The Contributions of Jane Jacobs and Bernard Lonergan

Patrick H. Byrne

Department of Philosophy

Boston College

The announcement for this conference remarked that in "the past, ecologists often assumed a dichotomy between a pristine, stable nature and disruptive human activity." Perhaps, then, it is best to begin with a statement of fact, at risk of stating what may already be obvious to all in attendance at this conference: nature is neither stable nor pristine. Before a single hominid walked the surface of this wonderful planet, nature was constantly being disrupted by processes of evolution, development, and decline. Nor did nature desist from such processes once humans appeared, ceding all future evolutionary change to the initiatives of humans. In no way do I mean this observation to provide any sort of rationalization for the kinds of abuses of natural environments that we have witnessed over the past two centuries. Rather I wish to emphasize that if we are to be properly critical of human deeds and their impact upon the natural environment, we must carefully and critically understand natural developmental processes and understand the kinds of human developments that are compatible and are incompatible with natural development.

Felicitously, the conference announcement went on to note with optimism that more recently ecologists have come instead to think comprehensively of a dynamic environment comprised of natural as well as human constituents. I this paper I intend to explore the thought of two authors who have devoted much of their intellectual careers to thinking out the dynamic relationships between the natural and human environments, Bernard Lonergan, S.J. and Jane Jacobs. Lonergan and Jacobs worked along very different lines of research – systematic theology and urban economics, respectively. Despite predictable differences in their thought, there are also remarkable commonalities in their analyses. Both thinkers have argued that the same dynamic principles that govern the functioning of natural ecologies are also to be found when human social and economic systems function well, but are absent when human systems become corrupted: "economic development is a matter of using the same principles that the rest of nature uses" (Jacobs 2000, 31). Both have argued that the violation of principles that underpin natural ecologies is destructive not only of natural environments, but also of human economic and communal well-being. In this paper I hope to make available the seminal ideas of these two thinkers, and to point to lessons that may be drawn from their analyses in framing policy issues.

I. Bernard Lonergan: The Emergence of Nature, the Human Order, and Grace

Educated in Catholic scholastic philosophy and theology of the 1920’s and 30s, the young Bernard Lonergan soon recognized that the two great challenges confronting Catholic theology were the intellectual transformations effected by modern natural science and by history. Already in his student days he was he was energetically at work on forging a new framework that would integrate and reconcile the account of natural processes that emerge from scientific research with human moral aspirations and the workings of divine grace.

Those efforts reached a mature culmination in his classic work, Insight: A Study of Human Understanding. There he gradually develops his account of the dynamic processes of the created order, characterized by what he called "emergent probability." While Lonergan’s account is evolutionary in the broad sense, he carefully distanced himself from Darwin’s version of evolution and the reductionistic, materialistic biases that characterize much of neo-Darwinian thought. In Lonergan’s view, materialism assumes that ultimate reality is known through sensation, especially through sight and touch (i.e., the "real" as what resists physical contact). By way of contrast Lonergan argues that what is known through sensation is only a component of reality; it is intelligibility (what is known through human insight and judgment) that is the heart of the natural reality. Natural science, he argues, is fundamentally concerned with discovery of the intelligible relationships and orders that make up the natural world. Where a materialistic worldview regards something like physical impact as the ultimate explanatory cause, Lonergan argues that it is intelligible relatedness that explains why things are as they are and why they behave as they do. Nowhere is this more evident than in Lonergan’s account of "emergence." In the following paragraphs I offer a brief sketch of Lonergan’s account of "emergent probability."

(1) Schemes of Recurrence

Lonergan remarks that the focus of Darwin’s evolutionary was the gradual accumulation of small "sensible qualities," (1992, 290) that is to say, observable and describable phenotypic characters. By way of contrast, the focus of Lonergan’s account is what he calls "schemes of recurrence." The small variations of classical Darwinism do not merely pile up. Rather, scientifically they must be understood in their intelligible relationships to the internal and external functioning of the organism and its environment:

By "scheme of recurrence" Lonergan means a series of events (or "operations") that are intelligibly linked together by natural laws of physics, chemistry, biology, etc. Schemes of recurrence can be "represented by the series of conditionals, If A occurs, B occurs; if B occurs, C occurs; if C occurs, … A will recur" (1992, 141), where the intelligible connection between the occurrence of A and B, between B and C, etc. is determined by some law of physics, chemistry, biology, etc. Simple examples of schemes of recurrence include the hydrogen-helium fusion cycles in the interiors of stars, the Krebs cycles in cells that continually regenerate energetic ATP from depleted ADP, and the mutual regeneration of atmospheric CO2 and O2 by animals and plants. Lonergan goes on to note that schemes of recurrence are usually far more complex, involving intricate sub-loops and alternative pathways.

