Experiment

An experiment is a set of actions designed to test a hypothesis. Experimentation is the key step in the Scientific Method, because it provides tangible proof that a hypothesis is (probably) true or false.

Once you understand the power of experimentation, and then pause to look at how much experimentation is behind most environmental sustainability problem solving proposals, you will be horrified. There is nearly none. Instead, nearly every article, book, and media appearance is based on the intuitive conclusions of its author. Should we pursue a Global Marshall Plan, as Al Gore argued in Earth in the Balance? Or should we restructure society along the lines of what Natural Capitalism, by Hawken, Lovins, and Lovins, suggested? Or perhaps we should listen to those promoting sustainable development? Or what about Lester Brown's Eco-Economy, or Maurice Strong's Where on Earth Are We Going?, or Only One Earth: The care and maintenance of a small planet, by Barbara Ward and Rene Dubos? Which course is the one we should take? We can't take them all, because they differ. But the showstopper is that none of the above efforts considers change resistance, which is the crux of the problem. So what should we do?

That is the same question that science faced for thousands of years: How can we determine what is truth and what it not? Science and scientists were totally unable to answer that question until recently, when the Scientific Method was perfected in the 17th century. And then, as history has shown, the way forward was so clear, and so much easier to find, that the speed of scientific progress increased over a hundredfold.

The same could happen for the environmental movement if it changed from intuition to experimentation. The hypotheses to be tested all follow the same pattern: We should do (fill in the blank) to solve this part (fill in the blank) of the problem.

In my humble opinion any environmentalist who is promoting a solution that is not based on formal analysis and experimentation is exactly where scientists were before they began using the Scientific Method. There were alchemists and quacks.

The right process, true analysis, and heavy experimentation lie at the heart of all efforts to solve extremely difficult problems. The ideas at Thwink.org are no exception. As promising as they may appear to be, they will never amount to much until they go through experimentation, which is planned. For more on experimentation, see the wikipedia entries on experiment and critical experiment.