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p.498-499 In sociology, Parsons stresses the concept of "adaptive capacity," which "includes an active concern with mastery, or the ability to change the environment to meet the needs of the system, as well as an ability to survive in the face of its unalterable features. Hence the capacity to cope with broad ranges of environmental factors, through adjustment or active control, or both, is crucial. Finally, a very critical point is the capacity to cope with... uncertainty... and unpredictable variations" (1964, p. 340).
p.500 Parsons argues that increases in adaptive capacity occur when and if four developments take place:
- differentiation occurs;
- "adaptive upgrading" (i.e., an increase in efficiency) results;
- the problems of integration posed by the differentiation are overcome; and
- "value generation" occurs, legitimizing the changes and thereby (in Parson's view) insuring their stability (1966, pp. 21-24).
p.501 for measures of adaptive capacity to have meaning, a substantial measure of predictability is required... accurate measurement of adaptive capacity requires us to know with some confidence what a society's likely future environmental exigencies are. No society is well prepared for all possible problems, and one which is best prepared for those what are least likely can hardly be scored high on adaptive capacity.
p.503 May comments that the "elegant body of mathematical theory pertaining to linear systems... and its successful application to many fundamentally linear problems in the physical sciences, tends to dominate even moderately advanced University courses in mathematics and theoretical physics. The mathematical intuition so developed ill equips the students to confront the bizarre behavior exhibited by the simplest of discrete nonlinear systems, such as [the equation above]. Yet such nonlinear systems are surely the rule, not the exception, outside the physical sciences" (1976, p. 467).
p.504 May continues, "it may be observed that [beyond the critical point of the parameter] arbitrarily close initial conditions can lead to trajectories which, after a sufficiently long time, diverge widely. This means that, even if we have a simple model in which all the parameters are determined exactly, long term prediction is nevertheless impossible" (1976, p. 466). In meteorology, this has been called the "butterfly effect" ...If such difficulties arise in even the very simplest ecological models, we might expect them more readily in complex ones. [JLJ - here is where scenario development comes in to play. Ask yourself: do I need to predict the future, or just be ready for whatever future arrives? If it is the latter case, you just spin out case after case of different possible scenarios, based on the interplay of the significant forces which exist and the lines of their possible interaction.]
p.505 Judgments of adaptive capacity impose severe predictability requirements. [JLJ - I disagree - you just need to come up with a clever way to test the ability to adapt to a crisis. This can be as simple as a sports coach arranging scrimmage, followed by an analysis and interpretation of events.]
p.509 It is ironic that the very element - differentiation - which is often cited as a measure of adaptive capacity, can be seen instead as making the concept impossible to give empirical content by virtue of the reduced predictability which accompanies it.
p.512 evolutionary biologists are reluctant to make sweeping statements about what features of a species make them more or less likely to survive, since that outcome is not a result of species characteristics but of a complex and generally unpredictable interplay between these and environmental changes.
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