"Foraging is as vital and dynamic to the animals as making a living is to the guy overseeing them," he says. "Life for both exists at the boundary between order and chaos. In the meantime, we learn over and over that a lack of cautious regard for novel environments or strange food is risky. So, we'll stick to what we know, even if we know doing so isn't in our best interest." Nature teaches over and over that any individual, population, organization or species that hangs on to old ways too long and cannot adapt become extinct. Climate, soils, plants, herbivores and people are interrelated parts of systems that change constantly.

"Habit is in a way phantom comfort because even those we have developed to try to make order out of life eventually must change."

As with herds of animals, people who break the habit of the group — about 10 to 20 percent are adventurers — go their own way and do their own thing. Just as most lambs are neophobic and regard novel foods with caution, some have little fear of eating novel foods or being in novel environments where most would never tread.

True, the adventurers who have little fear of the unknown can often end up dead, he says. But hey can also discover new resources that eventually allow the entire group to keep going.

Among human beings, people who weigh information carefully and seek to optimize their behavior provide stability and efficiency in society. However, the smaller number who behave randomly and ignore conventional rationality enable the system to adapt creatively to new challenges, he says.

Provenza's focus is range animals, but all of life participates, he says. "Whether we think about it or not, if you're eating, your life is made possible through death, and you're part of it."

Whenever any environmental conditions worsen, animals are forced to explore new options, Provenza says. "In a way, necessity becomes the mother of invention."

Jim Winder, a New Mexico cattle rancher who has put Provenza's approach into practice, has developed a creative combination of supplemental food, water, sirens and motorbikes to keep his cattle on the move, thriving in a desert landscape and away from streams that bring fishers to his ranch.

With encouragement and taking into account behavior, "we allow the cows to be cows while teaching them that when the siren sounds, the old watering troughs and the salt licks are now available in the new grazing area and no longer available where they've been."

Winder, a fourth-generation rancher, says he is personally and professionally embracing change and innovation instead of bucking it.

"Fred's work my seem like it's only for the adventurous, but it's what will save the West — which is a house on fire — and maybe help the world adapt our behaviors in ways that will let us keep going."

Which brings up Newton again. Provenza has no quarrel with him, but when you get right down to it, nature does not dictate, nor can ranchers nor scientists ever adequately predict it. Provenza believes nature is more like a river than a clock.

"From its headwaters to where it enters the sea, it is moving constantly and at all points along the way. Physics and mathematics have greatly expanded human understanding of the world, but nature is not a collection of independently operating parts. We're part of a web that ultimately extends from cells and organs to social systems and ecosystems."

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E-MAIL: jthalman@desnews.com