In this chapter, we argue that in order to understand the interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary dialectics in sustainability science, it is useful to see sustainability science as a kind of management science, and then to highlight the hard-soft distinction in systems thinking. First, we argue that the commonly made natural-social science dichotomy is relatively unimportant and unhelpful. We then outline the differences between soft and hard systems thinking as a more relevant and helpful distinction, mainly (...) as a difference between perspectives in systemic modeling toward models. We also illustrate that the distinction is methodologically useful to advance sustainability science by enabling us (i) to suggest novel ways of using existing theoretical, experimental, and computational resources of the sciences for renewable resource management, and (ii) to disentangle disciplinary disagreements in climate science. (shrink)

Sustainability science seeks to extend scientific investigation into domains characterized by a distinct problem-solving agenda, physical and social complexity, and complex moral and ethical landscapes. In this endeavor it arguably pushes scientific investigation beyond its usual comfort zones, raising fundamental issues about how best to structure such investigation. Philosophers of science have long scrutinized the structure of science and scientific practices, and the conditions under which they operate effectively. We propose a critical engagement between sustainability (...) scientists and philosophers of science with respect to how to engage in scientific activity in these complex domains. We identify specific issues philosophers of science raise concerning current sustainability science and the contributions philosophers can make to resolving them. In conclusion we reflect on the steps philosophers of science could take to advance sustainability science. (shrink)

This essay evolved from my keynote address for the plenary session of the ASEAN Conference for Young Scientists 2019 organized by the ASEAN Secretariat, Vietnam Ministry of Science and Technology—whose main theme is sustainability science—organized at Hanoi-based Phenikaa University. It has also benefited from my advisory work for the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN).

As the future of human development increasingly hinges on the need for sustainable education and science, this essay re-examines the imminent threats to humankind and the relevance of achieving the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to science-technology research among today’s young scientists. It also discusses some socio-political and economic challenges to achieving sustainability and argues that developing sustainability science is difficult but not impossible. The hope lies in our current efforts to build productive and (...) creative scientific communities through nurturing youth engagement with science and the scientific mindset. (shrink)

The exacerbating energy crises that are wreaking havoc around the globe, as well as the apparent effects of climate change, have spurred, amongst other causes, the concerted orientation towards amelioration aims such as the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and environmental, social, and corporate governance (ESG). Although often presented as not only the solution to these global problems (if adopted wholesale), they are increasingly being used as a vehicle to traffic the centralisation of power and exacerbate growing authoritarian trends. (...) This chapter aims to demonstrate how the narratives surrounding ESG package the problem into what might otherwise be the solution to global problems, missing the forest for the trees. (shrink)

The budding notion of sustainability is analyzed using the notions of an interdisciplinary versus a multidisciplinary field by Lindley Darden and Nancy Maul.

Arguably the most foundational principle in perception research is that our experience of the world goes beyond the retinal image; we perceive the distal environment itself, not the proximal stimulation it causes. Shape may be the paradigm case of such “unconscious inference”: When a coin is rotated in depth, we infer the circular object it truly is, discarding the perspectival ellipse projected on our eyes. But is this really the fate of such perspectival shapes? Or does a tilted coin retain (...) an elliptical appearance even when we know it’s circular? This question has generated heated debate from Locke and Hume to the present; but whereas extant arguments rely primarily on introspection, this problem is also open to empirical test. If tilted coins bear a representational similarity to elliptical objects, then a circular coin should, when rotated, impair search for a distal ellipse. Here, nine experiments demonstrate that this is so, suggesting that perspectival shapes persist in the mind far longer than traditionally assumed. Subjects saw search arrays of three-dimensional “coins,” and simply had to locate a distally elliptical coin. Surprisingly, rotated circular coins slowed search for elliptical targets, even when subjects clearly knew the rotated coins were circular. This pattern arose with static and dynamic cues, couldn’t be explained by strategic responding or unfamiliarity, generalized across shape classes, and occurred even with sustained viewing. Finally, these effects extended beyond artificial displays to real-world objects viewed in naturalistic, full-cue conditions. We conclude that objects have a remarkably persistent dual character: their objective shape “out there,” and their perspectival shape “from here.”. (shrink)

Vietnam, with a geographical proximity and a high volume of trade with China, was the first country to record an outbreak of the new Coronavirus disease (COVID-19), caused by the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 or SARS-CoV-2. While the country was expected to have a high risk of transmission, as of April 4, 2020—in comparison to attempts to contain the disease around the world—responses from Vietnam are being seen as prompt and effective in protecting the interests of its citizens, (...) with 239 confirmed cases and no fatalities. This study analyzes the situation in terms of Vietnam’s policy response, social media and science journalism. A self-made web crawl engine was used to scan and collect official media news related to COVID-19 between the beginning of January and April 4, yielding a comprehensive dataset of 14,952 news items. The findings shed light on how Vietnam—despite being under-resourced—has demonstrated political readiness to combat the emerging pandemic since the earliest days. Timely communication on any developments of the outbreak from the government and the media, combined with up-to-date research on the new virus by the Vietnamese science community, have altogether provided reliable sources of information. By emphasizing the need for immediate and genuine cooperation between government, civil society and private individuals, the case study offers valuable lessons for other nations concerning not only the concurrent fight against the COVID-19 pandemic but also the overall responses to a public health crisis. (shrink)

Excerpted from ‘The Vietnamese Social Sciences at a Fork in the Road’, Edited by Quan-Hoang Vuong and Trung Tran [1], with permission from the editors. The Vietnamese Social Sciences and Humanities at a Fork in the Road, utilizing an object-oriented structured database on the productivity of Vietnamese researchers, seeks to provide a comprehensive overview of the development of Social Sciences and Humanities in Vietnam from 2008 to 2018. The book can be ordered from De Gruyter Online or Amazon.