Lonergan’s focus on schemes of recurrence places emphasis on two important facts. First, the evolving unit is not a random material variation of the organism (e.g., longer limb) but a way of living (i.e., an intelligible functioning). Second, the environment is not merely a passive stage onto which an individual organism with a variant feature is placed. The schemes of the environment are always already implicated in every organism’s functioning.

(2) Emergence

Emergence has always been a problem for hard-core materialism, which tends to regard underlying matter (elementary particles) as ultimately unchanging. Although the rearrangements of matter change, ultimately no real change occurs.

This materialist philosophy tends to fly in the face of common sense and religious belief as well. Interesting, Lonergan argues that it is only a philosophical position that is also incompatible with scientific study. Science, he argues, seeks to correctly understand how events are intelligibly connected within schemes of recurrence, and when new schemes begin to function, really new intelligibilities emerge.

What is impressive about Lonergan’s account of emergence is how he can avoid materialism without needing to invoke any sort of vitalistic force or elán vital. Instead, he draws attention to an obvious but commonly overlooked feature of laws of science: their conditionality (1992, 70). Laws of science are extremely general, but for that very reason they are also are extremely indeterminate. For example, Newton’s three laws of motion and law of gravity are extremely general; they apply to any massive object. Yet from those laws alone it is impossible to derive any specific, concrete path of motion. A determinate path of motion be deduced only once specific conditions are stipulated. For example, if one stipulates or observes two bodies with very special combinations of mass, position and velocity, then a particular kind of elliptical path can be deduced; but for a different combination, the bodies will follow a specific hyperbolic path. As another example, the laws of chemistry allow that if octane is combined with oxygen, then carbon dioxide and water will be produced (2 C8H18 + 34 O2 –> 8 CO2 + 18 H2O). However, this chemical transformation will occur as complete oxidation, only under highly specific conditions of pressure, temperature, concentration, catalysis, etc. To put the matter bluntly: the laws of science in and of themselves determine nothing. It is only the laws plus specified conditions that determine concrete events (1992, 70-71).

Lonergan used this feature, the conditionality of scientific laws, as the foundation of his account of emergence of schemes of recurrence. It is true that A is a condition for the occurrence of B in the scheme, "If A occurs, B will occur; if B occurs …" That does not mean, however, that A is the one and only condition for the occurrence of B. In general, we might think of A as the last condition to fall into place so that B occurs. The only thing that singles A out for special consideration from all the other conditions requisite for B is that A just happens to be an event that sets off a self-conditioning scheme that eventually leads back to the recurrence of A. In other words, if all of the other appropriate conditions happen to be fulfilled, then the occurrence of A will result in the occurrence of B and "if B occurs, C will occur; if C occurs … A will recur."

For Lonergan, then, there is such a thing as real emergence. Schemes of recurrence emerge. Schemes of recurrence are not merely spatial aggregations of material particles or random variations. They are really distinct, novel, intelligible functionings. Lonergan writes for example that a biological species "is an intelligible solution to a problem of living in a given environment," that "later species are solutions that … rise upon previous solutions," and that "a solution is the sort of thing that human insight hits upon" (1992, 290). They emerge wholly in accordance with laws of science. No vitalistic force is needed to produce them or breathe life into them. Yet schemes emerge only when the appropriate prior conditions happen to be fulfilled. Lonergan goes on to explain how the assembly of appropriate prior conditions occurs randomly, and hence that there are "probabilities of emergence and probabilities of survival" that pertain to this field of environmental conditions. Indeed he argues that such probabilites undergo dramatic jumps, but that is tangential to the purposes of the present paper.

