An Integrated Educational Convergence Paradigm for Societal Challenges of the Anthropocene

Evolutionary mechanisms enabled humans to profoundly transform Earth systems. Because the resulting Anthropocene systems are highly interdependent and dynamically evolving, often with accelerating rates of cultural and technological evolution, the ensuing family of societal challenges must be framed and addressed in a holistic fashion. An agile, evolutionary, system-of-systems, convergence paradigm, which is based on a partially quantifiable, scientifically falsifiable, formal theoretical framework, can be used to systematically identify, decompose, characterize, and then converge, a nested, evolutionary ensemble of geophysical, biophysical, sociocultural and sociotechnical systems. The paradigm includes a causally coherent conceptual model based on a common language and reconciled ontology, with a hierarchical, extensible and scalable computational framework, an associated decision-support system and an educational pedagogy. The paradigm will require a major transformation in our national and global approach to science and engineering, enabling the creation of a meta-discipline that spans all the disciplines associated with the family of societal challenges of the Anthropocene.