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Complexity concepts and environmental education
History of European Ideas, Vol. 21, No. 1, pp. 31-36, 1995
Pergamon
0191-6599 (94) E0093-T
Copyright © 1995 Elsevier Science Ltd Printed in Great Britain. All rights reserved 0191-6599/95 $9.50 + 0.00
COMPLEXITY CONCEPTS AND ENVIRONMENTAL EDUCATION I~IARCELLO BUIATTI*
ABSTRACT Environmental education differs from environmental teaching in the sense that it involves the acquirement of basic concepts of life structure and function. The basic tenets of complex biological systems are thoroughly discussed along with their meaning for all forms of life, including human society. Finally, their transfer to education systems is described with the help of specific examples. Environmental education is generally based on the concept of dichotomy between humans and the rest of the biosphere where Homo sapiens is alternatively seen as a blind destroyer or the almighty owner of Comprehensive, predictive, wise, projects of transformation. In this frame, environmental education tends to a description of nature and of its 'alien' creatures with the aim of forming humans with a less destructive attitude and with the cognitive instruments necessary for life conservation. Very seldom the fact is stressed that we, the humans, are also alive and therefore there may be common concepts/rules to be taught which have relevance not only for the maintenance of alien lives but also for ours and therefore may affect our individual and social behaviour, and in general the parameters of human ecology. For this reason, the interdisciplinary nature of environmental concepts should be thoroughly discussed also in view of giving to the young the cognitive tools needed for a synthetic and holistic approach to life in its broader meaning. Such a discussion should start, in our opinion, from the analysis of a set of parameters which, taken together, may help us distinguish life from non-life (death) and thereby defining it in its structure and rules. With these rules in mind we may then challenge human behaviour in society and in nature. Let us then introduce shortly a set of concepts which seem to emerge from contemporary biology and change the mechanistic view of life largely supported until the eighties. (a) Life is neghentropic in the sense that living beings can utilize unordered (highly entropic) matter and organise it into their structure-function. This process can occur as life components are open systems, i.e. exchange matter and energy with the environment. In other words, life exists as long as its component systems are permanently out of equilibrium. (b) Life is hierarchical, i.e. organised at different levels (molecules, cells, organisms, populations, ecosystems, biosphere). Every level is a network of ele*Department of Animal Biology and Genetics, Universty of Florence, 17 Via Romana, Firenze, Italy.
31
32
Marcello Buiatti
ments tightly interconnected in such a way that modifying one element leads to a 'spreading' effect to other elements, following specific rules of connection, and eventually may affect the whole system. Interesting models for this behaviour have been constructed using cellular automata and are being studied and partially falsified (see for instance the large project 'artificial life'). Networks at different levels communicate with each other so that the spreading effect may occur 'vertically' (between levels) and 'horizontally' (within levels) at the same time. It should be noted that evolution has increased the number of interacting levels of life, every new level obeying specific new rules 'emerging' from the non additive interactions between components of the lower network. In other words, the construction of a new organisational level of living matter derived by the compartimentalisation of the components of the former higher level and the tightening of the interactions between them allows the emergence of a new, shorter, algorithm descriptive of the system. This also means that such an algorithm is different according to the level considered and that, being based on the nonadditive co-existence of network components cannot be inferred by their analytical description. In this sense, emergent properties truly represent new information derived from interaction complexes historically changing and aggregating into superior levels of organisation. It is worth noting that a new, 'artificial' level, which may be called according to Vernadskji, the 'noosphere', is emerging now based not on the connection between all lower level elements but only on the interaction between human informational components rapidly merging into a global dynamic structure. For this reason the noosphere rules are only human and may therefore conflict with the rest of the biosphere which may resist or be seriously damaged by the imposition of an 'alien' model, unless this is consistent with the general rules of life. (c) The organisation of individuals is based on a programme written on a software (the genetic material). However, at variance with what happens with artificial informative systems, living beings acquire new information during development (Waddington) or, in other words, are 'cognitive' in the sense that external conditions (signals coming from the living and non-living environment) can modify the dynamic expression pattern of DNA i.e. the ever changing structure-function of the organism. The necessary plasticity is given by mechanisms of ambiguous reading of the