(3) Conditioned Sequences of Emerging Orders and Development

Lonergan’s explanation of emergence is rolled into his new kind of evolutionary account, "emergent probability," by noting that certain kinds of schemes of recurrence themselves form the prior conditions for other subsequent schemes. "For the actual functioning of earlier schemes in [a] series fulfills the conditions for the possibility of the functioning of later schemes" (1992, 145). Lonergan goes on to explore the various features of this approach to emergence and evolution, and how it has the same scope of explanatory potential as Darwinism, but without its reductionistic tendencies (1992, 145-151 and 155-57). Later he presents a stronger argument that "emergent probability" is indeed the intelligible order of the natural world.

Lonergan draws attention to a particular difficulty that comes to light from this account of emergent probability that is pertinent to the concerns of this conference:

Consider for example the enormous numbers of offspring produced by certain species (e.g., salmon), where on average only two survive to reproductive maturity, the remainder serving as food for other living organisms. Simply put, the intelligibility of strictly natural emergent probability is compatible with the termination and even extinction of particular schemes of recurrence. Lonergan’s way of situating the "conflict" of development within the larger context of evolutionary emergent probability raises a significant issue. On the one had, emergence depends on the continued functioning of prior ecosystems of recurrent schemes. If these are violently destroyed both they and subsequent emergent forms are lost. On the other hand, development cannot proceed without the transformation of prior schemes by later ones. In nature emergent probability "respects" its underlying conditions, and yet it does not leave prior schemes untouched. Both Lonergan and Jane Jacobs seek to comprehend how human development can profit by learning to respect this delicate interplay.

(4) Human Schemes of Cooperation

Lonergan goes on to show the pertinence of emergent probability to the realm of human affairs. He points out that the human world is permeated by schemes of recurrence.

In his account, human social and economic schemes operate, not with the blind laws of natural selection, but through the conscious, self-correcting activity of human inquiry and insight. He argues that arguing that human intelligence is the creative source of innovation and emergence of later social and economic patterns of cooperation from earlier, and as well, of their self-correction.

Human schemes consist of intelligible patterns of relationships that "condition the fulfillment of each man’s desires by his contributions to the desires of others" (1992, 239). For example, every commercial enterprise is a scheme of recurrence of human actions that involves recurrent transactions among suppliers, workers, buyers and recurrent patterns of payments that condition its functioning. Every family involves recurrent schemes that not only continually takes in sustenance from the economy and regularly disposes of waste products, but also regularly distributes mutual acts of love, reassurance, support, discipline, and education amongst its members.

What radically distinguishes human schemes of recurrence from natural ones is that their emergence and survival depend upon acts of human intelligence and choice. Human "practical intelligence devises arrangements for human living" (1992, 239). These arrangements are largely patterns of cooperation that depend upon understanding "what one can expect" of the other person (1992, 248). Human practical intelligence (or "common sense") is the accumulation of innumerable such insights that make possible the full participation in human economic, social and political institutions.

Human insights not only maintain the schemes of human living; they also constantly transform and bring about new schemes. Prior schemes "set problems calling for" insights into inventions, insights into how to organize to distribute the fruits of production ever better, insights into how to reach group agreements and decisions ever more effectively (1992, 233-34). The ongoing development and emergence of human schemes follows what Lonergan called a "self-correcting" process: existing human scheme –> questions about how to do thing better –> insights into improvements –> actions that modify the schemes –> further questions and insights, etc.

This is a most interesting aspect of Lonergan’s understanding of creativity. Far some sort of Romantic notion of creativity that spurns critical intelligence and rationality, creativity in Lonergan’s sense includes and depends upon intelligent criticism. In principle, intelligent self-correction of human patterns of cooperation has the potential to respond intelligently to every difficulty. It can bring about not only technological innovations but also equitable economic distribution and political justice as well. Asking and answering numerous further questions is required to take into account both the immediate and long-term consequences upon intricate networks of recurrent schemes that characterize natural and human ecologies alike. As Lonergan notes, fully intelligent and ethical choices "cannot consistently" undertake initiatives that destroy their underlying conditions, including natural ecological conditions (1992, 629).

