Restoring Realism: Themes and Variations

Autor/in	Affifi, Ramsey
Titel	Restoring Realism: Themes and Variations
Quelle	In: Environmental Education Research, 26 (2020) 5, S.716-730 (15 Seiten)Infoseite zur Zeitschrift PDF als Volltext Verfügbarkeit
Zusatzinformation	ORCID (Affifi, Ramsey)
Sprache	englisch
Dokumenttyp	gedruckt; online; Zeitschriftenaufsatz
ISSN	1350-4622
DOI	10.1080/13504622.2019.1699026
Schlagwörter	Environmental Education; Realism; Epistemology; Generalization; Research Methodology; Humanism + Suchen Sie Ihr Suchwort? Umweltbildung; Umwelterziehung; Umweltpädagogik; Realismus; Erkenntnistheorie; Research method; Forschungsmethode; Humanismus
Abstract	In the critical tradition, environmental education discourse interrogates how knowledge constructs experience. But environmental education also emphasises perceiving, understanding and responding to "more-than-human" beings and processes. These two motivations are in tension. One problem is that the epistemological orientation driving the critique of knowledge seems to render access to something more-than-human "a priori" impossible. But environmental education squanders its promise and its dream if only ever permitted to talk about the natural world with scarequotes. Our field urgently needs to develop a realism robust against epistemologies that construct impassable barriers between humans and the rest of creation. I propose that this starts with radically reconceiving the nature and relationship between similarity and difference, interpreted in this article as the dynamic between theme and variations. Reworking Windelband's distinction between idiographic and nomothetic research, I suggest that the relationship between theme and variation manifests a fundamental ontological pattern that pervades all things. "Theme and variation" proposes a unifying metaphysical duality in which the more-than-human reveals itself in how things suggest, conform to, modulate, and violate generalisation. Acknowledging and investigating this is part of restoring to other beings and processes their metaphysical, aesthetic, and ethical status, from the skies to the psyche. (As Provided).
Anmerkungen	Routledge. Available from: Taylor & Francis, Ltd. 530 Walnut Street Suite 850, Philadelphia, PA 19106. Tel: 800-354-1420; Tel: 215-625-8900; Fax: 215-207-0050; Web site: http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals
Erfasst von	ERIC (Education Resources Information Center), Washington, DC
Update	2024/1/01