What is Science? Figuring out God's Will

Here is an interesting post by Ian Schindler,  It is not directly related to holobionts, but it deals with the way we see the world. Knowledge is something that needs to flow freely among people, just as information flows freely among the nodes of all good holobionts. Ian Schindler teaches at the Capitole University in Toulouse (Fr) and is also a member of the "proud holobionts" discussion group. If you wish to join the group, write me at ugo.bardi(swinglette)unifi.it.

A post by  IAN SCHINDLER:

What is science? To me science is trying to figure out God's will playing by the brutal rules of science which are:

1. God's will is explained using laws.
2. The laws must be precise and significant.
3. If your theory does not agree with empirical evidence, it's wrong.

An immediate corollary of rule 3 is that it is impossible to prove a scientific theory is correct. It is only possible to prove that it is wrong. It is wrong if it doesn't agree with observation. The scientific theories we accept are those that have not yet been proven wrong.

Richard Feynman (who was perhaps not such a fine man but he was a fine physicist and entertaining) on this topic: https://www.dailymotion.com/video/xp20d8

Remark: The law of supply and demand violates what Feynman calls vagueness and I call significance. It cannot be proved wrong being compatible with all possible price data. Thus nothing can be deduced from it. One can substitute "The price is the will of God" for the law of supply and demand.

Throughout history, good scientists have been spectacularly wrong about many things. In some sense, the smarter they are, the better they can be at fooling themselves. Max Planck (who chose to publish Einstein's papers on relativity) said something quite illuminating: "A scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it."

Example: When I was young I was told that the Catholic Church put Galileo in prison for supporting the heliocentric theory of the universe. What my teachers failed to add was that the Church jailed Galileo at the bidding of scientists working on the geocentric theory of the universe. Scientists who had worked very hard on the geocentric theory were understandably more upset by the heliocentric theory than theologians. See https://www.catholic.com/tract/the-galileo-controversy

That is why I pick my fights. I teach mathematics to economists. I do not hide from my economist colleagues that I am very dubious as to the usefulness of their theories. But I waste no time trying to convince them that my theories are more useful. I do try to isolate them. I explain my economic theories to students and non economists. Note that there is a trend that winners of the prize in economics in honor of Alfred Nobel is going increasingly to economists doing empirical work. This is due to the failure of mainstream economic theory to predict events. 

Similarly, I do not waste time trying to convince global warming skeptics that global warming is occurring. I do use probability. I ask them what they think the probability of global warming is. I also nail them for vagueness. If someone talks about "natural temperature variation", I immediately substitute "the will of God". Moreover, I tell them that I will believe that global warming is not occurring through increased greenhouse gas emissions when they provide a mathematical model that explains the earth's change in temperature over time independently from the composition of the atmosphere.

Mathematics is the language of science because of the precision of mathematical statements. A revolution occurred in science (and mathematics) when Newton wrote down a differential equation to describe gravitational attraction.

Of much concern to me is the amount of censorship occurring just about everywhere and the false news disseminated by mainstream media. Because it is so easy to document falsehoods perpetrated by mainstream news media, it is difficult to know who to trust. This makes it easier to get suckered into a
conspiracy theory rabbit hole. Note that Mark Zuckerberg recently stated that the FBI influenced Facebook to censor the (true) Hunter Biden laptop story before the 2020 election. This is a major reason that I support substack. I think it is much healthier to have a place where controversial ideas, scientific or otherwise, can be openly debated. Glenn Greenwald who worked for The Guardian when he helped break the Snowden story, helped found The Intercept because of editorial pressure at The Guardian. He resigned from The Intercept because of editorial pressure there and now publishes out of substack. He has documented how mainstream media disseminates false news stories, see for example

https://greenwald.substack.com/p/how-do-big-media-outlets-so-often,
https://greenwald.substack.com/p/corporate-news-outlets-again-confirm,
https://greenwald.substack.com/p/corporate-medias-double-standard

Matt Orfalea makes videos documenting fake news disseminated by mainstream media: https://rumble.com/search/video?q=orfalea It is a bit shocking to see with what fervor the media can insist a falsehood is true.

