Causality and complex systems in the geosciences

Abstract

• Geoscientists often conceptualize parts of the world as complex open systems in which nonlinear feedback mechanisms lead to patterns and of which the historic development needs to be reconstructed. • While geoscientists share the object of their investigations – the Earth, many different approaches and methods coexist to study causes and mechanisms of patterns in time and space. • Two case studies illustrate how the variety of approaches and methods can lead to confusions and disagreements amongst geoscientists of different disciplines. • The variety of implicit conceptualizations of causation is one of the factors underlying confusions and disagreements. It is unclear how geoscientists integrate mechanistic and probabilistic ways of causation, and whether this affects how they decompose complex open systems.