The
idea that one can create a field of science out of thin air—just because of
societal and policy need—is a bold concept. But for the emerging field of
sustainability science, sorting among theoretical and applied scientific
disciplines, making sense of potentially divergent theory, practice, and policy,
the gamble has paid off.
In the
Proceedings of the National Academy of
Sciences, scientists from Los Alamos National Laboratory, Santa Fe
Institute, and Indiana
University analyzed the
field’s temporal evolution, geographic distribution, disciplinary composition,
and collaboration structure.
“We
don’t know if sustainability science will solve the essential problems it seeks
to address, but there is a legitimate scientific practice in place now,”
says Luís Bettencourt of Los Alamos National Laboratory and Santa Fe Institute,
first author on the paper, “Evolution and structure of sustainability
science.”
The
team’s work shows that although sustainability science has been growing explosively
since the late 1980s, only in the last decade has the field matured into a
cohesive area of science. Thanks to the emergence of a giant component of
scientific collaboration spanning the globe and an array of diverse traditional
disciplines, there is now an integrated scientific field of sustainability
science as an unusual, inclusive, and ubiquitous scientific practice.
The
researchers used an exhaustive literature search to determine if the field can
truly be categorized as a legitimate science, using population modeling and
documenting technical papers’ evolution over time, worldwide author
distribution, range of sciences involved, and the collaboration structure of
the participants. Many of these techniques form the basis of a new science of
science, which allows researchers to analyze and predict the development of
scientific and technological fields.
The
researchers ask, “How has it been changing, and who are its contributors in
terms of geographic and disciplinary composition? Most important, is the field
fulfilling its ambitious program of generating a new synthesis of social,
biological, and applied disciplines, and is it spanning locations that have
both the capabilities and needs for its insights?”
Bettencourt
says that they concluded that the field is both applied and basic, spanning
worldwide institutions, governments, and corporations, but the key is the
collaboration network that evolved in about the year 2000. “This has never been
done, starting a worldwide scientific field defined mainly by the need for
informed global social practice and policy,” Bettencourt says, “but
sustainability science shows that it can be done.”