Sustainability assessments bring together different perspectives that pertain to sustainability in order to produce overall assessments and a wealth of approaches and tools have been developed in the past decades. But two major problematics remain. The problem of integration concerns the surplus of possibilities for integration; different tools produce different assessments. The problem of implementation concerns the barrier between assessment and transformation; assessments do not lead to the expected changes in practice. This paper aims to analyze issues of (...) complementarity in sustainability assessment and transformation as a key to better handling the problems of integration and implementation. Based on a generalization of Niels Bohr’s complementarity from quantum mechanics, we have identified two forms of complementarity in sustainability assessment, observer stance complementarity and value complementarity. Unlike many other problems of sustainability assessment, complementarity is of a fundamental character connected to the very conditions for observation. Therefore complementarity cannot be overcome methodologically; only handled better or worse. Science is essential to the societal goal of sustainability, but these issues of complementarity impede the constructive role of science in the transition to more sustainable structures and practices in food systems. The agencies of sustainability assessment and transformation need to be acutely aware of the importance of different perspectives and values and the complementarities that may be connected to these differences. An improved understanding of complementarity can help to better recognize and handle issues of complementarity. These deliberations have relevance not only for sustainability assessment, but more generally for transdisciplinary research on wicked problems. (shrink)

Instead of postulated fixed structures and abstract principles of usual positivistic science, the unreduced diversity of living world reality is consistently derived as dynamically emerging results of unreduced interaction process development, starting from its simplest configuration of two coupled homogeneous protofields. The dynamically multivalued, or complex and intrinsically chaotic, nature of these real interaction results extends dramatically the artificially reduced, dynamically single-valued projection of standard theory and solves its stagnating old and accumulating new problems, “mysteries” and “paradoxes” within the (...) unified and causally complete picture of intrinsically evolving, dynamically complex reality. The permanently unfolding complexity progress thus revealed is fundamentally unlimited and does not need to stop at the directly observed diversity of usual matter complexity. The exciting, but rigorously substantiated and objectively inevitable prospects of further civilisation complexity development towards its superior levels of genuine sustainability and global Noosphere are outlined, with practically important conclusions for today’s critical problem solution. (shrink)

The paper deals with the problem of future biology teachers’ vocational preparation process and shaping in them of those capacities that contribute to the conservation and enhancement of our planet’s biodiversity as a reflection of the leading sustainable development goals of society. Such personality traits are viewed through the prism of forming the future biology teachers’ professional and terminological competence. The main aspects and categories that characterize the professional and terminological competence of future biology teachers, including terminology, nomenclature, term, nomen (...) and term element, have been explained. The criteria and stages of shaping the future biology teachers’ professional and terminological competence during the vocational training process have been fixed. Methods, techniques, technologies, guiding principles and forms of staged work on the forming of an active terminological dictionary of students have been described and specified. The content of the distant special course “Latin. Botanical Terminology”, which provides training for future teachers to study the professional subjects and to understand of international scientific terminology, has been presented. It is concluded that the proper level of formation of the future biology teachers’ professional and terminological competence will eventually ensure the qualitative preparation of pupils for life in a sustainable development era. (shrink)

Indigenous Sustainable Wisdom: First Nation Know-How for Global Flourishing’s contributors describe ways of being that reflect a worldview that has guided humanity for 99% of human history; they describe the practical traditional wisdom stemming from Nature-based relational cultures that were or are guided by this worldview. Such cultures did not cause the kinds of anti-Nature and de-humanizing or inequitable policies and practices that now pervade our world. Far from romanticizing Indigenous histories, Indigenous Sustainable Wisdom offers facts about how human beings, (...) with our potential for good and evil behaviors, can live in relative harmony again. Contributions cover views from anthropology, psychology, sociology, leadership, native science, native history, native art. (shrink)

Human behavior is an underlying cause for many of the ecological crises faced in the 21st century, and there is no escaping from the fact that widespread behavior change is necessary for socio-ecological systems to take a sustainable turn. Whilst making people and communities behave sustainably is a fundamental objective for environmental policy, behavior change interventions and policies are often implemented from a very limited non-systemic perspective. Environmental policy-makers and psychologists alike often reduce cognition ‘to the brain,’ focusing only to (...) a minor extent on how everyday environments systemically afford pro-environmental behavior. Symptomatic of this are the widely prevalent attitude–action, value–action or knowledge–action gaps, understood in this paper as the gulfs lying between sustainable thinking and behavior due to lack of affordances. I suggest that by adopting a theory of affordances as a guiding heuristic, environmental policy-makers are better equipped to promote policies that translate sustainable thinking into sustainable behavior, often self-reinforcingly, and have better conceptual tools to nudge our socio–ecological system toward a sustainable turn. Affordance theory, which studies the relations between abilities to perceive and act and environmental features, is shown to provide a systemic framework for analyzing environmental policies and the ecology of human behavior. This facilitates the location and activation of leverage points for systemic policy interventions, which can help socio–ecological systems to learn to adapt to more sustainable habits. Affordance theory is presented to be applicable and pertinent to technically all nested levels of socio–ecological systems from the studies of sustainable objects and households to sustainable urban environments, making it an immensely versatile conceptual policy tool. Finally, affordance theory is also discussed from a participatory perspective. Increasing the fit between local thinking and external behavior possibilities entails a deep understanding of tacit and explicit attitudes, values, knowledge as well as physical and social environments, best gained via inclusive and polycentric policy approaches. (shrink)

Teachers are the frontline workers in sustaining quality education; hence, assessing their knowledge, attitudes, and behaviors (KAB) allows them and the administrators to create better training, programs, and instructional materials. The objective is to develop and validate a quick and accessible online instrument to assess the teachers’ KAB towards sustainable development in the Philippine context, as part of a bigger project to integrate Pili (Canarium ovatum) into education. The researchers administered the instrument using a cross-sectional survey method through Google Forms (...) in which respondents (n = 206) had voluntarily answered. The 24-item tool, anchored on the 2030 sustainable development goals and their complex systems, is reliable and valid based on the confirmatory factor analysis, and Cronbach’s alpha and Fleiss’s kappa estimates. The results showed that having favorable knowledge and attitudes toward sustainable development is inadequate to create positive behaviors. The adaptation of the developed instrument, the use of findings for intercultural and cross-cultural studies, and further investigations are recommended. (shrink)

