systems ecologist, engineer Metallurgist Adventurer Writer
John Polk Allen (born May 6, 1929, Carnegie, Oklahoma)[1] is a systems ecologist, engineer, metallurgist, adventurer, and writer.[2] Allen is a proponent of the science of biospherics and a pioneer in sustainable co-evolutionary development. He is the founder of Synergia Ranch, and is best known as the inventor and director of research of Biosphere 2, the world's largest vivarium and research facility to study global ecology.[3] Biosphere 2 set multiple records in closed ecological systems work, including degree of sealing tightness, 100% waste and water recycle, and duration of human residence within a closed system (eight people for two years). He is also involved with forestry and reforestation in Puerto Rico where he owns a 1000 acre Mahogany tree farm at Patillas.[4]
Allen was co-producer and dramaturg of Theater of All Possibilities, an internationally touring theater company, and has over two dozen publications to his credit (many under his nom de plume, Johnny Dolphin): half scientific, the remainder in poetry, plays, essays, short stories, novels, and autobiographical fiction. He currently serves as chairman of the Institute of Ecotechnics, an international project development and management company.
Allen graduated from Pauls Valley High School in Carnegie, Oklahoma, in 1946, where he served as editor of the school newspaper and was named valedictorian of his class. From 1946 to 1952 he studied anthropology and history at Northwestern and Oklahoma universities, writing at Stanford University, and served as a machinist in the US Army Corps of Engineers. He earned a metallurgical-mining engineer degree with honors from the Colorado School of Mines in 1957, where he was president of the student body and received the American Gentleman Award; a master's degree with distinction in business administration from Harvard Business School in 1962, where he was a Baker Scholar; and a Certificate in Advanced Physiological Systems for Engineers from the University of Michigan in 1971.
Political activism
In 1951, Allen worked as a factory worker in a meat-packing plant in Chicago, becoming involved in various efforts of community and political activism, serving as the secretary of the Anti-Discrimination Committee for the UPWA-CIO District 10 (which represented 20,000 workers), and helping to organize and lead a march to free Willie McGee, whose conviction and death sentence for rape became a cause célèbre in the burgeoning civil rights movement. While organizing for the Meat Packers Union on the South Side of Chicago, Allen worked alongside acclaimed bass-baritone and actor Paul Robeson and sociologist and leading civil rights activist W.E.B. DuBois.
Metallurgy
After spending the summer of 1956 conducting research on nickel ores for the Battelle Institute, Allen became a senior metallurgist for the Allegheny Ludlum Steel Corporation, where he headed a metals team that developed over thirty alloys to product status. He then became assistant to the vice-president for David Lilienthal's Development and Resources Corporation, conducting regional projects in Iran, Liberia, and the Ivory Coast, where he became proficient in complex regional development.
Travels
In 1963, Allen self-financed a two-year sojourn around the globe by land and sea to study the origins of indigenous cultures and their various approaches to living within their ecosystems. His journeys took him to Africa, Uzbekistan, Afghanistan, Turkey, India, Nepal, Burma, Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, Vietnam, Australia, Japan, and the Philippines. He mixed with Berbers and the avant-garde literary coterie in Tangiers; set up a painting studio in Fez, Morocco; hitch-hiked across North Africa from Tangiers to the Pyramids and Karnak; lived with tribal chiefs in Sudan; traveled with refugees to the Rann of Kutch in India and Pakistan, consulted for the international medical relief organization Project Concern International in Vietnam; lived on a junk with Tankas (Hong Kong boat people); and worked as a journalistic stringer to a foreign correspondent on the Ho Chi Minh trail in South East Asia (visiting twenty-three South Vietnamese provinces in a six-month period).[6][7][8]
Allen's world travels led to his creating a synergistic approach to both science and art. Regarding the confluence of cultures he experienced in Tangiers, he said: "There was the avant-garde art culture with William Burroughs and the people around him, and then the Berber culture which is maybe 6,000 years old and has its roots in the ancient magical traditions, and also the imperial culture of the Spanish, French and British empires. So the combination of the Western imperial culture, the native Berber culture, and the Western avant-garde forced a personal transformation of all values, not just on a mental and emotional level, but on a physiological and social level as well."[9]
Theatrical and literary career
In 1967, Allen co-founded Theater of All Possibilities (TAP) in San Francisco with Kathelin Gray and Marie Harding, a theater company and artistic practice network that toured domestically and internationally from 1968 to 1989. The wandering troupe contributed to multiple agricultural, ecological, and cultural projects, including performances in the Australian Outback, Peruvian Amazon, and the sacred forest in Osogbo, Nigeria. Allen served as co-producer and dramaturge for TAP, founding ten studios while working with collaborators from the sciences, technology, history, and ecology. After the network was formally disbanded in 2010, Allen and Gray created the performance research initiative Theatre for the Reconstitution of Reality (THEATRRR).
