Modes of Knowing the World: Global versus Spherical

2. Modes of Knowing the World: Global versus Spherical A: Environment as a Life World B: Environment as a Globe

3. Global Thinking • Gregorian Calendar • International Time Zones • Territorial Mapping • World as Detached Object of Contemplation • Leads to………World as External and Knowable

4. An Ordnance survey map of the city of Canterbury, 1959.

5. Spherical – From Within Experience

6. Spherical Mode of KnowingPractice over Observation • Spheres as Perceived from Within and not Without. • Life Lived within Experiential Centre, not on its Outer Surface. • Objective Knowledge based on Classic Visual Metaphors implying the Externality of the observer • And…….inertia • Knowledge of Participation over Knowledge of Observation.

7. From World to Earth • Global environmentalism arises as part of the Nuclear Age and Space Age. • Drive for increased knowledge of the earth and urge to be its protector. • Apollo 8 Space Mission - Impact of Earthrise and Blue Marble Photos.

8. Earthrise ‘ the most important thing about the lunar voyage was not the moon itself, but that we set our eyes on the earth‘

9. Blue Marble ‘a stunning revelation…..its thin film of life…….was far thinner and more vulnerable than anyone had expected.’

11. Objectivity • ‘To be objective is to aspire to knowledge that bears no trace of the knower’……(Datson and Galison 2007) • Knowledge is perceived as present in nature and potentially attainable • ……..but what counts as good scientific practice has shifted over time. • Such practices are enacted through representational strategies that mirror epistemological preferences of the era. • So……objectivity is contingent over time

12. Descriptive Phases of Scientific Inquiry • Before 1820 – The Artisan Genius interprets/depicts nature through drawings, etchings etc. • 1820 – 1920 – Intro of new technologies of representation • After 1920 – Trained Experts, increasingly complex instruments producing abstract data

13. Possible Critiques Objectivity cannot be about fixed vision when what counts as an object is precisely what world history turns out to be about’……………..(Haraway 1988)

14. Paradox of Observation • Take observation, which in general is an a priori requirement for any theoretical construct. Observation is itself based on a paradox; some parts of the world are only observable because all of it is not. All observation by necessity involves the creation of distinctions, and with such distinctions other things go unobserved. Each observation categorizes a non linear world in a linear fashion that ‘separates the observed scene from the rest, even though they remain structurally coupled in the ongoing flow of life’

15. So observation, by its very nature creates a type of asymmetry; couplings that constitute a non linear phenomenon are decoupled and although the artificially separated parts will continue to operate together in the world, they will be hidden from the observation; in essence, multiple order observations are collapsed into one manageable frame that lend an air of objectivity.

16. Human observation is conditional, but those conditions are necessarily unobservable, unappreciable, hidden in paradox, beyond observation. The world is observable because it is unobservable, the condition of possibility is its impossibility.

17. Thanks for your Attention!