Abstract
In two articles recently published in this journal, Wei-Ning Xiang presents four instances of Ian McHarg’s effective, time-honored socio-ecological practice research and raises the question of why he was so successful in discovering and articulating truth in these exemplary cases. In this knowledge I&I (implementation and impact) research article, the author digs into the question through a lens of ecopracticology (the study of socio-ecological practice, that is) and presents four reasons for McHarg’s achievements: (1) a proud member of the “crypto-pseudo-quasi-scientist” club; (2) a pragmatic way of knowing; (3) an ethical belief in human beings’ enlightened self-interest; and (4) a classic style of writing.
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Notes
Socio-ecological practice research is the fine-grained, evidence-based research of socio-ecological practice (Xiang 2019b, p. 11). “Socio-ecological practice is the human action and social process that take place in specific socio-ecological context to bring about a secure, harmonious, and sustainable socio-ecological condition serving human beings’ need for survival, development, and flourishing. It … includes six distinct yet intertwining classes of human action and social process—planning, design, construction, restoration, conservation, and management” (Ibid., p. 8).
By definition, ecological restoration is “[t]he process of assisting the recovery of an ecosystem that has been degraded, damaged, or destroyed” (Society for Ecological Restoration, https://www.ser.org/, accessed March 18, 2019).
“[A]ll achievement, all earned riches, have their beginning in an idea!” (Hill 1937, p. xi).
There are different ways by which truth is defined and proved. The one adopted in this article is that of pragmatism defined by William James. Along with Charles Sanders Peirce and John Dewey, James is one of three founding fathers of pragmatism, a school of philosophical thought that began in the United States in the late 19th century as a rejective response to certain then-dominant epistemological assumptions in philosophy about the nature of truth, objectivity, and rationality (LaFollette 2000, p. 400). In a 1907 article entitled “Pragmatism's conception of truth,” James states, “Truth … is a property of certain of our ideas. It means their 'agreement,' as falsity means their disagreement, with 'reality’” (James 1907, p. 141). “Realities mean, then, either concrete facts, or abstract kinds of things, and relations perceived intuitively between them. But what now does 'agreement' with such realities mean? … Any idea that helps us to deal with either the reality or its belongings, that doesn't entangle our progress in frustrations, that fits, in fact, and adapts our life to the reality's whole setting, will agree sufficiently to meet the requirement. It will hold true of that reality” (Ibid., pp. 146–147). In short, truth of an idea or concept is preeminently to be tested by its practical consequences (Merriam-Webster Dictionary, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/pragmatism, accessed March 27, 2019). It is noteworthy that this pragmatic ideal of truth is shared among many thinkers around the world and across history. For example, in a 1937 essay entitled On practice: on the relation between knowledge and practice, between knowing and doing, Chinese philosopher Mao Tse-Tung presents a famous phrase “[o]nly social practice can be the criterion of truth” (Mao 1937, p. 297) [a translation of “真理的标准只能是社会的实践” (毛泽东 1937, p. 284)], and calls the pragmatic ideal “the primary and basic standpoint in the dialectical-materialist theory of knowledge” (Ibid.). In the same pragmatic vein, a piece of knowledge, or an idea, is useful to practitioners if and only if it is directly relevant, immediately actionable, and foreseeably efficacious (Xiang, 2019a, p. 1; Xiang 2019b, p. 9).
Such a confirmation coincides with what James calls an “event” (James 1907, p. 142) in “the truth-process” (Ibid., p. 144). “The truth of an idea is not a stagnant property inherent in it. Truth happens to an idea. It (the idea—the author) becomes true, is made true by events. Its verity is in fact an event, a process, the process, namely, of its verifying itself, its verification” (Ibid., p. 142).
This statement and the title of Table 1 are both inspired by a 2011 book entitled Clear and simple as the truth by American literary scholars Francis-Noël Thomas and Mark Turner. In this book, the authors advocate a writing style through which writers present truth in a clear and simple way. A discussion about McHarg’s effective use of this style of writing in his articulation of those nuggets of truth in Table 1 is provided in Sect. 6 of this article.