The potential for human emergent probability toward ongoing improvement is underpinned by what Lonergan calls the "pure unrestricted desire" to understand, know and realize the good. In principle human beings have an unlimited capacity to ask all sorts of questions and face every sort of problem posed by any scheme of human cooperative living, including questions pertaining to proper care and protection of the natural environment.

(5) Bias and Destruction

To say that human beings have an unlimited capacity to intelligently inquire into every sort of problem posed by their organized efforts does not, of course, mean that human beings actually do so. Unlike natural ecologies, innovations in human social and economic arrangements are all too frequently implemented without the fullness of intelligent self-correction. Real self-correction can occur only when the full complement of further pertinent questions and problems are taken into account and answered by with creative solutions. The possibilities of genuine social and economic self-correction are cut short, Lonergan argues, by the forces of what he terms "bias." He therefore resonates with Jane Jacobs complaint, "we no longer care" to understand "how things really do work, but only what kind of quick easy outer impression they give" (1993, 11). When biases interfere with the full development of intelligence, both the well-functioning of human systems as well as their underlying natural infrastructure is imperiled.

Lonergan’s account of emergent probability in the human order incorporates the fact of human failure to consider questions raised by their endeavors, failures to seek answers even to all the questions they do raise, and refusals to act according to what they come to understand as the best courses of action. He identifies four fundamental forms of bias that distort human collaborative efforts into dysfunctional constellations: psychological aberrations ("dramatic bias"), selfishness disregard ("individual bias"), ethnic, racial, class and gender discrimination ("group bias"), and the narrow-minded disregard for non-immediate consequences, such as long-term environmental impacts ("general bias"). Instances of bias are legion. They all operate by ignoring the reflective processes of asking and answering all the questions that are raised by complex situations. According to Lonergan, biased courses of action that evade intelligent self-correction initiate downward spirals of decline, degradation and destruction not only of natural but also o cultural environments. Biases and decline have their own "logic" – the logic of a vicious cycles that lead to great destruction, unless something acts to reverse their downward trends (1992, 214-23, 242-63).

(6) Grace and Redemption

In using the term "bias" Lonergan characterizes the accumulating devastation in terms of its relation of opposition to the self-correcting potential of intelligence, inquiry, and insight. But as a Christian theologian, Lonergan was clear that the same pattern of decline is a pattern of sin in its relation of opposition to God. Lonergan is in fundamental agreement with St. Augustine’s characterization: "evil is nothing but the removal of good until finally no good remains." And as a Christian theologian, he affirmed that the reversal of sin and its devastating social consequences is by God’s grace. In fact his earliest research was on the development of Aquinas’s theory of grace (2000).

What is distinctive in Lonergan’s own treatment of grace and redemption is his way of situating them in relation to emergent probability. In Insight, he raises the question of God’s solution to the problem of sin, evil, and social decline, and argues that the solution is the emergence of the theological virtues of "faith, hope and love" (1992, 718-25, 741). There he reflects upon redemption as occurring within this universe of emergent probability — "When in the fullness of time" the Redeemer came, as Christian theology has put it.

Soon after Insight, however, Lonergan began to speak about the relationship between emergent world process and redemption more broadly as involving "three dynamics" of creativity and progress (intelligent self-correction), decline and degradation (bias and sin), and redemption and recovery through the healing that takes place in all religious love (1993, 1999a). The religious love, according to Lonergan’s later view, is a constant of human affairs Love heals hatred and bias, and off-sets the corrosive effects of stupidity and wickedness. There is a strain of hatred of nature to be found embedded in the seminal works of some founders of modernity like Machiavelli and Bacon. There is also misanthropic hatred to be found in certain strains of environmental activism. Religious love is love of God, and to love God unconditionally is to love everything God loves–all natural and human creation. Grace, religious love, sets about undoing hatred and making possible healing and discerning, intelligent responses to situations.

As a Christian theologian Lonergan identifies the unconditional love found in all religions with the mission of the Holy Spirit, "God’s love flooding our hearts through the Holy Spirit given to us (Rom 5, 5)" (1972, 105). This dynamic of redemption, Lonergan claims, suffuses all human history and is present through all human affairs, just as is intelligent creativity and biased degradation. The mission of the Holy Spirit reaches full efficacy through the mission of the Son, who inaugurates in emergent probability God-authored schemes testifying to God’s undying redemptive love.

