Resilience: Accounting for the Noncomputable

Plans to solve complex environmental problems should always consider the role of surprise. Nevertheless, there is a tendency to emphasize known computable aspects of a problem while neglecting aspects that are unknown and failing to ask questions about them. The tendency to ignore the noncomputable can be countered by considering a wide range of perspectives, encouraging transparency with regard to conflicting viewpoints, stimulating a diversity of models, and managing for the emergence of new syntheses that reorganize fragmentary knowledge.

Carpenter, S.R., C. Folke, M. Scheffer and F. Westley. 2009. Resilience: Accounting for the Noncomputable. Ecology and Society 14(1):13.