Towards a New Ecological Paradigm

The medieval world was oriented to devotion as creatures of God and, in a parallel hierarchy, to submission to kings.

By Andrew Porter 

At crucial junctures in human life, old ways of thinking become inadequate or even intolerable and new models are needed to guide the possibilities of human life. Plato’s Republic, which advances the rule of experts, was partly written in reaction to the failures blamed on Athens’ partial democracy after the Peloponnesian War. Rousseau’s Emile sought a new framing of education completely in contrast to the norms of the eighteenth century. Today, to develop a new sweeping paradigm may seem presumptuous or unrealistic, but fresh ideas are vital – and increasingly imperative.

The validity of a well-crafted and well-articulated paradigm acts like the sun in late spring, leaving little room for rational opposition. There is not, of course, only one possible winning paradigm; however, one envisioned by, say, the writers Wendell Berry or Andreas Malm, seems to offer the kind that underpins a viable and non-dystopian future.

But, as the American historian and philosopher Thomas Kuhn warned, ruling ideas refuse to budge even when they should since many of their adherents are highly invested in their predominance. And yet, if ever there were a time both ripe and desperate for a new paradigm, this current juncture would seem to be it. Various looming catastrophes – climate change, regional conflict, rainforest loss, and political upheaval – threaten us like ever higher waves behind the already dismaying ones.

Each era has its own ruling paradigm. The medieval world was oriented to devotion as creatures of God and, in a parallel hierarchy, to submission to kings. The Renaissance advanced humanism and secularism with a flourish. The Enlightenment sprouted recognition of natural rights and democratic principles as the basis of society. Post-Enlightenment centuries have seemed convoluted and fragmented, unsure about humankind’s relation either to nature or to itself. A sound and successful paradigm, in acting as a clarion call, both taps and inspires human capacity. It continues to deliver on its promise of fulfilling human potential. We are rapidly learning that this potential is interdependent, with one another and with the natural world.

Today, the ruling paradigms of scientific materialism and growing income disparity capitalism tend to work off a strange set of ideas that tolerate social injustice, large-scale damage to the planet, and the growing wealth and influence of oligarchs. At the same time, counter to this, it seems that an undermining of too-long-held worldviews is also taking place in many novel forms, whether in physics, culture, politics, and understandings of nature. One fresh approach that seems most propitious is human ecology, an approach long shelved but in certain key areas making significant inroads. This might be called the Natural Life Paradigm.

The key component of a ‘natural life’ or ‘human ecology’ paradigm is an acceptance of and eagerness for integration with the limits and opportunities of whatever bioregion a community is in. The need for limits is obvious; less obvious is the opportunities for well-being and long-term sustainability this entails. The pursuit of happiness tends to reside in these ways of being, whether recognised or not.

The Natural Life Paradigm could solve many problems at once. What would an outline of such a paradigm look like? One way to approach this is to let ecological thinking engage in dialogue with social justice and metaphysics. Efforts and vision to improve anti-racism, human rights, climate change melioration, and gun control benefit as they enter into conversation with novel conceptualising about the nature of reality – to underpin the direction of betterment.

For instance, if education were oriented towards deep ecology, then it would have a real possibility of transforming economics and societal systems around a sustainable future. Education could be the springboard that develops new mindsets that value sanity, longevity, justice, and simplicity.

Such an ecological framework for human life nationally and globally would likely start by defining the optimal ways of being for individual and communal life. This might include abolishing industry other than small-scale manufacturing and reining in the excesses of agribusiness. Tribal communities worldwide have had a harmonious relationship with their natural environments and it is to be hoped that they will outlive industrialised humankind. Were citizens and leaders of other societal types to view nature, not as a larder of resources, but as fitting limits and opportunities, their core philosophies would have legitimacy. Such a revamped world would have a seven-generations mentality, acting with care for those seven generations ahead because they strive for the sanction of ecosystems and the Earth as a whole.

