The ecology of knowledge: Linking the natural and social sciences

0016-7185185 $3.00 + 0.00 Pergamon Press Ltd

Geoforum, Vol. 16 No. 2, pp. 21S225.1985. Printed in Great Britain.

The Ecology of Knowledge: Linking the Natural and Social Sciences

MARGARITA

BOWEN,* Canberra, Australia

Abstract: In the context of global crisis the Bacon-Descartes model of exact science, with its mechanistic world view and its doctrine of progress in man’s mastery of nature, is being replaced by a more coherent philosophy of science based on ecosystem concepts. The late twentieth century, it seems, marks the end of centuries of positivism and the beginning of an age of ecoscience. This paper looks at the origins of the discredited positivist claims for an objective scientific method and proposes the ecology of knowledge as a more appropriate theory, both for the sciences and for ordinary knowledge. From this viewpoint claims for a fundamental division between the natural and social sciences on the basis of method and subject matter can no longer be sustained. Moreover, as the feminist and deep ecology movements join in condemning the tradition of patriarchal, exploitative science, a new conceptual framework is emerging in which science is being directed towards more holistic views and more democratic processes, guided by a more socially and environmentally responsible ethic.

concluded, “We are thus, in the most fundamental sense, at a hinge of history”. Her analysis pointed to the enormous responsibility for the future that must be faced by those who direct science and technology:

A Hinge of History

Debate on the philosophy of science, and particularly on the links between the so-called natural and social sciences, is taking on a new urgency and immediacy in the context of the massive challenges and conflicts of the current period. Recent decades have been marked by increasing community demands for environmental protection and social reform, for equity in world resource sharing and for greater moral responsibility among scientists, industrialists and politicians in dealing with these issues. At the same time confidence in an inevitable march of progress through science has been undermined as grim warnings of pollution, food crises and the nuclear threat to survival have become part of the international framework of life.

In short, no problem is insoluble in the creation of a balanced and conserving planet save humanity itself. Can it reach in time the vision of joint survival? Can its inescapable physical interdependence - the chief new insight of our century - induce that vision? We do not know (p. 277).

For scientists, this has called for basic changes in ideas and procedures accepted for centuries. With the rise of ecoscience (EHRLICH et al., 1977) the positivist model of exact science has come under stronger attack for its ‘man master of nature’ stance, its claims for objective, value-free research and increasingly for its failure to solve mounting world problems. After observing the effects in economics and in geography of recent efforts to identify with that model, ZELINSKY (1975) summed up the dilemma of an ineffectual demigod scientist, and called for “a profoundly different approach and perhaps even a totally novel philosophy of science”.

In that context one of the most hopeful signs has been the growing influence of ecology, which has led to a wider public awareness of the interdependence of life forms and the inorganic environment in the global ecosystem. As WARD (1979, p. 266) *Student Assistance Policy Development Branch, Department of Education P.O. Box 826, Woden, ACT 2606, Australia.

The term science, which is derived from the Latin 213

214 scientia (knowledge), has now taken on a much wider connotation. Over the last two centuries the whole scientific enterprise - in the industrially advanced countries at least - has become institutionalised. Like the churches it has come to represent powerful political and investment interests and has secured a special status by claiming direct access to truth. Essentially, however, science can be described as a process of ordered inquiry, directed to the extension of knowledge about the universe and conducted according to accepted procedures. Articulating a new philosophy of science, then, is not a simple task, for, in effect, it involves developing a complex set of theories: of nature or existence; of knowledge; and of ethics and aesthetics - the good and the beautiful, in the terms of classical philosophy. Put simply, this means constructing a framework of ideas on what scientists study, how they should proceed and what values will guide them. In addition, as the response to KUHN’s Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1970) has shown, there is a growing awareness of the need to consider the scientists themselves and the context in which they work. The sociology of science - the study of how the scientific community operates - was considered irrelevant to the philosophy of science according to the positivist school, since in their view valid scientific research is impartial and therefore does not reflect the values or bias of individual scientists. With the questioning of those views the political and sociological aspects of science have become a focus of interest in the effort to formulate an alternative model or paradigm for scientific inquiry (KUHN, 1970). Kuhn made a valuable contribution in stimulating a more vigorous concern with the history and philosophy of science, and in widening this beyond the narrow circles of specialist philosophers, whose writings this century - from the schools of logical positivism and linguistic analysis to the ‘post empiricists’ and phenomenologists - have rarely been meaningful to scientists or the community in general. His use of the term ‘paradigm’ has since been extended to include not only the pattern of goals, rewards, research themes and procedures that are accepted by the scientific community, but also the whole conceptual framework within which they operate - their shared world view. Kuhn’s rather mechanistic analogy of the paradigm switch, which he employed to describe the change from one set of guidelines to another, also needs some modifi-

