Mercury Stories: Understanding Sustainability Through a Volatile Element

Abstract

In Mercury Stories, Henrik Selin and Noelle Eckley Selin introduce and apply their original systems theory, a human–technical–environmental (HTE) framework coupled with an illustrative matrix approach, to an issue of sustainability: the mercury system. The underlying idea of the system perspective is that “a system is a connection of individual components that together produce results unobtainable by the components alone” (19). It is important to examine social, technological, and environmental factors and their interactions together to truly understand the sustainability system. This book urges social and natural scientists and engineers to broaden analytical scopes in their own fields, while analytically and empirically connecting with the field of sustainability science.