Mapping Thematic Space #7: The Center of the “Ecological Interaction” Thematic Space

Introduce the concept of Ecological Complexity

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18 min readFeb 25, 2022

Unit of Analysis of Ecological Level (Oliver Ding, 2020)

The above picture is Unit of Analysis of Ecological Interaction which is a method I developed in July 2020. The ecology view focuses on the “organism — environment” relationship. It suggests each and every living organism has its specific surrounding medium of environment called niche. An organism is also part of other organisms’ environment. Following this general view, I consider “ecological interaction” as “people interacting with their surrounding context” and see “social interaction” as a subset of “ecological interaction” because we can consider other people as social context.

This article introduces a new term called “ecological complexity” as the “center” of my “Ecological Interaction” thematic space.

Part I

Ecological Physics
Ecological Interaction
Understanding Idea Ecology
Artifact-centered Interaction
Units of Analysis

Part II

What’s Ecological Complexity
What’s not Ecological Complexity
Ecological Complexity as a Heuristic Tool
Reduce Ecological Complexity
Increase Ecological Complexity
Curate Ecological Complexity

Part III

A new “Complexity Thinking”
Studies in Ecological Complexity
Complexity, Creativity, Competence

Ecological Physics

In June 2020, I wrote an article titled #SocialPxD — ReEngagement with Twitterville which introduces the Ecological Physics Method and applied it to Twitterville.

I quoted the ecological psychologist James J. Gibson’s ideas from his book The Ecological Approach to Visual Perception (1979/2015) and translated them into the context of Twitter research. The Ecological Physics Method incorporates the following seven aspects: Ecological Environment, Ecological Mechanics, Ecological Invariant, Ecological Events, Ecological Perspective, Ecological Affordance, and Ecological Information into a unified whole framework.

Gibson didn’t use the term Ecological Physics Method, he only used the term Ecological Physics. After reading Gibson’s book, I realized that he used a brand new method to build his theory. In order to summarize his method for cross-disciplinary application, I called the method the Ecological Physics Method.

Ecological Interaction

In July 2020, I expanded my unit of analysis to ecological interaction in order to reflect on my reading experience on Goffman’s Frame Analysis. I made the following diagram to visualize six kinds of context: Physical, Digital, Personal, Social, Figure, and Idea. I named this process of diagramming Ecological Interaction Analysis.

The above diagram presented six kinds of context for the reading case study:

Physical environment as context
Digital ecology as context
Personal psychobiography as context
Social connections as context
Figure ecology as context
Idea ecology as context

An emergent issue is an interaction between people and their figure ecology. I consider this type of interaction as “Quasi-social Interaction” since historical figures are people too but they can’t respond to us.

You can read the full article here: Frame Analysis in Context.

Understanding Idea Ecology

In June 2020, I also developed a framework called HERO U which aims to close the gap between “Theory” and “Practice”. The framework has a diagram called Diagram U for presenting six types of “Objective of Knowing”.

Yesterday I published Activity U: The Landscape of Activity Theory (Part I) and used Diagram U to represent the theoretical development of Activity Theory or Cultural-historical activity theory (CHAT).

This case study is an example of discussing Idea Ecology with the Diagram U.

I also developed a new thinking tool called Concept Dynamics. In order to discuss the complexity of theoretical concepts, I created the diagram below and suggested that every theoretical concept has three basic aspects: ecological reality, conceptual reality, and linguistic reality.

Ecological reality refers to the real experience of discovery in the real world from the perspective of a researcher.
Conceptual reality refers to the outcome of the creative conceptualization process.
Linguistic reality refers to expressional form with verbal and rhetorical effects.

Based on the framework, I believe that an ideal theoretical concept should not have intrinsic contradictions between these three aspects and extrinsic contradictions between these aspects and context which means the dynamic background of the concept. Thus, it is hard work to create an ideal theoretical concept. The harder work is detaching an existing concept from its original context and attaching it to a new context by reconceptualizing it with new meaning.

In Jan 2022, I developed the concept of Thematic Space and its canvas. Now we have a new tool for understanding the idea ecology.

The idea ecology is both a web and a flow. Each idea belongs to at least one thematic space and each thematic space has a center.

