Sustainability and Research

A plurality of perspectives

Over the years many and not always compatible definitions of sustainability have emerged. Some emphasize the centrality of the natural component, assuming an eco-centric perspective, while others give more importance to human activity, and consequently an anthropocentric point of view. The differences are in fact complementary, sometimes recognised explicitly or implicitly, and at others ignored.

In general we can say that sustainability is an ensemble of knowledge, attitudes and actions which allow humanity to live indefinitely in harmony with natural systems.

Research, education and reflection on sustainability bring together environmental, economic, social and cultural aspects, and go beyond the traditional boundaries of single disciplines. Research is concerned with the natural world, human communities and their activities. Education promotes a growth in awareness of the problem. Reflection considers how research and knowledge are produced and indicates directions for behaviours and decisions.

Towards complexity

The picture which emerges around the concept of sustainability is that of an issue characterised by a high level of complexity, due to the multiple variables which play a role, the interactions between them, the difficulty in establishing linear relationships of cause and effect, the intrinsic unpredictability of the systems involved, often a result of the non-linear nature of responses and the presence of threshold effects. The situation is rendered even more complex by the level of conflict which arises because of the different perspectives assumed by economists, biologists, naturalists, sociologists, physicists, geologists, engineers, psychoanalysts, educators.

Within this broad debate, reflection on sustainability risks becoming caught between two opposed and unyielding positions, while the prevailing model of development continues to act upon ecosystems and social structures, with unprecedented force, due to the enormous potential furnished by technology.

In an endeavour to create an interdisciplinary dialogue, based on a mutual understanding between different perspectives and approaches, IRIS wishes to promote a constructive interaction between the contributions both of those sciences (and the scientists within them who may have different points of view and concerns) that consider the human factor central and those who place more emphasis on the role of natural systems. Moreover, new pathways are indicated by other areas of research concerned with creating new forms of interpretation or with the interior human dimension, which add a holistic and global dimension to the debate on sustainability and involve the totality of human experience: interaction with the natural world, productive activities, social organisation, the cultural, emotional and spiritual spheres.

The landscape is extremely broad and complex, and the various members of IRIS are differently engaged within it. Some are particularly concerned with conducting specialist and quantitative research, able to provide knowledge which can be demonstrated and is not conditioned by factors which are external to rigorous, rational enquiry, leaving to others the contribution offered by systemic and qualitative research. For these members - in a context characterised by high complexity, wide areas of uncertainty, little understood feedback dynamics and the critical nature of what is at stake – it is necessary for scientific practice to take into account the importance of uncertainty and the inextricable link between facts and values. This gives rise to an important debate concerning the validity of different forms of action, whether it is legitimate, opportune or necessary to bring together contributions from specialist, disciplinary research and from evolutionary sciences characterised by wide areas of randomness and unpredictability.

From specialist, disciplinary science to post-normal science

In this way attitudes linked to a traditional idea of science and others closer to a post-normal science come together. According to Funtowicz and Ravetz (1999), science becomes post-normal when research questions which concern political decisions (sustainability is a clear example) involve uncertain facts and controversial values, when it is necessary to take urgent decisions with important social and environmental consequences. Therefore it becomes necessary to add to specialist, quantitative research a new dimension, an approach that considers the complexity of the questions involved and the plurality of legitimate interpretations. In conditions of uncertainty or ignorance (as with the relationships of interdependence between natural systems and the human populations that act upon them) a plurality of approaches and the dialogue between them helps find new ways of orientation. Reconstructing learning requires reflection on the processes of knowledge building within various disciplines, the differences that emerge, and the epistemological aspects which emphasize the qualitative characteristics of knowledge.

(Funtowicz, S. and J. Ravetz. Post-Normal Science - an Insight now Maturing. Futures; 31:7, 641-646, 1999)

The perspective of a ‘stimulating disagreement’

Within the academic world it is often considered that all valid research derives from a single epistemology, and thus reference is made to science rather than to sciences. Indeed, within philosophy, epistemology considers that all contributions to a given discourse should be commensurable, in that they can be subjected to a series of rules able to show how a rational agreement can be reached. The dialogue within IRIS demonstrates how in fact the presence of different epistemologies leads to apparent incommensurability between different perspectives.

According to Richard Rorty, on such occasions hermeneutics can provide a fruitful alternative to epistemology, in that it does not aspire to filling a space left by the failure of epistemology to provide agreement, but rather expresses the hope that our culture might not feel a need for “definitive and final cogencies”. Hermeneutics explores the relationships between discourses, the conditions for a “possible conversation”, not necessarily based on common disciplinary premises, but which maintains the hope of some agreement, or at least a “stimulating disagreement”.

[Richard Rorty, Philosophy and the mirror of nature, 1979]..

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