] [Thread] [Date] [Author]

["Conrad Harrison" <sch.tectonic(--nospam--at)bigpond.com>]

I guess I should be more careful how I introduce a topic. I wasn't actually
discussing climate change. I was actually making a point that the economic
environment and the interaction between businesses, and products, have been
modelled by the population ecology model of Lotka-Volterra. The Gaia
hypothesis suggests this model is incomplete because it fails to model the
interaction between species and environment: both the impact of species on
the environment and the impact of environment on species.

Thus just as management theory borrowed the Lotka-Volterra model, it could
equally well borrow the Gaia hypothesis and the Daisy world model, to model
interactions between businesses, and the economic environment. Structural
engineers and structural engineering businesses are but one species in the
model, providing services for the development of the built environment.
Before any mathematical model can be developed it is first necessary to
develop the qualitative model, identify appropriate characteristics which
can be quantified, adopt appropriate measures for those quantities, identify
dependent and independent quantities, and determine mathematical
relationships between.

In the short term however the qualitative application of the Gaia hypothesis
to our artificially constructed world, of cities, industries, nations,
businesses, learned societies, and professions provides explanation as to
why structural engineers typically have low incomes compared to other
occupational classes, and also why licensing is of little value. Each
grouping is an attempt to create order out of chaos, and forms a new higher
form of life, competing against many others for limited resources.
Structural engineers are a new life form, civil engineers and architects can
equally well complete their task without the services of structural
engineers. The more specialised species of the structural engineer has a
smaller environmental niche in which it is able to survive than that of the
more generalised species of engineer. The market is a food resource, if it
runs out then species perishes. Since the artificial world we have created
does not provide direct access to what we eat, then it is beneficial to
consider that our markets are our food resource. We can either be hunter
gatherers, or we can be farmers. That is either hunt down the customer in
the wilderness, or nurture and grow the customers locally.

I leave it to your imaginations as to how to extend and develop the analogy:
including applying it to one design solution competing against another. Or
one post and/or thread on the SEAint listserv competing for the attention of
the members.



Regards
Conrad Harrison
B.Tech (mfg & mech), MIIE, gradTIEAust
mailto:sch.tectonic(--nospam--at)bigpond.com
Adelaide
South Australia
 



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