Knowing reasons for McHarg’s success is a first and critical step to following his example as a leader in socio-ecological practice research. However, leadership in general, and reasons for leadership success (or failure) in particular, have rarely, if ever, been topics of scholarly inquiry on socio-ecological practice. To attend this missing link, in his 2019 article “Ecopracticology: the study of socio-ecological practice,” Xiang calls for investigations into questions pertaining to practitioners’ leadership in socio-ecological practice, and to scholar–practitioners’ leadership in socio-ecological practice research (Xiang 2019b, p. 9). One of these is the question about “why some practitioners at leadership level performed well (in socio-ecological practice—the author), while others did not”; and the other “in the exemplary cases of socio-ecological practice research that have lasting, positive impacts, how ecophronetic scholar–practitioners (i.e., scholar–practitioners of ecological practical wisdom) worked in Pasteur’s quadrant to create the type of knowledge that is useful to practitioners and enlightening to fellow scholars” (Ibid.). The inquiry in the following sections is an attempt in this direction.
When did McHarg actually write this essay? After much investigation, the author remained unsuccessful to find the answer.
“Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL) is a multipurpose research institution funded primarily by the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Science. Located on the center of Long Island, New York, Brookhaven Lab brings world-class facilities and expertise to the most exciting and important questions in basic and applied science—from the birth of our universe to the sustainable energy technology of tomorrow” (https://www.bnl.gov/about/ accessed March 22nd, 2019).
Why so? Taleb offers an interesting observation from a unique angle (Taleb 2012, p. 227). “Self-directed scholarship (of the enlightened amateurs—the author) has an aesthetic dimension. For a long time I had on the wall of my study the following quote by Jacques Le Goff, the great French medievalist, who believes that the Renaissance came out of independent humanists, not professional scholars … ‘One is a professor (the professional scholar—the author) surrounded and besieged by hundred students. The other (the enlightened amateur humanist—the author) is a solitary scholar, sitting in the tranquility and privacy of his chambers, at ease in the spacious and comfy room where his thoughts can move freely. Here we encounter the tumult of schools, the dust of classrooms, the indifference to beauty in collective workplaces. There, it is all order and beauty …’.”
The use of “crypto-pseudo-quasi-scientist” in this article serves a dual purpose. It honors with great admiration McHarg’s humorous and humble self-designation, and helps highlight his own pragmatic, ethical way of knowing and classic style of writing which served well his socio-ecological practice and practice research in the four instances showcased in Xiang (2019c and 2019d). As such, it complements the remarks Orr makes in the following passages (Orr 2007, p. 9). “Just ignore his (McHarg’s—the author) loud protest that he was not a scientist” and (ignore his own claim—the author) “that he was only a ‘quasi-pseudo-crypto-scientist’ (should be ‘crypto-pseudo-quasi-scientist’ instead–the author) with a non-status theory.” “Although not a laboratory or experimental scientist, his commitment to truth, his keen recording skills, and his capacity for communication lead me to claim as vociferously as he denied it: McHarg indeed was a scientist.”
This is in fact the “rarely explicated yet perhaps more plausible reason” for “the untenable status quo of the ES (ecosystems services—the author) scholarly enterprise in accomplishing the ambition to inform, influence, and direct practitioners in planning and management” (Xiang 2017a, p. 2243).
In ancient world, knowledge was either passed on orally or handwritten on scrolls or ancient texts (Howitt and Wilson 2014, p.482). The earliest record of Dujiangyan irrigation system is found in the classic Chinese history book Shiji (《史记》, Records of the historian, circa 94 BC). Based on his firsthand field survey a century after the system’s initial construction (Peng 2008, p. 540), the author Sima Qian (司马迁, cira 145BC–86BC) (Sima 1959) documented the successful operation (instead of the arts and crafts of construction) of the Dujiangyan irrigation system. Two millennia later, the scientific principles undergirding Li Bing’s work were extrapolated from the technical characteristics of the irrigation system [for reviews, see Cao et al. (2010), Li and Xu (2006)].