Artifact-centered Interaction

In July 2020, I also published an article titled Hammer, Hammering, Affordance: The Materiality Turn and Artifact-centered Interaction, I used the hammer as a metaphor for discussing Artifact-centered Interaction (ACI) which can be considered as a part of Ecological Interaction.

One of the great outcomes of the article is the following chart titled the landscape of Artifact-centered Interaction.

The Landscape of Artifact-centered Interaction (Oliver Ding, 2020)

I used four dimensions and two components (artifact and human) to make the chart. The four dimensions are individual, compositional, systematic, and historical. I don’t consider the imaginative and fictional dimensions, you can add them to the chart if you need them.

As a heuristic tool for theoretical thinking, this chart identifies 16 niches which mean creative spaces of theory-building. For example, we can place Gibson’s affordance at the nice #1. My own idea Curativity theory is about curating pieces into a meaningful whole, thus I can place it in niche #5. My other idea Social Platform Design is about one systematic artifact with many people, it locates in niche #10. Most researchers of IS (information systems) and communication pay attention to the context of organizations, thus their ideas belong to niches #3, #7, #11, and #15. For some archaeologists, their theories can be placed at niche #16. For example, Ian Hodder’s entanglement theory (Entangled, Hodder 2012) can be seen in niche #16 but his other idea assemblage (Assembling catalhoyuk, Hodder and Marciniak 2015) should be placed in niche #7.

What’s Ecological Complexity

The idea behind the above four dimensions (individual, compositional, systematic, and historical) is ecological complexity such as quantity (quantitative complexity), space (spatial complexity), and time (temporal complexity).

The individual dimension only considers one entity such as one artifact and one person.
The compositional dimension and systematic dimension both consider multiple entities, but the former refers to a loose relationship within a group of entities while the latter refers to a group of entities with a stable structure.
The historical dimension considers non-existing entities and the cultural-historical development of entities.

Now it’s time to detach the notion of ecological complexity from the about chart and attach it to the ecological interaction framework.

The above diagram offers a simple model of the concept of Ecological Complexity. We can consider Ecological Complexity is born from the dynamic changes within a nested structure: Context[Event(Entity)].

Then, we can develop a typology of Ecological Complexity in order to test the concept through empirical research. I’d like to highlight the following five types of ecological complexity as a starting point:

Time: temporal complexity
Space: spatial complexity
Number: quantitative complexity
Form: structural complexity
Context: situational complexity

We have discussed temporal complexity, spatial complexity, and quantitative complexity. Let’s look at Form and Context.

For structural complexity, the hierarchical structure of Activity Theory is a good example. The first generation of Activity Theory didn’t have this notion. Leontiev developed this framework and argued that human activities are units of life that are organized into three hierarchical layers: Activity, Actions, and Operations.

For situational complexity, we can learn from Activity U which presents six types of “objective of knowing”. Also, we can consider the dynamics of domains and personal life situations. For example, Daisy Mwanza adopted Activity Systems and developed a method for HCI (human-computer interaction) researchers and designers while Lisa C. Yamagata-Lynch did a similar thing for learning and education researchers. Nardi was a trained anthropologist, but she was disgruntled with anthropology’s total lack of interest in digital technology in the 1980s. Later, she moved to the high-tech industry and appropriated the activity theory.

We can also learn the difference between structural complexity and situational complexity from the above picture which is about diagrams and canvases. A diagram is a representation of conceptualized knowledge while a canvas is an instrument of practical communication. The primary goal of diagrams is to visually express knowledge frameworks while the primary goal of canvases is to enable situational interaction around data and concepts.

Since diagrams are for developing knowledge frameworks, the primary focus of diagramming is structural complexity. However, we use canvases for domain communication which should deal with the situational complexity.

What’s not Ecological Complexity?

The notion of the Ecological Approach is about the “Organism — Environment” relationship. Various theorists from different fields have different versions of ecological approaches. My version of the ecological approach is inspired by the ecological psychologist James J. Gibson.

Gibson told us his philosophical stance by explaining the concept of Affordance, “An important fact about the affordances of the environment is that they are in a sense objective, real, and physical, unlike values and meanings, which are often supposed to be subjective, phenomenal, and mental. But, actually, an affordance is neither an objective property nor a subjective property; or it is both if you like. An affordance cuts across the dichotomy of subjective—objective and helps us to understand its inadequacy. It is both physical and psychical, yet, neither. An affordance points both ways, to the environment and to the observer. ” (p.121)

Let’s replace “affordance” with “ecological complexity” and we get the following statement.

