permaculture

["souscayrous" <souscayrous@wanadoo.fr>]

Bob, I have no problem with ‘other ways of knowing’, when faced with the entrenched scientific paradigm it is often revelatory to discover the possibility that there *are* other ways of knowing.  I can remember a seminar as an undergraduate where the tutor was perhaps outlining just this point, I was following a science degree at this time, and it took me a little while to actually understand the significance of what he was saying. I burst out, hot with righteous indignation; ‘What! Are you saying Science is wrong?’

 

            But science, or scientific enquiry isn’t wrong, that’s certainly not my point. I am no Luddite.  It would be a curious particularity to denigrate the advances made in medicine, transport or communications; technological advances that daily contribute to our lives.  However, in accord with Bob, I do question the ‘Idea of Progress’ implicit in the scientific paradigm.  I would have it that the reflective, Cartesian (after Descartes) conception of knowledge, is just one form of knowing, and that it is not particularly revealing of how humans interact with the world (my example of the saw was intended to offer another form of knowing based not on reflection but on action).  There are more profound ways of knowing; this is why The Idea of Progress is compromised. Just because we can collide sub-atomic particles, see further into space, are ever making computers faster and smaller; just because we seem to be able to do any-damn-thing we technologically please, we are still no happier.

           

The Idea of Progress has a long history; implicit in the medieval Christian idea of providence and joyously explicit in the Enlightenment. However, the epitome of this teleological thinking is gloriously concluded in the Philosophy of History by Hegel.  Hegel argues that not only in philosophy and the arts, but in human history and religion too, rational progress is demonstrable, if only we turn a ‘rational eye’ to look for it.  It is a hideous book.  From his study in the department of philosophy at Berlin University, Hegel oversees the progress of the world dialectic being played out through time and culminating triumphantly in the words he engraves upon his manuscript. It is bloated egocentrism and ethnocentrism.  And there is a live thread of influence stretching down through our culture from the nineteenth century that still imagines the West to be the pinnacle of cultural evolution to which all other cultures aspire, whether they are aware of it or not.  It is for this reason that the Afghanistan pc thread was important; cultural hegemony is cultural hegemony whether the means are through war or aid. (note to myself: what are the ramifications for pc in light of this last point, considering that pc is (recognised with the label pc at least) a western cultural construct – possible future discussion thread!).

 

Robyn, yes, that is exactly what I am trying to express  ‘the conscious separation between person and saw/tool has blurred’.  You pose the question ‘- at this point are saw, person and log together in a state of simply being?’  I would respond thus; the saw, person and log are together in one way of being, a nexus of action (the person) and occurentness (literally being available for, the saw and the log) unified in the intention of gathering firewood.  However, the saw, person and log could all offer different ways of being if, for example, the intention was to sculpt the wood with the saw.  Here the saw would retain the same function, for a saw is limited in its possibilities in that it is designed purely to saw: while the log and the person can be seen to offer different possibilities of being.

 

Finally, Robyn has surely brought up a topic that in some way has to be discussed, though I am not sure how: ‘The sacredness of the Celtic cauldron lies in the emptiness – the potential of the emptiness is limitless’.  In much of twentieth century thought, see especially Heidegger and Sartre (his magnum opus is after all called Being and Nothingness), in Buddhism and now, through Robyn, I discover in Celtic thought also, nothing, or rather Nothing, is of fundamental importance.

Why is there not nothing?

 

 

Souscayrous   

 

 

-----Original Message-----
From: Bob Howard [mailto:rmhoward@omninet.net.au]
Sent: Tuesday, November 27, 2001 12:51 PM
To: permaculture
Subject: Re: language, meaning and nature

 

This is an interesting discussion for a permaculture group to be having - but I think that there is a third point of view that exists apart from a defence of science and progress as put forward by Sean and what I might call (hopefully without offence) Souscayrous'  "other ways of knowing" argument.

 

 

Snip…

 

IN the interests of discussion let me just challenge once and for all the notion that there is such a thing as human progress which seems to underlie Sean Harrison's defence of scientific method. To argue that the world in 2001 is better off than it was in 1801 or 1901 is, I would contend, fraught with problems. It would be like arguing that the world of Rome in 300 AD was better than the world of Rome in 200 AD etc. At the time, it may seem patently obvious - but within 50 years Rome was sacked and the world entered a Dark Age ruled by petty tyrants and the occasional Arthurian legend. I need hardly point out the consequences of the depletion of the earth's resources and the unsustainability of current practices to people reading a permaculture news list. Why are they here in the catacombs of the internet after all?

Regards

Bob Howard

-----Original Message-----
From: permed@nor.com.au [mailto:permed@nor.com.au]
Sent: Wednesday, November 28, 2001 7:25 AM
To: permaculture
Subject: RE: language, meaning and nature

 

when I turn to the next log to cut I find the saw already in
>my hand exactly at the place where the cut is to be made
>This is not magic.  It is the way we act in the world, our
>'being-in-the-world'
Maybe this is when the saw becomes part of you or extension of self (or
is that you have become part of the saw) - the conscious separation
between person and saw/tool has blurred. This 'being' involves a very
different 'knowing' to purely intellectual knowledge arising from
scientific impartiality which may describe the kind of saw, the metals
and processes in creating the blade, the size and angle of the teeth etc.
The state of 'being' with the saw arises from the familarity of 'doing',
becoming a willing participant. When we stop thinking I-am-me and
that-is-saw that the work flows naturally/effortlessly and is no longer
'working the saw' but simply 'being' - at this point are saw, person and
log together in a state of simply being?

snip

 

 Can we embrace the whole if we cannot accept the hole?
The sacredness of the Celtic cauldron lies in the emptiness - the
potential of the emptiness is limitless.
It is in the design of the invisible towards which the art of
permaculture strives.

Robyn
(I'm enjoying this thread & out of control - just wish my workload wasn't
so massive so I could participate more)


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