programme (different proteins coded by the same sequences), by genetic modifications occurring during development, by quantitative changes in the number of copies of specific sequences eventually leading to qualitative modifications of the ever changing form-function. (d) Plasticity (variability) is a necessary condition for life at all hierarchical levels as it allows a high degree of homeostasis against environmental fluctuations. In other words, the plastic readjustment of interactions at one level allows the maintenance of the general rules of it, i.e. the 'self' of the higher level which can then survive as such. At the ecosystem level, plasticity is not necessarily correlated with variability but is positively affected by the loosening of the interactions between components. Variability however is also important in this case like at the individual and population level, as it allows the reconstruction of new equilibria (new ecosystems) and thereby the survival after the breakdown of an established network by providing the necessary material for a 'jump' into a dif-
History of European Ideas
Complexity Concepts and Environmental Education
33
ferent relational equilibrium. Such a jump may in fact occur at every level of organisation when fluctuations exceed thresholds allowed by constraints imposed by the stringency of interaction between network components. (e) Given the network nature of living systems and the fact that little changes can abruptly bring about the choice of new equilibria, the history of life at all hierarchical levels can be seen as a succession of 'catastrophic' bifurcations interrupted by periods of apparent canalization into permanent patterns. In this frame, the exact nature of each choice between the possible equilibria of a given system is determined by infinitesimal differences in the initial conditions (before the bifurcation) which become rapidly amplified after bifurcation. In this sense, life is intrinsically 'chaotic' and unpredictable given the initial conditions of such complex systems not subject to exact measure according to the indeterminacy principle. This view is supported by the fact that chaotic behaviours are being indeed found in a wide number of biological systems ranging from host-parasite interactions at the population level, to olfactive perception, cardiac rhythm, etc. In the cases analysed, chaotic behaviour seems to be a positive property of life, predictability being a signal of loss of competence for adaptation. This is true, for instance, for cognitive networks and in the case of cardiac rhythm where nonchaotic oscillation has been proposed as a signal for the early diagnosis of heart attack. In summary, then, life can be seen as a self organising but cognitive hierarchical complex of dynamic and intensely interacting networks permanently out of equilibrium whose persistence is bound to the contemporary presence of constraints and a sufficient competence for change and chaotic behaviour. Such networks cannot be described properly by simply describing their components, and are unpredictable within a range of possible structure-functions. This view strongly contradicts the implicit message prevalent in industrial societies, wholly based on the possibility of transforming nature on the basis of models completely 'safe' being founded on the total prediction of the effects. These models imply the negation of the 'spreading' effect of perturbations and therefore the existence of non-additive interactions between elements. This allows the reduction of predictions to the direct and immediate effect of the single change induced while the removal of the unpredictable nature of chaotic behaviours renders every measure wholly reliable. At the individual level moreover, this attitude means predicting the structure-function of living beings including humans from the inborn programme and therefore leads to the choice of better individuals as the only way of 'improving' life, and denying any value to conscious changes of individual environmental histories. At the human ecological level, the obvious consequence is that, variability being not only not needed but dangerous as difficult to control, humanity should be induced to organise itself according to a unique 'rational' and therefore an optimal model some way imposed on everybody; at the biosphere level, that life should in general be modelled according to our human needs, based on few highly useful species properly selected and bred and possibly limited to a few highly suitable areas. If, on the other hand life is possible only under the conditions briefly discussed in this paper according to which reduction of variability, loss of plasticity, predictability etc. are synonymous with death, the ideologies which are based on the (violent) imposition of single universal models should be contrasted from their roots by introducing into a utilitarian ethical
Volume 21, No. 1, February 1995
34
Marcello Buiatti