GeoforumiVolume 16 Number 2/1985 cation, for it tends to underestimate the complexity of such a process and the continuity of ideas. The painful twentieth century transition, initiated in physics, away from the seventeenth century mechanistic view of nature and towards the new concepts of relativity theory, quantum mechanics and the uncertainty principle is evidence of this. In effect, a scientific paradigm operates as a system. The various elements the cosmology, the methodology and so on - have to relate to each other and work together. These elements and the whole system must be open to logical analysis, of course, although past evidence indicates that the pragmatic test is likely to be given primacy logical discontinuities can be glossed over if the system works in the interests of those who have the power to manipulate it. Very often, given the limitations of human insight, a sinister intent does not have to be ascribed to those who formulated assumptions which later can be seen as inaccurate, irrational or unjust. In any community ideas that fit with existing dominant views are more likely to be promoted than those which undermine accepted beliefs. Once significant changes are set in motion, then ideas that support the new system will be given more credence, but old traditions and beliefs, even if they are inconsistent with the new pattern, will persist until they are effectively challenged. For this reason the myth of the revolutionary transformation - in politics or in science - is potentially dangerous. Building a meaningful framework of ideas can be a slow process. Powerful concepts are not easy to formulate: they may require intense community effort over long periods of time. Indeed, many aspects of the positivist paradigm that came to dominate science were the product of two millennia of Western thought, and the continuity of some of these elements seems assured. Confidence in it as a system, however, has largely disappeared. The philosophy that in an age of industrial expansion seemed to offer positive progress for man in the knowledge and control of the material world is now seen as a positive threat to the more sane development of science for survival. Clearly the movement to formulate a new paradigm is well under way. Even in the context of global crisis there is a sense of excitement in the new world view that is taking shape and in the diversity of responses to this challenge. Central to these efforts, I believe, are the moves to explore the potential of

GeoforumiVolume 16 Number 2/1985 ecological thought to integrate many of the emerging ideas in the sciences. It seems likely that the perspective of history will show the last decades of the twentieth century as marking the end of the positivist period (BOWEN, 1979) and the beginning of an age of ecoscience. A major problem in this transition stage is that an alternative theory of knowledge has yet to be clarified. Holist ecosystem concepts and the new relativity physics are effectively displacing the mechanical materialism of Descartes and Newton, and challenging the dualism that seemed to fit well with that view - their strict separation of mind from matter, man from nature. Their assumptions about scientific knowledge and methods, however, which were also linked with that world view, seem to be still widely accepted, even in the face of substantial criticism. Evidence of this can be seen in the persistent belief that the methodology of the social sciences is fundamentally different from that used in the ‘exact’ sciences such as chemistry or physics. The first task in this short paper, then, is to examine some of these assumptions, looking briefly at their historical origins, and to outline a more appropriate theory of knowledge by applying ecosystem concepts to epistemology. The second task is to consider the wider application of such concepts in developing a more coherent philosophy for all the sciences, and to examine in this regard the contribution of two significant streams of current thought: the deep ecology movement and the growing feminist critique of masculine science.

The Ecology of Knowledge

In the search for an alternative methodology I have suggested the term ecology of knowledge to emphasise the view that scientific inquiry, like all the knowledge that people share, occurs in the dynamic space-time context of the earth ecosystem (BOWEN, 1981, p. 272). This means that the observer - and the scientist cannot be regarded as an exception - must be considered as part of the system being observed. Moreover, all ideas or actions that issue from observation are themselves incorporated in the total system, for the sphere of ideas forms part of the global ecosystem. A proposal of this kind actually involves a fairly radical break from the established model of exact

215 scientific method, in which the scientist was regarded as being detached, intellectually at least, from the objects of observation and so able to collect reliable data ‘objective facts’ - by sense-perception and experiment, using instruments and mathematical analysis to ensure accuracy. Later, so it was claimed, the observer produces generalizations or theories by induction, through logical thought and analysis. According to that model, the human mind was assumed to be separate from the material world, so that thought could not be considered as part of nature. As a logical extension of that view it was customary to regard thought as separate from action, theory from practice. The exact science method itself, to which Comte gave the name of positivism when he applied it to his newly founded study of sociology in the early nineteenth century, was not new in his day. It had been proposed two centuries earlier by BACON in his Novum Organum (1620) as a ‘new method’ for conquering nature through the advancement of learning. His declared aim was to break from the scholastic dependence on the deductive logic of Aristotle’s Organon. Although Bacon was apparently unaware of it, this new ‘inductive’ method actually incorporated large elements of Aristotle’s theory of knowledge, including his faculty theory of the mind which suggested that the senses can operate independently of the logical faculties. According to Aristotle’s theory of mental capacities, only the human mind or nous has the power (dynamis, later translated and reified as ‘faculty’) of rational thought and the potential of immortality. Below this, in the hierarchy of faculties that he defined, are the senses. These produce sensations on which the intellect later acts, with the assistance of the memory, and using mental images provided by another rather ill-defined faculty, the imagination (phantusiu), which operates between the senses and the mind - between the sensible and intelligible worlds, in Aristotle’s terms. The imagination thus makes reasoning possible, although he noted that it causes some trouble by providing false images, especially when “the mind is temporarily clouded over by emotion, or disease, or sleep”. Animals on the other hand, he claimed, apparently without any evidence, “have no mind”, that is, in his terms, they have no faculty of reason. He acknowledged them to have sense, memory and a lower form of imagination - in the form of sense

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but not of judgement 1957, III, 3-7).

(see ARISTOTLE,

trans.

