Document: BRU-3-330-187

Nature, science, humans...how to find our way: An epistemological perspective.

WILSHIRE, B.*

Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ 08903 USA ¹

Abstract:
So great are the accomplishments of science, it is tempting to think that the questions raised by its discoveries will be answered by the same methods that produced the discoveries themselves. For example, science has revealed that some genes "turn on" no matter what, while other express themselves only as a result of environmental influences. However, the belief that science has unveiled the "blueprint of life" and is our ultimate determinant, raises a fundamental question that science as we know it, cannot answer: is freedom an illusion? If science can only accommodate and predict certain aspects of life, then how are we to convey what the environment means to humans, how their ritualized ways of living and meaning and myths? The exploratory capacities of science are only as good as the hypotheses it forms and questions that it asks. We might learn from indigenous peoples to ask questions about the meaning of environment and our place in it. This may alter the meaning of a "standard" or concept of a separate environment and the whole system of the nature-human, nature-nuture, genes-environment dichotomies, as well as the meaning of ourselves.

Keywords: humans,standard,science

This abstract is being presented at: 3:45 PM in session:
Symposium # 24: Re-thinking the "and" in Humans and Nature: Ecology at the Boundary of Human Systems.