construction the parameters of life as positive 'values'. This has immediate implications for human behaviour towards all other living network elements both belonging to our species or not. Consciousness of the intrinsic value of the existence of other living entities and of the communication with them would lead not only to tolerance of diversity in our societies and in the environment but to a positive feeling towards it, even to the joyful appreciation of the extraordinary variation in structure-functions in nature and in thoughts in human societies. The knowledge that, to every human action, a chain of spreading reactions is bound to follow, should lead to the understanding of the stringent connection between human social and economic behaviour and the state of environment and therefore to the realization that destroying the environment inevitably will negatively interfere with development, as it is already happening in the case of agriculture and of a number of productions particularly affected by the availability of resources. On the other hand, such concepts should made clear that the environment and thereby our economy and our lives cannot be saved by simply isolating enclaves of conservation but need a reprogramming of our whole view of development according to schemes which involve the maintenance and in some cases the utilization of plasticity, the conservation of resources, the prediction of the range of effects at least in medium terms, the use of analyses as global as possible, etc. All this certainly implies a tremendous educational effort in a society like ours more and more canalized towards a monocultural neopositivist model almost unchanged since the industrial revolution. Such an effort, necessary for the birth of a new way of individual and collective life based on a 'natural' scale of life and therefore critical of the alienated imposition of abstract models born only in the noosphere, a condition for survival, has to be carried out on the basis of renewed educational models. Some principles for these models may be the following. (a) Environmental education should be permanent and therefore directed, with different objectives and modes, to people of different age and conditions. It should, in other words, be extended well beyond schools and touch adult men and women particularly during the 'productive age' (i.e. the period when they transform nature) acting both at the level of planning and of actual implementation. (b) Environmental education has to be interdisciplinary in the sense that, with the environment being deeply humanized, on the other hand, humans, still embedded in nature, history, economy, cultural traditions, should be studied as a part of natural history in its broader sense. (c) Environmental education should be as global (holistic) as possible or, in other words 'system minded' and teach the principles of human respect between living beings derived from the deep consciousness of us being a part of an interactive dynamical network with the characteristics discussed in the earlier part of this paper. (d) Environmental education should be based as much as possible on the study and the solution of real problems and avoid where possible the construction of allexplanatory models. Such an attitude stems from the need of abandoning our superiority concept based on the anthropological principle and to start again observing nature with a mind open to the perception of its signals. (e) The modern faith of humanity in its transformation and prediction powers has determined a revolution in cognitive methods and deeply affected the very
History of European Ideas
Complexity Concepts and Environmental Education
35
meaning of the words knowledge and science which have often been taken as synonymous of 'known truth'. In education this has favoured the use of cognitive mathematically minded methods founded on the analysis and generally not on the compression of descriptive algorithms through synthetic approaches. These methods tend to lead pupils to the assimilation of a series of universal truths and to base their formation on the acquisition of a 'security' feeling bound to the avoidance of uncertainties. Cognitive instruments suitable for the study of non-linear dynamic processes, for the intuition of synthetic rules and of the roles of chaos and variability, for the understanding of aesthetics and the capacity of subjectively appreciating the joy deriving from the communication with humans and other living beings and from the consciousness of the living 'self', should all be reintroduced and used along with all our forgotten senses for a new understanding of nature and ourselves. Within this frame, particular attention should be paid to the fact that exact truths do not give more security than uncertainty, too many 'truths' being, as we have discussed before at length, the main cause of our present dangers of possible future disasters. Pilot experiments of environmental education at the two levels of schools and 'working age' are being carried out in Tuscany at the moment and will be briefly described. The first, which is being developed at the 'Scuola Citta Pestalozzi', Firenze, is based on the construction of an eight year curriculum from the beginning of school (six years of age divided into four two year periods). In this experiment, teachers of sciences in collaboration whenever possible with those of humanistic disciplines base their work on the introduction to a number of basic concepts such as those discussed in this paper, firstly in a simple way and then with an increasing depth of insight into the problems horizontally, i.e. through all the disciplines interested. For instance, the concepts of variability and movement are introduced in the first two years by directing the attention of children to the differences between themselves and the changes during the year both in the absolute value of some parameters and in the relative ratio of the same parameters in different individuals. The same is being done in the garden with other living beings (generally plants) which are watched growing during different periods of the year. The first result is that children understand that their identity and the rest of life is changing and not fixed once and for all. These concepts are then followed in later years by making diagrams describing the movement (change) of the mentioned parameters and observing the difficulties in exactly predicting the values from measurement to measurement. At a later stage, when children are able to start abstracting from the pure observation the concepts of individuality, differences and changes with time are extended to other disciplines and particularly to history with a specific attention to showing what has changed in the habits and behaviours of the families of scholars during their lives, those of their parents, and of their grand-parents. Family changes in traditions are then compared between children coming from different parts of Italy or from other countries thus introducing communication, interaction and even tolerance as new concepts to be extended to other living beings. Programs of postschool education are carried out with the association 'Ambiente lavoro' (Environment and work) with short courses in cooperation with the Unions carried out in the factories and in connection with municipalities for people involved in local administration. The first starts from an evaluation, both theoretical and medical,
Volume 21, No. 1, February 1995
36
Marcello Buiatti
of working conditions in the factory and then connects it to the evaluation of the effects of the production by the same factory on the local environment and on the lives of workers' families and friends. Finally, all the knowledge gained is used, whenever possible, to plan changes in the production cycles and in the prevention measures to be proposed to the direction of the enterprise and to the administrations for financing of part of the necessary modifications. Administration officials and technicians finally are challenged with specific problems (for instance the water problem) and introduced to the methods for a global planning and evaluation of the range of possible results. Attention is directed in this case to the proposition of remedies to the water problem through projects regarding their use, recycling, the planning of urban expansion, of factory production, forest plantations, soil preservation, etc. These are, of course, as I said only preliminary experiments to be modified, unified and compared with similar ones in other European countries all with the aim not only to increase the knowledge of the dangers involved in nature transformation by humans but also to prepare the new culture necessary to avoid them. Marcello Buiatti
University of Florence
History of European Ideas
Pergamon
0191-6599 (94) E0093-T
Copyright © 1995 Elsevier Science Ltd Printed in Great Britain. All rights reserved 0191-6599/95 $9.50 + 0.00
COMPLEXITY CONCEPTS AND ENVIRONMENTAL EDUCATION I~IARCELLO BUIATTI*
ABSTRACT Environmental education differs from environmental teaching in the sense that it involves the acquirement of basic concepts of life structure and function. The basic tenets of complex biological systems are thoroughly discussed along with their meaning for all forms of life, including human society. Finally, their transfer to education systems is described with the help of specific examples. Environmental education is generally based on the concept of dichotomy between humans and the rest of the biosphere where Homo sapiens is alternatively seen as a blind destroyer or the almighty owner of Comprehensive, predictive, wise, projects of transformation. In this frame, environmental education tends to a description of nature and of its 'alien' creatures with the aim of forming humans with a less destructive attitude and with the cognitive instruments necessary for life conservation. Very seldom the fact is stressed that we, the humans, are also alive and therefore there may be common concepts/rules to be taught which have relevance not only for the maintenance of alien lives but also for ours and therefore may affect our individual and social behaviour, and in general the parameters of human ecology. For this reason, the interdisciplinary nature of environmental concepts should be thoroughly discussed also in view of giving to the young the cognitive tools needed for a synthetic and holistic approach to life in its broader meaning. Such a discussion should start, in our opinion, from the analysis of a set of parameters which, taken together, may help us distinguish life from non-life (death) and thereby defining it in its structure and rules. With these rules in mind we may then challenge human behaviour in society and in nature. Let us then introduce shortly a set of concepts which seem to emerge from contemporary biology and change the mechanistic view of life largely supported until the eighties. (a) Life is neghentropic in the sense that living beings can utilize unordered (highly entropic) matter and organise it into their structure-function. This process can occur as life components are open systems, i.e. exchange matter and energy with the environment. In other words, life exists as long as its component systems are permanently out of equilibrium. (b) Life is hierarchical, i.e. organised at different levels (molecules, cells, organisms, populations, ecosystems, biosphere). Every level is a network of ele*Department of Animal Biology and Genetics, Universty of Florence, 17 Via Romana, Firenze, Italy.