Allen began writing poetry, novels, short stories, plays, and autobiographical fiction in earnest in the mid-60s, many of which appeared under the pen name Johnny Dolphin. Highly influenced by the Beat Generation poets and writers of the 1950s and 60s, Allen became a practitioner of the "Tangier School" writing style, a literary movement identified with the fiction of Paul Bowles, Jack Kerouac, and William Burroughs, and the "cut-up" techniques of Burroughs and Brion Gysin. Allen's books include the science-fiction novel Far Out and Far Away: A Novel of Emergent Evolution; poetry collections The Dream and Drink of Freedom, Off the Road, and Wild: Poems, Aphorisms and Short Stories; the short-story collection My Many Kisses; and a trilogy of autobiographical novels: 39 Blows on a Gone Trumpet, Journey Around an Extraordinary Planet, and Liberated Space. His plays have been performed on seven continents, and he has read his work in Paris at George Whitman's Shakespeare and Company, in New York City accompanied by Ornette Coleman, in London with West African musicians at the October Gallery, and in Fort Worth, Texas with the Caravan of Dreams.
Allen's autobiography, Me and the Biospheres (Synergetic Press, 2009), which provides a detailed description of the inspiration and experience that informed Biosphere 2, won the Benjamin Franklin Award for best autobiography/memoir of 2010.[10] Allen was called "Borges with a sense of humor!" by Maria Golia of the Cairo Times.[11]
In 1969, Allen co-founded and became general manager of Synergia Ranch near Santa Fe, New Mexico. The ranch was home to the TAP network from 1969 to 1980, and again from 2000 to 2010. Situated on 130 acres of high altitude grassland, Synergia leased space to architectural enterprises, conducted anti-desertification work, developed special ecologically sustainable agricultural systems, and performed research in solar and wind energy. Over a thousand trees were planted, including 450 fruit trees and organic vegetable gardens. An extensive soil-building program was established, adobe buildings and a geodesic dome designed by Buckminster Fuller[12] were constructed, and subsequent artisan enterprises included pottery, wood, iron, clothing, and leather work. In conjunction with a local construction firm, Synergia built over three dozen adobe buildings in Santa Fe, contributing to a local renaissance of traditional adobe architecture. In 2016, Synergia won the Good Earth award at the New Mexico Organic Agriculture conference in recognition of its land care.[13]
In 1973, Allen co-founded and became director of the Institute of Ecotechnics (IE), an educational, training, and research charity dedicated to the synergetic applications of technology and ecology, the environment, conservation, and heritage. With its U.S. base at Synergia Ranch in Santa Fe and U.K. headquarters at October Gallery in central London (an art gallery founded by IE in 1979 dedicated to the promotion of trans-cultural avant-garde art and artists), IE has organized international conferences focusing on emerging research in biospherics and space exploration. Guest speakers have included architect and systems theorist Buckminster Fuller and adventurer and ethnographer Thor Heyerdahl.
