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A New Ecology - Systems Perspective - Chapter 3

3 Ecosystems have ontic openness 3.1 INTRODUCTION This chapter’s title may mean little to many persons, yet the essence may be understood fairly easily on an intuitive basis. The adjective “ontic”, which hardly appears in any dictionary, clearly relates to the term ontology, which is used in philosophy in its widest sense | Else_SP-Jorgensen_ch003.qxd 4 12 2007 15 31 e 35 3 Ecosystems have ontic openness . next to music and art science is the greatest most beautiful and most enlightening achievement of the human spirit Popper 1990 3.1 INTRODUCTION This chapter s title may mean little to many persons yet the essence may be understood fairly easily on an intuitive basis. The adjective ontic which hardly appears in any dictionary clearly relates to the term ontology which is used in philosophy in its widest sense to designate the way we view the world and how it is composed . Ontic bears the slight difference that it refers to intrinsic properties of the world as we construct it and its behavior such that it addresses phenomenology as well. Therefore this chapter complements the concepts of thermodynamic openness addressed in the previous chapter by including the physical openness available to ecosystem development. In fact everybody knows something about openness. We know how it is to be open to another person s opinions to be open minded or open to new experiences. We enjoy that surprising things may happen on our field trips and journeys in nature . In fact any person who has tried to plan exact details for a tour into the wilderness will know how difficult this is. First we may address the aspect of realizing such a trip and stress that this also implies the acceptance of the fact that unexpected things may or rather will occur. But second we have also to address the fact that once an event occurs it is an outcome of many unexpected events. It is impossible to predict which one and how often such events actually occur. We may expect to bring extra dry socks to use after one incident an unexpected event. How many persons will be able to foresee exactly how many pairs to bring Or in other cases we may return with unused socks but found that we needed extra shirts instead. Any of us will know that it is eventually not possible to make such a detailed plan. In fact one could have chosen