Environment and Umwelt: Grand Challenges and Intelligent Self-Limitation

This commentary presents an epistemological perspective on grand challenges (GCs) suggesting that the distinction between Umwelt (what social systems observe) and environment (the surrounding but unobserved world) can help us provide deeper analyses of GCs. I argue that indifference to the environment outside the observed Umwelt is a root cause of GCs and suggest that organizations must compensate for society’s inability to address GCs by developing forms of intelligent self-limitation.