Communication plays an important role in promoting sustainable consumption. Yet how the academic literature conceptualizes and relates communication and sustainable consumption remains poorly understood, despite growing research on communication in the context of sustainable consumption. This article presents the first comprehensive review of sustainable consumption communication (SCC) research as a young and evolving field of scholarly work. Through a systematic review and narrative synthesis of N = 67 peer-reviewed journal articles, we consolidated the research conducted in this field into four (...) distinct types: communication as an approach to (1) behavior change, (2) self-empowerment, (3) systems change, and (4) reflection on current discourses and practices around sustainable consumption. Our findings reveal that most journal articles focus on incremental changes in individual consumer behavior (“weak” sustainable consumption) and employ communication as an intervention tool with little reference to communication science and theory. They also reveal integration challenges arising from the disciplinary diversity and fragmentation characteristic of the research field. Future research should develop shared frameworks and terminology, diversify its foci, synthesize relevant evidence, and innovate critical perspectives that go beyond one-way business-to-consumer communication. The results of our review can serve researchers engaged in sustainable consumption communication to better systematize their efforts and contribute more effectively to changing systems of consumption in the future. (shrink)

The current global COVID-19 pandemic has led to a deep and multidimensional crisis across all sectors of society. As countries contemplate their mobility and social-distancing policy restrictions, we have a unique opportunity to re-imagine the deliberative frameworks and value priorities in our food systems. Pre-pandemic food systems at global, national, regional and local scales already needed revision to chart a common vision for sustainable and ethical food futures. Re-orientation is also needed by the relevant sciences, traditionally siloed in their disciplines (...) and without adequate attention paid to how the food system problem is variously framed by diverse stakeholders according to their values. From the transdisciplinary perspective of food ethics, we argue that a post-pandemic scheme focused on bottom-up, regional, cross-sectoral and non-partisan deliberation may provide the re-orientation and benchmarks needed for not only more sustainable, but also more ethical food futures. (shrink)

Committing to contribute to promoting the 11th progressive cultural element – environmental-healing value – and building the eco-surplus culture for sustainable development, the AISDL Team (represented by Drs. Minh-Hoang Nguyen and Quan-Hoang Vuong) has collaborated with Discover Sustainability to launch “Environmental Sustainability Needs Humanities” Topical Collection. In contributing to the generation of knowledge that aids the social transitions toward an eco-surplus utopia, the Topical Collection welcomes various types of articles across disciplines, including Research, Reviews, Perspectives, Comments, Brief Communications, (...) Case Studies, Registered Reports, and Data Notes that are related but not limited to these issues: - Socio-cultural and economic issues that help mitigate and adapt to climate change and prevent biodiversity loss - Socio-cultural and economic issues that support the development and implementation of nature-based solutions and artificial technologies for achieving environmental sustainability - Factors that help restore the connection between nature and humans, such as science, art, literature, and lived experiences - The psychology towards climate change, biodiversity loss, social transition, and technological transformation - The roles of creativity, serendipity, and knowledge management in sustainability transformation - Sustainable financing mechanism for climate change mitigation and adaptation as well as biodiversity conservation - The roles of urban and rural humans in addressing climate change and biodiversity loss - Global agreement, national commitments, and local actions for addressing climate change and biodiversity loss. (shrink)

This study aims to explore a demoethical model for sustainable development in modern society. It proposes an approach that focuses on organizing activities to improve sustainable development. Specifically, it presents a demoethical model relevant to Society 5.0 and Industry 5.0 organizations. The objective is to identify demoethical values that can drive sustainable development in the era of digitalization. Through a literature review and analysis, this study identifies key components of the demoethical model and provides practical recommendations for stakeholders involved in (...) digital transformation. The analysis of demoethical norms and phenomena, such as education, nurturing, mind, knowledge, science, and honest work, has enabled the identification of values that align with sustainable development in society. The results of the study demonstrate that the notion of a demoethical foundation for sustainability is rooted in the concept of spirituality as the basis for a new societal development scenario and its relationship with nature. The study shows that ideas about the demoethical basis of sustainability are based on the priority of spirituality as the basis of a new scenario for the development of society, as well as the integration of demographic, socio-economical, and ecological components in system-wide modeling. (shrink)

American philosopher Wilfrid Sellars (1962) once said that “the aim of philosophy, abstractly formulated, is to understand how things in the broadest possible sense hang together in the broadest possible sense.” My main question is this: within the context of contemporary sustainability science, how does the concept of ‘sustainability’ in the broadest possible sense of the concept hang together in the broadest possible sense? I will answer this question by advancing two new explicative definitions of sustainability (...) that jointly constitute a unifying concept of sustainability. This meta-level concept accommodates most of the central meanings conventionally assigned to ‘sustainability’ by sustainability scientists and scholars, offers a useful division of labor between scientists and scholars, and makes explicit value judgements commonly associated with the concept of sustainability. (shrink)

This article argues that we need to learn from the living earth how living systems sustain themselves and use this knowledge to transform our unsustainable and destructive social systems into sustainable and symbiotic systems within systems. I first set out what I take to be four central features of sustainable living systems according to the life and earth sciences. Secondly, I set out what I take to be the main features of our unsustainable social system that cause damage to the (...) ecosphere on the one hand and give rise to the illusion of independence from it on the other hand. I then turn to several ways of responding to the sustainability crisis that are informed by this way of thinking about our interdependent relationship in and with ecosocial systems. These are ways of dis-engaging from our unsustainable practices, beginning to engage in practices of re-engaging and reconnecting socially and ecologically, and thus beginning to bring into being unalienated and sustainable ways of life on earth. If the symbiotic interdependency thesis of the first section is true, then participants in these connecting practices should be empowered in reciprocity by the interdependent relationships they connect with, and thus initiate expanding virtuous cycles. This reciprocal empowerment is discussed in the final section. (shrink)

Ubuntu originated in small-scale societies in precolonial Africa. It stresses metaphysical and moral interconnectedness of humans, and newer Africapitalist approaches absorb ubuntu ideology, with the aims of promoting community wellbeing and restoring a love of local place that global free trade has eroded. Ecological degradation violates these goals, which ought to translate into care for the nonhuman world, in addition to which some sub-Saharan thought systems promote environmental concern as a value in its own right. The foregoing story is reinforced (...) by field research on African hunting operations that appear—counterintuitively—to reconcile conservation with business imperatives and local community interests. Though acknowledging shortcomings, I maintain these hunting enterprises do, by and large, adopt Africapitalist and ubuntu attitudes to enhance community wellbeing, environmental sustainability, and long-term economic viability. I also examine how well-intentioned Western conservation agendas are neocolonial impositions that impede local control while exacerbating environmental destruction and socioeconomic hardship. Ubuntu offers a conciliatory epistemology, which Africapitalism incorporates, and I conclude by considering how standard moral theories and political divisions become less antagonistic within these sub-Saharan frameworks, so even opponents can find common cause. (shrink)

