"Debasing" what we touch...

What is this?. I came to the phrase while turning the pages from the book, Leadership and the New Science by Margaret J. Wheatley. She was explaining how science in the pursue of scientific truth and knowledge had disengaged itself from the object it wanted to understand and comprehend. And by doing this had lost all connection with it with negative consequences. There was no communication or better yet, no communion with nature, the object of  science  attention  and inquiry.

And I thought, "Don't we do the same every time we relate with nature as a mere object from which we derive and obtain whatever it can provide us?. Is not our relation with plants, animals, the Earth a disengaged one when we consider them as just things to be used?.  The phrase was taken from this paragraph I want to share from the book:

"The removal of human experience from the scientific world view had one other surprising consequence. Though scientist had engaged  in  a successful dialogue with nature, as Prigogine and Stengers describe it, an unexpected outcome of their work "was the discovery of a silent world. This is the paradox of classical science. It revealed a dead, passive nature, a nature that behaves as an automaton which, once programmed, continues to follow the rules inscribed  in the program. In this sense, the dialogue with nature isolated humans from nature instead of bringing them closer to it...It seemed that science debased everything it touched." 

But as an individual trained in scientific matters I can say as so many others had, that this view of nature came from the particular perspective or view point classical science chose to stand from to observe the whole of nature. Western culture took this perspective, but it was not a universal one. Oriental culture knew another type of relating to nature. They had a different point of view. But, that could be conversation theme for another day. Let's return to this debasing theme....

Sensei Myriam 

links: digg this    technorati    reddit