Reductionistic forms of Darwinism tend not only to refute role of God as Creator, to eliminate as superfluous theological considerations of grace. Lonergan to the contrary integrates God’s grace with the evolving character of the natural and human worlds.

II. Jane Jacobs: Across the Nature/Human Divide

Jane Jacobs came to prominence when in the early 1960’s she spearheaded a community organizing effort to block construction of the Lower Manhattan Expressway, handing New York City’s planning czar, Robert Moses, his first ever defeat. During that same period she also wrote and published her book, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, which has become mandatory reading for urbanologists. Her book presented a powerful critique of the then prevailing theories of urban development that underpinned the redevelopment projects of R. Moses’s generation. Just as importantly, Jacobs also offered a nuanced alternative theory of her own, whose principles have received wide reception and verification.

Jacobs has since gone on to extend her original line of investigation in several additional books and numerous articles. In these works she presents her analyses of the ways urban economies function and become dysfunctional. "The basic idea," she writes, is "to try to begin understanding the intricate social and economic order underlying the seeming disorder of cities" (1993, 21-22). In her most recent book The Nature of Economies (2000), Jacobs draws the results of her previous work urban economic patterns into a synthesis with recent researches into biological and dynamic systems (sometimes called "chaos" or "complexity" theory). She argues that exclusive reliance on prevailing economic assumptions – such as marketplace "laws" regarding maximization of profit – are both too abstract and too inadequate. The same assumptions, she claims, that have in many ways led to destruction of natural ecosystems, also lead to destruction of economic vitality as well. She further argues that exactly the same principles (or "processes" as she prefers to call them) that sustain a vital, evolving natural ecologies also underpin robust and dynamic economies. According to Jacobs, both healthy biological systems and healthy economies have four common characteristics: (1) development, (2) expansion, (3) self-maintenance through "self-refueling," and (4) evading collapse. In this section I will explain her analyses of these four fundamental and interconnected characteristics. I will also show how she employs strategically chosen illustrations in order to make the case that both ecologies and economies remain vital and sustainable only when all four processes are present and allowed to operate.

(1) Development

Jacobs initially characterizes all kinds of developments as the interplay of two principles: differentiations emerging from within generalities; and differentiations becoming new generalities from which further differentiations then emerge (16-17). (This closely parallels Lonergan’s schemes of recurrence emerging from prior, conditioning schemes.) By her imaginative and strategic use of illustrations, Jacobs makes a persuasive case that both natural and human developments all follow the same patterns. Examples: (a) An originally generic, undifferentiated cosmic cloud differentiated into a star (our sun) and nine very different sorts of planetary climate systems. One of those (our earthly system) became in turn the new "generality" within which diverse ecosystems and life forms differentiated. (b) In mammalian evolution, successive sequences of differentiations of vertebrate forelimbs have produced hoofs, paws, hands, flippers, and wings. (c) In embryogenesis, the generically indistinguishable cells of a zygote differentiate into ectodermic, mesodermic, endodermic cellular layers, which become new generalities, which in turn differentiate into the multifacited tissues and systems of an adult mammal. (d) The first crude wheel, whatever its origin, has been modified, and its modifications modified, over and again into such differentiations as rimmed spoked wheels and "rimless spoked wheels such as: water mill-wheels, windmills, fans, paddle wheels, propellers, food blenders," solid wheels like "the potter’s wheel … circular saws, rotating dials, phonograph turntables, movie projectors," and so on (25).

To the interplay of these two principles, Jacobs adds a third: all development depends upon co-development (2000, 19). Jacobs insists that it is a great mistake to think of development linearly, as is suggested in biology textbooks by evolutionary trees that trace lines of descent. Such "trees" are too abstract. They prescind from the real fact that concretely, evolution operates not linearly, but "as a web of interdependent co-developments" (19). In other words, any newly differentiated innovation needs a habitat, and habitats consist of intricately interconnected differentations, each of which itself had to have been developed. This is evident in the intricacies of evolved natural ecologies. It is no less evident in human economies, Jacobs argues. In this way Jacobs contextualizes and relativizes competition and survival: "Competiton for feeding and breeding take place in an area. That area is a [co-developed] habitat" (21).