Although immigrants have been found to be particularly likely to engage in entrepreneurial activities in their host countries, very often their ability to do so is restricted by a range of challenges, including having limited access to finances. As a consequence, proactive immigrant entrepreneurs establish informal financial associations, which are known as stokvels in South Africa, in order to compensate for the general lack of available capital for their business ventures. Accordingly, this paper has sought to ascertain the role, which (...) stokvels play in the startups and the growth of Cameroonian-owned businesses, and also the strategies which they employ. A mixed-methods approach was adopted to conduct the study and purposive sampling was employed to obtain a research sample of 123 participants to respond to the survey questionnaire and 10 to take part in one-on-one in-depth interviews. The data was analysed through the use of the Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) software, which generated findings in the form of descriptive statistics. The results suggest that most emerging immigrant entrepreneurs struggle to obtain sufficient startup capital. It also emerged from the findings that stokvels played an equally significant role in providing the capital, which was necessary for the growth of their businesses. On the basis of the assumption that widening access to finance would improve both the startups and the growth of immigrant-owned businesses, the authors of this paper advocate for inclusive policy initiatives, which consider the unique characteristics of the immigrant entrepreneur. In addition, it is hoped that this paper will make a valid contribution to the discourse concerning inclusive finance and be of interest to policymakers and academics. (shrink)

The need to act in networks and to function in a society where we relate in complex fashions has fostered the use of data in accordance with distributed models. In a big data context, the individual is often overcome with the sentiment that one’s life does not matter, nor does it make a difference. What are sought are trends, and since there is no detached observer, those change things as much as they measure them. Where can we find a vantage (...) point, a ‘topsight’ necessary before the conception of any program? One could seek it in the direction of a collective figure, somewhat like the Leviathan of Hobbes, made up in its gigantism of smaller figures. Those that have been schooled in the classical tradition, or philosophia perennis, might think that we are abandoning solid realism, which seeks a conformation of statements, propositions, and language to what there is. They might criticize the reign of opinion. But what we entered into is not, upon closer inspection, some overarching paradigm of truth as success. It is rather a rationality of the likely, and it requires assessing the truths that can seem distributed between alternating or competing positions. But then, to seek decisions despite this, is to erase from our world this ‘esprit de finesse’ which Pascal deemed necessary to balance the illusions of a procedural mathematical rationality claiming that its end-products are simply in correspondence with reality. When we gather information, we frame it within an ontology for classification purposes, but this does not import with itself the immanence of this information as endogenous power to harmonise and give form. Feeling, as Whitehead construed it, seeks to take within it a receptivity to the world in order to turn it into an internalised representation. For this, it needs to be possible for a part of the world to reflect in itself the whole. Yet, this reflection is not a totalisation in an immaterial data range, it is rather a grounding in the mystery of the flesh, which is found here as a signpost on the way, if we are to heal dreams of complete mastery. (shrink)

Preservation of the environment, the sphere of the vital activity of the population, cultural heritage, promotion of the healthy lifestyle movement, the implementation of the “green†and resource saving technologies create more active demand for organic goods in the international trade. The ecological, social, economic and institutional merits of organic goods compared with traditional and genetically modified goods as well as the high pace of the growth of the international trade in organic agricultural goods enhance their role in the achievement (...) of the goals of sustainable development. The article considers the international trade in organic goods as sustainable international trade. Based on the authors’ methods of the calculation of the integrated index of development of organic market of 15 developing countries, the positions, factors, prospects and conditions of the development of national markets of organic agricultural goods were identified. It was found that the market of organic goods of the Czech Republic is the most developed and balanced due to the high payment capacity of the population, the policy of the producer’s support, existence of the relevant certification of the produce during delivery to the EU market. The markets of the countries of Europe and Middle East (Poland, Romania, Turkey, and Ukraine) are growing mainly under the influence of supply factors; the markets of Asia and America (China, Brazil and Peru) – under the influence of demand factors, including the demand in the global market. The internal markets of China and India are developed insufficiently. The prospects of the development of markets of organic goods of Mexico, Brazil, India, China, Russia and Chili are related to the stimulation of the internal production of organic goods. In Ukraine, Peru, India, Chili, Mexico and Turkey, it is appropriate to popularize consumption of organic goods. Romania, Czech Republic, Brazil, Turkey, Ukraine and Russia have to facilitate the promotion of their own organic goods to the world market. It was found that a relatively high payment capable demand in the internal market is a necessary condition, and the growth of the share of organic goods in the export structure of the countries is an obligatory condition to enhance the positions of the countries in the global market of organic goods. The condition of an increase in the role of the countries developing in the world market of organic goods and the transition of the world economy to the principles of sustainable development were substantiated. (shrink)

Faced with enormous unemployment, the South African government enacted pro-SMME policies. It was assumed that such policies would ignite broad-based growth within the SMMEs cluster, regardless of the sector. However, the current evidence suggests that these laudable efforts have not benefited the poorest of the poor nor have they aroused and sustained entrepreneurship in certain quarters. Using the spaza shop as the focus and two prominent townships as the locus, this paper sought to understand the factors that under mind the (...) effective startup of businesses by natives. Furthermore, it identified the support structures that can foster and sustain new firm births. Leaning on the exploratory and descriptive research design, the quantitative research approach was enforced through self-administered questionnaires. The data collected was captured and analysed using the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) software, and was based on 121 fully completed questionnaires. A number of challenges unique to native spaza shops were conceded. These included a restricted access to seed capital, inability to benefit from bulk purchases, competition from non-South African shops, lack of business information, unsuitable business location, and the lack of collateral. The customarily challenges included a high level of crime, high cost of security and limited management skills. To encourage and sustain, new firm births, firstly, spaza shop-owners must have a clear vision of what they want to achieve before they embark on the venture. Secondly, crime must be dealt with collectively. Thirdly, government agencies and the private sector must come on board to address the skills gap. Lastly, technology should be adopted, to mitigate the issues around bulk purchases and transport costs. (shrink)

