Macroscope (science concept)

In science, the concept of a macroscope is the antithesis of the microscope, namely a method, technique or system by which a very large object can be observed, for example the Earth and its contents,[1][2] or conceptually, the Universe. Obviously, a single system or instrument does not presently exist that could fulfil this function, however its concept may be approached by some current or future combination of existing observational systems.[3][4] The term "macroscope" has also been applied to a method or compendium which can view some more specific aspect of global scientific phenomena in its entirety, such as all plant life,[5] or all life on earth.[6] The term has also been used in the humanities, as a generic label for tools which permit an overview of various other forms of "big data". As discussed here, the concept of a "macroscope" differs in essence from that of the macroscopic scale, which simply takes over from where the microscopic scale leaves off, covering all objects large enough to be visible to the unaided eye.

This article is about the science concept. For Other uses, see Macroscope.

History of the concept

The term "macroscope" was introduced by the ecologist Howard T. Odum in 1971,[7] who used it (in contrast to the microscope, which shows small objects in great detail) to represent a kind of "detail eliminator" which thus permits a better overview of ecological systems for improved management (Odum, 1971, figure 10). Some authors, such as Hidefumi Imura, continue to use the term as more-or-less synonymous with an overview or large scale pattern analysis of data in their field.[8][9]

Odum's concept was then expanded upon by the French scientific thinker Joël de Rosnay, who wrote a book explaining his usage of the concept in 1975; in de Rosnay's view, the macroscope could be turned not only on the natural world but also on human-related systems such as the growth of cities, economics, and the behaviour of humans in society.[1] More recent workers have tended to use the term synonymously with a whole-of-Earth observational system, or portion thereof, underpinned particularly by satellite imagery derived from remote sensing, and/or by in situ observations obtained via sensor networks (see below).

As an extension of its science context, the term "macroscope" has also been applied in the humanities, as a generic term for any tool permitting an overview of, and insight into "big data" collections in that or related areas.[10][11][12] For completeness, it should be mentioned that the concept of a "reverse microscope" is not entirely new: around 80 years earlier, the author Lewis Caroll in the second volume of his novel Sylvie and Bruno, published in 1893, described a fictional professor who includes in his lecture an instrument that will shrink an elephant to the size of a mouse, that he termed the "megaloscope".[13] The Dutch author Kees Boeke also wrote a 1957 book, Cosmic View: The Universe in 40 Jumps,[14] the first portion of which presents images of aspects of the Earth at ever decreasing scales and parallels the subsequent principle of the hypothetical "macroscope" at a series of zoom levels.

Interpretation and practical implementations
Image from a 2007 "macroscope" demonstration concept from the ICT Division of CSIRO, showing physical data from a Fleck wireless sensor network overlaid on Google topographic imagery

The more practical aspect of exactly what constitutes a macroscope has varied through time and according to the interests, requirements, and field of activity of the workers concerned. Odum's initial concept was for the study of ecosystems, by integrating the results of existing methods of surveying, identifying, and classifying their contents, then eliminating fine scale detail to obtain a "big picture" view suitable for analysis and, as needed, simulation. De Rosnay viewed his "macroscope" as a systems-based viewpoint for the study of (among other things) the nature of human society, and understanding of the rationale for human actions. He wrote:

Let us use the macroscope to direct a new look at nature, society, and man and to try to identify new rules of education and action. In its field of vision organizations, events, and evolutions are illuminated by a totally different light. The macroscope filters details and amplifies that which links things together. It is not used to make things larger or smaller but to observe what is at once too great, too slow, and too complex for our eyes (human society, for example, is a gigantic organism that is totally invisible to us).[15]

For some recent workers engaged in scientific surveys of aspects of Earth systems (such as Dornelas et al.), the macroscope is the envisaged set of the observational tools that collectively will deliver the desired synoptic suite of observations over the relevant field of study (in their case for the marine realm, itemised as satellites, drones, camera traps, passive acoustic samplers, biologgers, environmental DNA and human observations),[3] while for others, the macroscope is already here, as a sort of "virtual instrument", with data sources such as Landsat satellite imagery providing the requisite high resolution Earth view,[16][17] and/or wireless sensor networks providing a suite of local, in situ observations.[18][19] In the view of IBM researchers, the macroscope is the technical solution—basically within the realm of data management—that will permit all existing earth and related observations to be integrated and queried for meaningful results. Writing in 2017 they stated:

By 2022 we will use machine-learning algorithms and software to help us organize information about the physical world, helping bring the vast and complex data gathered by billions of devices within the range of our vision and understanding. We call this a "macroscope" – but unlike the microscope to see the very small, or the telescope that can see far away, it is a system of software and algorithms to bring all of Earth's complex data together to analyze it by space and time for meaning.[4][20]

For Craig Mundey of Microsoft, the benefits of the macroscope are not only for observation of the Earth, but also of aspects of the people on it:

As the Earth becomes increasingly instrumented with low-cost, high-bandwidth sensors, we will gain a better understanding of our environment via a virtual, distributed whole-Earth "macroscope"... Massive-scale data analytics will enable real-time tracking of disease and targeted responses to potential pandemics. Our virtual "macroscope" can now be used on ourselves, as well as on our planet.[21]

(Interestingly, in 2020, 11 years after Mundey's above comment was made, researchers were using exactly such techniques in order to gain more insight into the origins of the 2019-2020 COVID-19 pandemic.[22])