In the early 1970s, in collaboration with TAP, IE constructed the ecological research vessel Heraclitus in Oakland, California, using a Chinese junk model. In 1978 the ship signed a cooperative agreement with the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration to collect weather, wind, cloud, temperature, and rainfall data during its voyages. Heraclitus has since logged over 250,000 nautical miles and undertaken twelve expeditions, including a three-year round-the-world voyage and journey through the tropics exploring the origins of human culture. It has sailed up the Amazon conducting ethno-botanical collections, undertaken oral history documentation in the Mediterranean Sea, and circumnavigated South America with an expedition to Antarctica to study the humpback whale population.[14][15]
In 1983, IE initiated Las Casas de la Selva (Houses of the Forest), a rainforest enrichment project in Puerto Rico, acquiring nearly 1000 acres of land adjacent to the Guavate-Carite Forest with the goal of establishing various methods of forest enrichment and to promote sustainable tropical forestry. With the cooperation of Puerto Rican departments of development and forestry, some 40,000 seedlings of valuable timber species were line-planted to minimize the impact on surrounding forest and conserve biodiversity. In 2017, Las Casas won the Energy Globe award for Puerto Rico.[16] Allen is co-designer of Las Casas and serves as its ecological and business consultant.
In the mid 1980s, along with a team culled from IE that included Margret Augustine, Kathelin Gray, Mark Nelson, Marie Harding, and William F. Dempster, Allen formed the corporation Space Biospheres Ventures (SBV) to invent, construct, and manage Biosphere 2. Project funding came primarily from the joint venture's financial partner Edward Bass's Decisions Investment. The $250,000,000 project[17] would conduct scientific, technical, and management research relevant to understanding the biosphere of the Earth, and as a prototype for permanent life habitats on suitable locations in space.
Allen was inventor, engineer, and executive chairman of Biosphere 2, which was designed to achieve a complex life-support system through the integration of seven areas or "biomes" — rainforest, savannah, desert, marsh, ocean, intensive agriculture, and human habitat. Unique bio-regenerative technologies, such as soil bed reactors for air purification, aquatic waste processing systems, real-time analytic systems, and complex computer monitoring and control systems were developed to create an experimental prototype and test-bed for the stable, permanent life systems needed for space colonization.
Between the years 1987-1991, SBV constructed the 7 million cubic foot (3.14 acres) Biosphere 2 in the foothills of the Santa Catalina Mountains in Oracle, Arizona, in the appropriately Mars-like Sonoran Desert. Allen began the first manned Biosphere Test Module experiment in September 1988, residing in the structure for three days, proving that closed ecological systems could work with humans inside and setting a world record at that time.[18]
The first crew (four men and four women) sealed themselves inside Biosphere 2 on September 26, 1991, and began a two-year experiment to study how the ecosystems inside the artificial biosphere developed. As Allen described in a scientific paper published with Mark Nelson in 1997, "The main objective of the experiment was to determine if an artificial biosphere could operate, increasing storages of energy and biomass, preserving a high level of biodiversity and biomes, stabilizing its waters, soils and atmosphere, increasing information and providing a healthy and creative life for humans working as naturalists, ecosystem scientists, and technicians."[19]
Biosphere 2 captivated the world's attention and imagination; Discover magazine asserted that Biosphere 2 was "the most exciting scientific project to be undertaken in the U.S. since President John F. Kennedy launched us toward the moon,"[20] and talk-show host Phil Donahue, in a live on-site broadcast, called Biosphere 2 "one of the most ambitious man-made projects ever."[21]
Criticism
Biosphere 2 also generated controversy, stemming from a combination of cost overruns, operational challenges, group infighting, and a suspicion, amplified by the media, that Allen's vision for the project centered on how humans could survive the destruction of the planet in the event of nuclear holocaust. In 1991, the New York Times referenced Allen's quote from a 1985 publication, The Biosphere Catalogue (Synergetic Press, 1985), where he discussed how "higher forms of life" could survive the destruction of civilization in biospheres: "A hundred Refugia protected by their own energy resources in mountain caverns could release full-scale life after the skies begin to clear."[22]
