The University of British Columbia

Narrative description of Research Interests:

            Dr. Kurt Grimm is an associate professor in the Department of Earth and Ocean Sciences at UBC. I have been perpetually interested in the origin and perpetuation of patterning in the world: cloud shapes, sedimentary bedforms, climate regulation, every human heartbeat. In recent years, my established research trajectory in paleoecology and Earth’s environmental evolution intersected the unfolding of some interrelated insights. A long season of germination facilitated by observation, teaching (synthesis), study, and suffering has yielded a simple and useful synthesis concerning the dynamics of patterning in the world. A body of theory and applied theory is before me and is being tested with my students, concerning the process-pattern and geometry (functional topology) of Nature and its intersections upon the human condition, with immediate and perhaps foundational utility for the Life, health, cognitive and sustainability sciences.  

            Complexity is simple not complicated. Life is a broad and dynamical phenomenon; a new, testable and perhaps revolutionary description is central to the synthesis being completed.

            Contemporary views of Life are profoundly reductionist, organism-focused and neodarwinian. These mechanistic and utilitarian perspectives are incomplete, they accompany conceptual and practical blind-spots, as they perpetuate scientific, cultural and theological confusion about the breadth, length, height and depth of the singular Life phenomenon, and how that is related to an observable universe of perpetual and spontaneous patterning.

            Nature, the dynamics of patterning and Life itself:  Their function and relatedness grabbed-hold of my relentless curiosity.  Systems approximations were intricate, mechanical and unsatisfactory. A fresh start, a new synthesis, invited my intuition.  I started deliberately, began sketching a lifetime of experiencing in the natural sciences and beyond. 

            What has emerged in these explorations has been nothing short of amazing to me. Plainly stated, a multifaceted and interdependent synthesis — Complexity is Not Complicated, Wet Tectonics, AUDOL and The Climate Consortium —is a data- and observation-based (i.e. scientific) synthesis; an open-minded inspection is required and invited. It is unconventional yet sensible and intuitive. The ideas (and their  novel expression via mindmaps; see below) are well-tested in the undergraduate and graduate classroom.

             One conspicuous fruit of this emerging synthesis — A Unified Description of Life (AUDOL) is simple, internally consistent, is empirically testable (performs well) and delivers broad explanatory power. It sounds kind of crazy (I'm not, I've checked) and even the sound of these ambitions seems to perplex and even annoy some people: particularly scientists. The sociocultural proces of advancing an unconventional synthesis has been very interesting and also very difficult. 

            Life is a verb, a dynamical process-pattern. It is not fully circumscribed by the mechanical/systems description that claims to encompass life via replicator molecules that direct and specify the perpetuation of membrane-bound metabolism. Contemporary systems biology is accomplishing amazing feats via techno-societal harnessing of neodarwinian thinking, analytical precision and raw computational power.  Great buildings and institutions are thriving; great promises have been made and some are being fulfilled.

            But the theory, the basic understanding is depauperate. There is scarcely complementarity amongst the molecular, cellular, ecosystemic and climate/planetary sciences. Much less a simple and consilient description of these interrelated phenomena.  There is no “plate tectonics synthesis” for biology; compare the neodarwinian synthesis (for organisms; genomes and phenotypes) to the Panarchy synthesis (for ecosystems and other consortia, e.g.www.resalliance.org) and view an immense disparity. Synthesis is important and perhaps useful.

            The latter is what I’m after and plainly stated, it is what I claim: a simple description with broad explanatory power and clear testability. Concerning empirical testing, so far, the synthesis performs well.

            AUDOL also intersects my real life, and perhaps yours. I am holding the constituent parts and understand, I think, how they fit together. I am working hard while praying sincerely that I may be able to bring this synthesis to completion. I would sincerely welcome some help with that, a few curious and competent people.

            Maybe this is all to be made useful. For example, the worldview that brought us into teh 21st century seems unlikely to carry us through. We  have some really big problems before and amongst us and we may soon be given an opportunity to (forgiving please the machine metaphor) reboot the world. Whether on planetary or bioregional-to-watershed scale, an agri-cultural and biocentric synthesis is perhaps required.

            If our highest aspirations at the interface of humans and nature equals sustainability,  a biocentric worldview is required. Doing that requires a clear and cogent understanding of what Life is, an encompassing and functional description.

            As a sustainability educator and risk-taker, sustainability arises from-while-perpetuating a Life-centric worldview, while soberly facing the triple-bottom-line facts concerning the real world. Very simply, many of my students and I are discovering that sustainability equals authentic abundance — quite literally and dynamically — in all that statement entails. Sustainability problems are substantially about quantities, yet solutions engage qualities, discernment and wisdom. Intelligence is good, particularly when multiplied by technological or computational brute-force, but these are alone insufficient.

             Engaging sustainability catalyzes immense, personal and essential questions. Sustainability aims to encompass the forest —processes, patterning and fluxes — a task more vital than counting and detail-describing a mob-diversity of dissimilar trees.

                    Very plainly stated: My life's work has emerged in a multifaceted and interdependent synthesis involving several discrete-yet-interrelated  components:  Complexity is Not Complicated, Wet Tectonics, AUDOL and The Climate Consortium. The synthesis is scientific: it is data- and observation-based; it is falsifiable and generates novel and testable hypotheses. So far, the synthesis is very useful and performs well under rigorous assessment. An open-mined inspection is required and invited. The task of publishing an unconventional and multifaceted synthesis remains an exciting challenge.

            These three links encapsulate some aspects of my scholarly work. A more-comprehensive website is in preparation.

1. Is Earth a Living System? http://gsa.confex.com/gsa/2003AM/finalprogram/abstract_62123.htm (2003).

2. Wet Tectonics:
http://www.agu.org/meetings/fm05/fm05-sessions/fm05_H33C.html (2005).

3. Katrina, Wilma and me: Learning to Live with Climate Surprises? http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0QQS/is_2_33/ai_n16726495 (2006).

           On Mindmapping: Exploring and communicating a new synthesis has required and is perpetuating a new medium for exploration and communication. Mindmapping uses words and pictures in distinct relational geometries to communicate ideas and understanding. Mimicking the dynamical geometries of nature is sharply contrasted with the systems/networks approaches that are otherwise predominant in the natural and social sciences. Amongst other outcomes, mindmapping  permits clearer representation of phenomena like synergy, emergence, symbiosis and dynamical self-regulation. Mindmapping is neither true nor false; it is a tool. Most of my students seem to agree that mindmapping is useful and fun.

            Mindmaps describe conceptual territory and invite exploration. Mindmapping reflects as it represents (mimics) the process-pattern and functional geometry (literally topology) of the real world. In contrast, systems/network approximations present objects (reservoirs; nodes) connected by processes (fluxes; material and energy exchanges). Systems metaphors accurately depict the constructed/technological world, yet are incomplete (and even distorting) in their depiction of natural processes. The functional process-pattern, for example, of clouds and climate are fundamentally distinct from the network geometry for laptop computers and engineered bureaucracies. Systems thinking and systems approximations have wide and continuing utility in the natural and social (including economic) sciences, however the topology of processing, patterning, structuring and evolving organizations is not a network!

            Mindmaps are useful and necessary to communicating a new synthesis. Learning how to interpret and create them equals learning a simple language. Like comprehending the synthesis itself, the first step, a necessary step, is to decide to be curious and following from there.

           Whoever and wherever you are, if you are curious, I welcome you to contact me.  I'd be happy to send along more, via email (kgrimm@eos.ubc.ca) or snail mail.