Knowledge sources, narratives, and living in social-ecological systems

At its root, information seeking is often about reducing uncertainty and it can increase “evolutionary fitness in rapidly changing environmental conditions” (Gottlieb et al. 2013). Reducing uncertainty has clear ties to survival. Knowing when rains come or if fruit is ripe, as well as noticing when these conditions change, has enabled human evolutionary success. An intrinsic motivation to understand the physical world helps explain why declarative knowledge has been the focus of much attention throughout human history (cf van Doren 1991; Burke 2000).

In this paper, we invoke biocultural evolution as the basis for thinking about knowledge. More specifically, research from diverse disciplines has found that schema theory offers valuable insight into understanding how humans acquire, store, and access information. Marshall (1995) provides a thorough review of how schema theory has been conceived from Plato to artificial intelligence and notes that “it has played a central role in many influential philosophical and psychological investigations of how we know what we know.” Research on schema has evolved from social science methods (e.g. experiments, surveys) to neuroscience-based efforts that reveal what is happening in the brain as schema develop, when knowledge or memories are retrieved, and if or how decision-making heuristics are influenced (Graber 1988; Schacter et al. 2007; Edelson et al. 2011; Ghosh and Gilboa 2014; Kappes et al. 2020).

Various disciplines have differentially used the term schema or applied alternate terms (e.g. frames, scripts) to the same concept (Marshall 1995; Whitney 2001; Wood et al. 2018). Despite this variation, in their literature review Ghosh and Gilboa (2014) note that there is strong consensus on schema functions, which include facilitating how new information is encoded, expediting information retrieval, and guiding behavior. Individual schema develop via repetition and pattern recognition. A simple example occurs as children learn to differentiate animals. If the first animal they learn is a cat and then they encounter a dog, they may call it a cat because their schema for cat (e.g. four legs, fur, tail) is activated. When given information about differences between cats and dogs, their brains can apply that information to develop a more detailed schema.

Schemata² are how humans organize and store knowledge to navigate the daily bombardment of information. They are “knowledge structures that represent objects or events and provide default assumptions about their characteristics, relationships, and entailments under conditions of incomplete information” (Di Maggio 1997). Schemas are not concrete or detailed, but more like conceptual stereotypes and hence they allow rapid categorization to reduce uncertainty. Schemata and memory are linked as an individual’s schemata influence how well they remember things as well as what they remember (Bartlett 1932; Di Maggio 1997; Kleider et al. 2008; Frost et al. 2015; Greve et al 2019; Cockcroft et al. 2022; Patel et al. 2022). There is now general consensus that memory is not a replicative process, but a reconstructive process whereby “only the gist or overall impression of the material is preserved and rebuilt around pre-existing knowledge structures or schemas” (Mesoudi and Whiten 2008). Memory is adaptive and is always culturally embedded. Counter to prevailing narratives, memory is not an archive of the past, but is a process for dealing with the present and planning for the future (Schacter et al. 2007).

Although adaptability is essential for schema function, there are distinct differences in how the brain processes new information that is congruent with existing schemas compared to incongruent information. Established schemas resist fundamental change (Anderson et al. 1980; Anderson 1983; Campbell 1989; Richter et al. 2019) and significantly influence what an individual pays attention to (Webb and Graziano 2015; Frodin 2017). They create a basis for confirmation bias, whereby individuals seek information that aligns with some existing schema. This phenomenon has long been recognized and in 1620 Francis Bacon observed, “The human understanding, when any proposition has been once laid down (either from general admission and belief, or from the pleasure it affords), forces everything else to add fresh support and confirmation.” When new information does align, it is readily assimilated into that person’s knowledge corpus. When new information does not readily align with or contradicts existing schema, it is either ignored or must be modified so that it can be accommodated within an existing schema (Bartlett 1932, 1958; Axelrod 1973; Tversky and Kahneman 1982; Wicks and Drew 1991; Ghosh and Gilboa 2014; Richter et al. 2019). This language of assimilation and accommodation is intentionally rooted in evolutionary biology. Because he was trained as a biologist, when he began formulating his ideas about schema, Piaget (1976) drew an analogy between assimilating food into the body and assimilating information. Likewise, the idea of accommodation drew upon non-hereditary phenotypic changes seen in embryonic development.

