Environmental educators do not merely criticise explanations, knowledge and understanding for being reductionistic and mechanistic, but also for being linear. In this third blogpost, I would like to challenge the idea that linear explanations and thinking are necessarily dangerous. I will do this not by presenting a methodological argument (for example, asserting that linear explanations are needed or important to generate stable or usable knowledge), but instead through arguing for how it appears in ecologies. This sets me up in contrast to the common trope that ecologies are circular and therefore ecological thinking is inherently circular as well. This is based on a very simplistic notion of what ecologies are.
Relative to a linear view that only sees things in terms of x -> y type interactions, circular conceptions (such as we find in feedback loops, cycles, and so on) is a dramatic improvement. The world is not a series of causal chains disconnected from one another, and treating it as such is highly destructive. But the opposite conclusion, that circularity is what ‘actually’ exists and linearity is an abstract illusion, is itself still an abstraction. Ecological processes involve both circular and linear processes, and the distinction between them is as important as their interplay.
Let’s address ‘cyclical’ processes first. A cycle is a kind of circularity that tends to repeat the same pattern again and again. It is important to consider how pervasive feedback loops actually are. Some might conceive that feedback loops only occur in the relationship between living things, while they are absent in processes like ‘gravity’ and therefore irrelevant when considering the constitution of (say) the cycle of the moon. (Of course, for those holding this view, the cycle of the moon may in turn participate in many other feedback loops generating cycles, so long as living organisms are part of the processes – e.g. menstruation?). However, holding this view is part of the long shadow of the Newtonian picture, which essentially saw gravity as an instantaneous (action-at-a-distance) tug of war between two objects. From the Einsteinian perspective, the gravitational field interacts with itself, and the energy lost to gravity changes the orbit, which in turn changes the gravitational attraction. In relativity theory, gravitational attraction between objects occurs as a feedback loop in time.
Cycles can be considered as feedback loops that generate recurring temporal patterns. When we stop and ask why there aren’t ‘just’ recurring patterns, we take the first step to understanding the importance of linear interactions in ecologies. But before getting there, we need to first address what might seem like two possible answers: 1) change is possible because positive feedback loops destabilise negative feedback loops, and 2) change is possible because different feedback loops (even different negative ones) at different space and time scales disrupt each other. I suggest that while obviously both these cases are true, neither is necessary, and moreover, even if they were necessary, they still do not discount the presence of linearity.
First, let’s consider positive feedback loops. Positive feedback loops exacerbate certain relationships, driving things exponentially towards infinity or zero. They are intrinsically unstable and crash. While it is clear that positive feedback loops generate change and disrupt the balancing processes of negative feedback, if they crash, we are forced to ask why positive feedback loops don’t themselves go extinct? After they all crash, why do they keep coming back?
The reason is because positive feedback loops alone do not explain what gives rise to their possibility from out of a balanced relationship. What is needed is an account of contingency: events that disrupt order and are the conditions for both new patterns of order and of disorder. Such events are widespread, both because systems are never sealed from what is outside of them, and because randomness also occurs from within.
Second, let’s consider circularities interacting between space and/or time scales. Circular conceptions perceive connections missed out when parsing the world into linear interactions. Some might argue that the problem is that a circular interaction is itself an abstraction, insofar as the world is more interconnected, and therefore involved in more kinds of recursive networking than any possible model can capture. From this point of view, what I view as the linear rupture of a given circular process should itself be attributed to how different circularities (in different space and time scales) interact. Surely such interactions happen. However, this does not cast doubt on the existence of linearity in the world. In response to the claim that ‘everything is interconnected’, one reply is ‘well, yes, but not everything is equally interconnected’. Another way of putting this, is that there are different ways in which things are interconnected, depending on the state of the system at a time. For example, some connections reinforce stability, others produce change.
