Simplexity and the Reinvention of Equifinality

Some earth surface systems apparently exhibit deterministic chaos, where small differences in initial conditions produce increasingly divergent results. This casts doubt on the venerable concept of equifinality, whereby surface features converge to similar forms. However, chaotic systems exhibit a broader-scale order, and their complex patterns occur within well-defined limits. This broad-scale order arising from smaller-scale chaos produces simplexity, where simple rules and regularities emerge from underlying complexity, when the broad-scale structures are independent of the fine-scale details. Chaos precludes equifinality, sensu stricto, at certain scales, but simplexity produces equifinality at others. Simplexity is illustrated in a case study of soil-landform relationships.     

The Irish rebellion of 1798

The Rebellion in Wicklow 1798 Ruan O'donnell, 1998 Dublin, Irish Academic Press pp.441, ISBN 0.7165.2659.X, £39.50 (hb)

On the Road to Rebellion: The United Irishmen and Hamburg 1796–1803 Paul Weber, 1997 Dublin, Four Courts Press pp.205, ISBN 9.781851.82311.6, £30.00 (hb)

The Summer Soldiers: The 1798 Rebellion in Antrim and Down A. T. Q. Stewart, 1995 Belfast, The Blackstaff Press pp. 294, ISBN 0.85640.558.2, £12.99 (pb)

1798: Rebellion in County Down Myrtle Hill, Brian Turner & Kenneth Dawson (eds), 1998 Gortrush, Colourpoint pp.286, ISBN 1.898392.44.7, £8.99 (pb)

The Sites of the 1798 Rising in Antrim and Down Bill Wilsdon, 1997 Belfast, The Blackstaff Press pp. 191, ISBN 85640.615.5, £7.99 (pb)     

Common Roots and Entangled Limbs: Earth First! and the Growth of Post-Wilderness Environmentalism on California's North Coast

Conflicts over the protection of redwood trees on California's North Coast are often depicted as following the trajectory of the radical wing of the larger American environmental movement, in which "radical" refers to the sharpness of the boundary drawn and defended between human despoliation and pure nature or "wilderness." Earth First!—an environmental organization characterized by their slogan, "No compromise in the defense of Mother Earth!"—is often depicted as simply the leading edge of this deepening rift between nature and culture. I argue, on the contrary, that the Earth First! branches on California's North Coast should be understood as making bold, if incomplete, attempts to cast off the problematic nature–culture dichotomy and to define social justice and ecological health as struggles with a common root. By moving beyond wilderness, the North Coast Earth First! offers the promise of a truly radical movement, by which I mean one which truly confronts capital's interlinked degradation of both natural and human communities. This article examines the efforts by the North Coast Earth First! to inscribe a new community of activists and timber-workers joined in the struggle to contest corporate claims on the redwood forest. It explores the ambiguous effects of activists' "embodied" and "home-based" practices on this budding alliance, particularly the ways in which such practices also have alienated workers by redefining the redwood forest as the exclusive property of the activists' themselves.