Page 42 - Cultural Studies of Science Education

18 R.A. Martusewicz et al.

As we explained in the section above, humans use complex language systems to
mediate the information sent by the world (the wind, for example) and to interpret
what it means. In this sense, we “map” the world with our words, concepts, stories,
or “data” just as paper maps present a “picture” of the territory represented. But, it
is impossible to get everything on the map, and the map, as Bateson says, is not the
territory. There is always a gap between the world itself and what we can say about
it, leaving all sorts of opportunity for errors of judgment, as well as an infinite
number of other possible interpretations depending on the metaphors employed to
make those “maps” or tell those stories. We tend to forget that what we think we
“know” is fraught with these interpretive gaps made by language. Moreover, our
words and our interpretations have a history, and so become interpretations of inter-
pretations of interpretations.
For example, in order to understand some phenomenon better, researchers often
make observations and record data (which is another type of symbolic representation),
and then use these to create a model to show how that phenomenon works. This
model can then be used to produce more data, which then sometimes get incorporated
into the development of yet another new model. Leaving aside the possibility that
any errors in the original data gathering are replicated in this process, scientific
models (by design and necessity) simplify all the possible variables and complexity
in observed phenomena. So the model based on data from the original model
becomes a simplification of a simplification. And, because of these abstractions, we
are actually further and further from the world itself, though we take very seriously
what we believe we “know.”
To be clear, all human cultures use language to make sense of the world, to
“know it,” but there are very diverse systems of metaphor and structures of thought
within diverse cultures. As we pointed out earlier, there are at least 5,000 different
languages still in existence across the planet, and each of these has been developed
over many centuries in relation to very diverse ecosystems that have influenced
what the peoples living within them can say, and how they say it. Some cultures
have within their systems of thought and collective psychology a much clearer
sense of the sacred among all life, and a perception of themselves as living within
those interdependencies.

Identifying and Revitalizing the Cultural and Environmental
Commons

The recognition that diverse cultures across the world live within very different
cosmologies that have very different effects on the natural world is an important
aspect of this work. An ecojustice framework emphasizes the ways that various
communities and cultures around the world actively protect and revitalize their
cultural and environmental commons (the social practices, traditions, and languages,
as well as relationships with the land necessary to the sustainability of their
communities). This includes listening carefully to the voices of North American