The Law of Scale Independence

Geography and geosciences deal with phenomena that span spatial scales from the molecular to planetary, temporal instantaneous billions of years. A strong reductionist tradition in sciences tempts us seek apply similar representations process-based explanations across these vast-scale ranges, usually a bottom-up perspective. However, law scale independence (LSI) states for any phenomenon exists sufficiently large range scales, there separation distance at which are independent respect system dynamics explanation. The LSI is evaluated here five perspectives: geographic intuition, dynamical systems theory, Kolmogorov entropy, hierarchy algebraic graph theory. All support LSI. Results indicate rather than attempting identify largest or smallest relevant work down up there, dictates strategy focusing directly on most important interesting scales. An example given hierarchical state factor model ecosystem responses climate change.