The ensuing media scrutiny cast doubt on Allen's goals and methods, and under increasing pressure he resigned as Executive Chairman. Commenting on his change of status, he said: "I feel that this was an unnecessary tragedy and I offer the hand of friendship to Ed Bass to reverse the ongoing calamity and put Biosphere 2 on sound footing for the future of humanity and science."[23] Speaking on his treatment by the media, Allen clarified, "I said the Biosphere was a "Refugia". This word has a technical meaning in biology, it means a place that has a concentration of life diversity... this became, in certain sensationalist hands, interpreted as me being the head of an apocalyptic cult... You can't live in Biosphere 2 if Biosphere 1 were destroyed—at least on earth. It was a dumb smear job."[24]
In June 1994, Allen and the board of SBV dissolved their partnership and transformed the joint venture into a corporation with Ed Bass as the majority owner of Biosphere 2. Allen and the SBV team then formed two new companies, Biospheres, LLC, to design and build the next generation of artificial biospheres, and EcoFrontiers LLC, to carry out projects in rainforest, savannah, sustainable agriculture, and urban biomes related to Earth biosphere problems. These two companies ultimately merged to form Global Ecotechnics Corporation (GCE), an international project development firm owning and managing sustainable ecological research projects, including: Las Casas de la Selva in Puerto Rico; Les Marroniers Conference Center and Provencal farm in Aix-en-Provence, France; Silver Hills Properties in Albuquerque, New Mexico; Lundonia House in London, England, and Birdwood Downs in West Kimberley, Australia. Since its inception, Allen has served as Chairman of GCE.
Despite the criticism that led to Allen's ouster, Biosphere 2 and its initial two-year experiment remains a significant scientific accomplishment, proving the viability of humans living in a man-made, fully recycling ecological system. A wealth of scientific results are available on the findings of the project, including a compendium of research papers published in the journal Ecological Engineering and reprinted in the book Biosphere 2 Research Past and Present.[25]The New Yorker asserted, "Much of what is known about coral reefs and ocean acidification was originally discovered, improbably enough in Arizona, in the self-enclosed, supposedly self-sufficient world known as Biosphere 2."[26] The Discovery Channel rated Biosphere 2 "third in top ten greatest engineering achievements of the twentieth century."[27]
Influences
Allen's work is influenced by the philosophy of geochemist and mineralogist Vladimir Vernadsky, most noted for his book The Biosphere (1926), and Buckminster Fuller, whose theories on whole-systems inter-relatedness was popularized by his two-volume work Synergetics: Explorations in the Geometry of Thinking (1975) and Synergetics 2: Further Explorations in the Geometry of Thinking (1979).[28][29] He described Fuller's influence in an interview with the Italian contemporary art magazine Mousse: "Bucky was a science philosopher and I was an engineering philosopher, so I took it as an engineering problem. An act of putting together a beaucoup d'argent and a beaucoup d'intelligentsia. Or in other words, synergies. Bucky's the one who came up with and really developed the concept of synergy. But I had also developed that, independently, being a metallurgical engineer."[30]
Philosophy
Allen has spoken at a variety of international forums on the emerging science of biospherics; the implications of Biosphere 2 for health, environment, science, and culture; the key role of space biospheres to create data needed to understand Earth's biosphere; and on the necessity for humans to create harmony between ecological systems, world markets, and military technics. He has written or collaborated on over forty scientific publications, papers and presentations, many on biospheric and ecotechnic science and applications of systems ecology that informed Biosphere 2. Notable papers include "Ethnospherics: Origin of Human Cultures, Their Subjugation by the Technosphere, The Beginning of an Ethnosphere, and Steps Needed to Complete the Ethnosphere" (2003), which proposes the need for a cybersphere that gives immediate feedback on technological impacts to the biosphere;[31] and "The Evolution of Humanity: Past, Present, and Possible Future" (2000),[32] which posits that humanity requires a stand-alone taxonomic classification, separate from the primate order of the animal kingdom.
