Pluralism and criticism in environmental education and education for sustainable development: a practical understanding

Abstract

Education is presented with a challenge when faced with criticism of modern science and adoption of a pluralistic view of environmental education and education for sustainable development. In dealing with this challenge, a practical understanding inspired by the later works of Ludwig Wittgenstein is suggested as a complement to more traditional theoretical and analytical responses. Through reminders of how criticism appears in everyday practice, the article shows that criticism does not necessarily have to be understood solely by reference to specific theoretical positions, but can also be seen in terms of the diverse ways that human beings react morally, encounter different norms and conduct ethical reflection. In such a practical understanding, the question is not whether the criticism is correct or not in absolute terms but rather whether the opinions and perspectives have significance in people’s lives. Criticism of modern science does not therefore appear to be a reason to exclude modern science, the proposal here being to acknowledge and embrace the criticism and the alternative views put forward by the critics. By means of a practical understanding, the opposition expected between criticism and pluralism can be dissolved, rather than solved.

Acknowledgements

Research for this article has been carried out within the project ‘Learning and the Appropriation of Scientific Discourse in a Sociocultural Perspective’ and supported by grants from the Swedish Research Council. I would also like to thank the research group SMED (Studies of Meaning‐making in Educational Discourses) and participants in the Swedish research network, Education and Sustainable Development, for their helpful comments on the various versions of this article.

Notes

1. The term modern science refers to the scientific activity that took shape during the scientific revolution in the seventeenth century. The criteria for intelligibility—or the epistemological norms for how to approach reality—connected to modern science are usually characterised in terms of objectivism, mechanism and atomism (see, for instance, Pepper, 1948, pp. 186–231; von Wright, 1991; Toulmin, 1992). The purpose of modern science can be seen as acquiring knowledge about the causes of events in order to control nature.

2. Wittgenstein’s philosophical method has influenced the treatment of moral matters of several moral philosophers, see for instance Winch (1987), Johnston (1989) and Diamond (1991).

3. For a comprehensive account of the history of vivisection and its criticism, see Rupke (1987). Vivisection refers to the practice of performing operations on live animals for scientific research (a term mostly used by those opposed to such work). The word originates from the Latin vivus, ‘living’, on the pattern of dissection. It is a scientific procedure that has been practised since ancient Greek times, and that became common in biological and medical research from the seventeenth century onwards. Along with the growing popularity of vivisection in laboratories, anti‐vivisection opinion also increased. The public debate reached its first peak in the late nineteenth century (the first anti‐vivisection societies originated in England in 1875).

4. It is important to underline here that criticism does not necessarily have to be expressed as an articulated verbal argument, but that facial and other bodily expressions, and even silence, can be ways of communicating criticism.

5. Wittgenstein uses the term family resemblance to characterise these kinds of patterns. He illustrates this term by inviting us to think about the many differences and similarities between the activities we call ‘games’ (think of chess, soccer, tennis…) (see Wittgenstein, 1977a, section 66).

6. This flexible relation can be compared with Wittgenstein’s metaphoric description of how a world picture (which modern science represents) is a kind of mythology, and how the borders between the things that stand fast and the things that are questioned and tested in this mythology vary according to different situations and circumstances: ‘The mythology may change back into a state of flux, the river‐bed of thoughts may shift. But I distinguish between the movement of the waters on the river‐bed and the shift of the bed itself; though there is no sharp division of the one from the other. //…the same proposition may get treated at one time as something to test by experience, at another as a rule of testing’ (Wittgenstein, 1997b, sections 97–98).

7. See, for instance, Rorty (1980, Chapter IV; 2003, Chapter 9).