For all the inspiration of Aristotle’s general philosophy, this theory - sketched here in a very superficial way - was to have a damaging impact in Western thought. It provided the basis for the more extreme form of empiricism underlying the socalled inductive method of modern positivism (BOWEN, 1981). It led also to the strangely chilling notion: ‘animals have no souls’, that would legitimise centuries of ruthless exploitation of animals. In The Politics ARISTOTLE (transl. 1962) argued that the lower orders in nature’s hierarchy exist for the sake of those with more highly developed mental faculties. Plants exist for the sake of animals, and animals - domestic or wild - have been made for the benefit of man. Slavery among humans is condoned on the ground that slaves are deficient in the rational capacity of the free men they serve, while the subordinate role of women is also justified on the ground of their intellectual inferiority. These ideas became part of the Western tradition - the nineteenth century struggle to end slavery is being followed today by campaigns for women’s equality and for animal liberation (SINGER, 1977, pp. 193-194). At the same time, scientists, having rejected Aristotle’s geocentric cosmology in the Copernican revolution, are still struggling to replace the Baconian version of Aristotle’s theory of knowledge, as it was adapted for the mechanistic world view. Aristotle himself held no such mechanistic view: nature (physis) for him represented a unity of form and matter, a sphere of constant change that was consonant with an overall harmony and order. Moreover, there is evidence that he held more of a gestalt or holist theory of perception than his followers. In The Physics he suggested that what the senses first perceive will be some kind of confused ‘whole’: Now what to us at first are evident

and obvious are more confused; later the elements and principles of these become known by analysis. So we must advance from total complexes (katholou) to constituent factors, for the whole is best known to the senses, a ‘whole’ being what the complex is: for many parts are included in the total complex (ARISTOTLE, transl. 19601963, I, 1,184a).

By claiming

that all knowledge

(empeiria)

depends

on experi-

Aristotle outlined what has been called the empiricist position. Although like Plato

ence

he believed

that the human

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mind is eternal

so that,

unlike the body and the rest of nature, it is unaffected by decay, Aristotle argued that all thinking involves an association with the body. As he stated in his treatise On the Psyche, the intellect must work on evidence provided by the senses, even in the “so-called abstractions of mathematics”. For this reason he proposed that the psyche, as the principle of life, should be included in the study of nature. In Greek thought, it should be noted, such characteristics of life as breath, activity and sensations, as well as mind, were considered as part of the psyche, so that the customary translation of ‘soul’ is rather misleading (ARISTOTLE, transl. 1957, I, 1, 403a-b). While relying heavily on Aristotle’s faculty theory, Bacon’s sense empiricism gave a more simplistic interpretation of perception. The steps in gaining knowledge were assumed to occur in a kind of linear sequence. Particulars, or facts of nature, in some automatic way give rise to sensations; the ordering of these, through experiments and rational analysis, can lead to certain knowledge, as long as the rather suspect faculties of imagination and emotion are not permitted to intervene. From this emerged the doctrine of facts on which the positivist claims to certainty were to rest. The persistence of the Baconian model can be seen even in the way that some of the Greek writings have been interpreted. Aristotle’s passage from The Physics (ARISTOTLE, transl. 1960-1963, I, 1, 184a), for example, quoted earlier in a translation which I have kept as close and literal as possible, is given a quite different meaning in the Loeb edition’s English version, translated by Wicksteed and Cornford in 1929-1934. Aristotle’s initial references to confused complexes are deleted and new terms added: my italics indicate words not present in the parallel Greek text: Now the things most obvious and immediately cognizable by us are concrete and particular, rather than abstract and general; whereas elements and principles are only accessible to us afterwards,

as derived from

the concrete data when we have analyzed them.

in a kind of backward paradigm switch, Aristotle has been Baconised, with his gestalt theory replaced by a materialist explanation: perception now begins with concrete particulars. Here,

Bacon’s theory of scientific method attracted strong allegiance from the beginning. It was widely accepted in the seventeenth century, even by

GeoforumNolume 16 Number 2/1985 Descartes, whose emphasis on rational anaIysis and the mind-body dualism was based on the same faculty theory of the mind and mechanistic concept of nature. The ideas of both sense empiricism and Cartesian rationalism were blended in the scientific empiricism of Newton, and confidence in this methodology was reinforced by his successful discoveries in physics. A century later, LAVOISIER (1789, pp. 4-15), as a founder of modern chemistry, urged a return to the Baconian approach: “to preserve only the facts, which are the data of nature, and which cannot deceive us; to search for truth only in the natural sequence of experiences and observations”. In this way, he hoped, chemistry could become “an exact science”. By contrast, the nineteenth century pioneer of ecology, Alexander von Humboldt, searched constantly for a more effective method to advance and yet integrate the sciences. In this he turned to Kant’s ideas on the importance of concepts in experience, and he responded in particular to Kant’s central concept of the world, not as a mechanism but as an organic whole. He was stimulated also by Hegel’s clear dismissal of the sense-empiricist doctrine of facts and his praise for Aristotle as a ‘thinking empiricist’. Humboldt was more preoccupied with scientific research, however, than with the philosophers of the day. He apparently was not aware of the contributions being made to the theory of knowledge by HERBART (1835) in replacing the faculty theory with a more unified concept of the mind. Herbart saw the mind as continually being formed by the process of organizing new experiences and relating them to previous ideas as these are raised above the threshold of consciousness. While Herbart’s theories strongly influenced Freudian psychoanalysis, his ideas, like those of Kant and Hegel, made little impact on current scientific thought. Comte’s Course of Positive Philosophy had more impact when it was presented in Paris from 1826 1829, and with a Baconian revival in full swing the claims of positivist science in the name of progress were becoming paramount. They were proving to fit very well with Western industrial growth, colonialism and the energetic exploitation of the world’s resources and its poor. Moreover, with the tightening of political repression in Europe after 1820, the notion of pure research and scientific detachment gave useful protection both for inquiry and for the rise of the technocratic new class. Humboldt at that time was on the defensive, under suspicion for his