While Gibson’s ecological approach is about the meaning and value of the ecological environment, the notion of ecological complexity considers significant changes in the interaction between humans and context.

Objective complexity is not Ecological Complexity

Objective complexity refers to the complexity of the physical world while Ecological complexity refers to the interaction between humans and the world.

For example, network science is an established science about the objective complexity of our world. For ecological complexity, we consider “network as context” and pay attention to the change of the network.

The above diagram shows the case of “network as context”. a is an entity. A is a network, and B is another network. This structure means a detaches from network A and attaches to network B. From the perspective of ecological complexity, we pay attention to actions of “detaching” and “attaching”.

Another example is “container as context”. The diagram below shows the idea of “container as context”. a is an entity and B is a container. This structure means a attaches to B.

While objective complexity only considers the structure of the container, ecological complexity also considers the change of interaction. The actions of “entering a container” and “exiting from a container” mean a change of the context. This change means complexity and refers to meaning and value, either positive or negative.

Subjective complexity is not Ecological Complexity

Subjective complexity refers to the complexity of the mental world while ecological complexity refers to the interaction between humans and the world.

Subjective complexity is based on personal feelings, tastes, values, and beliefs. This is the focus of traditional psychology. According to Oishi and Graham (2010), “Within various areas of psychology, there have been several historical waves of ecological movements… ” The diagram below presents these waves.

In fact, ecological psychologist Roger G. Barker (1968/1989) once suggested that there is a need for an eco-behavioral science independent of psychology.

He said, “Ecological problems and methods of science can be differentiated with precision from experimental problems and methods…Ecological approaches to scientific problems are not incomplete or defective experimental approaches. On the contrary, they provide knowledge that the best experimentation cannot provide, because experimentation by arranging conditions according to the concerns of the experimenter destroys the very thing an ecological investigation seeks to determine. The importance to science of experimental methods is everywhere recognized, but it is perhaps less widely realized that the ecological side of science is also essential.” (p.356)

I can consider ecological complexity at the camp of “eco-behavioral science”.

Ecological Complexity as a Heuristic Tool

From the practical perspective, I’d like to use the notion of ecological complexity as a heuristic thinking tool for theoretical development and practice development.

There are at least three ways to use the notion of Ecological Complexity as a heuristic thinking tool for theoretical development and practice development:

Reduce Ecological Complexity
Increase Ecological Complexity
Curate Ecological Complexity

Reduce Ecological Complexity

A classical example of reducing ecological complexity is the shipping container which revolutionized transport and international trade in the second half of the twentieth century.

According to Wikipedia, “Containerization led to a significant reduction in the cost of freight transportation by eliminating the need for repeated handling of individual pieces of cargo, and also improved reliability, reduced cargo theft, and cut inventory costs by shortening transit time.”

“Globalization” is an abstract concept, and “Containerization” is one ecological reality of the concept. While the Shipping container is a material thing, Containerization is the interaction based on the material thing. By adopting a standardized box, we reduce the ecological complexity.

A great scalable system starts from a basic unit with minimal ecological complexity. Let’s see a digital example: Slack.

Slack uses the method of hashtag to organize all conversations within an organization. The notion of hashtag reduces the ecological complexity of corporate communication.

Increase Ecological Complexity

The rise of Snapchat is a well-known story for most people, especially researchers, designers, and product innovators. I will focus on their initial feature.

Snapchat was launched in Sept 2011. Originally, Snapchat was a multimedia messaging app with a unique feature: pictures and messages are usually only available for a short time before they become inaccessible to their recipients.

In 2013, Snapchat’s researcher Nathan Jurgenson published an article on their blog. He gave Snapchat the tag “Temporary Social Media” and placed Snapchat as a leader of the new category. He said, “…Alternatively, not recording something for posterity can mean remembering more. For example, the Snapchat countdown timer demands an urgency of attention; when you look fast, you look hard. The image might not be perfectly remembered but the story it tells and how you feel in that moment become most salient. Permanent social media fixates on the details of a photo, whereas temporary social media fixates on what it meant and what it moved within you.”