“The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)”, are a universal call for action, covering targets to be fulfilled by the end of 2030. Many global problems such as global climate change and drought, environmental pollution, depletion of natural resources and biodiversity, inclusive education have evolved into the greatest collective problem of all humanity. It is recognized that teachers, are also responsible for ensuring a sustainable life for future generations and contributing to its sustainability. At this point, there is a need for (...) educational approaches based on group dynamics that will contribute to the socialization of the individual, support them to gain new experiences, provide them with the opportunity to produce solutions to the encountered obstacles, be sensitive to human values, have a questioning perspective, support them in processes that will enable critical, collaborative, attentive and creative thinking skills, and guide them in processes that will enable them to activate their critical, collaborative, attentive and creative thinking skills. Philosophy and creative drama practices for children based on these educational approaches are among two of the methods that are thought to be effective in addressing and questioning development goals and developing solutions for individuals who are learning about the actions that can be carried out. The research, which is designed to convey this universal call for action to children through the teachers of the future and to support them to be an active part of this process, is based on three components: sustainable development goals, creative drama and philosophy for children, and a sample workshop plan is presented. (shrink)

This transdisciplinary doctoral thesis presents various theoretical, methodological and empirical approaches that together form an ecological approach to the study of social sciences. The key argument follows: to understand how sustainable behaviours and cultures may emerge, and how their development can be facilitated, we must further learn how behaviours emerge as a function of the person and the material and social environment. Furthermore, in this thesis the sustainability crises are framed as sustain-ability crises. We must better equip our cultures (...) with abilities to deal with the complexity and uncertainty of socio-ecological systems, and use these cultural skillsets to survive in and adapt to an increasingly unpredictable world. This thesis employs a plurality of ecological social sciences and related methodologies—such as ecological psychology, ecological rationality and agent-based modelling—to enlighten the question of how the collective adoption of sustainable behaviours can be leveraged, particularly by changing the affordances in the material environment. What is common to these ecological approaches is the appreciation of ‘processes’ over ‘products’: we must understand the various processes through which sustainable forms of behaviour or decision-making emerge to truly locate leverage points in social systems. Finally, this thesis deals extensively with uncertainty in complex systems. It proposes that we can look to local and traditional knowledge in learning how to deal adaptively with uncertainty. (shrink)

Abstract: Science and emerging technologies should not be predominantly tasked with furnishing us with more sustainable societies. Continuous short-term technological bail outs without taking into account the longer socio-cultural incubation times required to transition to ‘weakly sustainable’ economies squander valuable resources and time. Emerging technologies need to be deployed strategically to buy time in order to have extended political, social and ethical discussions about the root-causes of unsustainable economies and minimize social disruptions on the path towards global sustainability. (...) Keywords: Nanoscience; nanotechnology; expanded materials design space; dematerialization; sustainability; permanent resource crises . (shrink)

While practical efforts in the field of artificial intelligence grow exponentially, the truly scientific and mathematically exact understanding of the underlying phenomena of intelligence and consciousness is still missing in the conventional science framework. The inevitably dominating empirical, trial-and-error approach has vanishing efficiency for those extremely complicated phenomena, ending up in fundamentally limited imitations of intelligent behaviour. We provide the first-principle analysis of unreduced many-body interaction process in the brain revealing its qualitatively new features, which give rise to rigorously (...) defined chaotic, noncomputable, intelligent and conscious behaviour. Based on the obtained universal concepts of unreduced dynamic complexity, intelligence and consciousness, we derive the universal laws of intelligence applicable to any kind of intelligent system interacting with the environment. We finally show why and how these fundamentally substantiated and therefore practically efficient laws of intelligent system dynamics are indispensable for correct AI design and training, which is urgently needed in this time of critical global change towards the truly sustainable development. (shrink)

As populations grow and arable land becomes increasingly scarce, large-scale long- term land leases are signed at a growing rate. Countries and investors with large amounts of financial resources and a strong agricultural industry seek long-term land leases for agricultural exploitation or investment purposes. Leaders of financially poorer countries often advertise such deals as a fast way to attract foreign capital. Much has been said about the short-term social costs these types of leases involve, however, less has been said about (...) the normative dimension of their long-term environmental impact. We therefore will focus on the likely impact such deals have for soil conservation, by (1) briefly introducing the basics of long-term leasing arrangements by comparing land leases to the renting of buildings, (2) explaining from a soil sciences perspective the difficulties in assessing the current value of an estate and in calculating the damages of soil erosion and degradation, and (3) show how difficult it is to incentivize the conservation of soil quality when one cannot sufficiently and cost-effectively valorize existing environmental capital and eventual future damages. Attempting to oblige tenants through contracts to invest in sustainable stewardship has limited potential when liability payments do not reflect true costs and are hard to enforce. (shrink)

Oswald Spengler is best known as a philosopher of history. However, one can trace in volume one of his The Decline of the West a sustained consideration of philosophical issues pertaining to the nature and practice of science that I suggest can be considered to be a philosophy of science. Not only has Spengler’s philosophy of science been largely overlooked, so too has its peculiar fictionalist character. By elaborating on the fictionalist character of Spengler’s scientific views I (...) shall consider his work in comparison with that of Hans Vaihinger, a contemporary of Spengler and noted fictionalist with regards to science. This comparison not only supports my interpretation of Spengler’s philosophy of science as fictionalist, it also throws into relief the numerous affinities between the thought of two philosophers who are not usually associated, in particular with regards to their accounts of the origins of science in the structures of human consciousness. This fictionalist affinity in turn suggests the need for a wholesale reappraisal of Spengler’s philosophical outlook. (shrink)

