Thank you for this post! Russian physicist Victor Gorshkov in 1995 identified and quantified the systemic connections and interactions between forests, soils, climate and other components of the biosphere based on the mathematical modeling of energy, substances and information flows: https://www.bioticregulation.ru/common/pdf/vg95-en.pdf
He made a simple conclusion for the national, local and global policies: stop cutting down, preserve and restore forests as the basis of water cycles, biodiversity and climate!
If only we could get the governments and the politicians of the world to think in terms of multifaceted interconnected systems for climate change, biodiversity, deforestation, ocean temperatures and acidification, air, water and soil pollution, drought, increasing temperatures, watersheds, flood plains, and wildfires instead of separate issue tunnel thinking.
So tensors are essential? “This is what we mean by looking at the “full vector space” that a solution operates on. Instead of only asking “what does this do to water?” we ask “what does this do to water and carbon and energy?” We’re forced to see the whole transformation, not just the part we’re focused on.”
Thank you for the detailed exploration. I believe the fungi network would also play an important role in such systems but one that we have only just started to delve into?
Overall I think the observation that older cultures such as the native cultures of Americas did much better at forest management points to the fact that breaking things into variables and formulas only restricts understanding rather than enhancing it. This is due to the fact that one will only be able to take into account the variables that are already known, whereas we have learned from the last thousand years that however much we may like to think we know a lot, we always discover something that changes the whole paradigm.
I recently gained a new understanding of why maths is not a good tool for understanding reality (though obviously invaluable for modelling it), through understanding the invention of algebra for example:
Muḥammad ibn Mūsā al-Khwārizmī (9th century) popularized zero and Hindu-Arabic numerals in the Islamic world, introducing them to Europe. [36][37][38][39] His seminal work, "Al-Kitāb al-mukhtaṣar fī ḥisāb al-jabr wa-l-muqābala," laid the foundations of algebra (from "al-jabr," meaning restoration or completion), solving equations through systematic balancing. [40][41][42][43][44][45] Drawing from Indian sources, al-Khwārizmī translated collective holistic insights into a rigid, individualistic framework, advancing math while hinting at the underlying unity.
Or what about the greatest contributor to understanding of reality Albert Einstein:
Albert Einstein embodied this transcendence. His revolutionary ideas—relativity's curved space-time—sprang from intuitive thought experiments, not initial equations. He visualized riding light beams or falling elevators, tapping into a unified consciousness where separations blur. Only afterward did he retrofit math to communicate and confirm. As he famously put it: "As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain; and as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality." Math was the pi's approximation—endless decimals chasing a circle's truth—but the proof lay in the intuitive whole, the raw grasp of undivided reality.
And also for an understanding of why maths could be more of a hindrance than help, let's look at this example:
Picture a snooker player calculating every angle, velocity, and spin before a shot: They'd freeze, paralyzed by the fantasy of perfect precision. Pros rely on "feel," an embodied intuition honed through practice, where cue, ball, and table merge into one seamless act. Stick to numbers, and that flow never develops; the rigidity enforces illusory divides, starving the non-dual essence.
All of the numbers are for references as listen in the post created to explain this insight:
This, for me (engineering background) is really helpful and explains a lot of what I'm seeing at our place. I mean, of course I've read statements like if you provide the habitat the animals will come back blah blah blah but I'm forever the skeptic with everything and have to prove these things to myself.
For the past couple of months we've had four endangered Philippine Hawk Eagles hanging out in ours and the neighbour's tallest trees. It doesn't prove anything of course but to me this cements the idea that if you focus on first principles, i.e. go back to basics; what does life need, healthy soil and healthy water - just focus on that, have patience, then the ripples start coming. Imagine that, I have endangered large birds hanging out at our place!
Thank you. And thank you so much for not using AI images on your page Alpha, your hand drawn sketches rock!
This is yet another awesome post, Alpha!! But no x’s or y’s! Algebra has to have these! Ha! Algebraic groups. Ok. Thanks for this, and the Russian paper is great also.
Wonderful blog, thank you. I think key for us is not to work to hard to understand all the ''mechanics'' of how nature operates at this time, but to take large scale, strategic action and learn from the intelligence embedded in nature while we take this large scale action. In short apply mimicry. A planetary biosphere regeneration strategy must urgently protect and regenerate tropical forests to stabilize rainfall, biodiversity and cooling, while scaling ocean restoration to rebuild marine food webs and blue-carbon systems, buffer heat, increase cloud cover and restore the planet’s largest life-support engine. All this action will sequester lots of carbon, but the restored water cycle by a revived biosphere will have the faster impact. Yet the most important challenge here is to wake up from our current destructive mass psychosis and realise that the future is on fire and will burn down to the ground if we don;t act at the required speed, scale focusing on strategic impact. Meanwhile, people like you and Ali can focus on improving the mathematical approaches to improve the impacts of our actions, but we must move fast. The biosphere is clearly unravelling, the window for effective action is closing as we speak. No time to waste!
The further into your article I read, the more I kept thinking nonlinear dynamic matrix analysis and that’s where your mathematical model and discussion ended up.
Thank you for this post! Russian physicist Victor Gorshkov in 1995 identified and quantified the systemic connections and interactions between forests, soils, climate and other components of the biosphere based on the mathematical modeling of energy, substances and information flows: https://www.bioticregulation.ru/common/pdf/vg95-en.pdf
He made a simple conclusion for the national, local and global policies: stop cutting down, preserve and restore forests as the basis of water cycles, biodiversity and climate!
