Hello all! Today I am going to write about a fascinating topic for me – the Systems theory in Permaculture. Since I was a child I have always been thinking about the interconnections in the world so now I am curious to learn more about this concept through Permaculture.
Aranya described Systems theory as a notion that investigates how complex systems behave in society, nature and science. He gave a really good example of it- the human digestive system. According to him the elements of the digestive system can be different depending on who we ask. Some might say that only the abdominal organs are elements of it. Other people might include the mouth, nose and the salivary glands as well.
He explains this by the fact that although if we look at the human body as a whole it has a distinctly defined edge the sub-systems do not have it. Concerning the edge he complements that obviously the edge is an illusion because we are in a never-ending exchange with our environment.
He explains the difficulty of defining the elements in the digestive system or any other system as well with the fact that the elements (or sub-systems) of the system are frequently with many functions, each function fulfilling main or crucial functions across sub-systems which helps the whole system.
We can better understand this concept if we observe Figure 1 where he drew an example of a system- a spiral of erosion. We can see how the increasing of human population affects nature. More people need more food, which makes them chop down trees in order to create more land for growing food, which leads to destruction of biomass, this leads to lose fertility, which makes the land less fruitful and the cycle repeats.
Figure 1. An example of a system by the author Aranya in his book “Permaculture design”
However, one of the solutions to this problem can be Permaculture. That is why I am so eager to learn more about it. Thank you so much for reading! Next week I will write a second part on the topic of this incredible theory. I will explain more about the complexity of systems and the functions of it. See you next week!
Greetings,
Polin
