Nature's Due: Healing Our Fragmented Culture
Nature's Due: Healing Our Fragmented Culture
复制标题
自然应得的：治愈我们支离破碎的文化
DOI：
10.1057/palgrave.development.1100456
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发表时间：
2008
期刊：
影响因子：
4.6
通讯作者：
A. Escobar
中科院分区：
文献类型：
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作者：
A. Escobar
2005年2月，在舒马赫学院（Schumacher College）阅读《自然的应得：治愈我们破碎的文化》（Nature's Due：Healing Our Fragmented Culture）的几个章节草稿时，“另类西方的睿智长者”一词第一次浮现在脑海中，用来形容这本书的作者布赖恩·古德温（Brian Goodwin）。1在第一次阅读上个月刚刚出版的整部作品后，我对古德温是一位如此“明智的长者”的印象得到了充分证实（我应该补充的是，“长者”并不一定与年龄严格相关，尽管它经常是沿着一生的反思和参与）。我决定写这些笔记，因为我相信，这些生物学家中的一些人，在他们自己的领域内，有着不同的想象力，告诉我们一些我在当代人文和社会科学批判理论的最佳作品中找不到的东西。这并不是说后者不那么重要，而是鼓励我们所有人阅读这些来自科学世界的“另类西方的明智长者”的作品，他们的目的是调和社会行动与生活本身的动态。人文社会科学的批判理论和替代科学理论是两个相辅相成的项目，在它们之间建立桥梁是很重要的。一些来自科学界的知识分子已经认真地开始了这一进程，比如古德温本人（当然还有许多其他人，Vandana Shiva是最著名的人之一）。让我从一个更直观的脉络开始，在古德温的书中找到一些主张：意义，语言，感觉和经验不是人类的特权，而是在所有生物中发现的。感觉是许多生物系统的一种属性;生物体应该被理解为“通过运用意图和技能创造和了解他们的世界的感知生物，其中感觉是自然的真正方面”。所有生物都能理解它们的遗传文本，并在自己的环境中从事有目的的活动，以创造自己并满足自己的需求。因此，在所有生物体中都存在一种基于意义的自然智能。创造力和适应性是所有生命形式的固有方面。我们可以从自然界的创造力中吸取经验，来设计社会世界。当代生物学（如，
It was on reading a couple of draft chapters of Nature’s Due: Healing Our Fragmented Culture, at Schumacher College in February 2005, that the expression ‘a wise elder of an alternative West’first came to mind to describe the book’s author, Brian Goodwin. 1 My impression that Goodwin is such a ‘wise elder’became amply corroborated after a first reading of the entire work, just published last month (I should add that ‘elder’does not have to do strictly with age, although it often goes along with a lifetime work of reflection and engagement). I decided to write these notes in the belief that there is something of great insight in what some of these biologists^ themselves, dissenting imaginations within their own fields^ are telling us that I do not find in the best works of contemporary critical theory in the humanities and the social sciences. This is not to suggest that the latter are less important, but to encourage us all to read the work of some of these ‘wise elders of an alternative West’, who, coming from the science worlds, aim at reconciling social action with the dynamics of life itself. The two projects^ critical theory in the humanities and the social sciences, on the one hand, and alternative science theory, on the other^ are complementary and it is important to build bridges between them. Some intellectuals coming from the sciences have started the process in earnest, such as Goodwin himself (there are many others, of course, Vandana Shiva being among the most well known ones). Let me mention, to start on a more intuitive vein, some of the claims to be found in Goodwin’s book:Meaning, language, feelings and experience are not the prerogative of humans but are found in all living beings. Feelings are a property of many biological systems; organisms should be understood ‘as sentient beings that create and know their worlds by exercise of intention and skill in which feelings are genuinely aspects of nature’. All organisms make sense of their genetic text and engage in purposive activity within their own context in order to create themselves and satisfy their needs. There is thus a meaning-based natural intelligence in all organisms. Creativity and adaptability are inherent aspects to all forms of life. There are lessons to be learned from how creativity works in the natural world for designing social worlds. Contemporary biology (eg,