sympathies with South American revolutionaries and his public attacks on slavery, his writings on social reform curtailed. His response was a set of public lectures in Berlin in 1827-1828 on physical geography and mankind’s efforts to understand the cosmos. These ideas were developed, until his death at 89 in 1859, in his final work, Kosmos. Here he outlined his own distinctive contribution to a new conceptual framework, with a dynamic concept of the community of nature, incorporating human thought and culture. This concept, arising from his ecological and electromagnetic researches, could more easily be made operative in further and therefore was potentially more research, powerful in integrating scientific inquiry than Kant’s earlier organic concept, or the ideas on the unity of nature that were current in the so-called romantic movement of the time. Humboldt remained committed to empirical methods, in terms of careful observation, experiment and analysis. With his early concept of the ecosystem, however, and his appreciation of the social and historical continuity of knowledge, he pointed the way, in what might be called his social empiricism, towards an alternative to the sense-empiricist model of positivism. These were radical ideas, and given the strength of the dominant paradigm, they were neglected after Humboldt’s death (HUMBOLDT, 1862, pp. 5-22; BOWEN, 1981, pp. 259, 269, 284-289). It was a full century before the positivist theory of knowledge was again challenged strongly in geography. LOWENTHAL (1961) led an attack on the surviving Baconian model by arguing that “sensing, thinking, feeling, and believing are simultaneous, interdependent processes”. Perception, he pointed out, is not a matter of the senses alone: seeing is conceptual as well as visual, involving information acquired prior to the present experience; thus all inte~retations of stimuli are culturally conditioned. Science, as well as common sense, he argued, depends on a shared world view. He joined with POLANYI (1958) in criticising naive objectivism in science - the belief, that is, that exact and certain knowledge of objects in the external world can be gained through the senses, as long as the mind is kept free of preconceptions or value judgements. From the viewpoint of the ecology of knowledge, separation of the observer from an ‘external world’ is brought into question. With the development of

218 ecosystem theory it is possible to move away from Bacon’s rather linear and mechanistic model of perception to a theory of knowledge which views knower and known as part of a single system - a functioning system in which thoughts and the act of observation actually change the whole complex, and so must be considered as actions. This more dynamic model incorporates a historical dimension in recognising that an act of perception, even in scientific observation, cannot be cut off from the continuum of that person’s experience. Previous experience, including ideas communicated from others, provides the conceptual apparatus with which subsequent observations and decisions are made, and these in turn create the conditions in which future knowledge will occur. All observation involves interaction with the environment. Even in the process of introspection individuals are linked with their past, their society and, if only in the impact of these thoughts on the thinker, with the future. This view involves a decisive break with the antihistorical ‘presentism’ that was fostered in science by Bacon’s claim that observation commences from the evidence of the senses alone, with the mind kept as a kind of blank slate. The positivist attempt to limit science to what can be observed, measured, predicted or controlled has proved not only logically indefensible but also unnecessarily restrictive of scientific inquiry. In moving away from Baconian sense empiricism with its interpretation of experience in terms of the immediate sense impressions of the individual, the new theory, however, does not claim to enter a ‘post empiricist’ phase. While accepting that knowledge is derived from experience, the ecology of knowledge looks to an empiricism based on a much wider concept of experience, consonant with a more dynamic ecosystem concept of the world. In exploring new limits for science there is a growing move to question the positivist limitations on scientific recognition of extrasensory perception. The possible significance of a psychic dimension in the earth ecosystem has been given increasing attention in serious scientific inquiry (BATESON, 1973; WATSON, 1974; LOVELOCK, 1979; CAPRA, 1982). This is an important area for research and is likely to be explored more thoroughly in the next decades, although it can only be touched on here. What is emphasised at this point is that the process of knowledge cannot be cut off from the social-

Geoforum/Volume 16 Number 2/1985 environmental context in ,which it occurs. Ideas obviously can be transmitted over space and time by means of symbol systems, and the apparent constancy of many such ideas in different societies and different ages has tended to reinforce belief in the existence of ‘timeless verities’. Nevertheless, at any given time, for such ideas to become meaningful or operative they must be reactivated by individuals in their own life context. An effort to comprehend the meaning of language or other symbols from different places, times or persons, therefore, requires an attempt to understand the environment in which they were formulated. Moreover, that environment is to be seen not simply as the intellectual or social context in which the thoughts occurred. Rather, it involves an ecosystem - whether viewed as the total earth ecosystem or one of its subsystems - in which all elements, organic and inorganic, form a functioning community and in which any change to a part will in some degree affect the entire system. In this respect the present theory represents a development of views outlined during the last century in the sociology of knowledge which emphasized the inevitable influence of society on the thought of its members (MANNHEIM, 1936; BERGER and LUCKMANN, 1966). Those views, however, tended to be associated with a dualist approach which separated society from nature. In many cases, too, they were linked with belief in an exceptionalist role for the scientist as being able to escape social influences and achieve certain knowledge, timeless and value-free. To this extent the holders of such views, like the advocates of exact science, were probably trilogists. They believed implicitly, if not explicitly, in the existence of three spheres, as it were: the material-mechanical world of nature, including the human body; a separate mental sphere of the human mind; and a universal Platonic realm of transcendental ideas. By contrast, from the ecology of knowledge perspective, human thought and the entire complex of shared ideas are seen as integral in the total ecosystem. Each person participates in constructing and sustaining the conceptual framework in which we operate, and in that sense we are all part of a ‘universal mind’. The question of how such a universal mind might operate and interact with individual minds is still to be explored. It remains to be seen whether the new philosophy of science will continue to assume that communication of these shared ideas can occur only