Sustainable dwelling is a mental concept, yet it should meet the physical and emotional requirements of humans for living. Therefore, only those sites in which human needs are satisfied can be regarded as sustainable dwelling. Iranian traditional houses with their genuine characteristics are still something to be desired. In these houses the courtyard is the heart of the structure and at the same time it is counted as its organizing principle. Hence, understanding the function of the courtyard leads us to (...) an understanding of the purpose of the whole building. This paper argues that the traditional Iranian courtyards are a materialization of the concept of sustainable dwelling. Moreover, the writer contends that probing into the courtyard for the concept of sustainable dwelling has the added advantage of shedding light on a solution to palliate life conditions in contemporary modern houses of Iran. To this aim the courtyards of three famous houses in Kashan, Iran during the Qajar dynasty, namely Borujerdiha house, Tabatabe'i house and Saleh house are examined as the closest historical examples to our modern world. This study the writer aims to provide a local definition for the concept of sustainable dwelling and second to suggest a practical solution by which to reach an ideal state of life in the contemporary world. (shrink)

Development in all of its stages, from organizing the vision and strategy to implementing plans, requires policy-making. We show that the division of labor and specialization of sciences and some philosophical doctrines cause the emergence of technocracy in policies. Technocracy makes development not happen in the direction of public welfare. For this reason, for sustainable development, we need institutions, strategies, and philosophical contexts that provide a democratic ground for the possibility of criticizing and reforming policies.

After a sketch of the optimism and high aspirations of History and Philosophy of Science when I first joined the field in the mid 1960s, I go on to describe the disastrous impact of "the strong programme" and social constructivism in history and sociology of science. Despite Alan Sokal's brilliant spoof article, and the "science wars" that flared up partly as a result, the whole field of Science and Technology Studies is still adversely affected by social (...) constructivist ideas. I then go on to spell out how in my view STS ought to develop. It is, to begin with, vitally important to recognize the profoundly problematic character of the aims of science. There are substantial, influential and highly problematic metaphysical, value and political assumptions built into these aims. Once this is appreciated, it becomes clear that we need a new kind of science which subjects problematic aims - problematic assumptions inherent in these aims - to sustained imaginative and critical scrutiny as an integral part of science itself. This needs to be done in an attempt to improve the aims and methods of science as science proceeds. The upshot is that science, STS, and the relationship between the two, are all transformed. STS becomes an integral part of science itself. And becomes a part of an urgently needed campaign to transform universities so that they become devoted to helping humanity create a wiser world. (shrink)

The experienced quality of urban environments has not traditionally been at the forefront of understanding how cities evolve through time. Within the humanistic tradition, the temporal dimension of cities has been dealt with through tracing urban or architectural histories or interpreting science-fiction scenarios, for example. However, attempts at understanding the relation between currently existing components of cities and planning based on them, towards the future, has not captured the experience of the temporal layers of cities to a satisfying degree. (...) Contemporary urban environments comprise both lasting and fairly stable elements as well as those that change continuously: change is an inevitable part of urban life. Different aspects of city life evolve with a different tempo: urban nature has its cycles, inhabitants their rhythms, and building materials and styles different lifespans, for example. Recognizing them becomes an especially important issue when future imaginaries are projected onto existing urban structures and when decisions about the details of urban futures are made. This paper aims at bringing environmental and urban aesthetics into the discussion about the possible directions of urban futures. The focus is on introducing the notion of aesthetic sustainability as a tool to better understand how urban futures unfold experientially and how aesthetic values of urban environments develop with time. This concept has some background in the field of design theory, more specifically in sustainable usage and product design, but it has not so far been used in order to study large scale living environments. The concept can prove to be a valuable supporting tool in urban sustainability transformations based on how it captures the experiential side of the physical and temporal dimensions of cities. (shrink)

Context: The problems that are most in need of interdisciplinary collaboration are “wicked problems,” such as food crises, climate change mitigation, and sustainable development, with many relevant aspects, disagreement on what the problem is, and contradicting solutions. Such complex problems both require and challenge interdisciplinarity. Problem: The conventional methods of interdisciplinary research fall short in the case of wicked problems because they remain first-order science. Our aim is to present workable methods and research designs for doing second-order science (...) in domains where there are many different scientific knowledges on any complex problem. Method: We synthesize and elaborate a framework for second-order science in interdisciplinary research based on a number of earlier publications, experiences from large interdisciplinary research projects, and a perspectivist theory of science. Results: The second-order polyocular framework for interdisciplinary research is characterized by five principles. Second-order science of interdisciplinary research must: 1. draw on the observations of first-order perspectives, 2. address a shared dynamical object, 3. establish a shared problem, 4. rely on first-order perspectives to see themselves as perspectives, and 5. be based on other rules than first-order research. Implications: The perspectivist insights of second-order science provide a new way of understanding interdisciplinary research that leads to new polyocular methods and research designs. It also points to more reflexive ways of dealing with scientific expertise in democratic processes. The main challenge is that this is a paradigmatic shift, which demands that the involved disciplines, at least to some degree, subscribe to a perspectivist view. Constructivist content: Our perspectivist approach to science is based on the second-order cybernetics and systems theories of von Foerster, Maruyama, Maturana & Varela, and Luhmann, coupled with embodied theories of cognition and semiotics as a general theory of meaning from von Uexküll and Peirce. (shrink)

Social innovations are usually understood as new ideas, initiatives, or solutions that make it possible to meet the challenges of societies in fields such as social security, education, employment, culture, health, environment, housing, and economic development. On the one hand, many citizen science activities serve to achieve scientific as well as social and educational goals. Thus, these actions are opening an arena for introducing social innovations. On the other hand, some social innovations are further developed, adapted, or altered after (...) the involvement of scientist-supervised citizens in research and with the use of the citizen science tools and methods such as action research, crowdsourcing, and community-based participatory research. Such approaches are increasingly recognized as crucial for gathering data, addressing community needs, and creating engagement and cooperation between citizens and professional scientists. However, there are also various barriers to both citizen science and social innovation. For example, management, quality and protection of data, funding difficulties, non-recognition of citizens’ contributions, and limited inclusion of innovative research approaches in public policies. In this volume, we open theoretical as well as empirically-based discussion, including examples, practices, and case studies of at least three types of relations between citizen science and social innovation: domination of the citizen science features over social innovation aspects; domination of the social innovation features over the citizen science aspects; and the ways to achieve balance and integration between the social innovation and citizen science features. Each of these relationships highlights factors that influence the development of the main scales of sustainability of innovations in the practice. These innovations are contributing to a new paradigm of learning and sharing knowledge as well as interactions and socio-psychological development of participants. Also, there are factors that influence the development of platforms, ecosystems, and sustainability of innovations such as broad use of the information and communications technologies including robotics and automation; emerging healthcare and health promotion models; advancements in the development and governance of smart, green, inclusive and age-friendly cities and communities; new online learning centers; agri-food, cohousing or mobility platforms; and engagement of citizens into co-creation or co-production of services delivered by public, private, non-governmental organizations as well as non-formal entities. (shrink)