In 1996, Allen delivered a speech at Buckminster Fuller's memorial where he offered insight into the exploratory spirit and synergistic philosophy the two men shared: "I think adventure is where human beings can find the best route to the answer of the question, "Who am I?" You don't have to justify climbing Mount Everest, you don't have to justify diving deeper into the oceans than anyone before, and you don't have to justify going into space. It's an end in itself because it leads to contemplation... It takes you out of superstition and fanaticism. That may be its greatest benefit."[33]
Richard Buckminster Fuller was an American architect, systems theorist, writer, designer, inventor, philosopher, and futurist. He styled his name as R. Buckminster Fuller in his writings, publishing more than 30 books and coining or popularizing such terms as "Spaceship Earth", "Dymaxion", "ephemeralization", "synergetics", and "tensegrity".
The biosphere, also called the ecosphere, is the worldwide sum of all ecosystems. It can also be termed the zone of life on Earth. The biosphere is virtually a closed system with regard to matter, with minimal inputs and outputs. Regarding energy, it is an open system, with photosynthesis capturing solar energy at a rate of around 100 terawatts. By the most general biophysiological definition, the biosphere is the global ecological system integrating all living beings and their relationships, including their interaction with the elements of the lithosphere, cryosphere, hydrosphere, and atmosphere. The biosphere is postulated to have evolved, beginning with a process of biopoiesis or biogenesis, at least some 3.5 billion years ago.
Gaia philosophy is a broadly inclusive term for relating concepts about, humanity as an effect of the life of this planet.
The noosphere is a philosophical concept developed and popularized by the biogeochemist Vladimir Vernadsky and philosopher and Jesuit priest Pierre Teilhard de Chardin. Vernadsky defined the noosphere as the new state of the biosphere, and described it as the planetary "sphere of reason". The noosphere represents the highest stage of biospheric development, that of humankind's rational activities.
University of Arizona Biosphere 2 is an American Earth system science research facility located in Oracle, Arizona. Its mission is to serve as a center for research, outreach, teaching, and lifelong learning about Earth, its living systems, and its place in the universe. It is a 3.14-acre (1.27-hectare) structure originally built to be an artificial, materially closed ecological system, or vivarium. It remains the largest closed ecological system ever created.
John Todd is a Canadian biologist working in the general field of ecological design. He addresses problems of food production and wastewater processing by using ecosystems technologies that incorporate plants, animals and bacteria. Todd has developed "Arks" or "bioshelters", ecologically closed "life-support systems" with the goal of sustainable functioning. He combines alternative technologies for renewable energy, organic farming, aquaculture, hydroponics and architecture to create "living machines" or "eco-machines".
BIOS-3 is an experimental closed ecosystem at the Institute of Biophysics in Krasnoyarsk, Russia.
Howard Thomas Odum, usually cited as H. T. Odum, was an American ecologist. He is known for his pioneering work on ecosystem ecology, and for his provocative proposals for additional laws of thermodynamics, informed by his work on general systems theory.
R. Buckminster Fuller coined the term design science revolution to describe his proposed scientific and socio-economic revolution accomplished by shifting from "weaponry to livingry" through the application of what he called comprehensive anticipatory design science. His World Design Science Decade, proposed to the International Union of Architects in 1961, was an attempt to catalyze the revolution.
The Biosphere, also known as the Montreal Biosphere, is a museum dedicated to the environment in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. It is housed in the former United States pavilion constructed for Expo 67 located within the grounds of Parc Jean-Drapeau on Saint Helen's Island. The museum's geodesic dome was designed by Buckminster Fuller.
Ethnoecology is the scientific study of how different groups of people living in different locations understand the ecosystems around them, and their relationships with surrounding environments.
Edward Perry "Ed" Bass is an American businessman, financier, philanthropist and environmentalist who lives in Fort Worth, Texas. He financed the Biosphere 2 project, an artificial closed ecological system, which was built between 1987 and 1991. He is the chairman of Fine Line, an investment and venture-capital management firm in Fort Worth, and chairman of the board of directors of the Sid W. Richardson Foundation, a philanthropic organization. He was listed as #239 on the Forbes 400 list of wealthiest Americans in 2012, with an estimated net worth of $2 billion.
