Soil composition emerges from relationships among elemental differences

Evidence

I am a gardener. In my garden I pick up a handful of soil, squeezing it in my fist. The force I apply sticks the matter in my hand together; it holds, and its very elasticity sends me a strong message about its possibilities. But what is going on here? The specific relationships between all of the various elements in the soil—the water content, the specific minerals, the humus and the micro-organisms—work together to create a particular response in my hand and, mediated by the language that I use to interpret it, tell me something about what it can do for the plants growing there. And if I raise the soil to my nose and breathe in deeply, another whole set of messages are sent via the odors that this specific elemental combination creates. All these elements are in a particular differentiating relationship to each other, and to my own senses and prior knowledge about soil. That is, they form a differentiating system of communication that sends messages to me and to other elements in the garden, the plants they feed, for example. I say differentiating here because they are in relationships that make a difference in terms of what they form together; it is the very differences among them, those spaces of relationship, that create the specific quality of the soil as a whole, and eventually of the plants they feed. Any change in those relationships would make a definitive difference in the makeup of the soil and its possibilities for the plants, and eventually the quality of the food I might eat from them. We could say that these changes would be differences that make a difference. They would create the meaning in the system that creates all possible changes creating life. — Rebecca A. Martusewicz, Jeff Edmundson, and John Lupinacci, EcoJustice Education, 468

Categorization

• DEFINE: Concrete demonstration of Bateson’s ‘difference that makes a difference’ using soil as a teachable, sensory example — exactly the kind of curriculum-ready content the reader wants.
• XREF: This hands-on soil observation maps onto listening/observation-as-method threads and eco-justice pedagogy’s place-based inquiry. — connects to: Difference is a generative relationship, not a fixed property of things — Rebecca A. Martusewicz, Jeff Edmundson, and John Lupinacci, EcoJustice Education: Toward Diverse,…, 309; Slope position within a region shapes soil maturity and depth — Vinson Brown, Reading the Woods: Seeing More in…, 242; Earth, air, fire, and water combine to form complex changing substances — Bertrand Russell, History of Western Philosophy, 311

Broader Connections

• Earth, air, fire, and water combine to form complex changing substances #epitomizes (0.82) — Bertrand Russell, History of Western Philosophy, 311
• Slope position within a region shapes soil maturity and depth #expands (0.75) — Vinson Brown, Reading the Woods, 242