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through sense-perception in the course of each person’s lifetime, or whether it will accept the possibility of other forms of access to this knowledge - by telepathy, for example, or forms of inherited knowledge. A renewed interest is being shown in Jung’s theory of an inherited unconscious psyche which includes a deeper ‘collective unconscious’ common to all humanity. More consideration is being given to his view that the child is born not with a mind as a zabula rasa but with a brain differentiated by heredity and thus with an inherited possibility of certain types of perception. Jung’s acceptance of spirituality as part of the human psyche, and his attempt to understand the psychic process as a life process, are seen by CAPRA (1982) as reflecting an effort to lead psychology away from the mechanistic Cartesian orientation of Freud and towards a more relevant holistic paradigm. In Capra’s view, Jung’s ideas of ordered connectedness or synchronicity, in explaining the relationship between inner and outer reality, are supported by recent concepts of local and ‘non-local’ connections in particle physics. Bacon’s forceful rejection of the Platonic theory of innate ideas has dominated positivist science, but the whole issue of the inheritance of learned behaviour requires more serious examination. What is already clear is that concepts of the mind are being reassessed. The notion of the separate individual mind, which fitted well with the mechanistmaterialist theory of discrete entities and the Western ethic of private enterprise and individualism, does not fit well in an ecosystem paradigm of continuity, interdependence and processes of community interrelation, The recent development of an ecological approach to psychology reflects this changed perspective. Supporting the growth of sensitivity to “the dynamic relations of mutuality and reciprocity between living entities and their environments”, SHOTTER (1983) argued for “a thoroughgoing evolutionism” to recognise the continuous operation of evolutionary processes in the constant exchange between organisms and their surroundings: “nothing is seen in isolation”. That theme has been drawing together research in a range of sciences. Earlier, BATESON (1973), from his researches on biological evolution and behaviour, had proposed a study that he called “the ecology of mind”, a new epistemology arising out of systems theory and

Applying cybernetics, or information theory, to the study of mind, he argued that “mind is immanent in the total evolutionary structure”, an inevitable function of complexity in the interaction between organisms and environment: ecology.

The individuaf mind is immanent

but not on@ in the body. It is immanent aiso in pathways and messages outside the body; and there is a larger mind of which the indi~dual mind is only a subsystem. This larger mind is comparable to God and is perhaps what some people mean by ‘god’, but it is still immanent in the total interconnected social system and planetary ecology. Freudian psychology expanded the concept of mind inwards to include the whole communication system within the body-the autonomic, the habitual and the vast range of unconscious process. What I am saying expands mind outwards.

Bateson warned of the dangers of combining scientific arrogance with the doctrine of a separate human intellect: As you arrogate all mind to yourself, you will see the world around you as mindless and therefore not entitled to moral or ethical consideration. The environment will seem yours to exploit (BATESON, 1973, p. 436).

With this estimate of your relation to nature, he suggested, and with an advanced technology, “your 1ikeIihood of survival will be that of a snowball in hell”. Immanent mind, he emphasized, is not the infallible mind of an ominiscient deity: Our minds - and this includes our tools and actions are only parts of the larger mind . . . Since it contains our insanity, the immanent mind is inevitably subject to possible insanity (BATESON, 1973, p. 442).

For the human species, as for all others, he concluded, survival depends on recognizing that threats to the environment are also threats to our own existence: perhaps the most important task for our time is learning to think in the new way. Bateson’s compelling concept of the universal mind - sombre but not entirely determinist or fatalistic - seems to offer at the least a valuable working hypothesis in scientific theory, and it carries an imperative for action; the responsibility for change rests largely with science and education. My first encounter with his ideas came at the end of a decade’s research that had led me to the ecology of knowledge (BOWEN, 1981), and strengthened my

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belief in the emergence of a more coherent philosophy to link rather than divide the sciences.

had been rejected vigorously while the mechanistic paradigm was dominant.

Ecology, it seemed, was coming of age, focusing on symbiotic relationships and incorporating the function of mind in a way that recalled Humboldt’s pioneering concepts of the community of nature and the dynamic recycling of elements in the Heraclitean flux of the cosmos. It had been a slow transition. The term ecology (from the Greek oikia, household) had been coined by Haeckel a decade after Humboldt’s death, and for the next century the young science was restricted largely to a Darwinian framework, as a study of organisms engaged in a struggle for existence with their environment and with each other. Mankind was generally excluded from such studies, and even human ecology, when it was proposed in the 1920s was interpreted as “the adjustment of man to his natural surroundings” (JAMES, 1972, p. 398). By the 1960s that kind of patriarchal dualism was no longer convincing, and CARSON made forceful use of the unified ecosystem concept that had been developed in the intervening years: her Silent Spring (19621, documenting the mounting threat of chemical pollution to the web of life, marked the emergence of ecology from the laboratory into the arena of public protest and political action.

The year 1600 had been a turning point in that respect. Giordano Bruno, who wrote of an infinite universe of change - a unity of material and spiritual aspects in which all events are manifestations of an immanent divine intelligence - was burned at the stake in Rome for various heresies; while in England the Queen’s physician, William Gilbert, published his book On the magnet, in which he wrote of “the great magnet, the Earth”. His ideas, which were scarcely more welcome at the time than Bruno’s, were revived two centuries later with research on electricity and magnetism, while in the twentieth century the new physics, with evidence that the universe operates more as a great mind than as a machine, is again confirming a unitary cosmology.

