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HOW CAN SCIENCE HELP US CARE FOR NATURE? HERMENEUTICS, FRAGILITY, AND RESPONSIBILITY FOR THE EARTH
Author(s) -
Joldersma Clarence W.
Publication year - 2009
Publication title -
educational theory
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.21
H-Index - 42
eISSN - 1741-5446
pISSN - 0013-2004
DOI - 10.1111/j.1741-5446.2009.00331.x
Subject(s) - hermeneutics , metaphysics , epistemology , nature of science , sociology , task (project management) , science education , environmental ethics , psychology , philosophy , pedagogy , management , economics
In this review essay, Clarence Joldersma argues for a novel role for science in developing an affirmative answer to his title question, “How can science help us care for nature?” He does so in dialogue with Clare Palmer's edited volume, Teaching Environmental Ethics , Dirk Postma's Why Care for Nature? and Michael Bonnett's Retrieving Nature . Joldersma suggests that although each book can help address the issue of how to teach students to care for nature, he parts company with their stance that we must go beyond science to develop a metaphysics of nature adequate to the task. Relying on the same Heideggerian framework as Postma and Bonnett, Joldersma comes to a different assessment of the role of science. He does so by arguing for a hermeneutic understanding of science as social practice and by claiming that science so construed can disclose the planet as earth (in the later Heidegger's sense), for which we owe thanks. This disclosure reveals earth as that which is fragile and for which we are responsible.