Synergetics is the empirical study of systems in transformation, with an emphasis on whole system behaviors unpredicted by the behavior of any components in isolation. R. Buckminster Fuller (1895–1983) named and pioneered the field. His two-volume work Synergetics: Explorations in the Geometry of Thinking, in collaboration with E. J. Applewhite, distills a lifetime of research into book form.
A spome is any hypothetical system closed with respect to matter and open with respect to energy capable of sustaining human life indefinitely. The term was coined in 1966 by Isaac Asimov in a paper entitled "There’s No Place Like Spome", published in Atmosphere in Space Cabins and Closed Environments and originally presented as a paper to the American Chemical Society on September 13, 1965. Asimov himself declared his coined word to be uneuphonious, and defined it as being a portmanteau of the two words "space home".
Synergia Ranch is an ecovillage founded in 1969 by John P. Allen, the inventor of Biosphere 2 and Marie Harding, its present manager. It is located in Santa Fe County, New Mexico, 15 miles south of the city of Santa Fe. Synergia Ranch operates as a private retreat and workshop center for small groups.
Mark Nelson is an American ecologist and author based in Santa Fe, New Mexico. His research focuses on closed ecological system research, ecological engineering, restoration of damaged ecosystems, and wastewater recycling. The founding director of the Institute of Ecotechnics in 1973, Nelson was one of the eight original crew members of Biosphere 2 in 1991 and served as the Director of Earth and Space Applications for the project until 1994.
Kathelin Gray is an American director, writer and curator working across many forms. She has co-founded numerous projects which integrate ecology, science and culture. She writes and speaks on the intersection of art and the sciences.
Theater of All Possibilities (TOAP), was an artistic practice network and touring theater founded in 1967 by John Allen, Kathelin Gray and Marie Harding in San Francisco, California, United States. The group worked with collaborators from the sciences, technology, history, and ecology, with the Institute of Ecotechnics as a partner organization on many projects.
The Institute of Ecotechnics is an educational, training and research charity with a special interest in ecotechnology, the environment, conservation, and heritage. With its U.K. headquarters in London, England and its U.S. affiliate in Santa Fe, NM, the institute was founded to "develop and practice the discipline of ecotechnics: the ecology of technics, and the technics of ecology."
Josef Isaevich Gitelson was a Soviet and Russian biophysicist. PhD in biology (1955), DrSc in medicine (1961), Professor, Member of the Russian Academy of Sciences (1991); Corresponding member of the USSR Academy of Sciences (1979), Member of the USSR Academy of Sciences (1990). Director of Institute of Biophysics, Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences (1984-1996). Academic Advisor at this Institute since 1996. Scientific supervisor of Institute of Fundamental Biology and Biotechnology Siberian Federal University. Member of International Academy of Astronautics. Honorary Citizen of Krasnoyarsk Krai since Sept 20, 2013 and the city of Krasnoyarsk. In 2018, JI Gitelson was awarded the highest award of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Lomonosov Gold Medal for the justification and development of the ecological direction of biophysics, which has achieved a number of outstanding fundamental and practical results, in particular, in marine and laboratory studies of bioluminescence.
References
Wikimedia Commons has media related to John P. Allen.
↑ Who's Who in America (63rd ed.). Marquis Who's Who. 2008.
↑ Allen, John. Me and the Biospheres. Synergetic Press. 2009. p. 41.
↑ Alexis (February 23, 2017). "Synergia Ranch Good Earth Award". Santa Fe Farmers Market Institute. Retrieved 2 January 2018.
↑ Allen, John. Me and the Biospheres. Synergetic Press. 2009. p. 54.
↑ Skidmore, Maisie. "How You Can Support the Greatest Artwork on the Oceans". Another Magazine. July 10, 2017. Archived from the original on 9 November 2017. Retrieved 9 November 2017.
↑ Ethnospherics: Origins of human cultures, their subjugation by the technosphere, the beginning of an ethnosphere, and steps needed to complete the ethnosphere http://www.esep.de/articles/esep/2003/E29.pdf
↑ "The Evolution of Humanity: Past, Present, and Possible Future." The Duversity Newsletter. No. 4. 2000.
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