In the following years the protest was widened from chemical companies to another kind of pollution the pervasive beliefs that threatened survival, and the institutions that supported them - religion and science. WHITE (1967), who did not share Carson’s belief that problems could be solved by more scientific research, argued that the roots of our crisis are largely religious: “We shall continue to have a worsening ecologic crisis until we reject the Christian axiom that nature has no reason for existence save to serve man”. Recalling the brief rebellion of Saint Francis, who, suggesting the equality of all things animate and inanimate, tried to replace human dominance with teachings of humility in a kind of spiritual democracy, White proposed Francis as “a patron saint for ecologists”. Other traditions of panpsychism were also receiving renewed interest from scientists as well as beatniks - in the 1940s. Taoism and Zen Buddhism, for example, along with the kind of pantheism revived in Spinoza’s philosophy - the belief that everything is one and God is everywhere - offered insights in the search for a scientific explanation of how mind functions in the ecosystem. Such views

CAPRA (1982, p. 5) has described the conceptual shift in physics as part of an emerging ecological consciousness, the counterpart in Western science of the ancient holist mystical teachings. He sees the present period as a turning point, when the influence of these ideas in the sciences and social institutions is contributing to a cuitural transformation that offers the main hope of overcoming the interlocking threats to the natural and social environment, which in his view are “different facets of a single crisis”.

Deep Ecology: Beyond ~esculine

Science

The ecological consciousness emerging in response to this crisis was labelled by NAESS (1973) as the deep long-range ecology movement. Whereas short-term environmentalism or shallow ecology is preoccupied with controlling pollution and resource depletion for the primary benefit of the affluent in developed countries, deep ecology, in his view, defends conservation in terms of basic principles of diversity, complexity and symbiosis in the ecosystem, for it rejects the man-in-environment image in favour of a ‘relational total-field image’. Anthropocentrism, and the attempt to ignore our dependence and establish a master-slave role, contributes to ‘the alienation of man from himself’. Instead he advocated the principle of biospheric egalitarianism, operating within pragmatic limits, and with this a deeper understanding and respect for life, a satisfaction in partnership and a support for democratic processes. This view condemns class suppres-

GeoforumNolume 16 Number 2/1985 sion, in which both exploiter and exploited are adversely affected. Decentralization rather than hierarchical control, and the use of soft rather than destructive technologies, are part of the value priorities of the deep ecology movement, which he saw as part of an ecophilosophical system, moving beyond the limited science of ecology to an ecosophy, a “philosophy of ecological harmony or equilibrium”. Reviewing the emergence of deep ecology, DEVALL (1980) saw it as “revolutionary, seeking a new metaphysics, epistemology, cosmology and environmental ethics of person/planet” and, therefore, challenging the basic assumptions of the dominant social paradigm, with its ideals of economic growth, resource and property development, and scientism: “Deep ecology seeks transformation of values and social organisation”. Many streams of thought have contributed to this movement: critical social philosophy; Eastern philosophy and the beliefs of preliterate peoples; the ‘minority tradition’ of Western holist thinkers from the Presocratics to the present; the science of ecology; and artists who reaffirm spiritual kinship in their perception of nature. Although the deep ecology movement has no fully articulated politicaleconomic program, Devall believed that “from ecological consciousness will flow an ecological resistance”, strengthened through teaching and through life-models. While professional environmentalists work with bureaucracies, deep ecologists are distrustful of hierarchical-bureaucratic organisations, preferring more loosely organized networks: “The role of deep ecology in contemporary society is liberating, transforming, questioning”. An aspect of this liberating role, not mentioned by Naess or Devall but one which has featured prominently in the ecological philosophy of the 1980s is an increasing link with the feminist movement and the mounting criticism of the ‘masculine science’ tradition KELLER (1974, 1978) drew attention to the meager and even declining representation of women in science, especially in the upper echelons, and warned that the growing importance of science and technology could disadvantage them even further. Science, as part of the sexist patriarchal tradition, has been identified with masculine ideals, or myths, of unemotional rationality, hardness, objectivity and power. The fact that the scientific population remains overwhelmingly male is in Keller’s view a consequence of the

221 attribution of masculinity to scientific thought. By a circular process of reinforcement, scientific prestige benefits from the cultural dominant of masculine values, and what is seen as feminine becomes further devalued by exclusion from science. The process has become entrenched throughout the sciences since Bacon and his followers announced the birth of a masculine science in the seventeenth century. This underlines the need, she suggested, to look beyond the demonstrated inadequacy of the classical science model to “a more dynamic conception of reality and a more sophisticated epistemology to support it” (KELLER, 1978, p. 421). These issues are being explored in a growing feminist critique of science (OVERFIELD, 1981; SPENDER, 1981b; McMILLAN, 1982; SALLEH, 1984). In a recent paper, “Feminism, science and democracy”, KELLER (1983) has argued that the male scientific “predisposition toward hierarchy, control and even domination” has not only attracted to science those drawn by such an approach, but has also encouraged the selection of themes consistent with that ideology. Barbara McClintock’s significant 1950s research on genetic transposition, for example, although later acclaimed, met with prolonged opposition from colleagues who were committed to the concept of DNA as a ‘master molecule’, transmitting instructions for the cell. M~Clinto~~s work dismounted the linear hierarchy theory for it showed that the program encoded by DNA can change in response to interactions with the cellular environment: control rests not with a single governor but with the entire system. Similarly, Keller’s own research in the 1960s with a colleague showed change occurring as a field effect of interacting cells in a slime mold that can alter, rather remarkably, from single cells to a multicellular slug which crawls off when food is scarce. Their model was rejected in favour of a more popular theory of ‘pacemaker’ cells. As Keller noted, interactionist theories were hampered, not only by the preference for hierarchical models, but also by a lack of analytic tools in terms of mathematical techniques: only in the last ten years has the study of nonlinear equations enabled further analysis of cellular interactions. Support for such enquiry in her view gives hope for the development of a more democratic science. Concern for democratic processes is an important theme in the new philosophy of science. Writing in The Death of Nature on the substitution during the last scientific revolution of a mechanistic for the