Why should ecological planners be listening to nature and learning from culture in their practice? In an earlier piece of his writing entitled “Ecological planning: the planner as catalyst,” McHarg outlines the rationale (McHarg 1978, p. 88). “People in a given place with opportunities afforded by the environment for practicing a means of production, will develop characteristic perceptions and institutions. These institutions will have perceptions and values that feed back to an understanding of the environment—both national and social—and that have a modification of technology. Thus, I believe, we have a continuous model, which emanates from the physical and biological, and extends to the cultural … The most critical factor is the value system, for it determines the planning solution … Most of the important values are particular and there is no substitute for eliciting them from the constituents themselves. These values themselves become the data, whether it be for describing rocks, soils, animals, people, or institutions. Planners must elicit these data from their client if they are going to help solve the problems posed by the particular system within which the client functions. This, in fact, is the planner’s most important role.”
American landscape ecologist Richard Forman regards The Woodlands to be an exemplary case of “[p]lanning for nature and culture” (Forman 2002, p. 102), and praises that it is “an ecologically remarkable community” with “distinctive natural and cultural attributes” (Ibid., p. 104).
For example, in 1984, Wilson provided a brief yet insightful review of human knowledge fragmentation in his book Biophilia (Wilson 1984, pp. 47–49). In 1998, in Consilience: the unity of knowledge, he made the observation that “[t]he ongoing fragmentation of knowledge and resulting chaos in philosophy are not reflections of the real world but artifacts of scholarship” (Wilson 1998, p. 8). With the premise that “[t]he greatest enterprise of the mind has always been and always will be the attempted linkage of the sciences and humanities” (Ibid.), he expressed reasoned optimism in the reinvigoration of consilience between the knowledge domains of sciences and humanities (Ibid., pp. 266–298).
Not only is this notion of “human beings’ enlightened self-interest” a “dominant theme” in many ancient indigenous societies (Redman 1999, p. 24), but it also has profoundly inspired the development of a series of comparable ideas in environmental virtue ethics of the modern world (Xiang 2016, p. 56). These include, but may not be limited to, ideas of Rachel Carson, Aldo Leopold, James Lovelock, George Marsh, Arne Naess, Albert Schweitzer, and Henry David Thoreau (Berkes 2012, p. 287; Cafaro 2001, pp. 14–16; Lyle 1999, p. 208, 225; Redman 1999, p. 22, pp. 25–27).
Advocates for “sponge cities” and “sponge infrastructure” (Liu 2016) would appreciate this early usage of “sponge” by McHarg in the socio-ecological practice of ecological planning.
“Intrinsic function” here could well be a precursor of the concept “intrinsic suitability” he defined later in Design with nature: “Once it has been accepted that the place is a sum of natural processes and that these processes constitute social values, inferences can be drawn regarding utilization to ensure optimum use and enhancement of social values. This is its intrinsic suitability.” (McHarg 1969, p. 104).
The 2300-year-old irrigation system has been providing multiple, lasting benefits to both human and nonhuman beings on the Chengdu Plain (roughly the size of the state of Delaware in the United States) for over two millennia (Needham et al. 1971, p. 288; Xiang 2014, pp. 65–66). In January 2000, the United Nation Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) designated the Dujiangyan irrigation system and nearby Mount Qingcheng, a mountainous Daoist sanctuary, as a World Cultural Heritage Site (UNESCO 2000). As Mount Qingcheng is where the first organized Daoist establishment Tianshidao (天师道) was founded some 400 years after the initial development of the irrigation system, the UNESCO designation is regarded as a recognition of the philosophical bond between the exemplary socio-ecological practice and Daoism (Xiang 2016, pp. 65–66). Similarly, American ecological planner and educator John Lyle regards The Woodlands as an exemplary instance of “[t]he Taoist (Daoist, that is—the author) approach in recent practice (of ecological planning and design—the author)” (Lyle 1999, p. 237).