31
32
Marcello Buiatti
ments tightly interconnected in such a way that modifying one element leads to a 'spreading' effect to other elements, following specific rules of connection, and eventually may affect the whole system. Interesting models for this behaviour have been constructed using cellular automata and are being studied and partially falsified (see for instance the large project 'artificial life'). Networks at different levels communicate with each other so that the spreading effect may occur 'vertically' (between levels) and 'horizontally' (within levels) at the same time. It should be noted that evolution has increased the number of interacting levels of life, every new level obeying specific new rules 'emerging' from the non additive interactions between components of the lower network. In other words, the construction of a new organisational level of living matter derived by the compartimentalisation of the components of the former higher level and the tightening of the interactions between them allows the emergence of a new, shorter, algorithm descriptive of the system. This also means that such an algorithm is different according to the level considered and that, being based on the nonadditive co-existence of network components cannot be inferred by their analytical description. In this sense, emergent properties truly represent new information derived from interaction complexes historically changing and aggregating into superior levels of organisation. It is worth noting that a new, 'artificial' level, which may be called according to Vernadskji, the 'noosphere', is emerging now based not on the connection between all lower level elements but only on the interaction between human informational components rapidly merging into a global dynamic structure. For this reason the noosphere rules are only human and may therefore conflict with the rest of the biosphere which may resist or be seriously damaged by the imposition of an 'alien' model, unless this is consistent with the general rules of life. (c) The organisation of individuals is based on a programme written on a software (the genetic material). However, at variance with what happens with artificial informative systems, living beings acquire new information during development (Waddington) or, in other words, are 'cognitive' in the sense that external conditions (signals coming from the living and non-living environment) can modify the dynamic expression pattern of DNA i.e. the ever changing structure-function of the organism. The necessary plasticity is given by mechanisms of ambiguous reading of the programme (different proteins coded by the same sequences), by genetic modifications occurring during development, by quantitative changes in the number of copies of specific sequences eventually leading to qualitative modifications of the ever changing form-function. (d) Plasticity (variability) is a necessary condition for life at all hierarchical levels as it allows a high degree of homeostasis against environmental fluctuations. In other words, the plastic readjustment of interactions at one level allows the maintenance of the general rules of it, i.e. the 'self' of the higher level which can then survive as such. At the ecosystem level, plasticity is not necessarily correlated with variability but is positively affected by the loosening of the interactions between components. Variability however is also important in this case like at the individual and population level, as it allows the reconstruction of new equilibria (new ecosystems) and thereby the survival after the breakdown of an established network by providing the necessary material for a 'jump' into a dif-
History of European Ideas
Complexity Concepts and Environmental Education
33
ferent relational equilibrium. Such a jump may in fact occur at every level of organisation when fluctuations exceed thresholds allowed by constraints imposed by the stringency of interaction between network components. (e) Given the network nature of living systems and the fact that little changes can abruptly bring about the choice of new equilibria, the history of life at all hierarchical levels can be seen as a succession of 'catastrophic' bifurcations interrupted by periods of apparent canalization into permanent patterns. In this frame, the exact nature of each choice between the possible equilibria of a given system is determined by infinitesimal differences in the initial conditions (before the bifurcation) which become rapidly amplified after bifurcation. In this sense, life is intrinsically 'chaotic' and unpredictable given the initial conditions of such complex systems not subject to exact measure according to the indeterminacy principle. This view is supported by the fact that chaotic behaviours are being indeed found in a wide number of biological systems ranging from host-parasite interactions at the population level, to olfactive perception, cardiac rhythm, etc. In the cases analysed, chaotic behaviour seems to be a positive property of life, predictability being a signal of loss of competence for adaptation. This is true, for instance, for cognitive networks and in the case of cardiac rhythm where nonchaotic oscillation has been proposed as a signal for the early diagnosis of heart attack. In summary, then, life can be seen as a self organising but cognitive hierarchical complex of dynamic and intensely interacting networks permanently out of equilibrium whose