Today, the world is facing many global crises and challenges. In order to limit negative environmental and social impacts, human being had put forward the concept of sustainable development, set goals and taken actions to advance the process of sustainable development. However, scholars’ research on sustainable development mainly focuses on the three major aspects: economy, society and environment/ecology. Only a few articles talked about culture and sustainable development. In order to further promote the development of human high-quality life and the (...) construction of sustainable development, it must consider the relationship between culture and sustainable development. Therefore, the thesis raises two research questions: 1. What is the connection and contribution of culture to the sustainable development according to the scholars’ research on sustainable development in the past? 2. How can culture contribute to sustainable development? The first part of this thesis introduced the background, significance, and the objectives of the research. Then, the second part defined the concept of “culture” discussed in this research, which referred to all the spiritual activities of mankind and its products. Culture explains the core problems of kinds of issues being produced, sent, communicated, accepted, understood, and mutated to people, and all kinds of cultural forms are the basic methods of providing human communication and studying things. viii These products and activities were divided into two kinds, the material culture and non-material culture. Material culture was an entity that existed, it presented culture in a physical, perceptible and measurable form while non-material culture included symbols, values, cultural norms and people’s way of life, it was abstract and constantly inherited. The third part was to introduce the process of culture development through Sichuan cuisine’s development. Culture itself had the characteristics of development and inheritance, but to achieve the sustainable development of culture, it required planning and strategy. Consequently, the author combed the milestone of culture development in the process of sustainable development, sorting out the characteristics of sustainable development culture, that required sustainable development culture were: people-based, participation-based, systematic, pluralistic, dynamic, integrated, confident and responsible. The third part used two methods to analyze the literature that met the search criteria in Web of Science from 1900 to 2020. The first was Occurrence, resulted in 11463 results, finding that the most studied areas of sustainable development were environmental science, green sustainable science technology and environmental studies, which meant research on culture and sustainable development was a weak subject compared to other areas. The second was Co-occurrence, resulted in 52 review articles, then used the method of the systematic literature review to analysis. Lastly, these 52 articles were analyzed by the systematic literature review (SLR) approach, and then ix divided into four categories and were the focus of this article. The first category directly discussed the relationship between culture and sustainable development; the second category discussed of the single culture in sustainable development; the third category was the development of culture in specific circumstance in the context of sustainable development; and in the fourth category, “culture” meaning cultivation, not related to the culture this paper discussed about. From the above analysis for 52 articles, the following findings and discussing are discovered: in sustainable development, the definition of culture is too broad and then requires a concept of “culture”, which can be adapted to various disciplines and applied to sustainability research. Culture needs to be and should be a pillar of sustainable development. Culture can be in, for, as sustainable development. Culture is not only an artistic and creative activity, but also concerned with the relationship with nature and a broader social issue. The power of culture in sustainable development cannot be ignored, it can not only play in the other pillars of sustainable development, but also can eventually form a sustainable development culture, to change people’s way of life, behavior and mind, so that human beings can be better and more sustainable development. (shrink)

Human ecology, it is argued, even when embracing recent developments in the natural sciences and granting a place to culture, tends to justify excessively pessimistic conclusions about the prospects for creating a sustainable world order. This is illustrated through a study of the work and assumptions of Richard Newbold Adams and Stephen Bunker. It is argued that embracing hierarchy theory as this has been proposed and elaborated by Herbert Simon, Howard Pattee, T.F.H. Allen and others enables human ecology to conceive (...) humans both as part of nature and as cultural beings in a way that gives due regard to the ethical development of humanity. That is, ethical constraints need no longer be conceived of as 'unnatural'. Characterizing the nature of such constraints, conceived of as emerging from the Hegelian 'struggle for recognition', this argument is shown to justify some optimism about the future, and to give some idea of how society should be organized if ethical constraints, able to constrain humanity’s relationship to the rest of nature, are to prevail. (shrink)

Abstract In a context of human demographic, technological and economic pressure on natural systems, we face some demanding challenges. We must decide 1) whether to “preserve” nature for its own sake or to “conserve” nature because nature is essentially a reservoir of goods that are functional to humanity’s wellbeing; 2) to choose ways of life that respect the biodiversity and evolutionary potential of the planet; and, to allow all this to come to fruition, 3) to clearly define the role of (...) scientific expertise in a democratic society, recognizing the importance of biospheric equilibrium. In fact, in socio-scientific controversies, which are characterized by complex linkages between some life and environmental sciences objects and economic, political and ethical issues, a posture of transparent, impartial commitment is appearing, more and more, as a deontological necessity. (shrink)

The purpose of the article is to solve an important scientific problem – further development of the basics of management decisions on the implementation of export-import activities based on the results of enterprise symptomatic diagnostics in disruption conditions of sustainable development of the world economy. The essence of enterprise symptomatic diagnostics in the context of management activity is specified by the results of the critical analysis of the scientific publications. The study of the features of the symptomatic diagnostics process of (...) enterprise export-import activity might become the basis for the development of a comprehensive approach to its implementation, which reveals the interaction of the theoretical, scientific and methodological basis and the targeted direction of managers` actions in the diagnostics process. Generalization of symptomatic complex of export-import activity of enterprises-manufacturers of BOPP films – Terichem Tervakoski, a.s. and Xpro India Ltd, helped to identify issues that are reducing its performance. A set of measures was explored in order to avoid the negative symptoms of export-import activity of Terichem Tervakoski and Xpro India Ltd. The authors revealed some dependency respecting that the more negative symptoms of export-import activity realization lead to decline the efficiency of its implementation. The results of the study might clarify the impact of symptoms on the results of the enterprise export-import performance. Symptomatic diagnostics of enterprise export-import activity is considered as the basis of a sequence of management measures in order to avoid negative symptoms of export-import activity. (shrink)

