Sustainability Calling

IntroductionWhy “Transformation” Is the One Keyword

I.1. Where have we got by now?

Let us observe the environment around us for a moment. What do we observe?

For one, the current state of affairs in the world is not uniform: complexity arises from every corner and irresistibly requires from us a change in our way of thinking. The fact that everything is said to be “complex” relegates “non-complex” things into the realms of oblivion and they seem to no longer exist or are incredibly weak.

Thus, we acknowledge that the factors at hand that spell irrevocable change are hard to reach, or difficult to measure, and their understanding inherently resists an analytical approach. As a result, we tend to feel caught in a sort of nest that captures our past habits, yet at our own risk.

At the same time, new concepts and opportunities visibly emerge that signify new possibilities for those who would deliberately act upon new paradigms. Unsought complexity levels result as a consequence of evolution, and also possibly by chance as permanent mutations play their spontaneous role. And both evolution and chance are factors of diversity.

The emergence of new concepts is of great importance for our own living, our society and its environment. Everything evolves toward more complexity and new functionalities are offered to living systems through three main ways:

1. By changing scale on a material plane: our society investigated the microscale over the last century and by now reached the nanoscale, ...