The five-legged article refers to those that are composed with the IMRAD format of scientific writing. A typical article of the IMRAD format consists of five parts: introduction, method(ology), results, discussion, and conclusions. Among the critics of the prevalence of this style of writing is the 1960 Nobel laureate Peter Medawar. He writes in a 1964 essay, “What is wrong with the traditional form of scientific paper is simply this: that all scientific work of an experimental or exploratory character starts with some expectation about the outcome of the inquiry” (Medawar 1964, p. 43; for a recent, still critical account, see Howitt and Wilson 2014). Nonetheless, the IMRAD format, originated in the experimental and laboratory sciences, has now become a predominant style of writing and regularly appeared in academic journals across a wide range of disciplines, including journals in planning, design, and management. The designation of IMRAD-style articles as “five-legged articles” here is inspired by that of “eight-legged essay”(baguwen, 八股文), a traditional Chinese style of writing created for, and used over 1000 years in, the required eight-part response to civil service examination questions based on Confucian thought [for a succinct review, see Elman (2009)]. The five-legged articles (i.e., wuguwen, 五股文), with its highly formalized structure and sanitized content (Howitt and Wilson 2014, p. 481), resemble in many ways the eight-legged essays, though less restrictive and rigid.
“According to American planning scholar–practitioners Judy Innes and David Booher, a good theory “has truth because it accounts for the evidence in a way that rings true. It has beauty because of its ultimate simplicity and because it reveals what has not been seen before. It has fertility because the ideas open up new lines of inquiry” (Innes and Booher 2018, p. 18). Further, “[n]othing is as practical as a good theory” (Steiner 2004, p. 142). A good theory also has practical usefulness, in that it “provides ways of seeing how and why practices do or do not work in particular ways; it offers a critical distance that helps surface unexamined assumptions and places activities in perspective; it provides a basis for an evaluative framework…” (Innes and Booher 2018, p. 17)” (Xiang 2019b, p. 7).
The adjective ecophronetic is from ecophronesis (ecological practical wisdom), a term coined and defined by Xiang (2016) and further expanded by Austin (2018); for ecophronesis’ genesis within the context of ecological wisdom conception, see Xiang (2019e); for the relevance of ecophronesis to socio-ecological practice and practice research, see Gross et al (2019), Jim (2019), Steiner (2019), and Wang (2019).
“We must learn to green the earth, to restore the earth, and to heal the earth. I long to live to see it” (McHarg 1996, p. 374). “I would love to be here when this process (of greening, restoring, and healing the earth—the author) is apace … In my mind’s eye I see myself with a group of scientists, looking at the earth from space, viewing the shrinking deserts, the burgeoning forests, the clear atmosphere, the virgin oceans, smiling at the recovery, anticipating the day when a successor will announce, ‘the earth is healed, the earth is well’” (Ibid., p. 375).
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Acknowledgements
The explorations of “four reasons for McHarg’s achievements in socio-ecological practice research” would not be possible without the invaluable works by the McHarg scholars, in particular, those by Frederick Steiner, Bo Yang, Lynn Margulis, and David Orr (all cited in this article). Much of the research pertinent to this article was supported by China National R & D Program entitled “Building strong ecological security patterns through elevating green infrastructure’s level of ecosystem services” (No. 2017YFC0505705) and done during the summers of 2018 and 2019 while the author was a visiting fellow at the Center for Ecophronetic Practice Research, College of Architecture and Urban Planning, Tongji University, Shanghai, China. The author also wishes to thank the following individuals who provided comments, suggestions, and encouragements during the preparation of this article (listed in alphabetic order): Bill Cohen (Temple University, Philadelphia, USA), Tom Daniels (the University of Pennsylvania, USA), Wei Gao (South China Agricultural University, Guangzhou, China), Jinwu Ma (ESRI, Redlands, California, USA), David Orr (Oberlin College, USA), Fritz Steiner (the University of Pennsylvania, USA), and Bo Yang (the University of Arizona, USA).
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Xiang, WN. Why did history vote many times in his favor? Four reasons for McHarg’s achievements in socio-ecological practice research. Socio Ecol Pract Res 1, 359–369 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s42532-019-00023-5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s42532-019-00023-5