If only we could get the governments and the politicians of the world to think in terms of multifaceted interconnected systems for climate change, biodiversity, deforestation, ocean temperatures and acidification, air, water and soil pollution, drought, increasing temperatures, watersheds, flood plains, and wildfires instead of separate issue tunnel thinking.
Brilliant and good on both of you!
So tensors are essential? “This is what we mean by looking at the “full vector space” that a solution operates on. Instead of only asking “what does this do to water?” we ask “what does this do to water and carbon and energy?” We’re forced to see the whole transformation, not just the part we’re focused on.”
Yeah tensors can be one way of understanding how the different components of a system transform together as different forces act on it
Is that what you use ?
Thanks for this post. Your cartoon is worth 1000 words. Perhaps cartoons are better than hoped-for algebra at elucidating energy relationships.
Thank you for the detailed exploration. I believe the fungi network would also play an important role in such systems but one that we have only just started to delve into?
Overall I think the observation that older cultures such as the native cultures of Americas did much better at forest management points to the fact that breaking things into variables and formulas only restricts understanding rather than enhancing it. This is due to the fact that one will only be able to take into account the variables that are already known, whereas we have learned from the last thousand years that however much we may like to think we know a lot, we always discover something that changes the whole paradigm.
I recently gained a new understanding of why maths is not a good tool for understanding reality (though obviously invaluable for modelling it), through understanding the invention of algebra for example:
Muḥammad ibn Mūsā al-Khwārizmī (9th century) popularized zero and Hindu-Arabic numerals in the Islamic world, introducing them to Europe. [36][37][38][39] His seminal work, "Al-Kitāb al-mukhtaṣar fī ḥisāb al-jabr wa-l-muqābala," laid the foundations of algebra (from "al-jabr," meaning restoration or completion), solving equations through systematic balancing. [40][41][42][43][44][45] Drawing from Indian sources, al-Khwārizmī translated collective holistic insights into a rigid, individualistic framework, advancing math while hinting at the underlying unity.
Or what about the greatest contributor to understanding of reality Albert Einstein:
Albert Einstein embodied this transcendence. His revolutionary ideas—relativity's curved space-time—sprang from intuitive thought experiments, not initial equations. He visualized riding light beams or falling elevators, tapping into a unified consciousness where separations blur. Only afterward did he retrofit math to communicate and confirm. As he famously put it: "As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain; and as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality." Math was the pi's approximation—endless decimals chasing a circle's truth—but the proof lay in the intuitive whole, the raw grasp of undivided reality.
And also for an understanding of why maths could be more of a hindrance than help, let's look at this example:
Picture a snooker player calculating every angle, velocity, and spin before a shot: They'd freeze, paralyzed by the fantasy of perfect precision. Pros rely on "feel," an embodied intuition honed through practice, where cue, ball, and table merge into one seamless act. Stick to numbers, and that flow never develops; the rigidity enforces illusory divides, starving the non-dual essence.
All of the numbers are for references as listen in the post created to explain this insight:
https://x.com/Farz_Zaad/status/1990971207806484678?s=20
Yeah fungi play an important role.
Maaaate.... this is pretty good!!
This, for me (engineering background) is really helpful and explains a lot of what I'm seeing at our place. I mean, of course I've read statements like if you provide the habitat the animals will come back blah blah blah but I'm forever the skeptic with everything and have to prove these things to myself.
For the past couple of months we've had four endangered Philippine Hawk Eagles hanging out in ours and the neighbour's tallest trees. It doesn't prove anything of course but to me this cements the idea that if you focus on first principles, i.e. go back to basics; what does life need, healthy soil and healthy water - just focus on that, have patience, then the ripples start coming. Imagine that, I have endangered large birds hanging out at our place!
Thank you. And thank you so much for not using AI images on your page Alpha, your hand drawn sketches rock!
This is yet another awesome post, Alpha!! But no x’s or y’s! Algebra has to have these! Ha! Algebraic groups. Ok. Thanks for this, and the Russian paper is great also.
I had the notation in earlier version of article
Wonderful blog, thank you. I think key for us is not to work to hard to understand all the ''mechanics'' of how nature operates at this time, but to take large scale, strategic action and learn from the intelligence embedded in nature while we take this large scale action. In short apply mimicry. A planetary biosphere regeneration strategy must urgently protect and regenerate tropical forests to stabilize rainfall, biodiversity and cooling, while scaling ocean restoration to rebuild marine food webs and blue-carbon systems, buffer heat, increase cloud cover and restore the planet’s largest life-support engine. All this action will sequester lots of carbon, but the restored water cycle by a revived biosphere will have the faster impact. Yet the most important challenge here is to wake up from our current destructive mass psychosis and realise that the future is on fire and will burn down to the ground if we don;t act at the required speed, scale focusing on strategic impact. Meanwhile, people like you and Ali can focus on improving the mathematical approaches to improve the impacts of our actions, but we must move fast. The biosphere is clearly unravelling, the window for effective action is closing as we speak. No time to waste!
The further into your article I read, the more I kept thinking nonlinear dynamic matrix analysis and that’s where your mathematical model and discussion ended up.
Kudos.
Epic translation!