Jurgenson talked about the relationship between temporary social media and memory. I’d like to provide another explanation from the perspective of ecological complexity:

Temporary social media increases ecological complexity.

If you receive pictures and messages from your close friends and these contents are only available for a short time before they become inaccessible, you will react to these contents immediately. Thus, you take more action on temporary social media than on permanent social media. Taking more actions means increasing ecological complexity.

Curate Ecological Complexity

The Swiss Army Knife is a great example of curating ecological complexity. If one tool can be used as many tools, then we can use one tool to cope with ecological complexity. Originally, the ecological complexity is distributed within our interactions with many tools, the curated ecological complexity is contained within our interactions with one tool.

Another famous example is Apple’s iPhone. The screenshot below shows the flashlight button. Traditionally, the flashlight is an independent artifact. Now, the flashlight is a feature of the iPhone.

Apple’s iPhone also curated other our interactions with other artifacts together. For example, Camera. Traditionally, the Camera is an independent artifact. Now, the Camera is just a button.

The disappearance of a traditional artifact and the appearance of a new artifact change ecological complexity within our everyday life and work. Some people use “multifunction”, “Evolutionary Tree (from TRIZ)” and other ideas for discussing the trend of technology development. These ideas can be considered objective complexity.

A new “Complexity Thinking”

Traditionally, “complexity thinking” is understood as connecting with complex systems, network sciences, and emergence theory. For example, let’s look at a short description of complexity science from the website of Freedom Lab: “Complexity science is an interdisciplinary field of studies spanning subjects from physics and biology to economics, to the social world. The field aims to analyze complex systems: systems that cannot be reduced to their constitutive components and contain many non-linear and dynamic interactions. Given the increased interconnectedness of the world (e.g. due to digitization and globalization) and the fact that many of the world’s largest challenges can be considered ‘wicked problems’, complexity theory will increasingly become part of the toolbox of the 21st-century researcher.”

Source: Social Emergence (R. Keith Sawyer, 2005. p.21)

The above diagram is quoted from R. Keith Sawyer’s book Social Emergence: Societies as Complex Systems (2005). According to Sawyer, “First- and second-wave theorists were not focused on emergence….all of the social science contributions to second-wave systems theory have been from methodologically individualist social scientists. This history has left second-wave system theory with severe weaknesses that make it inappropriate for application to sociology…Third-wave systems theorists are fundamentally concerned with emergence, component interactions, and relations between levels of analysis.”

As mentioned above, network sciences can be seen as objective complexity. Systems theory and Social Emergence theory can be considered objective complexity too.

Ecological complexity doesn’t adopt “system” as a main metaphor but uses “environment” as a foundation. Ecological Complexity focuses on the change in the environment such as artifacts.

The above discussion points to the uniqueness of ecological complexity. We even can trace back to Gibson’s philosophical thought. According to Edward S. Reed, Gibson’s idea can be seen as “experience + action”.

The primary difference between Holt and the young Gibson lay in the latter’s evenhanded treatment of both action and experience. “Holt didn’t believe in phenomenology,” Gibson (1979c, 89) was to recall years later. Even at his most behavioristic, Gibson not only believed in phenomenology, but also used it to guide his research and theorizing. Gibson’s psychology united experience and action, whereas James’s psychology had applied only to experience and Holt’s only to action.

Though Gibson’s affordance theory is a great ecological theory, we still can discover new ideas for understanding ecological complexity by following Gibson’s direction.

Studies in Ecological Complexity

Before 2014, I spent most of my spare time on digital nonprofit communities as a digital activist. From 2014 to 2015, I changed my focus to theoretical learning. Since then, I have been spending most of my spare time learning ecological psychology, creativity research, and other related subjects.

After learning ecological psychology for five years, I wrote a book titled Curativity from Sept 2018 to March 2019. During the process of writing, I developed a new theoretical approach called the Ecological Practice Approach which aims to build an Affordance-based theory of action and apply ideas of ecological psychology to analyze various social practices.

After March 2019, I continuously worked on revising Curativity and developed the Ecological Practice Approach as a new project. Three months ago, I wrote another book titled After Affordance in which I proposed several new theoretical ideas for expanding ecological psychology to the modern digital environment.