persistence is bound to the contemporary presence of constraints and a sufficient competence for change and chaotic behaviour. Such networks cannot be described properly by simply describing their components, and are unpredictable within a range of possible structure-functions. This view strongly contradicts the implicit message prevalent in industrial societies, wholly based on the possibility of transforming nature on the basis of models completely 'safe' being founded on the total prediction of the effects. These models imply the negation of the 'spreading' effect of perturbations and therefore the existence of non-additive interactions between elements. This allows the reduction of predictions to the direct and immediate effect of the single change induced while the removal of the unpredictable nature of chaotic behaviours renders every measure wholly reliable. At the individual level moreover, this attitude means predicting the structure-function of living beings including humans from the inborn programme and therefore leads to the choice of better individuals as the only way of 'improving' life, and denying any value to conscious changes of individual environmental histories. At the human ecological level, the obvious consequence is that, variability being not only not needed but dangerous as difficult to control, humanity should be induced to organise itself according to a unique 'rational' and therefore an optimal model some way imposed on everybody; at the biosphere level, that life should in general be modelled according to our human needs, based on few highly useful species properly selected and bred and possibly limited to a few highly suitable areas. If, on the other hand life is possible only under the conditions briefly discussed in this paper according to which reduction of variability, loss of plasticity, predictability etc. are synonymous with death, the ideologies which are based on the (violent) imposition of single universal models should be contrasted from their roots by introducing into a utilitarian ethical
Volume 21, No. 1, February 1995
34
Marcello Buiatti
construction the parameters of life as positive 'values'. This has immediate implications for human behaviour towards all other living network elements both belonging to our species or not. Consciousness of the intrinsic value of the existence of other living entities and of the communication with them would lead not only to tolerance of diversity in our societies and in the environment but to a positive feeling towards it, even to the joyful appreciation of the extraordinary variation in structure-functions in nature and in thoughts in human societies. The knowledge that, to every human action, a chain of spreading reactions is bound to follow, should lead to the understanding of the stringent connection between human social and economic behaviour and the state of environment and therefore to the realization that destroying the environment inevitably will negatively interfere with development, as it is already happening in the case of agriculture and of a number of productions particularly affected by the availability of resources. On the other hand, such concepts should made clear that the environment and thereby our economy and our lives cannot be saved by simply isolating enclaves of conservation but need a reprogramming of our whole view of development according to schemes which involve the maintenance and in some cases the utilization of plasticity, the conservation of resources, the prediction of the range of effects at least in medium terms, the use of analyses as global as possible, etc. All this certainly implies a tremendous educational effort in a society like ours more and more canalized towards a monocultural neopositivist model almost unchanged since the industrial revolution. Such an effort, necessary for the birth of a new way of individual and collective life based on a 'natural' scale of life and therefore critical of the alienated imposition of abstract models born only in the noosphere, a condition for survival, has to be carried out on the basis of renewed educational models. Some principles for these models may be the following. (a) Environmental education should be permanent and therefore directed, with different objectives and modes, to people of different age and conditions. It should, in other words, be extended well beyond schools and touch adult men and women particularly during the 'productive age' (i.e. the period when they transform nature) acting both at the level of planning and of actual implementation. (b) Environmental education has to be interdisciplinary in the sense that, with the environment being deeply humanized, on the other hand, humans, still embedded in nature, history, economy, cultural traditions, should be studied as a part of natural history in its broader sense. (c) Environmental education should be as global (holistic) as possible or, in other words 'system minded' and teach the principles of human respect between living beings derived from the deep consciousness of us being a part of an interactive dynamical network with the characteristics discussed in the earlier part of this paper. (d) Environmental education should be based as much as possible on the study and the solution of real problems and avoid where possible the construction of allexplanatory models. Such an attitude stems from the need of abandoning our superiority concept based on the anthropological principle and to start again observing nature with a mind open to the perception of its signals. (e) The modern faith of humanity in its transformation and prediction powers has determined a revolution in cognitive methods and deeply affected the very