Of course, individuals are embedded in social groups and individual schema are tightly woven with cultural experience (Vygotsky 1978; McVee et al. 2005; Frodin 2017; Anderson 2018). A key tenet in assessing linkages between biological evolution and cultural evolution is how knowledge is transmitted across time (Mesoudi 2017; Dennett 2017; Mesoudi and Whiten 2008). Although there is debate about the specific mechanisms and contexts, there is significant evidence that the uptake of knowledge is rooted in biocultural dynamics of individual cognition (schema) and the complexity of being a social species.

From this starting point in understanding schemas as key cognitive mechanisms, we identify four knowledge sources: knowledge from self, knowledge from observation, socially transmitted knowledge, and shared knowledge. The boundaries of these four knowledge sources are not discrete or static. Rather, they overlap and interact with each other. Taken together, they influence whether someone accepts or rejects ‘knowledge that’ or ‘knowledge how’ and subsequently influence perceptions, attitudes, behaviors relevant to SES. Whether specific knowledge is acknowledged, accepted, or rejected is in constant flux. Figure 1 shows our four knowledge sources as interrelated and that the knowledge acquisition process is embedded in a maelstrom of influences that include emotions, institutions, and power structures (Ostling et al. 2018; Lassig 2016). It is in this milieu that narratives arise and it is under these conditions that we crafted this paper. Our ideas and the choices we made in thinking about this topic, in drafting a manuscript, and in responding to reviewer comments were all subject to knowledge acquisition processes and reflect various cultural narratives. It is beyond the scope of this paper to dig deeply into the broader context shown in Fig. 1, but this context suggests opportunities for future work, for example, to consider how knowledge acquisition within institutions affects narratives about SES management.

Scholars have delineated multiple types of problems, to include social messes (Ackoff 1974; Horn and Weber 2007), divergent and convergent (Schumacher 1977), simple, complicated, and complex (Glouberman and Zimmerman 2002), as well as wicked and tame (Churchman 1967; Rittel and Webber 1973). At one end of the spectrum, social messes, divergent, complex, and wicked problems are amorphous and do not have singular definitions or solutions. In contrast, convergent, simple or tame problems such as constructing a rocket or developing a pesticide, can be solved. While wicked versus tame is often set up as a dichotomous relationship, Head’s (2022) review offers a more nuanced view, suggesting a spectrum of problem configurations ranging from wicked to tame and that considering any issue of concern in concert with its decision-making context are key to determining how wicked something may be. Pertinent to our work, the dichotomous versus spectrum approach reflects differing narratives about the nature of problems with associated ties to knowledge acquisition. The more recent spectrum-based perspective also suggests a shift in narrative over time. Our key point, however, is that there is a tendency to try to push problems toward the tame end of the spectrum in seeking simple and/or permanent resolution. Daviter (2017) notes a paradox in approaches for engaging with wicked problems, “In stark contrast to the widely shared notion that solving wicked problems is not a viable option, a sizable part of the more recent debate appears to promote strategies that are designed to accomplish exactly that.”

