Description
Thinking about causality has almost always conceptualised humans as knowers distant from the things known. This has informed our causal methodologies, including the experimental methodologies which are still considered our best methods. Even where separating ourselves from the target system is difficult, methodologies advise as much separation as possible. However, this conception is no good for practices like restoration ecology, where restoration practitioners exist in constant dynamic contact with their object, which is simultaneously their object of study and of intervention. We trace the history of theorising causal methods that positions us first as observers and then as interveners, and argue that such practices show that we need a better-suited concept of causality: poiesis. From the poietic point of view, humans are not merely observers or interveners; we are makers, creators of whole causal systems. Sometimes we create causal systems while ourselves living within them. We argue that this requires a shift in understanding our causal methodologies. This shift to causality as poiesis is needed in all the disciplines struggling with complexity, uncertainty, and other pragmatic constraints, the wild sciences. These include at least health complexity, sustainability science, geology, climate science, and ecology. Understanding our causal methodologies for ecology as observational, experimental and poetic gives us a much more complete and integrated view of those methodologies.
| Topic | Topic 1: : Methods for integrating social and ecological knowledge |
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