Note that I linked Orfalea's rumble channel rather than his youtube channel. I support rumble for the same reason I support substack, no censorship.

I will add that the censorship extends to peer-reviewed scientific papers. Many papers are rejected not for any scientific reason but because either the result is contrary to an accepted result, the references are not those of the referee, or the author is unknown. One only has to look at the difficulties Lynn Margulis encountered in her career.

Why Agroecology is the future of food production: How to feed the land holobiont so that it feeds you

Ian Schindler is a mathematician originally from Los Angeles, now based in Toulouse (France). He has gradually moved his interests from pure mathematics to resource depletion and collapsology, and now he is interested in permaculture and holobionts.

By Ian Schindler

Agroecology aka restorative agriculture aka regenerative agriculture is characterized by:

1. Control of pests through biodiversity.  Thus no mono-cultures.

2. More labor as there are no mono-cultures so harvesting must be done with human labor.

3. Yields (for humans) are lower than with intensive farming but biomass is far greater than with intensive farming.

4. No (or very little) artificial fertilizers or pesticides are required.  

1- LaCanne and Lundgren 2018, https://doi.org/10.7717/peerj.4428 found fewer pests on agroecological farms than on the surrounding pesticide using farms.

2- The labor is much more intense the first few years. It is less monotonous than in intensive agriculture because there is no mono-cultures so it is less repetitive.  It is perhaps more rewarding if one enjoys contact with wildlife.

3- The biggest difference between intensive agriculture and agroecology is between the ears.  Different metrics are used to define success.  The goal in agroecology is to design a food producing, self-sustaining system.

4- The cost structure is quite different from intensive agriculture.  While intensive agriculture requires recurring high level investments, agroecology requires a high initial investment, but once the system starts self-sustaining, costs are very low.

Agroecology is essentially food production with the food kept in its holobiont. Globally about 50% of terrestrial biomass is below the surface of the soil. Of course there are plant roots, but according to Paul Stamets, about 1/3 of the carbon in the soil is contained in the mycelium of fungi. Fungi are particularly important in forests. Well informed practitioners of agroecology pay particular interest in the health of the soil. Note that in https://doi.org/10.7717/peerj.4428 the authors found profit was not correlated with yield, but it was correlated with soil quality. It can take several years to obtain high quality soil. The fastest way to improve the soil is to add animal excrement (herbivore excrement works the best). Plants help to improve the soil. Plants growing in poor soil will devote at least 1/4 of their photosynthesis to creating sugars excreted by their root systems to encourage bacterial and fungal growth.

Agroecology addresses  the following problems:

1. Climate change.  
2. Mitigating the effects of climate change.
3. Peak oil.
4. Peak soil (https://energyskeptic.com/2017/peaksoil/).
5. Peak water (http://encyclopedia.uia.org/en/problem/135192 and
   https://science.sciencemag.org/content/372/6540/418).
6. Decreasing biodiversity
7. A declining agricultural population.
8. Public health.
9. World hunger
10. Water pollution.

1- At least 1/4 of all greenhouse gas emissions come from land use while all of transportation is less than 15% (see
https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/global-greenhouse-gas-emissions-data and
https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/ac018e). Switching to agroecology would transform land use from a source of CO2 emissions to a sink (see https://4p1000.org/).

2- Two of the primary characteristics of high quality soil are increased water capacity and resistance to erosion. High quality soil does not wash away in heavy rain and is more resilient to drought as it can store more water.  Because the soil can absorb more water, flooding is reduced in the case of very heavy precipitation.

3- Agroecology is far less energy intensive than intensive agriculture.  In the U.S., to produce 1.75 calories of food requires about 2 calories of energy inputs.  If one looks at the entire food process (packaging, processing, storage, etc.) 14 calories are required for every calorie consumed.  See
https://css.umich.edu/publications/factsheets/food/us-food-system-factsheet
and also https://www.postcarbon.org/publications/the-future-is-rural/

4- Agroecology creates soil rather than destroying soil.

