Ecological Knowledge

Thomas Berry (1988) observes that as a species, we have gradually become ‘autistic’ and have forgotten how to hear, communicate, and participate in meaning-making with our places on the living earth.” (cited by Gruenwald 2003b, p. 624). What is ecological knowledge?

In the Western view of knowledge, a solitary individual, abstracted from context, seeks “objective” knowledge of disconnected things (Kincheloe, 2001). This paradigm has been widely criticized and counterposed to non-Western traditions and new knowledge paradigms that promise to restore a unity between subject and object, self and other. As one example, M’Gonigle (2000) suggests that Western paradigms for knowledge and inquiry are fundamentally flawed, and that the understanding ecological systems require diverse, larger ways of knowing. “In contrast to the extractive and formulaic character of Western scientific knowledge, … ‘alternative’ forms of knowledge have in common a sort of ‘held’ quality, a knowledge that is held in community and in the unknowable culture before it, held in the body as well as the mind” (p. 36).

The phrase “ecological knowledge” is freighted with desires to live in harmony and enmeshment with a Web of Life. The articles in this section review some of the impediments to ecological knowledge, and suggest possible approaches.

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