Prolegomena to a History of Robustness

Caianiello, Silvia

doi:10.1007/978-3-030-01198-7_2

Cited by 5 publications

(1 citation statement)

References 107 publications

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“…The present conditions were the same in the (at least recent) past, and will continue to be the same in the (at least near) future. Steady state can be reached in man-regulated devices ranging from a simple bathtub with no bottom plug and the tap open to sophisticatedly engineered systems (e.g., Caianiello, 2018). But can this be true for Nature as well, where "dynamic processes arise from a multiplicity of variables", and which is "inherently complex, refuses to keep to boundary conditions, and is influenced by the pervasive variables of solid geology, climate change and life forms" (Leeder, 2011)?…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Against Steady State

Garzanti¹,

Sternai²

2022

Preprint

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Nature is never at steady state. Natural history is generated by ever-interacting forces that produce always surprising phenomena. Negating change is negating Nature’s essence, and the historical record, at both geological and human time scales, shows that steady state remains utopia. However, although unrealistic because constantly endangered, we need a state of equilibrium as a starting point for modelling Nature. The steady-state condition is thus widely used as a reference in models aimed at understanding natural processes. Models are tools useful to extract meaning from data but they do not produce data, and we are allowed to base our reasoning on fictions provided we resist the temptation to believe that our assumptions are real, thus falling into a narcissistic circular trap. We cannot avoid using fictions in our models, which however makes them limited and discourages the tendency to imagine planets sustained by elephants carried in turn by giant turtles held up by a snake.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%