Enlightenment ideals established a social narrative that knowledge acquisition should rely on linear, hierarchical, and reductive approaches, which are suitable for addressing tame problems but can be counterproductive when applied to wicked ones (Ison et al. 2015; Cockerill et al. 2017; McKay et al. 2020). Given the evidence for how humans acquire, store, and retrieve knowledge, the dominance of the Enlightenment model makes sense. Because tame problems can be clearly defined, the cause and effect relationships are typically visible and accurate and often lend themselves to binary thinking. This helps to instantiate schema emphasizing reductive approaches that identify causal relationships as the ‘best’ way to solve problems. The undeniable success in addressing a diverse array of tame problems coupled with decreased experiential knowledge of biophysical systems has promulgated a narrative suggesting that humans can fully understand, predict and even control social and biophysical systems (Cockerill et al. 2017). This is often expressed in demands for controlling or eliminating various hazards (e.g. flood, fire) within SES and then placing blame when those hazards manifest (Andrasko 2021, Weir, Neale, Clarke 2021). The persistent power of this narrative is epitomized by the conviction of Italian seismologists for not accurately predicting the risk posed by a 2009 earthquake and the public outrage following their subsequent acquittal (Nosengo 2012; Abbott and Nosengo 2014). SES focused issues reside at the wicked end of the problem spectrum and therefore, require management approaches that allow adaptation as conditions change rather than focusing attention toward a singular endpoint. While wicked problems cannot be addressed using the same processes that solve tame problems, the limits to how humans acquire knowledge resists recognizing and accepting this, even among professionals.

The idea that humans have limited cognitive ability is not new. Miglietti (2020) writes about Swiss naturalist Johann Jakob Scheuchzer who advocated in 1731 that humans need “self-knowledge” to recognize that we cannot possibly know everything we might want to know and that what we do know is always imperfectly known. This caution about human cognition was overpowered by Enlightenment narratives emphasizing the human ability to understand, and subsequently control, the physical environment, which spawned narratives separating humans from “nature” (Cockerill et al. 2017). This cemented a strongly anthropocentric worldview that marginalized other ‘ways of knowing’ including more biocentric or indigenous worldviews (Aho 2019; Relva and Jung 2021). In reaction to Enlightenment rationality and the clear environmental consequences of the Industrial Revolution, Romantic era narratives doubled down on segregating humans from nature in an attempt to benefit both (Cockerill et al. 2017; Cockerill 2021). This was further entrenched as the field of ecology emerged and intentionally segregated humans from the physical environment (Kingsland 2019). This segregation continues to be perpetuated in research (Dalrymple 2022) and in contemporary debates about SES management. In his pivotal work, Dryzek (1997) documents that five of seven dominant environmental discourses subordinate nature to humans. Additionally, culture is often treated as exogenous to SES, yet culture is where shared knowledge accumulates and so must be integral to thinking about how to manage or adapt to SES (Caldas et al. 2015). Any narrative of humans as exceptional and exempt is in direct opposition to the integrated, evolutionarily egalitarian reality of SES. In fact, Dunn (2021) suggests that if human society is to have a long-term future, we must recognize that “there is no boundary between us and nature.”

Akin to the human-nature divide narrative, there are disciplinary narratives that segregate evolution-based from social-cultural based understanding of human thought and action, representing a form of “intellectual apartheid” (Wilson et al. 2014). Those on one side of this divide resist accepting biocultural evolution as foundational to understanding humans generally and how we know things more specifically. In writing about what the future holds for humans, Dunn (2021) emphasizes that we ignore evolution at our own peril. Likewise, Cockerill et al. (2017) posit that, “ignoring the reality of evolution represents a significant barrier to developing realistic ways to implement resilient, adaptive approaches” for living in SES. Still, this reluctance to engage with the very root of human existence is evident across multiple disciplines. Venkatraman (2013) highlights resistance from economics and other behavioral social sciences to embrace neuroscience to help explain decision-making. As Carroll et al. (2017) note, “…scholars in the humanities face heavy institutional resistance to conducting biocultural research.” Despite its clear connection to human cognition and culture, linguists and philosophers of language tend to discount evolutionary explanations for language (Dennett 2017). There are, of course, exceptions and Dennett (2017) notes several linguists who embrace evolutionary thinking while Spink and Cole (2006) offer insight into applying evolutionary psychology in library science to consider how and why people seek information. There are multiple explanations for resistance, including that embracing biocultural evolution requires acknowledging that much of human cognition is unconscious, challenging narratives of free will. Mesoudi (2017) posits that another reason for resisting evolutionary rationales is based on a “reluctance to consider continuities between human behavior and the behavior of other species.” These rationales reflect Enlightenment and Romantic era narratives that established a human-nature divide and posited that humans are superior to other species and hence not subject to the same laws of biology. In more recent history, evolutionary concepts were misinterpreted and misapplied to support various social injustices and therefore became “a pariah concept” for considering human behavior (Wilson et al. 2014). There is no small irony in having a dominant narrative supporting empiricism that simultaneously rejects the abundance of empirical evidence from biocultural evolution. This does, however, reflect the power of various cognitive processes described in this paper, including misplaced accommodation of information that is incongruent with existing schemas. It also reflects the power of shared knowledge as disciplinary narratives constrain change (Wilson et al. 2014).