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ancient organic and female concept of nature. MERCHANT (1980) suggested that the subjugation of both nature and women which this sanctioned is now being opposed by a conjunction of conservation, ecology and feminist movements. The near disaster at the Three-Mile Island nuclear reactor in March 1979, for example, focused attention on the need for nuclear controls and democratic action: such incidents have strengthened community resistance against dominant hierarchies of ‘experts’, whether in governments, power companies or science. MARTIN (1979) advocated the goal of ‘self-managed science’ for an alternative science in which there is maximum public participation in scientific research and decision making. The changed community perspective is reflected in the enthusiasm with which men have contributed to exposing the myths of masculine science, finding in this an understanding of their own role model conditioning (MORGAN, 1981) and an explanation for the basic irrationality of continuing resource conflicts and industrial confrontation in what EASLEA (1981, p. xi) called “the world’s heroically masculine and science-dominated race to total disaster”. The force underlying such aggression, Easlea believed, is the basic insecurity of sexist men in maintaining repression of women: “a society must be basically feminist in order for men to behave rationally”, that is, it must be characterized by cooperation rather than rivalry. Expanding these ideas in a later book, Fathering the unthinkable: Masculinity, Scientists and the Nuclear Arms Race

(EASLEA, 1983), he argued that it is not coincidental that exploitative science and industrialization are the product of “one of the most sexually repressive civilisations on record”, in which the Christian churches, from their Judaic origins, through the witch hunts of the early scientific revolution to the present nuclear crisis, have been basically hostile to women as well as arrogant towards nature. Masculine science and the philosophy of science have to be made more human so that the well-being of humanity and the biosphere becomes their prime concern (EASLEA, 1983, pp. 1744175). Affirming the link between feminism and ecology, CAPRA (1982, pp. 444-446) predicted that “the feminist movement will continue to assert itself as one of the strongest cultural currents of our time” and is likely to play a pivotal role in the forming of coalitions among various social movements environmental, consumer and ethnic liberation

GeoforumiVolume 16 Number 21198.5 groups and the antinuclear movement. Since the ultimate feminist aim involves a redefinition of human nature and the establishment of more harmonious relationships in the ecosystem, he expected the women’s movement to have a profound influence on the evolution of the rising culture. The theme of social, intellectual and spiritual evolution has been explored by a number of other writers (LOVELOCK, 1979; PEDLER, 1981; BOOKCHIN, 1982; RUSSELL, 1982). One of the most interesting proposals, a kind of scientific interpretation of the ancient Greek concept of Mother Earth from the ecological perspective, is the Gaia hypothesis developed by Lynn Margulis and James Lovelock. This suggests that Earth’s living organisms function as a system to regulate the chemical and physical environment and maintain conditions suitable for life. In that sense the biosphere operates as a single organism which includes man as a partner in a democratic entity. All life forms are interconnected: as LOVELOCK (1979) stated, “Our bodies are formed of cell co-operatives. Each nucleus-containing body cell is an association of lesser entities in symbiosis”. Moreover intelligence, as the ability to respond to information and answer questions effectively, is a property of living systems. At the cellular level, decisions on whether the environment is favourable or not are vital for survival, but in Lovelock’s view these are automatic processes which do not involve conscious thought: trees modify their chemistry to shed leaves before winter, but this is done automatically, drawing on “information handed down in the tree’s genetic set of instructions”. Turning to the question of whether human intelligence represents nature become selfconscious, Lovelock asked: “To what extent is our collective intelligence also a part of Gaia? Do we as a species constitute a Gaian nervous system and a brain which can consciously anticipate environmental changes?” (LOVELOCK, 1979, p. 147). As a species with the capacity to store and process information, he believed, we are already beginning to function that way, with the potential to use human technology and intelligence not in destructive conflict but for the benefit of the Gaian commonwealth. Exploring the answers to such questions is obviously outside the scope of this paper. It is interesting, however, to complement Lovelock’s views on con-

