Page 231 - Cultural Studies of Science Education

16 Educating-Within-Place: Care, Citizen Science, and EcoJustice 205

mediums. They could photograph them, draw, poeticize, or narrate their experiences
with worms and their ecology. In the words of another great phenomenologist,
Merleau-Ponty (1962):
All my knowledge of the world, even my scientific knowledge, is gained from my own
particular point of view, or from some experience of the world without which the symbols
of science would be meaningless. The whole universe of science is build upon the world a
directly experienced, and if we want to subject science itself to rigorous scrutiny and arrive
at a precise assessment of its meaning and scope, we must being to reawakening the basic
experience of the world, of which science is the second-order expression..... To return to
the things themselves is to return to that world which precedes knowledge, of which knowl-
edge always speaks and in relation to which every scientific schematization is an abstract
and derivative sign-language, as is geography in relation to the countryside in which we
have learnt beforehand what a forest, a prairie or a river is. (p. viii–ix)
Heidegger broke with Husserl’s original view of phenomenology seeking allegiance
with the ancient Greeks, namely Aristotle. As such, phenomenology was to be under-
stood in terms of the Greek understanding of phenomenon and logos – in other words,
“letting what is to be seen show itself in a manner in which it shows itself” (Moran
2000, p. 228), or as Wollan (2003) comments: “Heidegger therefore sees the aim of
phenomenology as looking for the ‘hidden ground and meaning’ of what ordinarily
shows up in the world” (p. 33). Things show themselves (appear) in various ways
depending on the modes of access we have to them, that is, history, tradition, and
increasingly through technology. In our NatureWatch case studies this took on the form
of “revealing worms” through a scientific frame of reference. Students were directed
by the program to engage with worms by collecting data. An aside: today data com-
monly means information – facts or statistics collected together for comparison,
analysis, reasoning, or calculation. In the seventeenth century, data meant something
given. Construing knowledge through the act of giving something – a gift, perhaps?
– is radically different from the contemporary knowledge metaphor founded on social
constructivism where knowledge is “constructed.” Regardless, striving to think the
nature of phenomenology differently, Heidegger, in contrast to Husserl, realized that
some things do not always show themselves as they are, so phenomenology could not
be simply description, rather it seeks meaning which is, on occasion, hidden by the
entity’s mode of appearing. Entities can be such things as birds, wind, laptops, books,
and in our NatureWatch case studies, worms. They “appear” (come to presence or
come to be) in various ways, but increasingly so through the enframing capacity of
science, and even more so technology. The students we observed primarily engaged
with worms as they “appeared” through the interpretive stance of science, namely, data
collection. In this way, Heidegger’s view of phenomenology departs from that of
Husserl’s. Furthermore, because the understood model for seeking meaning is inter-
pretation of a text (up to that time), phenomenology became linked with hermeneutics
(interpretation) and in this way radicalized phenomenology as hermeneutic phenom-
enology – “how things appear or [our emphasis] are covered up must be explicitly
studied” (p. 229). Accordingly, providing opportunities for students to engage with
worms in other ways beyond strict data collecting activities becomes a priority as it
nurtures and respects the relationship they have with their lifeworld – what Heidegger
proclaimed as Being-in-the-world.