[Bolincentret-at-su.se] Why the Earth Sciences Need the Social Sciences

[Leonard Barrie]

Dear Centre Scientists,  As international global change research moves from
the umbrella of International Geosphere Biosphere Programme to that of
Future Earth, the human dimension of the anthropocene is more and more
involved. Here is one thoughtful comment on the importance of Social
Sciences to Earth Sciences.

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/why-earth-sciences-need-social-roy-haggerty?trk=prof-post

Roy Haggerty Oregon State University Why the Earth Sciences Need the Social
Sciences

Oct 12, 2015
Over my career as an Earth scientist, I have occasionally heard dismissive
comments about the social sciences.  The comments have tended to suggest
that social sciences are fundamentally different than the natural sciences,
of which Earth sciences are members, and that since they are fundamentally
different, they shouldn’t be mixed.  Commenters, including social scientist
colleagues who support earth and social sciences working together, have
stated that the social and natural sciences are fundamentally different
because they are based in distinct processes.

To the contrary, the social sciences and the earth sciences share the same
fundamental processes, and earth scientists need social sciences to answer
many important questions.  Spoiler alert: we live in the Anthropocene.

Before going any further, I want to say that I define the earth sciences as
those sciences studying the ocean, atmosphere, hydrosphere, solid earth,
and the marine and terrestrial biosphere that impacts all of these.

The most basic processes that influence the earth and the human beings that
inhabit it must be the same.  Earth processes are driven at their most
fundamental level by the four physical forces – gravity, electromagneticsm,
and the strong and weak nuclear forces. No other forces are known, and in
fact, someday it may be found that these forces are a single, unified
force.  At higher levels of synthesis, electromagnetic forces and the laws
that describe them generate emergent behavior that is more easily described
as chemistry.  At higher levels of emergence we get biology and, with the
other fundamental forces, earth sciences.  At one or two higher levels of
emergence, we get social sciences.  Unless you are willing to appeal to
mystical forces, beyond the reach of science, the behavior of human beings
derives from the same four physical forces as all other sciences.  The
underlying emergent properties of chemistry and biology and, potentially,
gravity and the strong/weak nuclear forces, must govern human beings.  If
we argue that the root of human behavior and interactions are not based in
the same fundamentals as earth sciences, we are either arguing for other
forces in the universe that are unknowable to science, or that somehow when
physical processes interact with each other in a human being, they generate
new laws that are somehow disconnected from the fundamental forces.

Note: I am not arguing that we should always study the most fundamental
forces in order to understand higher-level phenomena.  This is currently
impractical.  I can’t say that it will always and forever be impractical,
but it is currently far beyond our capability to understand some emergent
processes in terms of their fundamentals.  This is one of the reasons that
universities don’t solely consist of a physics department!

The fundamentals that drive both earth and social processes are the same,
at least at their deepest levels.

Second, social processes have critical influences on earth processes.  This
has explanations both at the shallow (obvious) level and at the deep
(fundamental) level.  At the shallow level, human beings obviously
influence the Earth in myriad ways.  We are now living in the Anthropocene
– the geologic time period where the most important driver is no longer
plate tectonics, the atmosphere, water, or the biosphere, but human
activity.  Human beings now move perhaps ten times as much material on the
Earth’s surface as geologic material.  We control – though not in an
engineered sense – climate.  We are driving the Earth’s sixth mass
extinction.  This is the Anthropocene.

At the deeper level, human ideas may be the most important determinant of
the future of the planet.  Human ideas could, for example, determine if the
sixth mass extinction goes to completion or if we stop it with policies and
choices.  Human ideas – perhaps even a single human idea – could determine
whether we continue to warm the planet a century or two from now or if we
bring climate change under control.  Imagine what would happen if we find a
way to capture the energy of nuclear fusion that is both acceptably safe
and cheaper than fossil fuels.  We know of no physical laws that would
prevent this from being true, which means that it is only a matter of
finding out how to make it so. If we could find a safe and cheap way to
capture the energy of nuclear fusion, then within a generation or so,
fossil energy would be overtaken by fusion energy.  Carbon dioxide
emissions to the atmosphere would start to decline, and we would begin to
slow the warming of the atmosphere.  Of course, safe, cheap fusion would
almost certainly come with its own set of challenges, but that is the
history of human ideas.  In any case, human beings are now powerful enough
that the future course of earth history depends more on humanity – on
social processes – than on many traditional earth science processes.

While it is clear that human ideas have the capability to radically change
the future of the Earth, we have very limited capacity to predict the
evolution of those ideas and how they will shape society.  To make such
predictions, we need a better understanding of human beings.  That is the
domain of social sciences.

Earth sciences and social sciences are cut from the same fabric of the
universe, and Earth sciences are now dependent on the social sciences
understanding some aspects of our planet.  We should learn to work together.

Leonard Barrie
Research Director,  Bolin Centre for Climate Research
Professor for Climate and Atmospheric Science
Department of Geological Sciences
Stockholm University
106 91 Stockholm
Sweden
leonard.barrie at geo.su.se
mobile +46761418800  work IGV +46 8164868
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