow range of experience defines our urban specialization. It is one of the contributors to our woeful disregard for nature.

[Timo]

The late Garrett Hardin points out in many of his writings that "whole system" scientists who look at the interrelatedness of all the various scientific specializations are called "Ecologists". He says a truly well-educated person in today's society should be:

Literate (understand the words)
Numerate (understand the numbers)
Ecolate (understand the inter-relationships)

Basically, be both scientifically near-sighted (be able to see the trees) and far-sighted (be able to see the forest). And be literate enough to have the ability to filter the words funneled to you by those who would rather convince you that you are looking at a desert and grains of sand.

Neil DeGrasse Tyson???

He seems to be as close to fitting that description today, as anyone else living. At least he got paid for dethroning Pluto as a genuine planet. Bastard!

For a while that was Carl Sagan. RIP. Bill Nye also comes to mind. Other than that, though, you have to search really deep into the sciences to find anyone who is vocally (or trying to) speak up about the connections between the macro and the micro.

Sad to say, but nowadays, anyone who dares speak of such things is succinctly deemed to be nuts, defunded, and discarded as lost potential.

[MD]

You all are too wrapped up in your trees.

Too many words.

It's over. Deal with it.

You and yours might not survive.

Put your efforts into those endeavors that might come through.