Permaculture Farming

Question: What Epistemological questions should we be asking about sustainability and using science to evidence it?

Epistemology: The Philosophical study of Truth states that there are two components: Raw information (Knowledge) and acceptance (Belief). Without both the information is dismissed.

I am interested in evidencing the sustainability of the whole system of our Permaculture Smallholding not just elements of it.

Sciences is reductionist, it takes part of the system and proves or disproves that that bit works.

What Epistemological questions should we be asking about science to evidence the sustainability of our smallholding?
Thank you little robber girl for the great links. Thanks all for answering.

Answer: Good link by little robber girl to the work of Donella Meadows. It is a good description of the application of elements of Epistemology to specific systems. Not only do our paradigms, or memes, determine how we interpret data, the acceptance of new data will give us the power to transcend our current paradigms.

Science is not reductionist, in order to build both a precise and accurate model you must know what individual elements of a system do (precision) and how they affect the overall system (accuracy), each element of the ecosystem must be understood individually and within the context of the entire model. Modeling individual elements into an overall system is an important part of science.

The first question you should be asking is: “What does sustainability mean to me?” Without defining your terminology first you cannot support your evidence of it; that is the foundation stone of your argument.

You cannot argue against the use of science to understand a complex system, you can only argue the methodology and conclusions.

Permaculture & PEAK OIL: Beyond ‘Sustainability’