Such a world would have its own problems, but that is the nature of human existence. The future of humankind depends on the quality and accuracy of the theories we choose.

Above all, this new way of viewing things would need to be buttressed by a growing comprehension that the physical world is not material; rather, it would be understood as a mode of something that has variously been called Consciousness, Mind, Spirit, or more recently, ‘Non-physicality’. Quantum physics suggests something tending toward this in its reconstruction of matter into energy and fields. A new understanding of natural reality spurs a conception of ecology, including human ecology, as offspring of a larger ‘purpose’.

Likewise, social justice solutions could go beyond current wrangling and instead ground themselves in ecological principles that controvert overexploitation, unfairness, imbalance, and power used wrongly. Think of what might happen to industries, guns, cars, marginalised people, and corporations in light of Natural Life as a common value. There are, of course, downward and upward societal forces in any age, but crossing the threshold into sustainability holds the promise of a world that has fairness and integration as its watchwords.

Such new paradigm-development is all the more pressing in a world with higher and higher stakes. Some thinkers are eager to retool governing ideas and develop more conscious systems to frame human life, however diverse. Lance Newey, of the University of Queensland in Australia, says: “A number of countries are moving to the adoption of a wellbeing governance and performance framework….Many of these frameworks aim to measure the economic, social, environmental, and cultural wellbeing of the country.” He defines wellbeing as “the capacity of an entity (an individual, a community, an organisation, a society, the globe) to resiliently flourish”. 

Likewise, the School of Human Ecology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in the United States presents human ecology as the pursuit that “touches us and everything that we touch to improve the quality of life”.  This is an approach that draws on science and the humanities equally.

Imagination is the first step to betterment. We need not be victims of unworkable, entrenched paradigms whose only claim to fame is that they cling on with a death-grip. A thorough and carefully conceived ecological paradigm can serve as the basis for a better quality of life, individually and societally. All the past models for how to govern or institute or act have had philosophical underpinnings. Today, it is time we refresh our perspective to prioritise human ecology – a strategy more worthy both of our intellect and our situation.

The Philosophy of Science

The solar eclipse of May 29, 1919, forced a rethink of fundamental laws of physics

By Keith Tidman

Science aims at uncovering what is true. And it is equipped with all the tools — natural laws, methods, technologies, mathematics — that it needs to succeed. Indeed, in many ways, science works exquisitely. But does science ever actually arrive at reality? Or is science, despite its persuasiveness, paradoxically consigned to forever wending closer to its goal, yet not quite arriving — as theories are either amended to fit new findings, or they have to be replaced outright?

It is the case that science relies on observation — especially measurement. Observation confirms and grounds the validity of contending models of reality, empowering critical analysis to probe the details. The role of analysis is to scrutinise a theory’s scaffolding, to better visualise the coherent whole, broadening and deepening what is understood of the natural world. To these aims, science, at its best, has a knack for abiding by the ‘laws of parsimony’ of Occam’s razor — describing complexity as simply as possible, with the fewest suppositions to get the job done.

To be clear, other fields attempt this self-scrutiny and rigour, too, in one manner or another, as they fuel humanity’s flame of creative discovery and invention. They include history, languages, aesthetics, rhetoric, ethics, anthropology, law, religion, and of course philosophy, among others. But just as these fields are unique in their mission (oriented in the present) and their vision (oriented in the future), so is science — the latter heralding a physical world thought to be rational.

Accordingly, in science, theories should agree with evidence-informed, objective observations. Results should be replicated every time that tests and observations are run, confirming predictions. This bottom-up process is driven by what is called inductive reasoning: where a general principle — a conclusion, like an explanatory theory — is derived from multiple observations in which a pattern is discerned. An example of inductive reasoning at its best is Newton’s Third Law of Motion, which states that for every action (force) there is an equal and opposite reaction. It is a law that has worked unfailingly in uncountable instances.