5- Water management is a key feature of agroecology.  Ditches or swales are created to keep water from draining off the land.  On slopes retaining walls are built so that water can soak into the ground.  High quality soil reduces the need for irrigation.  In many biomes, irrigation is not required.

6- Because holobionts are preserved, so is biodiversity.  

7- The average age of a farmer, both in the U.S. and Europe is greater than 55 years. In France, a farmer commits suicide every day. Many young people who would like to farm, would like to apply agroecological techniques. Currently they have difficulty getting bank loans and finding land to begin
their activity. At the 2022 commencement ceremony at AgroParisTech (a prestigious French agronomy school) several students took the stage, complained that they had been trained to destroy the planet, and voiced their intention of practicing agroecology. A link to a video of the event (in French): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SUOVOC2Kd50.

8- Food produced with agroecological methods is healthier.  For example the milk from cows fed on grass contains a higher ratio of Omega 3 fatty acids to Omega 6 fatty acids than the milk from cows fed soy.  See also https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/54785505-inflamed and https://book.umanaidoomd.com/.

9- Agribusiness pushes yield as a metric to solve world hunger. However the food produced by intensive agriculture is too expensive for people in poor countries (where labor is cheap). In fact this high yield food is exported from poor to rich countries leaving poor local people hungry. See https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/agroecology-is-the-solution-to-world-hunger/.

10- Agroecology actually purifies water.  See Dan Barber's talk linked to below.

Remarks:

1. Agroecology is a group effort.  It requires many people per unit area.    Currently woofers make up a large part of this effort: https://wwoof.net/.

2. Currently in France the profitable farms are either very large or very small (less than 2 hectares). The large farms are profitable because they receive the most subsidies from the European common  agriculture policy. In (Kirsch, Kroll, and Trouvé 2017 http://journals.openedition.org/economierurale/5223) the authors found that subsidies were positively correlated with pesticide use per unit area. Small farms are profitable because they sell directly to consumers.

3. Solutions are not unique. Sepp Holzer (http://www.seppholzer.info/) never prunes fruit trees but at the garden of the workers fraternity the fruit trees are pruned intensively (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2DVLlkToPuU).

4. Starting an agroecological project is not easy.  It can take up to 7    years for the system to stabilize.

5. Agroecology is profitable after the first few years. See    https://doi.org/10.7717/peerj.4428. There are many examples of successful farms practicing agroecology (see below).

6. Agroecology would require less land than industrial agriculture to feed the world.  Much land used in agriculture today is used to grow grain to feed animals.  It is a very inefficient system.

7. An efficient policy to encourage agroecology would be to pay farmers to sequester carbon.

Examples:

1. Agroecology is a key element of permaculture. David Holmgren, one of the founders of permaculture, has been successfully practicing agroecology since the the mid 1970s: https://holmgren.com.au/.

2. Dan Barber's wonderful 19 minute Ted talk: "How I Fell in Love With a Fish",
   https://www.ted.com/talks/dan_barber_how_i_fell_in_love_with_a_fish.

3. Kirsten Dirksen's 55 minute documentary on the Kailash Ecovillage in Portland, Oregon which is a mature, urban permaculture design. These people are not farmers, but part of their rent is participating in their own food production. They demolished parking lots to grow food. Note that they compost their own excrement on site:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iCGXVk-cBVk.

4. Kirsten Dirksen's 53 minute documentary of a mature large agroecology farm in Wisconsin: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sRPP4Ilpxso

5. Sepp Holzer: http://www.seppholzer.info/

6. Jean-Martin Fortier: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean-Martin_Fortier

7. The Garden of the Worker's Fraternity in Moscou, Belgium grows with agroecology since 1969 (in French): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_dNKG20-GrE

8. "The Biggest Little Farm" is an excellent documentary on the 80 hectare Apricot Lanes Farm (https://www.apricotlanefarms.com/) in Moorpark, California.