Development has been themain strategy in addressing the problemof sustainability since at least the mid-1980s. The results of this strategy have been mixed, if not disappointing. In their objections to this approach, critics frequently invoke constraints imposed by physical reality of which the most important one is entropy production. They question the belief that technological innovations are capable of solving the problem of sustainability. Is development the right response to this problem and is the current course capable of (...) attaining sustainability? The article examines closely and critiques the principal theoretical objection to sustainable development that emphasizes physical constraints, and more specifically entropy production. It also offers a critique of the current approach to sustainable development. The article advocates a systems approach as a way to anchor a broad consensus in the ongoing sustainability debates. (shrink)

Despite the many advantages that mobile money o ers to Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs) relative to traditional banking services, the majority of stakeholders of this platform have not yet maximised its use owing to several concerns not limited to trust, awareness, and even cost. To examine the factors justifying the adoption and usage of Mobile Money Services (MMS) among SMEs, the types of Mobile Money Services used by these SMEs, and the interdependences between these variables, this study adopted an (...) exploratory approach. The researchers elected to use a mixed-method approach, which necessitated the usage of a survey questionnaire and structured in-depth interviews. Representatives of 12 SMEs were interviewed during the qualitative phase to corroborate the 285 SMEs surveyed in the quantitative part of the study. Descriptive and inferential statistics were adopted to analyse the quantitative data using the Statistical Packages for Social Sciences version 26 (SPSS version 26). The researchers described the qualitative data according to themes, and the findings were combined after that. While no single factor was accountable, it emerged that accessibility, safety, and convenience were the main factors that entice SMEs in Douala, Cameroon to embrace mobile money services in the effort to receive money from clientele, pay suppliers, and purchase airtime for additional transactions (most preferred mobile money services). Furthermore, it was found that there was a statistically significant association between most of the motivating factors cited and the most preferred mobile money services used by SMEs in Douala. These findings validate the role that mobile money plays in promoting the inclusive finance agenda for SMEs, mainly in the context of emerging economies where the majority of people and businesses do not have access to banking services and therefore may be of interest to policymakers and different stakeholders. Furthermore, an identification of the types of mobile money services businesspersons mostly use in Douala, a business hub, may help to develop businesses by directing the stakeholders to agenda items of interest in the context of Cameroon. (shrink)

Scientific realism is the view that the aim of science is to produce true or approximately true theories about nature. It is a view which not only is shared by many philosophers but also by scientists themselves. Regarding Kuhn’s rejection of scientific progress, Steven Weinberg once declared: “All this is wormwood to scientists like myself, who think the task of science is to bring us closer and closer to objective truth.” But such a realist view on scientific theories (...) is not without problems. The paper discusses some arguments for and against the ontological commitments that scientific theories may entail. The upshot is that scientific realism according to which the semantic content of theories should be understood literally is not sustainable. Instead, it is argued that only realism with respect to entities can be reasonably and practically maintained. Finally, the paper discusses structural realism which presents itself as a modern alternative to scientific realism which may meet both the optimistic no-miracle argument and the pessimistic meta-induction argument. My conclusion is that such a position is neither attractive nor defendable. (shrink)

Continental philosophies of science tend to exemplify holistic themes connecting order and contingency, questions and answers, writers and readers, speakers and hearers. Such philosophies of science also tend to feature a fundamental emphasis on the historical and cultural situatedness of discourse as significant; relevance of mutual attunement of speaker and hearer; necessity of pre-linguistic cognition based in human engagement with a common socio-cultural historical world; role of narrative and metaphor as explanatory; sustained emphasis on understanding questioning; truth seen (...) as horizonal, aletheic, or perspectival; and a tolerance for paradoxical and complex forms of expression. Continental philosophy of science is thus more comprehensive than philosophy of science in the analytic tradition, including (and as analytic philosophy of science does not tend to include) perspectives on the history of science as well as the social and practical dimensions of scientific discovery. Where analytic philosophy is about reducing or, indeed, eliminating the perennial problems of philosophy, Continental philosophy is all about thinking and that will mean, as both Heidegger and Nietzsche emphasize, making such problems more not less problematic. (shrink)

In this article, we investigate how to explain the difference between traditional design, engineering, and technology—which have exploited nature and put increasing pressure on Earth’s carrying capacity since the industrial revolution—and biomimetic design—which claims to explore nature’s sustainable solutions and promises to be regenerative by design. We reflect on the concept of mimesis. Mimesis assumes a continuity between the natural environment as a regenerative model and measure for sustainable design that is imitated and reproduced in biomimetic design, engineering, and technology. (...) We conceptualize mimesis in terms of two interdependent boundary conditions: differentiation and participation. We subsequently develop four characteristics of biomimicry as regenerative design, engineering, and technology: technological mimesis is 1) a participative differentiation of nature; 2) supplemental to natural mimesis in biomimetic design; 3) the participative differentiation of technological mimesis is constitutive of nature; 4) the participative differentiation of technological mimesis is always limited. (shrink)

Responsible innovation (RI), also termed Responsible Research and Innovation, has emerged due to increasing concern over how to integrate ethical and societal values into research and innovation policy and governance (Von Schomberg 2013), in response to questioning of the societal role of science as well as populist resurgence in some countries (Long and Blok 2017a). Within a RI approach, innovators must consider three dimensions of responsibility, including the dimensions of (1) ‘avoiding harm’ to people and the planet, (2) ‘doing (...) good’ through the offering of innovations that foster sustainable development, and (3) the development of facilitative global governance schemes (Voegtlin and Scherer 2017). (shrink)

In this article we offer a perspective on the immense number of problems and challenges confronting humanity in our common biosphere. As our human population grows and urbanization increases globally, billions of humans with diverse beliefs and opinions are living in large urban areas without the basic needs of life. The way forward in our biosphere is not violence and disrespect. It is working to maintain and improve our common biosphere and solve our common global problems. Religion and religious believers (...) will need science, so humans can survive and sustain our biosphere. (shrink)