I also had a plan for the Affordance Analysis project which is about the affordance-centered idea ecology.

These three projects form a series: Studies in Ecological Complexity. The above picture shows their different themes.

Affordance Analysis: From Potential to Actual
After Affordance: From Attach to Detach
Curativity: From Pieces to Whole

The diagram below describes the evolution of my idea. After reviewing many Affordance-inspired concepts and related works in various domains, I went back to Ecological Physics which is behind ecological psychology. I developed a method based on Ecological Physics in June 2020. Later, I realized I found my own path of discovery.

Baggs and Chemero (2020) argued the meaning of “ecological psychology” is not clear, they suggested that “… Gibson’s ecological approach can perhaps be read as an unprecedented account of the conditions of mental life: it is an account of the structure of things ‘out there’ — the structure that an animal can potentially come into contact with. What it generally is not is an account of what animals actually do when they come into contact with their surroundings.”

I hope the concept of ecological complexity can solve this issue. Under the umbrella of “Ecological Complexity”, we can explore the structure of things out there, and more ideas behind the structure. We can also discuss both potential and actual. We can even study both physical surroundings and digital surroundings with the same approach and method.

Complexity, Creativity, Competence

As Baggs and Chemero (2020) pointed out, “The success of a behavioral science research should ultimately be measured by what it can be used for…two ways in which the ecological approach can inform practical interventions in everyday life. First, we can reconfigure the habitat in order to make it easier for actors to carry out some task. Second, we can reconfigure the animal by educating them to attend to their surroundings…”

For practical ecological interventions, we can use 3C to organize our plan:

Complexity: Understand the ecological complexity with special theoretical concepts and frameworks.
Creativity: Encourage creative approaches to cope with negative ecological complexity and engage with positive ecological complexity
Competence: Educate actors and improve their knowledge and skills for mastering ecological complexity

One unique aspect of ecological complexity is that it is observable in the daily real-life world. For example, I took many pictures to record real-life situations about affordance. These pictures became my research materials and can be used for educational purposes in the future.

The above picture was taken in a swimming school’s observation room. The owner of the swimming school cut tennis balls and used them for the pads of chairs in order to protect the floor.

No one likes complexity. However, complexity is something we can no longer ignore. Also, it can be positive too.

The Ecological Practice Approach

What’s the difference between “Ecological Complexity” and the Ecological Practice Approach?

As mentioned above, the notion of “Ecological Complexity” is the center of “Ecological Interaction” which adopts the perspective of individuals.

However, the Ecological Practice Approach expands the individual perspective to the “practice” perspective. For the Ecological Practice Approach, the goal is to develop a new social theory that echoes the ecological approach.

If we work on the “Ecological Interaction” project, then Affordance is a core concept of our activities. But we only consider Affordance as a starting point for the Ecological Practice approach. For example, the core of the Ecological Practice approach is the following ideas:

Attachance: detach a thing from a container or attach a thing to a container
Supportance: potential action opportunities offered by Social Environments
Infoniche: Affordances + Supportances
Lifeway: a set of Affordances
Lifeform: a set of Supportances
Lifesystem: Lifeway + Lifeform
Curativity: curate pieces into a meaningful whole (an affordance is a piece too)
Possible Practice: possible actions lead to possible practice

If we roughly adopt the diagram of the Lifesystem framework to understand the relationship between “Ecological Interaction” and “Ecological Practice”.

Lifeway refers to individual actions while Lifeform refers to social context. Lifeway is more above Ecological Interaction while Lifeform is more about Ecological Practice. Or we can say Ecological Interaction is part of Ecological Practice.

The good news is that the Lifesystem framework is a practical framework for life-change innovation. In the real-life world, we need to adopt multiple perspectives to reflect on our practice.

This article is part of the Slow Cognition project and its focus is Thematic Space and Developing Tacit Knowledge. I have introduced the concept of Thematic Space and discussed related ideas in the following articles:

The theme of this article is that we can define a Center for a thematic space. A “Center” should have its own uniqueness in order to establish its identity and theme. Otherwise, there is no need to build a “Center”.

If we can define a “Center” for a thematic space, then we can develop a new knowledge project around the “Center”.

You are most welcome to connect via the following social platforms:

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/oliverding
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