Contrasting terminology

The term macroscopic scale differs in usage from the science concept as discussed above; in essence it covers any item large enough to be seen with the unaided eye, in other words, not requiring a microscope to be visualized. Some authors also use "macroscopic" as part of a continuum of successively larger types of scale, commencing with microscopic, then macroscopic, then mesoscopic, and finally megascopic scales.[23]

See also

References
  1. de Rosnay, J. (1975). Le macroscope, vers une vision globale. Editions du Seuil, Paris. English translation available online at http://pespmc1.vub.ac.be/macroscope/default.html
  2. Jerome E. Dobson: "Through the Macroscope: Geography's View of the World". ArcNews, Winter 2011/2012. www.esri.com, accessed 9 June 2020.
  3. Dornelas, Maria; Madin, Elizabeth; et al. (2019). "Towards a macroscope: Leveraging technology to transform the breadth, scale and resolution of macroecological data". Global Ecology and Biogeography. 28 (12): 1937–1948. doi:10.1111/geb.13025. hdl:10023/20955.
  4. www.research.ibm.com: Macroscopes will help us understand Earth's complexity in infinite detail. Accessed 8 June 2020
  5. Ausubel, Jesse H. (2009). "A botanical macroscope". PNAS - Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. 106 (31): 12569–12570. Bibcode:2009PNAS..10612569A. doi:10.1073/pnas.0906757106. PMC 2722277. PMID 19666620.
  6. Encyclopedia of Life, February 2008: "Scientists to explore life's mysteries through encyclopedic 'macroscope'." AAAS EurekaAlert, accessed 06 June 2020.
  7. Howard T. Odum, 1971. Environment, Power, and Society. Wiley, New York, 331 pp.
  8. Imura, H., 2013. Environmental Systems Studies: A Macroscope for Understanding and Operating Spaceship Earth. Springer, 151 pp. ISBN 9784431541257 (original in Japanese, published 2009)
  9. de Magny, G.C., Renaud, F., Durand, P. & Guégan, J.-F., 2008. Health ecology: a new tool, the macroscope. Chapter 8 (pp. 129-148) in Thomas, F., Guégan, J.-F. & Renaud, F. (editors): Ecology and Evolution of Parasitism: Hosts to Ecosystems. Oxford University Press, 240 pp.
  10. Tangherlini, Timothy R. (2013). "The folklore macroscope: challenges for a computational folkloristics". Western Folklore. 72 (1): 7–27. JSTOR 24550905.
  11. Shawn Graham, Ian Milligan and Scott Weingart, 2015. Exploring Big Historical Data: The Historian's Macroscope. World Scientific Publishing Company, 308 pp.
  12. Yun, Joseph T.; Vance, Nickolas; et al. (2020). "The Social Media Macroscope: A science gateway for research using social media data". Future Generation Computer Systems. 111: 819–828. doi:10.1016/j.future.2019.10.029. Retrieved 2020-06-15.
  13. Lewis Carroll, 1893: Sylvie and Bruno Concluded. Macmillan and Co., London and New York. Digitised version available at https://ia800206.us.archive.org/8/items/sylviebrunoconcl00carriala/sylviebrunoconcl00carriala.pdf.
  14. Kees Boeke, 1957: Cosmic View: The Universe in 40 Jumps. John Day Company, New York. ISBN 0-381-98016-2.
  15. de Rosnay, 1975, English translation: Introduction
  16. Amoroso, Ricardo O.; Parma, Ana M.; Orensanz, J. M. (Lobo); Gagliardini, Domingo A. (2011). "Zooming the macroscope: medium-resolution remote sensing as a framework for the assessment of a small-scale fishery". ICES Journal of Marine Science. 68 (4): 696–706. doi:10.1093/icesjms/fsq162. Retrieved 2020-06-10.
  17. Endsley, K.A., 2018: "Remote sensing of socio-ecological dynamics in urban neighborhoods". Pp. 90-106 in Walsh, Stephen (ed.): Comprehensive Remote Sensing, vol. 9. Applications for Societal Benefits. Elsevier, 2018.
  18. Tolle, Gilman; Polastre, Joseph; et al. (2005). "A macroscope in the redwoods". SenSys '05: Proceedings of the 3rd International Conference on Embedded Networked Sensor Systems, November 2005: 51–63. doi:10.1145/1098918.1098925. ISBN 159593054X. S2CID 1233150.
  19. "The geological macroscope". Chapter 8 in Michael Stephenson: Energy and Climate Change: An Introduction to Geological Controls. Elsevier, 2018, 206 pp.
  20. Jeffrey Welser: IBM’s past “5 in 5” predictions – where are they now? IBM Research Blog, September 23, 2020, accessed 12 October 2020.
  21. Mundey, Craig: "The way forward". Pp. 223-226 in Tony Hey, Stewart Tansley and Kristin Tolle (eds): The Fourth Paradigm: Data-Intensive Scientific Discovery. Microsoft Research, 2009. ISBN 978-0-9825442-0-4. Available at https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/Fourth_Paradigm.pdf
  22. Morgan McFall-Johnsen, 2020: "Satellite images and internet trends suggest the coronavirus may have emerged months before China reported it: 'Something was happening in October'". www.businessinsider.com.au, accessed 11 June 2020.
  23. Issautier, Benoît; Viseur, Sophie; Audiganez, Pascal; le Nindre, Yves-Michel (2014). "Impacts of fluvial reservoir heterogeneity on connectivity: Implications in estimating geological storage capacity for CO2". International Journal of Greenhouse Gas Control. 20: 333–349. doi:10.1016/j.ijggc.2013.11.009. Retrieved 2020-11-23.
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