Knowing Systems and the Environment 45well as to the epistemic aspects of all that, as a knowing system, it is trying to
accomplish. Through their interconnectedness, each individual within the ‘know-
ing (sub)system’, will contribute to the collective process of knowing, to the knowl-
edge that comes to be known, and to the democratic deliberations that are an
essential property of that system. Each person learns with and through all of the
others.
To behave effectively in this manner, knowing (sub)systems must have capa-
bilities at all three levels of cognition, and must be prepared to allow for their own
evolution as a knowing system as evidenced by collective intellectual and moral
development. This last issue is of signal importance, for as Salner (1986) has
emphasized, there is a strong correlation between the capability to think in any
systemic way – and thus effectively use any systems methodology – and an advanced
state of epistemic development. Drawing especially on the work of both Perry
(1968) and Kitchener (1983), Salner argues that it is essentially not until one has
learned the characteristics of an epistemological/ethical stance of what Perry
referred to as ‘contextual relativism’ or ‘contextualism’ and has developed on from
‘dualism’, that one is able to develop effective systemic competencies. Addressing
complex issues with any success, demands the development of complex meaning
perspectives or worldviews (West, 2004), and that, in turn, demands critical atten-
tion. It is from a similar position that Bawden (2000, 2005) has made the claim
that sustainable acts of development in the material and social worlds are functions
of the intellectual and moral development of all of those who ought to be involved
in those acts. This therefore brings a fresh, critical epistemic perspective to the calls
for social learning as the foundations for the adaptive management of ‘the environ-
ment’, made by Keen et al (2005), and to support the quest for shared goals for
sustainability and policies for greater environmental protection through public
discourse which is ‘holistic’ in both its focus and its nature (Norton, 2005). As
Norton readily concedes, the adoption of ‘holistic adaptive management’ as a
social learning approach to environmental sustainability, presents a host of philo-
sophical as well as practical challenges to all concerned, with the need for ethical,
aesthetic, ontological and epistemological considerations to be taken seriously if
we are ever to come to really know what to do better with respect to our relation-
ships with the environment about us (Norton, 2003) – which represents ‘the mat-
ter to hand’, in the language of ‘knowing systems’.
This perspective on social learning for adaptive management indicates the
need for what is referred to as ‘transformational learning’ (Mezirow, 1991) that
involves epistemological challenge and change, in contrast to ‘informational learn-
ing’ which is merely ‘a change in behavioral repertoire or an increase in the quan-
tity or fund of knowledge’ (Kegan, 2000). A key distinction between the outcomes
of these two forms of learning lies with their differential impact on the ‘frames of
reference or minds’ that we use in structuring our knowing. Thus, as Kegan sees it,
both kinds of learning are expansive and valuable, ‘one within a preexisting frame
of mind and the other reconstructing that very frame’ or worldview: from the per-
spective of the three-dimensional knowing (sub)system being promoted here, this