If humans seek a long tenure on Earth, the status quo is not tenable. One way forward is to consider how and where people acquire knowledge to create narratives and to then use that knowledge to intentionally shift problematic narratives. This approach requires that researchers and practitioners be aware of prevailing schema and concomitant dominant narratives. To be clear, we are not proposing narrative shifts to advocate for any particular position. Our point is that many current narratives present significant barriers to addressing contemporary wicked problems and if humans are to successfully navigate modern SES via mitigating impacts and/or adapting to variation, these narratives must change. There are signals that groundwork is being laid to support such shifts for the focal narratives we have described and we offer several brief examples. It is beyond the scope of this paper to deeply assess these cases, but by bringing them together we hope to prompt discussion and reflection in considering how they demonstrate linkages across knowledge acquisition, narratives, and meeting SES challenges.

Because the complexity of SES is often beyond human cognitive ability to fully grasp, computer models are necessary to understand SES-focused problems. Cooperative modeling projects report that helping people see (i.e. knowledge from observation) inherent complexity is a key benefit to using this approach in SES management. As a specific example, a water planning project in the Middle Rio Grande basin in New Mexico included cooperatively developing a model to create ‘what if’ scenarios. The model revealed multiple unintended consequences, including reduced river flows, if various conservation options were implemented. These results reframed perceptions of water management as a relatively tame problem to recognizing it as a more wicked problem. Because influential people with a strong desire to address water issues were engaged in the modeling process, the model results catalyzed a shift in socially transmitted knowledge about water management, which did affect narratives related to long-term planning (Cockerill et al. 2006).

Relevant to the human—nature divide narrative, across disparate disciplines there is increasing attention focused on the reality that humans are integral to social-ecological systems (Cockerill et al. 2017; Herrero-Jáuregui et al. 2018; Colding and Barthel 2019; Vos et al. 2019) and that any ideal of human agency as being separate from the biophysical world is misplaced (Tábara 2023). Schill and colleagues (2019) argue that humans need to alter their narrative from a human dominant view (e.g. Homo economicus) to thinking of humans as “enearthed”— that is integrated with and dependent upon the biosphere. Water management in Aotearoa, New Zealand offers an applied example where culturally shared knowledge has attempted to re-shape a national narrative about being part of SES. According to Te Ao Māori (Māori worldview), mountains and rivers are perceived as ancestors, not as impersonal objects. Kaitiakitanga is “the ethic of protecting the environment for its own sake, as well as for present and future generations to use and enjoy” (Aho 2019). Te Mana o te Wai refers to the vital importance of water, emphasizing the special connection tangata whenua (people of the land) have with it. When managing freshwater it imposes a hierarchy of obligations, prioritizing first the health and well-being of the water, followed by human health needs (i.e. drinking water) and then enabling other water uses to provide for people’s social, economic and cultural wellbeing (Ministry 2017, 2020, 2023). Since 2014 Te Mana o Te Wai has been recognized as nationally significant and has been included in the National Policy Statement for Freshwater Management and related regulations (Ministry 2017).

