Page 495 - Cultural Studies of Science Education

470 M.P. Mueller and D.J. Tippins

“where people put their faith” is what makes the presumption of ecological crisis
so dangerous, particularly, when thinking with science/eco/environ mentalism
is privileged. While the environmental sciences are now less concerned with thinking
of the Earth in certainty, and more concerned with how to reduce uncertainty, the
shift to uncertainty thinking is subject to criticism when the methods and criterion
used to evaluate possible ecological outcomes inadvertently reify eco/environ men-
talism; for example, the constructed hierarchies that scientific thinking implicitly
privilege, such as mathematical modeling. Mathematical proof is often taken more
seriously than local knowledge, beliefs and values, expectations, and place-based
testimonies. It might be argued, that reducing Earth’s uncertainty through whatever
means possible provides a more viable way for making qualified ecological deci-
sions about human survival and reproduction. To that, we cannot argue.

Eco/Environ Mentalism and Anthropocentric Tendencies

Now let us explore the inherent assumption privileging human survival and repro-
duction. The philosopher Reg Morrison (1999), author of The Spirit in the Gene:
Humanities Proud Illusion and the Laws of Nature, notes that the origins of ratio-
nality can be traced from Homo habilis (i.e., “handy man”) to the emergence of
agriculture-based settlements, when the need to be more certain emerged as a way
to ensure human survival and reproduction. Keeping cattle and farming food helped
humans to become the most populated species of mammals on the Earth – only
second to the cattle now kept for food. Morrison reasons that humans have now
entered “plague status” or severe overpopulation and are headed toward anticipated
population collapse. He explains that humans have, up to this point, followed all the
characteristics of species that are on the verge of collapse and that our science and
technology can do little to bail us out of this predicament. His central thesis is that
we use cultural mysticism (or mentalism) to disguise the Earth’s evolutionary
process and as a way to ensure our genetic survival. In other words, Morrison
claims that we rationalize the Earth to protect genetic imperatives to reproduce.
Morrison (1999) builds his case by pointing out how humans and chimps are
99.6% similar, and yet minor differences such as the Broca’s and Wernicke’s areas
in our brains have allowed for specialized language development. Recent environ-
mental declines can be attributed to our DNA or genetic wiring differences: the
ability to spread out, to develop culture and language, and to rationalize the Earth.
A significant problem is that humans tax the natural systems much more than other
species do, on a per capita basis, and we view consumerism as acceptable and
admirable. We devastate biodiversity and, consequently, strengthen the numbers of
pathogenic species that prey upon other species and us. We rationalize humankind’s
devastating impacts: land degradation, exhausted soils, intensive erosion, dryland
salinization, overzealous land clearing, overfertilization, transgenically altered
crops, declining fisheries harvests, destruction of freshwater and oceanic habitats
by aquaculture, freshwater shortages, highly toxic pollutants, ozone destruction,