But such successes do not eliminate inductive reasoning’s sliver of vulnerability. Karl Popper, the 20th-century Austrian-British philosopher of science, considered all scientific knowledge to be provisional. He illustrated his point with the example of a person who, having seen only white swans, concludes all swans are white. However, the person later discovers a black swan, an event conclusively rebutting the universality of white swans. Of course, abandoning this latter principle has little consequence. But what if an exception to Newton’s universal law governing action and reaction were to appear, instead?

Perhaps, as Popper suggests, truth, scientific and otherwise, should therefore only ever be parsed as partial or incomplete, where hypotheses offer different truth-values. Our striving for unconditional truth being a task in the making. This is of particular relevance in complex areas: like the nature of being and existence (ontology); or of universal concepts, transcendental ideas, metaphysics, and the fundamentals of what we think we know and understand (epistemology). (Areas also known to attempt to reveal the truth of unobserved things.) 

And so, Popper introduced a new test of truth: ‘falsifiability’. That is, all scientific assertions should be subjected to the test of being proven false — the opposite of seeking confirmation. Einstein, too, was more interested in whether experiments disagreed with his bold conjectures, as such experiments would render his theories invalid — rather than merely provide further evidence for them.

Nonetheless, as human nature would have it, Einstein was jubilant when his prediction that massive objects bend light was confirmed by astronomical observations of light passing close to the sun during the total solar eclipse of 1919, the observation thereby requiring revision of Newton’s formulation of the laws of gravity.

Testability is also central to another aspect of epistemology. That is, to draw a line between true science — whose predictions are subject to rigorous falsification and thus potential disproof — and pseudoscience — seen as speculative, untestable predictions relying on uncontested dogma. Pseudoscience balances precariously, depending as it does on adopters’ fickle belief-commitment rather than on rigorous tests and critical analyses.

On the plus side, if theories are not successfully falsified despite earnest efforts to do so, the claims may have a greater chance of turning out true. Well, at least until new information surfaces to force change to a model. Or, until ingenious thought experiments and insights lead to the sweeping replacement of a theory. Or, until investigation explains how to merge models formerly considered defyingly unalike, yet valid in their respective domains. An example of this last point is the case of general relativity and quantum mechanics, which have remained irreconcilable in describing reality (in matters ranging from spacetime to gravity), despite physicists’ attempts. 

As to the wholesale switching out of scientific theories, it may appear compelling to make the switch, based on accumulated new findings or the sense that the old theory has major fault lines, suggesting it has run its useful course. The 20th-century American philosopher of science, Thomas Kuhn, was influential in this regard, coining the formative expression ‘paradigm shift’. The shift occurs when a new scientific theory replaces its problem-ridden predecessor, based on a consensus among scientists that the new theory (paradigm) better describes the world, offering a ‘revolutionarily’ different understanding that requires a shift in fundamental concepts.

Among the great paradigm shifts of history are Copernicus’s sun-centered (heliocentric) model of planet rotation, replacing Ptolemy’s Earth-centered model. Another was Charles Darwin’s theory of natural selection as key to the biological sciences, informing the origins and evolution of species. Additionally, Einstein’s theories of relativity ushered in major changes to Newton’s understanding of the physical universe. Also significant was recognition that plate tectonics explain large-scale geologic change. Significant, too, was development by Neils Bohr and others of quantum mechanics, replacing classical mechanics at microscopic scales. The story of paradigm shifts is long and continues.

Science’s progress in unveiling the universe’s mysteries entails dynamic processes: One is the enduring sustainability of theories, seemingly etched in stone, that hold up under unsparing tests of verification and falsification. Another is implementation of amendments as contrary findings chip away at the efficacy of models. But then another is the revolutionarily replacement of scientific models as legacy theories become frail and fail. Reasons for belief in the methods of positivism. 

In 1960, the physicist Eugene Wigner wrote what became a famous paper in philosophy and other circles, coining the evocative expression unreasonable effectiveness. This was in reference to the role of mathematics in the natural sciences, but he could well have been speaking of the role of science itself in acquiring understanding of the world.