(2) Expansion

The second component in Jacobs’ analysis, expansion, begins with the question, "Why don’t new developments crowd old ones out?" From this question flows her analysis of how both biological and economic environments expand. "The most amazing demonstration of expansion is the sheer volume and weight of biomass on the earth. It expanded from nothing before life began" (43). Expansion here can mean growth in spatial extent, but more to the point, it means growth in complexity. Webs of co-developments do not merely multiply instances; they multiply differences and intertwine differences together into ever more complex systems. In this way co-developments are constantly providing new interstices and niches for still further developments. This is why old developments are not automatically crowded out.

Not content, however, to merely solve the crowding problem, Jacobs offers an account of how the dynamics of expansion work. Reminiscent of the work of Ilya Prigogine, she explains that

In order to illustrate her point, Jacobs contrasts desert with forest environments. Both receive comparable amounts of energy from the sun. Yet in forests

By way of contrast, desserts have relatively few systems for capturing sunlight and converting it into forms usable by other biological systems. The lesson that she wishes to draw from this analysis is that expansion is not primarily a function of external inputs – sunlight – but rather of internal complexity.

Jacobs then turns this analysis upon the phenomena of economic growth.

What "goes on within the conduit" is the complex interdependent patterns of working, producing, trading, and living that characterize each particular settlement. She argues that theories and policies intent upon promoting development have focussed too much upon introducing external inputs – such as large grants and loans – and too little upon existing webs of complexity and the means needed for differentiating and diversifying patterns that already exist. The result of input theories, she argues, has been devastation both of economic and natural ecologies. Here Jacobs is incorporating her earlier work on the dynamics of urban economies (1969, 1985) into the more comprehending world-view linking natural and human orders.

(3) Self-maintenance through Self-refueling

Jacobs distinguishes dynamic natural ecologies and economic ecologies from mere machines by their capacities to "refuel" themselves. What she means by this is that part of the system’s operation is devoted to obtaining the forms of "energy" usable by the system itself. "Part of the energy each takes in from outside itself is spent to capture subsequent infusions of energy, and part of that to capture more infusions, and so on, repeatedly" (2000, 65). Mere mechanical systems, by comparison, are passive with regard to energy acquisition; someone else has to turn the crank or fill the tank, so to speak.

In line with her endorsement of the value of diversity and complexity in other contexts, here, too, Jacobs insists that

Because self-refueling is so crucial to a system’s integrity and survival, this assertion of uniqueness implies, therefore, that it is imperative to learn how each system effects its own form of self-refueling, and to undertake no policy that would imperil it. Once again drawing upon her earlier work, Jacobs argues that vital economic systems refuel themselves by beginning to produce locally what they had previously been importing from outside. Earlier she had devoted much attention to the dynamics of this "import replacing" process (1969, 1985); here she is integrating that earlier analysis into her broadened framework of natural/human ecology.

Jacobs explains that she deliberately coined the term, "self-refueling" in order to avoid certain kinds of moral principles associated with environmental movements that she has found inadequate:

Her point is that simplistic versions of these moral principles can interfere with really understanding how refueling works – preemptively classing certain forms as "bad" before they are properly understood in relation to their environments. This is not to say, however, that Jacobs is unconcerned with the rate at which resources can renew themselves. Quite the contrary; she explicitly acknowledges that all natural systems and human settlements require unearned "gifts" (Lonergan’s earlier schemes) that are "inheritances from earth’s past developments and expansions" in order to start their own developments (2000, 54-55). (More on the theological significance of this observation later.) What she opposes is policies based moral principles that would declare certain categories of innovations in self-refueling to be "off limits" before the concrete situations are fully explored. Rather, in healthy economies, "chains of replacements typically start with goods and services that are easiest to replace at a specific time and in a specific place and replacements can proceed to more complex and difficult ones as … its refueling equipment … diversifies and expands" (2000, 78-79).

In dynamic ecologies self-refueling is itself a dynamic process. It is no mere matter of constantly taking in the same forms of energy in the same way year in and year out. She points out that if this were so, the system would eventually perish. The constancy of the form of its input energy cannot be guaranteed; moreover, by its own expansion, it produces ever increasing amounts of dissipated energy that begin to accumulate in its own environment. Unless the system adapts, it will cease to function.