History of European Ideas
Complexity Concepts and Environmental Education
35
meaning of the words knowledge and science which have often been taken as synonymous of 'known truth'. In education this has favoured the use of cognitive mathematically minded methods founded on the analysis and generally not on the compression of descriptive algorithms through synthetic approaches. These methods tend to lead pupils to the assimilation of a series of universal truths and to base their formation on the acquisition of a 'security' feeling bound to the avoidance of uncertainties. Cognitive instruments suitable for the study of non-linear dynamic processes, for the intuition of synthetic rules and of the roles of chaos and variability, for the understanding of aesthetics and the capacity of subjectively appreciating the joy deriving from the communication with humans and other living beings and from the consciousness of the living 'self', should all be reintroduced and used along with all our forgotten senses for a new understanding of nature and ourselves. Within this frame, particular attention should be paid to the fact that exact truths do not give more security than uncertainty, too many 'truths' being, as we have discussed before at length, the main cause of our present dangers of possible future disasters. Pilot experiments of environmental education at the two levels of schools and 'working age' are being carried out in Tuscany at the moment and will be briefly described. The first, which is being developed at the 'Scuola Citta Pestalozzi', Firenze, is based on the construction of an eight year curriculum from the beginning of school (six years of age divided into four two year periods). In this experiment, teachers of sciences in collaboration whenever possible with those of humanistic disciplines base their work on the introduction to a number of basic concepts such as those discussed in this paper, firstly in a simple way and then with an increasing depth of insight into the problems horizontally, i.e. through all the disciplines interested. For instance, the concepts of variability and movement are introduced in the first two years by directing the attention of children to the differences between themselves and the changes during the year both in the absolute value of some parameters and in the relative ratio of the same parameters in different individuals. The same is being done in the garden with other living beings (generally plants) which are watched growing during different periods of the year. The first result is that children understand that their identity and the rest of life is changing and not fixed once and for all. These concepts are then followed in later years by making diagrams describing the movement (change) of the mentioned parameters and observing the difficulties in exactly predicting the values from measurement to measurement. At a later stage, when children are able to start abstracting from the pure observation the concepts of individuality, differences and changes with time are extended to other disciplines and particularly to history with a specific attention to showing what has changed in the habits and behaviours of the families of scholars during their lives, those of their parents, and of their grand-parents. Family changes in traditions are then compared between children coming from different parts of Italy or from other countries thus introducing communication, interaction and even tolerance as new concepts to be extended to other living beings. Programs of postschool education are carried out with the association 'Ambiente lavoro' (Environment and work) with short courses in cooperation with the Unions carried out in the factories and in connection with municipalities for people involved in local administration. The first starts from an evaluation, both theoretical and medical,
Volume 21, No. 1, February 1995
36
Marcello Buiatti
of working conditions in the factory and then connects it to the evaluation of the effects of the production by the same factory on the local environment and on the lives of workers' families and friends. Finally, all the knowledge gained is used, whenever possible, to plan changes in the production cycles and in the prevention measures to be proposed to the direction of the enterprise and to the administrations for financing of part of the necessary modifications. Administration officials and technicians finally are challenged with specific problems (for instance the water problem) and introduced to the methods for a global planning and evaluation of the range of possible results. Attention is directed in this case to the proposition of remedies to the water problem through projects regarding their use, recycling, the planning of urban expansion, of factory production, forest plantations, soil preservation, etc. These are, of course, as I said only preliminary experiments to be modified, unified and compared with similar ones in other European countries all with the aim not only to increase the knowledge of the dangers involved in nature transformation by humans but also to prepare the new culture necessary to avoid them. Marcello Buiatti
University of Florence
History of European Ideas