Modern science has so far had little effect on our patterns of thinking, and we still respond to crises using medieval disputation. Yet, one of the principles of movement in the universe takes us close to the ancient Chinese view of the dynamics of the cosmos. Whenever a situation occurs in which something is disturbed from an intermediate position, the forces tending to restore the changing matter to its intermediate position are exactly proportional to its displacement from that position. A curve of harmonic variation is generated, the intermediate position in relation to the extremes may be visualised as a time-line. This may be suitably demonstrated with the so-called constancy of orbiting planets, the concentration of blood sugar as well as with the level of aggression in a school playground. Harmonic oscillations around a measurable objective is also the basis of the operational planning cycle of conservation management.

The rules that define this dynamic equilibrium are the principles of Le Chatelier, applied to the physical world, and homeostasis, applied to living systems.

The model of Le Chalelier is the 'candle flame', a chemical system maintained with a well defined energy/gas structure despite the constant addition and removal of materials. The principle enunciated by Le Chatelier himself is:

Every system is in chemical equilibrium, under the influence of a change of any single one of the factors of equilibrium, undergoes a transformation in such direction that, if this transformation took place alone, it would produce a change in the opposite direction of the factor in question.

The factors of equilibrium are temperature, pressure, and electromotive forces corresponding to three forms of energy- heat electricity and mechanical energy. The mathematical treatment of physical systems maintained constantly at or near equilibrium, may be extended to deal with situations, such as the developing universe, where one or more of the parameters determining such equilibrium were slowly changing, thus engendering a moving equilibrium.

The principle of homeostasis may be traced to a passage in Herbert Spencer's statement of biological 'first principles'.

Among the involved rhythmical changes constituting organic life, any disturbing force that works an excess of change in some direction is gradually diminished and finally neutralised by antagonistic forces, which thereupon work a compensating change in the opposite direction, and so on, after more or less of oscillation, restore the medium condition. This is a conclusion which we may safely draw without knowing the special rearrangement that affect the equilibration: If we see that a different mode of life is followed after a period of functional derangement by some altered condition of the system- if we see that this altered condition. becoming by and by established, continues without further change, we have no alternative but to say that the new forces brought to bear on the system have been compensated by the opposing forces they have evoked.