2016 Ecological Epistemology (EE)

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Ecological Epistemology (EE) Isabel Carvalho Isabel Cristina de Moura Carvalho Graduate Program of Education Pontifical Catholic University of Rio Grande do Sul, Porto Alegre, Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil Keywords

Materialism; Realism; Ecological psychology; Symmetric ontology; Object-oriented ontology

Definition Ecological epistemology (EE) demarcates an area of convergence between contemporary theories whose common core is the recognition of the agency of natural processes, objects, and materials. EE encompasses the knowledge emerging from the assumption of symmetry between things and thought, human and nonhuman beings, and historical and natural processes. The claim of a symmetrical ontology developed in the framework of the new philosophy of materialism has demanded intense work in order to overcome philosophical constructivism that takes knowledge as a mental construct, regardless of its material base. The idealist perspective in this approach takes knowledge as a representation of reality, which is processed through the logical operation of abstraction and detachment from its empirical object. The assumption of symmetry leads to a

knowledge no longer “about” but “with” the other human and nonhuman beings. From this perspective, EE avoids diluting culture into nature or assimilating nature into culture but seeks to merge the human and natural histories considering all, nonhumans and humans, coresidents, and “co-citizens” of the same world. Numerous authors, from many different disciplinary and theoretical backgrounds, have contributed to the theoretical-philosophical debate, which is encompassed by EE. In contemporary philosophy, this development is associated with “new materialism” (Bryant et al. 2011) and with the concepts which are moving away from the anthropocentric view, as with flat ontology (Landa 2003) or flat alternative (Escobar 2007). This view has also been called the object-oriented ontologies (Morelle 2012), and the theory of Bruno Latour’s actor-network (ANT) is a further contribution in this direction (Latour 2005). Tim Ingold (2010), in turn, unlike Latour, in his ecological anthropology prefers the notion of things rather than objects. Other contributions are the ecological psychology of Bateson (2000) and Gibson (1979) and the immanent philosophy of Deleuze and Guattari (1996). In all cases, what is at stake is the reaction to Aristotelian thought and its contemporary developments of hylomorphism that sustains matter (substance) and form dualism in representational thinking. In opposition to the constructionist operation, EE claims a return to things, reality, body, and organisms. Against the imprisonment of knowledge within the human

# Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2016 H.P.P. Gooren (ed.), Encyclopedia of Latin American Religions, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-08956-0_19-1

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mind, ecological epistemologies bring to the fore the world’s materiality an autonomous rethinking of the status of reality. The concept of EE can be set as plural because it encompasses a range of formulations, theoretical paths, and communities of dialogue. This heterogeneity runs against the idea of one school of thought sustaining the sole corpus of truth in a particular field of knowledge or even within an interdisciplinary field. Even if some of these authors sustain continued dialogue among themselves, they do not form the unique scientific community. By maintaining the differences between them, it is possible to place them in a material turn, based on a shared premise that a cultural or symbolic world does not exist apart from matter and things. For instance, human learning, in this perspective, is a skill acquired in relation with organisms and other beings who inhabit the same world that they do, rather than a rational prerogative of the restricted space of the human mind. The concept of EE can be called ecological because it refers to the repositioning of the human being in the symmetrical network of mutually determined relations. From the point of view of ecological ethics, it is necessary to understand the need to immerse oneself in matter and in the world, by means of continual engagement with the environment. The dissemination of such ecological ethics and the emergence of environmental rights has become an important asset for various social agents who are critical of the positivistic outlook in science. Above all, what will make possible a shift in the classical epistemology is the change in status of the subjects of knowledge away from human exclusivism. This shift to include nonhumans in the epistemological horizon undermines the deepest foundations of modern knowledge, as well as the basic pillars of normal science. In this sense, these epistemologies are ecological because they give voice to the world, considering the autonomy of things and nature in its relation to the human, avoiding determinisms, be they biological or cultural. Thus, if Gadamer (2012) claimed the recognition of the “dignity of things” as a condition for authentic dialogue, ecological epistemologies claim

Ecological Epistemology (EE)

“agency of things.” In the EE paradigm, the otherness of nature appears not in the form of a radical different and closed world; the point of departure is, on the contrary, the subject’s engagement with the world and with the core of matter by participating and sharing a common experience that pervades all beings and things that inhabit the same realm or, as would say Tim Ingold (2010), the same atmosphere. Thus, this theoretical framework offered by the “ecological epistemologies” has been incorporated into the analysis on the New Age movement. This approach has been shown to be suitable for this field of study, largely due to the possibility that this perspective opens for the consideration of symmetrical relations between human and nonhuman.

Cross-References ▶ Body/Soul ▶ Ecology ▶ Environmentalization ▶ Romanticism, Transcendence/Immanence

References Bateson G (2000) Steps to an ecology of mind. University of Chicago Press, London/Chicago Bryant L, Srnicek N, Harman G (eds) (2011) The speculative turn: continental materialism and realism, Repress. Open Source http://www.repress.org/bookfiles/OA_ Version_Speculative_Turn_9780980668346.pdf De Landa M (2003) A new ontology for the social sciences. In: New ontologies: transdisciplinary objects, Mar n.2. Deleuze G, Guattari F (1996) Qu’est-ce que la philosophie? Éditions de Minuit, Paris Escobar A (2007) The ‘ontological turn’ in social theory. A commentary on ‘Human geography without scale’, by Sallie Marston, John Paul Jones II and Keith Woodward. Trans Inst Br Geogr 32(1):106–111 Gadamer H-G (2012) Verdade e método, 11th edn. Vozes, Petrópolis Gibson JJ (1979) The ecological approach to visual perception. Houghton Mifflin, Boston Ingold T (2010) Bringing things back to life: creative entanglements in a world of materials. NCRM Working Paper # 15. Realities/Morgan Centre, University of Manchester Latour B (2005) Reassembling the social. University Press, Oxford

Ecological Epistemology (EE) Morelle L (2012) Speculative realism: after finitude, and beyond? Speculations. Open Source http://www.

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