Mysterious Ways

Abstract

What stories should we, and could we, tell about nature, about Earth surface systems and landscapes? According to this book, stories of continuous and ongoing transformative, recursive, emergent evolution, as well as tales of everything, including humans, connected to everything else, told with an emphasis on an integrated approach to landscape evolution—stories of complex interactions and coevolution and of historical and geographical and scale contingency. Our narratives will include supra-organic notions and system-level evolution; they will incorporate multiple possibilities and pathways and efficiency selection. We will tell stories of adaptation and creativity. The settings will be perfect, uniquely determined by combinations of laws, place, and history. We will tell of mysterious ways, which turn out to be not so mysterious after all.