Let’s consider how the integrity of a cell requires it maintains a series of internal and external relations. As it does this, there are events that arise that are not necessary or normal, and possibly deleterious for the cell, such as a temperature shift, a new chemical in the environment, etc. In many cases, these events are utterly new, arising from geological or exoplanetary factors for example. But for the sake of the its-all-cycles argument, let’s assume this shift or chemical has occurred before, say in some long ‘season’ in which they return every several million years. In this case, either the cell type existed back then or its ancestor did. If the latter, it is obvious that however the cell responds will itself be ‘new’ and therefore a real case of linear causality. However, what if the cell type did exist back then? We can imagine that the temperature or chemical cycle might be something it would ‘expect’, and have a repertoire to respond as certain gene regulation patterns kick in that are normally dormant. However, even here, unless every condition remained the same, it is difficult to imagine the cell would behave exactly as it did previously. For starters, other organisms in its environment will likely have evolved, to some extent are approaching this change as ‘new’ by doing new things in response, and altering the cell’s environment. But even if (miraculously) they were not, it is a fact that cells do new things spontaneously even in highly controlled environments. Of course, all of this grants too much: the cell would have changed in many ways in between each cycle.
The case for linearity is clearer when we consider how dramatic contingent events such as Theia smashing into the earth, the development of photosynthesising bacteria, or the evolution of human consciousness, have upheaved the existing order. In these instances, many things go extinct and previously well-operating negative feedback loops either fail to persist or reorganise into less functional relations. But what is also unleashed is the possibility for new relations, and so negative feedback loops between aerobic organisms and photosynthetic ones eventually evolved, while Theia stabilised the Earth’s axial tilt, giving way to more consistent seasons and climate, essential for further life. What will happen in the aftermath of human destruction, and how we are part of the subsequent flourishing is an open question. Single events rupture the order of circularity with opportunities but also many dangers, and nothing is assured.
Single contingent events are linear (they follow a very obvious x -> y causality) and not circular or cyclical. For that reason, it is perhaps wise that environmental educators are suspicious of linearity. Such events are dangerous and full of risk. One of the might wipe us out entirely. But they are also essential and not necessarily dramatic as the examples above suggest. Every gene mutation is a case in point. And it is important to acknowledge that circularity without linearity is just a well functioning machine – which is another concept that environmental educators resist. In fact, what we usually refer to as a ‘machine’ is precisely that which is unable to exapt or adapt to contingent events. Linear events deteriorate or destroy machines. So linearity is the true enemy of mechanism (and mechanism is an attempt at closed loop circularity). By contrast, linearity is intrinsically connected to creativity when it interacts with circular systems.
Part of the confusion, I think, is that there are two common opposites to linearity. It is sometimes contrasted with circularity, but other times with nonlinearity. The meaning of nonlinear is itself vague. In some cases, it means that the maths required to model the systems are not linear equations (in other words, the function has some exponential making it curved, and so on). In other cases, it means something like being intrinsically unpredictable (like the equations from chaos theory). think it is clear from the discussion above circular systems can be nonlinear in the first sense but not necessarily in the second. It is, however, the second sense that is the interesting one: those cases where one event causes another one, and history changes as a result.
Linear and circular concepts of time
There is a common trope that Western time is ‘linear’ while some Indigenous cultures see time as ‘circular’. I think this probably both bad philosophy and bad anthropology. While I admit to ignorance here, I do not see how an Indigenous culture, steeped in close attention to the land and inherited knowledge, would not clearly see how new events come into the scene, even if they emphasise the return of cycles such as seasons and the like. Conversley, ‘the west’, however allegedly linear, has identified thousands of cycles through scientific investigation, circularities within circularities all the way up and down. It is hard to imagine a culture that does not conceive of some interplay between linear and circular time, between what is new and what returns, though they may emphasise these differently in important ways.
Finally, radically ‘circular’ conceptions of time, such as Nietzsche’s (western) eternal return (1882), don’t seem to really help out in ecologising thinking – precisely because linearity is gone. After all, it is because linearity exists that humans can mess up ecological circularity, and it is also because linearity exists that we might turn things around -or not.
References
Affifi, R. (2025). My baby and his beeping box. Ecologising Education blogpost. https://ramseyaffifi.org/blog/my-baby-and-his-beeping-box/
Affifi, R. (2025). Misunderstanding ‘reductionism’ in environmental education research. https://ramseyaffifi.org/blog/misunderstanding-reductionism-in-environmental-education/
Nietzsche, F. (1882). The Gay Science (Kauffman, trans.). Vintage Books.
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