This increased recognition of living in SES bodes well for moving away from narratives emphasizing human-nature duality toward more complex narratives decentralizing humans. Despite promising developments, however, challenges remain. For example, at the time of writing, the New Zealand government has walked back national policies based on Te Mana O Te Wai and returned to primary national resource management legislation that aims to “promote the sustainable management of natural and physical resources” (Resource Management Act, 1991). Based on findings in literature reviews about SES frameworks and models, a false human-nature duality persists in the tendency to focus on the social or the ecological rather than their integration (Binder et al. 2013; Herrero-Jáuregui et al. 2018; Cockerill 2024). Likewise, there are issues with balancing benefits of quantitative, empirical methods with the messy, qualitative reality of many SES relationships (Herrero-Jáuregui et al. 2018; Vos et al. 2019; Nagel and Partelow 2022). Overemphasizing empirical approaches can perpetuate treating SES-based concerns like tame problems (Cockerill 2024).

Suggesting the seeds of another narrative shift, there is increasing cross-disciplinary attention to biocultural evolution. Authors of the 2023 paper Multilevel Cultural Evolution represent fields of engineering, business, psychology, public policy, computer studies, public health, and biology as they offer ways to apply biocultural evolution to addressing social issues (Wilson et al. 2023). Similarly, the paper Earth Systems to Anthropocene Systems represents diverse disciplinary fields in proposing an evolution-based system of systems paradigm to address societal concerns and the target audience includes those “engineers and scientists who are unfamiliar with evolutionary mechanisms” (Little et al. 2023). This academic attention is aligned with numerous popular publications that embrace biocultural evolution. Over time, this has the potential to reduce the resistance to including biocultural evolution as core to thinking about living in SES.

Within contemporary SES-specific research and practice, however, there is scant attention paid to biocultural evolution and its role in how SES are perceived as well as how management options are viewed (but do see Schellnhuber et al. 2005). Reviews of SES as a frame for thinking about resilience or sustainability do not explicitly address the evolutionary roots of and limitations to human knowledge acquisition processes. At the same time, research and practice engaged in trying to better manage or adapt to changing SES increasingly acknowledges the power of narratives in how people perceive a particular issue and how they are likely to behave. These efforts reveal that acquiring knowledge about other people’s perspectives or narratives can positively influence group interactions (Eyal et al. 2018; Chabay et al. 2019; Davenport and Rentsch 2020; Relva and Jung 2021). When viewed through a biocultural lens, this is not surprising as storytelling (one kind of narrative), may be at the root of human intelligence (Coen 2019) and is likely key to how we have evolved into the social species we are (Boyd 2018). If employed with an appreciation for biocultural evolution and knowledge acquisition processes, narrative elicitation and storytelling approaches have the potential to introduce new narratives that normalize the concept of wicked problems as well as establish humans as natural and hence subject to biocultural evolution.

One promising narrative elicitation approach is to tap into bioculturally-derived factors that resonate deeply, and often unconsciously, with people. Examples of these factors include identity affirmation, expressions of power or status, collaborating with peers, and caring for next generations. For decades, scholars have proposed using recognized evolved human traits to catalyze behavioral changes necessary to address environmental concerns (Heinen and Low 1992; Penn and Mysterud 2007; Vugt et al. 2014; Wilson et al. 2014). We suggest that applying narrative elicitation techniques intentionally designed to access deep-seated human attributes could influence schema formation and thereby influence how knowledge about SES-related concerns is received, which would subsequently affect perceptions about mitigation or adaptation options. As a specific example, narrative elicitation could take advantage of the human desire for causal explanations. There is evidence that simply asking people to share their views about a contested topic does little to moderate those views, but asking people to generate a narrative to explain causal relationships about how something works, may reveal a knowledge gap that can moderate attitudes (Sloman and Fernbach 2017). “The beauty of causal explanation is that it takes explainers outside of their own belief systems” (Sloman and Fernbach 2017). Applying this understanding of human cognition is at the root of using fuzzy cognitive mapping to engage people in SES-related decisions (cf Gray et al. 2012, 2015). Applying a narrative approach that asks people to explain cause and effect can be useful in getting people to more readily acknowledge the complexity inherent in SES and to better see how and where social systems are fully integrated with ecological systems.