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scious intelligence with Seed’s reminder that even the distinction between ‘life’ and ‘lifeless’ is questionable: “Every atom in this body existed before organic life emerged . . . We are the rocks dancing. Why do we look down on them with such a condescending air? It is they that are the immortal part of us” (SEED, 1983, p. 12). Emerging from such viewpoints is an awareness of the continuity of organic and inorganic systems in the ecosystem, and the links also between mind and life, as suggested in the Greek concept of psyche. For the philosophy of science the ecological perspective offers in the long term a more coherent guide to scientific inquiry. It provides a theory of knowledge which, while making no unreasonable claims to certainty, is related closely to a concept of the global or even cosmic ecosystem and is consonant with advanced thought in physics and the social sciences. The outlines of a new paradigm are suggested in writings on deep ecology and eco-feminism that have been scattered and uncoordinated, frequently suppressed by scientific establishments and publishers (MARTIN, 1979; DEVALL, 1980; SPENDER, 1981a). As Lovelock noted in acknowledging that earlier research on the Gaia hypothesis may have been overlooked, such notions that have not been acceptable to the main science stream are likely not to have flourished in the past (LOVELOCK, 1979, p. x). As these ideas emerge to prominence they provide a refreshing contrast to the more ponderous and convoluted analyses of scientific methodology that defended the positivist model. The newer writings are stimulating in their basic concern, not to produce an analytic construct that will be immune from criticism, but rather to find solutions to a common crisis. Their ability to cross disciplinary boundaries and their appeal to a wider public reflect a basic commitment to a democratic science, rather than the hierarchy of experts assumed by Polanyi and Kuhn. The effort to widen awareness of the ecological role of science and technology, and to promote active community involvement in these issues, is already changing the scientific process. As CAPRA (1982) has shown, changes in health care and psychotherapy reflect the holist paradigm concern for environment-organism interaction, rather than an attempt to treat symptoms in isolation from their context. The education of medical staff in psychosomatic care and community health, and efforts to

223 produce architects, engineers, chemists and physicists who are more sensitive to the environmental impact of their work are all hopeful signs of the post positivist era. A valuable application of ecosystem theory is the procedure of considering any problem as an aspect of a complex functioning system, where apparently rational solutions can have unforeseen impacts on other parts of the system. In education the implications of the ecology of knowledge have yet to be explored: its emphasis on action and pa~i~ipation in the ecosystem context offers a development of the ideas of Rousseau and Pestalozzi, who saw the child as part of the harmony of nature, and of John Dewey and the progressives, who treated learning as problem solving in a social, although not so much a historical and intellectual, context. With the expansion of computer technology the ecological perspective, of course, brings a reminder that using the machine is a message. In a more promising light, the increasing links between the sciences, and between the sciences and humanities, that are fostered by the new scientific paradigm will accord well with educational programs of community participation and equity. On the issue of the continuity of scientific inquiry, new insights can be gained from the ecological perspective. Positivists accepted only two models for legitimate scientific knowledge - the formal disciplines of logic and mathematics and the ‘empirical sciences’, that is, studies of the materialmechanistic world, the natural sciences, Although Bacon had planned a scientific study of mental phenomena and Comte claimed scientific status for sociology, the proponents of exact science argued that whereas the phenomena of the natural sciences are physical and objective, those of the social sciences, being mental and subjective, do not allow for the production of a body of objective facts and scientific laws (BERNSTEIN~ 1976). Arguments for a methodological division between the sciences have centred on the issue of reductionism - whether the methods of social sciences can be reduced to those of the natural sciences. Advocates of the social and historical sciences have spent much effort defending those studies for their alleged deficiencies compared with the exact sciences. In a kind of reverse reductionism, however, the new paradigm has effectively reduced the method of the natural sciences to the same level of objectivity or relativity - in their claims to truth as the social sciences. The strict distinction between physical and

224 social sciences, moreover, which seemed appropriate in a philosophy that separated man from nature, is no longer applicable in the new paradigm. From the ecology of knowledge perspective the social sciences are also ‘physical’ and must be related to the ecosystem context. While the labels will survive as convenience terms, it is likely that the old divisions between natural and social sciences will be increasingly blurred. In this transition stage from one rather narrowly prescriptive paradigm to another whose parameters have yet to be explored, only the outlines can be sketched. While it is possible to indicate where the positivist guidelines and limitations for scientific research have proved inadequate, it is not possible yet to define clearly the structure of the new conceptual framework. Many of the established procedures for scientific inquiry and experiment will continue. An essential part of the new argument, however, is that scientific knowledge is not basically different from ordinary knowledge. Scientists distinguish their inquiries by the significance of the concepts they use and the effectiveness of their research procedures, but their work and its impact remain part of community knowledge. For the philosophy of science the new conceptual framework offers an enormous challenge. References (transl. 1957) On rhe Soul, Parva Nuturalia, On Breath, transl. by W. S. Hett. Loeb Classical

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Library, William Heinemann, London. ARISTOTLE (transl. 1960-1963) The Physics, transl. 1929-1934 by P. H. Wicksteed and F. M. Cornford, 2 ~01s. Loeb Classical Library, William Heinemann, London. ARISTOTLE (transl. 1962) The Politics, transl. by T. A. Sinclair. Penguin, Middlesex. BACON, F. (1620) Novum Orgunum, transl. by R. Ellis and J. Spedding [n.d.]. Routledge, London. BATESON, G. (1973) Steps to an Ecology of Mind, Granada, London. BERGER, P. L. and LUCKMANN, T. (1966) The Social Construction of Reality. Doubleday, New York. BERNSTEIN, R. J. (1976) The Restructuring of Social and Political Theory. Basil Blackwell, Oxford. BOOKCHIN, M. (1982) The Ecology of Freedom: the Emergence and Dissolution of Hierarchy. Cheshire Books, Palo Alto, CA. BOWEN, M. J. (1979) Scientific method after positivism, Aust. geogr. Stud. 17, 210-216. BOWEN, M. J. (1981) Empiricism and Geographical Thought: From Francis Bacon to Alexander von Humboldt. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. CAPRA, F. (1982) The Turning Point: Science, Society,

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