Knowing Systems and the Environment 43evidently bounded ‘ecosystems’ in the form of the higher order ‘biotic communi-
ties’, as introduced by Tansley (1935).
These issues are far from trivial for they get to the very heart of the conundrum
of why it is that the citizenry seems so reluctant to commit itself to learning its way
out of the environmental mess that, paradoxically, many willingly acknowledge
needs to happen. They also highlight some of the critical deficiencies of the envi-
ronmental and ecological ‘knowing systems’ that are contributing to this paradox.
Witness for instance, the long-standing ambivalence of ecologists with regard to
the ontological status of human beings with respect to ‘natural ecosystems’, which
does little to inspire the confidence of the citizenry. As Berkes (1999) has stated
with such eloquence, within ecology, human beings are so frequently regarded
either as somehow ‘un-natural’ components of ‘natural eco-systems’ or are placed
into such mythological categories as the ‘Ecologically Noble Savage’, the ‘Intrud-
ing Wastral’, or the ‘Fallen Angel’. To this, as has been already indicated, must be
added the issue of the ontological status and organization of ‘nature itself ’ and
whether the notion of ecosystems as cybernetically regulated, stability-seeking
entities that can evolve in all of their wholeness, can ever be empirically validated
beyond mathematical representation. And what a sloppy concept ‘nature’ turns
out to be under such circumstances, and ‘society’ too for that matter, and yet vocal
is the claim that the new field of sustainability science for instance, ‘seeks to under-
stand the fundamental character of interactions between nature and society’ (Kates
et al, 2001).
The environmental sciences meanwhile have an even more difficult epistemic
issue with which to contend, for in identifying the environment as their issue of
concern, they are in fact nominating the ‘other’ as their ‘it’. This creates a further
source of epistemic confusion, for if the ‘other’ becomes the ‘it’ in any act of cogni-
tion, then the question arises of what now is the ‘other’ and what is the significance
of the interrelationships between ‘it’ and whatever the ‘other’ is deemed to be? As
well as being a matter of some epistemic significance to environmental scientists,
this matter is also central to the contributions of environmental philosophers in
their attempts to bring synthesis to what Belshaw (2001) has highlighted as ‘rea-
son, nature and human concern’. This focus well captures the claim that the quest
for environmental sustainability must not only embrace what it is that could per-
sist over time, but also, and essentially, what it is that should be allowed to persist
(Thompson, 2004). It also illustrates a basic contention of Norton (2005) of
what is needed if we are to intelligently discuss and learn about our environmental
goals and how to achieve them: we will need a discourse which is rich enough to
express and disagree about values – which perforce must include aesthetic notions
of beauty as well as ethics – while also incorporating knowledge gained through
scientific understanding. And all of this, as Norton particularly insists, demands
communicative and cooperative behaviour of us within our communities in ways
that allows clarification of epistemological and ethical assumptions as well as accom-
modating processes by which these can be safely challenged and, when appropriate,
changed. As Grove-White (1996) has asserted, modern environmentalism has