In any healthy biological or economic ecosystem, therefore, the dynamics of self-refueling both presuppose and are presupposed by the dynamics of development and expansion (2000, 82). Self-refueling takes in appropriate forms of "energy" (inputs, imports). Development modifies the system’s "equipment" including its mechanisms of self-refueling. Expansion converts, recycles, and recombines the energy, altering its dissipated energy (outputs, exports). Altered outputs provide new potential energy sources, which further development, expansion, and self-refueling can make use of. (This, again, is comparable to Lonergan’s account of development.)

(4) Evading Collapse

Because there is no such thing as a "total system," dynamic biological and economic systems characterized by development, expansion and self-refueling also need processes that enable them to survive (when they do survive) both dramatic changes to which they are not already adapted, and unintended consequences of their own functioning. Jacobs argues that there are four basic processes for evading collapse: bifurcations, positive feedback, negative feedback and emergency adaptations. I will forego the rich details of her discussion of these processes, offering just one illustration, and fundamental points that she draws.

"Positive feedback loops" Jacobs writes "permit biomass expansion and economic expansion without loss of dynamic stability" (2000, 94). She illustrates the role that positive feedback can play through an analysis of the dynamics of Grand Banks cod fishing. Here is a clear instance of a system of intertwined natural biological and a human economic systems. Processes of development and expansion led to technological innovations in trawlers, nets, sonar detection, etc., as well as growth in the yield of cod. However, the numbers of fish caught and their sizes eventually began to decline. This led a rise in prices. Rising prices, declines in fish size and yield were forms of positive feedback information. They suggested to many that the intelligent response would be to cut back on the rate of fishing. But in fact just the opposite happened. Instead, the fishing industry responded with more sophisticated equipment and more intensive fishing, requiring greater financial investments. But catches continued to decline, and returns on investments were disappointing: more positive feedback. Yet in 1992 Grand Banks cod fishing collapsed, "a horrendous economic and social disaster … to say nothing of an ecological disaster, whose ramifications are still unknown" (2000, 97). The problem, Jacobs argues, was not "the feedback information, but the response to it." The root problem, she claims, was government subsidies of the escalating growth of fishing. Had the subsidies been added into the costs, "cod would have priced itself out of the market before fish stocks collapsed" (2000, 100).

From this and similar illustrations Jacobs raises two serious considerations. First, each of these manners of evading collapse has an associated "trap." She analyzes the forms of these traps, often through the sorry lessons of human ventures that failed to beware of them (instances of Lonergan’s "general bias").

Second, the existence of traps raise for her the question: "whether our species has inborn traits that restrain habitat destruction"? (2000, 125). This is a way of posing the question of redemption, even though she is not a theologian. She considers several possibilities, among them aesthetic appreciation, fear, awe, but ultimately concludes that it is our intelligence, our moral consciousness, and our awareness that we partake of "processes of development and diversification" that we receive as gifts–which of course is one way of talking about the awareness of grace (2000, 130-32, 146). Elsewhere she identifies love as the source of recovery as when people chose to stay and work together in slums out of love of their neighborhoods (1993, 279-83) and when people act out of care for future generations they will never see. Like Lonergan, therefore, Jacobs is keenly aware of the need for the healing and restorative power of love to reverse the effects of bias against understanding.

III. Conclusion

Of what value is all this exploration by Lonergan and Jacobs of the dynamics of biological and economic ecologies? Jacobs herself offers an answer:

Just as Lonergan emphasizes that emergent probability is not primarily about things but about natural and human processes and schemes, so also Jacobs. These are the "gifts" with which human actions operate. Hence, our focus should be upon them and their natural dynamics of development, their delicate and intricate interdependencies. The better we understand them, the better we can cooperate with them. Actions that ignore or flaunt these dynamics are doomed to have unintended and disastrous consequences. Whether gifts of creation or gifts of grace, they only become effective in human action when they are recognized, properly understood, and willingly cooperated with. The work of Lonergan and Jacobs invite us take on the hard work of understanding how nature and grace are already at work developmentally, and how to better cooperate with their dynamics.

Bibliography

Jane Jacobs:

Bernard J. F. Lonergan, S.J.: