Educating for Sustainability Guide

Selections for College and Graduate School Educators

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About this Guide

Since our founding in 1998, The Nature Institute has been practicing, teaching, and refining context-rich methods for understanding the world and for striving to ethically relate to it. Based on the fruits of that work, we offer this resource guide for sustainability education.

Much in this section is oriented toward helping educators develop the capacities they need to perceive and understand nature in more holistic, intimate ways.

The guide does not contain specific activities for younger children. But we do hope our resources will inspire educators to develop their own original, experiential activities based on their intimate knowledge of the children they are working with.

Each resource is briefly summarized and the appropriate educational levels indicated. We have organized the resources in areas of focus. To go directly to a specific area, you may click on its title below.

• Early childhood (Pre-kindergarten – Grade 2)

• Lower school (Grades 3 – 5)

• Middle school (Grades 6 – 8)

• High school

• College and Graduate school

• Teacher education

We have organized the resources under several broad topics listed below. You can go directly to any given topic by clicking on it.

1. Foundations of Holistic Sustainability Education

2. Perceiving Nature — Taking Appearances Seriously

3. Visual Appearances and Phenomena-Based Physics

4. Whole Organism Biology Studies

5. The Living Nature of Life — From Mechanism to Organism

6. Agriculture and Sustainability

7. Impacts of Mechanistic Thinking and Technology

8. Foundations of Holistic, Contextual Science

9. Goethe and Other Holistic Scientists

1. Foundations of Holistic Sustainability Education

“Encounter-Based Science: From Learning About to Learning Through” by Craig Holdrege (2020)
Craig’s article for Renewal magazine highlights science education as a process of discernment and discovery. Rather than offer students pre-packaged concepts about science and phenomena, Craig demonstrates how educators can create lesson plans that allow students the opportunity to be engaged through exploration, where they make decisions and encounter questions. Such a process encourages a deeper and broader understanding of the world. The author draws on his own high-school teaching classroom experience to highlight the difference between learning about and learning through a topic.

TEACHER RESOURCE: High school educators and postsecondary teacher
educators.

“Children and Nature” by George K. Russell, Ph.D. (2017)
In this essay, George Russell, professor emeritus of biology at Adelphi University and founding co-editor of Orion magazine, asks how we can restore to children an essential, healthy relation to the natural world. Many children’s primary exposure to nature, he notes, is now mediated by that most severe tool of abstraction — the electronic screen. To help address that urgent challenge, he recommends many specific books and authors for educators, as well as some for children, and most importantly, he describes the kinds of experiences in nature that children need to form a lasting bond with the rest of the natural world.
As Russell writes, “We will honor and protect what we have come to love and admire, and such feelings have their source in personal experience.” He adds: “Too much emphasis on concepts and the mechanical principles of nature, especially in the early years, does little to establish the sort of deep communion with nature” that will lead to a lasting bond. “Young people, above all, need to sink their hands into things that are real and actual.”

CLASS READING: Undergraduate and graduate courses in Education and Developmental Psychology.

TEACHER RESOURCE: Early childhood through high school educators and postsecondary teacher educators. Also of great value for parents.

Thinking Like a Plant: A Living Science for Life by Craig Holdrege (2013)
How can we develop an awareness of the transformational nature of life that can increasingly inform our own thought and action, so that we become more conscious and responsible participants in an evolving earth? This book directly addresses that question. It is written as a practical guide that shows, through concrete and vivid examples, how we can learn from the context dependency of nature to think and act in more dynamic and context-sensitive ways. Here is an excerpt from this book.

CLASS READING: High school courses in Environ­mental Science and Life Sciences; undergraduate and graduate courses in Education, Environmental Science, History and Philosophy of Science, and Life Sciences.

TEACHER RESOURCE: A basic professional development tool for all educators, from early childhood through postsecondary education, who are seeking to grow in the inner capacities they hope to cultivate in their students. In particular, the book guides educators in developing capacities to attend ever more carefully to our participation in the concrete reality of the world we are embedded in; to perceive it as dynamic, interwoven processes rather than a set of separate objects; and to become more receptive, fluid, and dynamic in our own thinking.

“Education and the Presence of the Unknown” by Craig Holdrege (2012)
Every student has an unknown future, full of potential. How can a teacher prepare individual students for what is unknown? How can the unknown play a positive role in the life of both teacher and student as they work together toward mutual unfolding of potential? In this article, Craig provides teachers with guidance in crafting learning encounters for students – that is, opportunities to experience education as attentive exploration of the world and to participate in how living science unfolds.

CLASS READING: Undergraduate and graduate courses in Education.

TEACHER RESOURCE: All educators (from early childhood to postsecondary teacher educators).

“The Art of Thinking: Helping Students Develop Their Faculties of Thinking and Observation” by Craig Holdrege (2001 — 2002)
A fundamental guide for holistic science education that clearly explains the pedagogy and presents many examples of applying the methods. Craig demonstrates how to help students: (1) develop the critical faculty of asking questions through the use of scientific riddles; (2) develop logical thinking anchored in observation; (3) grow in their capacities for complex thinking that discerns the difference between a necessary condition and an overly simplistic single-cause explanation; and (4) bring their analytic powers together with their imagination to discover for themselves ecological relations within and between organisms. He explains how these skills are related to ecological thinking about the world. He also provides specific guidance in relating the high-school science curriculum, from 9th to 12th grade, to the changing developmental needs of students. Craig concludes: “Nothing is more important than to help the students school their abilities to see relations and connections, to see how things fit together in the world. This is precisely the capacity humanity needs to find creative solutions to the myriad problems we create that lead to a dissolution, rather than a regeneration of the world.”

CLASS READING: Undergraduate and graduate courses in Education.

TEACHER RESOURCE: High school, postsecondary, and postsecondary teacher educators.

“Teaching to Understand: On the Concept of the Exemplary in Teaching” by Martin Wagenschein (2009)
The late German physicist Martin Wagenschein, a champion for reconnecting science education with nature and with children’s developmental needs, explores here how both teaching and learning can become living experiences for the participants. Wagenschein, a longtime high school teacher and education professor, shows that covering large amounts of material is not the way to help students learn. Real learning occurs through careful consideration of exemplary cases in which the whole of the subject matter can be experienced through a concrete instance. (For other teacher resources rich in pedagogical and practical suggestions for K-12 science classes, see “Experience-Based Science Education: The Work of Martin Wagenschein.”)

CLASS READING: Undergraduate and graduate courses in Education.

TEACHER RESOURCE: All educators.

“Ecological Conversation: Wildness, Anthropocentrism, and Deep Ecology” by Stephen L. Talbott (2002)
In this philosophical essay on ecological responsibility, Steve suggests that we have other choices besides trying to control nature or leaving the “wildness” of nature untouched by human hands. We can begin to enter into “an attentive, reverential conversation” with the partial mystery of Otherness we encounter in the rest of the living world. “The very first — and perhaps the most important — conversational step we can take may be to acknowledge how we have so far failed to assume a respectful conversational stance.” (An adapted version of this article is Chapter 3 in Nature Institute Perspectives #3: In the Belly of the Beast: Nature, Technology, and the Human Prospect (2004). That entire 74-page monograph is freely available to download or can be purchased in print from our bookstore.)

CLASS READING: grade 12 courses in Ecology and Environmental Science; undergraduate and graduate courses in Ecology, Environmental Science, and History and Philosophy of Science.

TEACHER RESOURCE: Middle school, high school, postsecondary, and postsecondary teacher educators.

“Phenomenon Illuminates Phenomenon” by Craig Holdrege (2011)
A guide for mediating discovery and surprise in science and sustainability education through the powerful tool of comparison. This article shifts attention from the molecular level to that of common observation of the similarities and differences between phenomena – in this case, comparative observations of trees, and in particular the sugar maple and white oak. Comparisons help deepen understanding of both.

CLASS READING and ACTIVITY: High school (grades 11-12) courses in Botany and Ecology.

TEACHER RESOURCE: Lower school (grades 4-5), middle school, high school, and undergraduate educators.

“Science and the Child” by Stephen L. Talbott (2004)
In response to the emerging technical potential to genetically engineer children, this article calls for “reopening science to the categories of meaning, value, and purpose.” At first glance, the sophisticated, supposedly value-neutral, world of science appears at the opposite extreme from the naive, value-centered, imaginative world of the child. “How can you recognize a better child if you must shun the language of value? More specifically, how can we, as scientists or parents, propose to manipulate an individual child’s destiny if we cannot seriously ask about that destiny — about identity and purpose and tasks?”

CLASS READING: Undergraduate and graduate courses in History and Philosophy of Science, Molecular Biology, and Science, Technology and Society.

TEACHER RESOURCE: High school, postsecondary, and postsecondary teacher educators.

“Children of the Machine” by Stephen L. Talbott (1995)
A provocative essay that challenges the wisdom of efforts to teach computer programming to young children. In such efforts, Steve argues, the child loses — never having fully developed it in the first place — that fluid, imaginative ability to let experience reshape itself in meaningful ways before she carves out of it a set of atomic facts. The award-winning 1995 book by Steve, The Future Does Not Compute: Transcending the Machines in Our Midst, from which this chapter is excerpted was prescient in predicting — contrary to widespread political and commercial hype at the time — that heavily investing in computers for K-12 classrooms would not lead to a renaissance in American education. Its concerns and critiques remain pertinent to current wishful thinking about the role of advanced electronic media in the education of children. (The entire book is freely available online and can also be ordered in print from our bookstore.)

CLASS READING: Undergraduate and graduate courses in K-12 Education, History and Philosophy of Science, and Science, Technology and Society.

TEACHER RESOURCE: All educators.

“Impressing the Science Out of Children” by Stephen L. Talbott (1995)
This provocative essay, excerpted from Chapter 13 of the book, The Future Does Not Compute: Transcending the Machines in Our Midst by Stephen L. Talbott, challenges the wisdom of efforts to increase children’s interest in science and math by designing immersive experiences of electronic media in the classroom. Steve notes that the ubiquity of nature videos has not translated into a rush among young people to become naturalists, and goes on to describe why. (The entire book is freely available online and can also be ordered in print from our bookstore.)

CLASS READING: Undergraduate and graduate courses in pre-K to grade 12 Education, History and Philosophy of Science, and Science, Technology and Society.

TEACHER RESOURCES: All educators.

“Transformation in Adult Learning” by Craig Holdrege (2007)
A guide to methods for self-learning that can deeply change who educators themselves are, and prepare them to lead students in developing their own capacities for open-minded, flexible, and critically astute thinking. Includes specific group observational exercises that can be practiced with both colleagues and student to encourage the consideration of different points of view and to avoid letting assumptions and mental habits block new learning. The goal: transformational learning, rooted in perceiving, listening, picturing, and, over time, growing in self-awareness as well.

CLASS READING: Undergraduate and graduate courses in Education.

TEACHER RESOURCE: All educators.

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2. Perceiving Nature — Taking Appearances Seriously

“Expressing the Being of Animals” by Craig Holdrege (2017)
In this recorded talk accompanied by slides, Craig explores the holistic vision of the German Expressionist painter, Franz Marc. Through the story of the artist’s life, his words, and images of his breathtaking work, Craig shows the loving attention with which Marc (1880-1916) was able to enter into, and profoundly convey, the life of animals. “I have no desire to paint animals as I see them,” Marc wrote, “but rather as they are, how they themselves see the world and feel their being.” The slides presented here begin with Marc’s early drawings and paintings (including fascinating samples of his work as a young teacher of anatomical drawing) and trace his further evolution as an artist, ending with his powerfully vibrant expressionist works.

CLASS READING: High school and undergraduate courses in the Visual Arts, Zoology, and Ecology.

TEACHER RESOURCE: Pre-K through undergraduate educators in the Arts, Humanities, Zoology, and Ecology.

“Meeting Nature as a Presence: Aldo Leopold and the Deeper Nature of Nature” by Craig Holdrege (2016)
Can we perceive “the deeper nature of nature?” Aldo Leopold’s view of nature transformed radically during the course of his life (1887-1948) and this transformation provides the focal orientation for this essay. Leopold’s life and writings — especially his 1949 posthumous book, A Sand County Almanac — have been a significant source of inspiration for the modern environmental movement. Recounted here is Leopold’s vivid encounter with a dying wolf, as well as his profound insights into the deeper character of the natural world. He asks us to “think like a mountain” — a timely challenge.

CLASS READING: High school courses in Ecology and Zoology; undergraduate courses in Ecology and Environmental Science.

TEACHER RESOURCE: Pre-K through undergraduate educators.

“Reality-Based Education in a Hyperreal Culture” by Craig Holdrege (2015)
In a culture filled with screens and technology-mediated experiences, how can we help children interact directly with essential realities so their ideas can be rooted in the world and not in the fantasies of the virtual world? Based on Craig’s presentation at the 2014 Techno Utopia Teach-In in New York City, this article links to a video that is best watched without sound.

CLASS READING and VIDEO RESOURCE: Undergraduate courses in Ecology,
Education, Environmental Studies, Life Sciences, and History and Philosophy of Science.

TEACHER RESOURCE: All educators.

Being on Earth: Practice in Tending the Appearances by Georg Maier, Ronald Brady, and Stephen Edelglass (2006)
This book is an excellent guide for educators seeking to understand what phenomena-based science instruction means and how to provide such instruction at the high school and undergraduate level. It includes many suggested classroom and outdoor activities for students (especially in physics) and makes a powerful philosophical case for the importance of both educating and trusting human sensory experience. It also explores the relation between sense experience and knowing, the role of human intention in awareness, and the importance of older students becoming aware of their own processes in gaining knowledge. The authors — two physicists and a philosopher — demonstrate how understanding in the physical sciences requires rigorous attention to the physiology and psychology of the human being who seeks to know, as well as rigorous attention to the physical phenomena being studied. The full 174-page book is freely available to download.

CLASS ACTIVITY: High school courses in Physics and grade 12 Philosophy; undergraduate and graduate courses in History and Philosophy of Science, Philosophy, and Physics.

TEACHER RESOURCE: High school and postsecondary educators.

“Save the Phenomena: The Primacy of Unmediated Experience” by Martin Wagenschein (2008)
From the gracefully ponderous motion of a massive pendulum to the mysteries hidden in still water, sound, and radioactivity, the late German physicist Martin Wagenschein offers here a master teacher’s insights into experience-based learning that engages the student in a lively way. Wagenschein was a longtime high-school science teacher and university professor. (For other resources that are rich in pedagogical insights, practical advice, and experiential activities for K-12 science classes, see “Experience-Based Science Education: The Work of Martin Wagenschein.”)

CLASS READING: Undergraduate and graduate courses in Education.

TEACHER RESOURCE: All educators.

“Love and Detachment: How We Can Reconnect with Nature” by Stephen L. Talbott (2002)
To overcome our alienation from the world, it is not enough to immerse ourselves in nature. We must learn to walk into the scientific laboratory, take up the language of cause, mechanism, and all the rest, and learn to shape-shift this language into a speech revealing a fuller reality. (An adapted version of this article is Chapter 4 in Nature Institute Perspectives #3: In the Belly of the Beast: Nature, Technology, and the Human Prospect (2004). That entire 74-page monograph is freely available to download or can be purchased in print from our bookstore.)

CLASS READING: Undergraduate and graduate courses in Ecology, Environmental Science, Life Sciences, and History and Philosophy of Science.

TEACHER RESOURCE: Middle school, high school, and postsecondary educators.

“A Day in the Life of a Chicory Flower” by Craig Holdrege (2016)
Throughout the summer, along roadsides near The Nature Institute, the radiant blue flowers of chicory are in bloom. Bringing to life a demonstration of Goethean methods of scientific study, Craig follows the unfolding and withering of the flower over the course a day. It’s a story of beauty and evanescence, told here in a sequence of careful botanical observations and radiant color photos. It provides a clear guide that educators can follow in similar holistic studies for their own professional development and could adapt for observational activities with older students.

CLASS READING and ACTIVITY: High school courses in Ecology and Life Sciences;
undergraduate courses in Ecology and Life Sciences.

TEACHER RESOURCE: Early childhood though undergraduate educators.

“Amazonian Impressions” by Henrike Holdrege (2015)
A retrospective on The Nature Institute’s 2015 water adventure upon the Rio Negro and Amazon rivers, describing in vivid text and photos the unsurpassed intensity and diversity of ecological relations in the Brazilian rainforest, the largest of all rainforests.

CLASS READING: High school courses in Ecology and Life Sciences; undergraduate
courses in Ecology.

TEACHER RESOURCE: Middle school, high school, undergraduate educators.

“An Open Secret — The Calyx of Ipomoea Purpurea” by Reinout Amons (2015)
A rose, a morning glory, a verse attributed to the medieval scholar Albertus Magnus, and a remarkable pattern of “bearded” sepals — these subjects all come together in this colorfully illustrated botanical study of pattern in seeming randomness written by an attentive observer of a Dutch garden.

CLASS READING: High school courses in Botany and Ecology; undergraduate courses in Ecology.

TEACHER RESOURCE: Middle school, high school, and undergraduate educators.

“Can We See With Fresh Eyes? Beyond a Culture of Abstraction” by Craig Holdrege (2006)
This essay asks, “Can we gain our scientific concepts through openness to the world instead of imposing them on the world?” It’s the difference between a living thinking that respects the phenomena, and a habitual thinking that cuts us off from the phenomena. By attending to the way plants grow, we begin to appreciate the nature of living thinking. Seeds of our own transformation are created every time we catch ourselves considering a problem or phenomenon through some pre-formed conceptual lens and then drop that lens and turn back, in openness, to the things themselves. In this act, we acknowledge our ignorance and readiness to engage in the concrete situation. With heightened awareness, we can begin forming concepts out of interaction with the world rather than imposing concepts upon the world. “The shift from abstraction and object-thinking to a plantlike dynamic thinking would help us develop the capacities we need to truly root our understanding and our interactions with nature in nature.” (The essay includes practical suggestions to help develop such living thinking.)

CLASS READING: High school (grades 11-12) courses in Ecology and Life Sciences; undergraduate and graduate courses in Ecology, Environmental Science, History and Philosophy of Science, and Life Sciences.

TEACHER RESOURCE: All educators (especially science teachers).

“Why Is the Moon Getting Farther Away?” by Stephen L. Talbott (2007)
In this essay about educational priorities in a device-saturated culture, Talbott argues that educators and parents don’t need to focus time and money on making sure that students embrace technology. Technophobia, after all, is not a dominant trait of our society. What we need is balance and connection. The adaptation, even addiction, to advanced technologies occurs all too well on its own. “Children must learn, rather, how to hold these technologies in a human balance. And I suggest that a bird in the hand — and a pine cone, and a rock, and a crawdad, and a snowflake — are the counterbalances we need if our alienation from nature is not to become more than the world can bear. These bits of nature may not seem like much to us – but that is the problem. For the child they can hold magic – exactly the magic that, in a matured form, may be required to ground the adult in a society otherwise encompassed on every side by virtuality.”

CLASS READING: Undergraduate and graduate courses in Education.

TEACHER RESOURCE: All educators.

“The Forming Tree" by Craig Holdrege (2005)
Based on a study of growth patterns in trees from different settings, this essay offers a lesson on the importance of context in understanding the life of any organism. We learn how in an individual tree the shape of the crown and the size of the trunk relative to the crown express a tree’s history: “Directing our gaze toward the form of trees leads us beyond the tree itself. It leads us to a web of relations of which the tree is a part. Once you begin to see in such an organic form the tracks of its history and its relations to its surroundings, every meeting with a new tree is a source of excitement, a riddle waiting to be appreciated and deciphered.”

CLASS READING: High school and undergraduate courses in Botany and Ecology.

TEACHER RESOURCE: Middle school, high school, and undergraduate educators.

“Portraying a Meadow” by Craig Holdrege (2002)
Goethe described the intention of his approach to science as “to portray, rather than explain.” This essay provides a model for such a phenomenological study of plants and habitats. Its aim is not to explain, in the sense of depicting causal relations, but rather to create a characterization through which something essential can speak: “Sometimes when you stare at something directly, you don’t see it. You need to walk around it, change vantage points and build up a picture of the larger world of which it is a part. Then it comes into focus. So with the meadow. Its special qualities show themselves more vividly when we place it within the context of the changing seasons and contrast it with another habitat — the bottomland forest.”

CLASS READING: High school and undergraduate Botany and Ecology.

TEACHER RESOURCE: High school and undergraduate educators (Botany, Ecology, Goethean Methodology, Life Sciences, Nature Studies).

“What Forms an Animal?” by Craig Holdrege (2001)
An essay modeling a holistic approach to biology that goes beyond high-level abstractions — such as “genes and environment form the animal” — to more open-ended inquiry. What’s required is close, constant attention to what nature actually presents and then inching a way forward to a more full-toned understanding. The essay discusses, as its focal example, how skulls of lions raised in captivity differ dramatically from skulls of the same subspecies that lived in the wild. Such phenomena point to the plasticity of the organism’s genetic inheritance, and to the role of behavior and environment in molding the organism. An animal’s “form is given through inheritance and then molded by activity. The hereditarily given model is something dynamic and plastic, waiting to be filled and formed by the animal’s activity. This is what we should be picturing when we speak of a “genetic background” or genes, not some fixed plan.”

CLASS READING: High school (grades 11-12) courses in Ecology, Life Sciences, and Zoology; undergraduate courses in Ecology and Zoology.

TEACHER RESOURCE: Lower school (grades 3-5), middle school, high school, and
undergraduate educators.

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3. Visual Appearance and Phenomena-Based Physics

“Save the Phenomena: The Primacy of Unmediated Experience” by Martin Wagenschein (2008)
From the gracefully ponderous motion of a massive pendulum to the mysteries hidden in still water, sound, and radioactivity, the late German physicist Martin Wagenschein offers here a master teacher’s insights into experience-based learning that engages the student in a lively way. Wagenschein was a longtime high school science teacher and university professor. (For other resources that are rich in pedagogical insights, practical advice, and experiential activities for K-12 science classes, see “Experience-Based Science Education: The Work of Martin Wagenschein.”)

CLASS READING: Undergraduate and graduate courses in Education and Physics.

TEACHER RESOURCE: All educators.

“Mirror Images" by Georg Maier (2011)
Physicist Georg Maier demonstrates how to model for students a calm, steady commitment to exact observation as he guides the reader in understanding visual phenomena based on careful attention to our own direct experience. Maier’s work reminds us that, however “commonplace” the subject matter, a well-trained receptivity can bring new insights and render the matter less common than our inattention may have led us to imagine. Maier’s work is an invitation to discovery through disciplined perceiving. The article is an excerpt from his 2001 book, An Optics of Visual Experience.

CLASS ACTIVITY: High school courses in optics; undergraduate courses in Optics and Physics.

TEACHER RESOURCE: High school and undergraduate educators.

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4. Whole Organism Biology Studies

The Nature Institute’s revolutionary approach to science is exemplified in holistic, qualitative studies of particular whole organisms. These studies demonstrate how each organism is characterized by wholeness and unity, and at the same time is intimately entwined with the larger ecology of life. For sustainability educators and their students, these studies provide a complement and contrast to conventional laboratory and textbook studies that focus on organisms as mechanisms. Below are selected resources for transforming conventional approaches to academic life sciences into a new, profoundly ecological perspective. Such a perspective is far more in tune with the irreducible reality of our living ecosphere, within which humanity is immersed and our activities must harmonize.

The Giraffe’s Long Neck: From Evolutionary Fable to Whole Organism by Craig Holdrege (2005)
A comprehensive picture of the giraffe’s biology and ecology, with a related discussion about the complex and controversial issue of the giraffe’s evolution. The result is a unique portrayal of the giraffe that exemplifies the Goethean approach to understanding animals and evolution. It examines the many misdirected attempts to offer evolutionary “explanations” of the giraffe’s neck and shows how an adequate understanding of evolution cannot be achieved unless it is based in an understanding of active and integrated whole organisms. The booklet can be purchased in print from our bookstore, or freely downloaded.

CLASS READING: High school (grades 11-12) courses in Ecology, Evolution, Life Sciences, and Zoology; undergraduate courses in Ecology, Evolution, and Zoology.

TEACHER RESOURCE: Lower school (grades 3-5), middle school, high school, and postsecondary educators.

The Flexible Giant: Seeing the Elephant Whole by Craig Holdrege (2003)
A many-sided portrayal of this remarkable animal and, at the same time, an introduction for educators and students to the methods of a qualitative, holistic biology. Readers will experience how the elephant is a unique being that expresses itself in every aspect of its anatomy, physiology, and behavior. The whole lives in every part. This kind of approach shows the grave limitations of simplistic Darwinian “explanations” of animal life, while also demonstrating that a rigorous scientific approach can build up a living picture of an animal that enhances our sense of awe and responsibility for our fellow creatures on earth. The booklet can be purchased in print from our bookstore, or downloaded for free.

CLASS READING: High school (grades 11-12) courses in Ecology, Evolution, Life Sciences, and Zoology; undergraduate courses in Ecology, Evolution, and Zoology.

TEACHER RESOURCE: Lower school (grades 3-5), middle school, high school, and postsecondary educators.

“The Story of an Organism: Common Milkweed” by Craig Holdrege (2010)
A 25-page photo essay and natural history of the common milkweed, including its history through one season from early May through October. Craig clearly articulates the process to follow for this holistic study of a single organism and its broader ecological context: “I began studying the plant’s life history from first emergence in spring to opening of the fruits and seed dispersal in October, observing and comparing plants in different patches (colonies). I collected and then planted seeds from plants of different colonies, and observed germination and young seedling growth. I drew and photographed plants and also pressed the leaves of numerous plants. Finally, I observed the insects that associate with common milkweed. In addition to my own observations, which continued over a couple of years, I carried out an extensive review of the scientific literature on common milkweed.” The essay provides an easy to follow guide for phenomenological research on a single whole organism for a teacher’s own professional development. It could also be adapted for similar holistic studies with older students. (A slightly expanded version of this essay, with sustainability education in mind, became Chapter 5 in Thinking Like a Plant.)

CLASS READING and ACTIVITY: High school and undergraduate courses in Botany, Ecology, and Life Sciences.

TEACHER RESOURCE: Lower school, middle school, high school, and undergraduate educators.

“What Does It Mean to be a Sloth”? by Craig Holdrege (2009)
The sloth is a singular animal that expresses slowness in so many of its characteristics and even slows down processes in the rain forest in which it lives. Educators and students will enjoy getting to know this remarkable creature. As Craig explains: “I have tried to describe the sloth in a way that allows us to catch glimpses of its wholeness. I can now refer to such characteristics as slowness, inertia, blending in with the environment, receding or pulling in and not actively projecting outward. Each expression is a different way of pointing to the same coherent whole. Taken alone, as abstract concepts or definitions, they are empty. They are real only inasmuch as they light up within the description or perception of the animal’s characteristics. But they are not things like a bone or an eye. They are, in context, vibrant concepts that reveal the animal’s unique way of being.”

CLASS READING: High school courses in Ecology, Evolution, and Life Sciences; undergraduate courses in Ecology, Evolution, and Zoology.

TEACHER RESOURCE: All educators.

“How Does a Mole View the World”? by Craig Holdrege (2003)
The potent methods of whole organism biology are discussed and then demonstrated here, allowing a glimpse into the radically different world of a fascinating creature — the star-nosed mole. Each species lives out a unique way-of-being. To explore an animal’s behavior, we include how it actively and selectively relates to the world around it. This we can call the animal’s intentionality — how it shapes its existence by its ways of interacting. By carefully observing an animal’s behavior and the concrete context of its different behaviors, we gain understanding of its specific intentionality. But we can’t fully penetrate this behavior without attending to how it moves and the way this movement is shaped through the form and function of its various organs. The point is to build up vivid pictures of the animal from as many sides as possible. By continually immersing ourselves in concrete observation and then connecting our observations to vivid inner images, we enter into a conversation with the animal. Through such methods, the animal begins to show itself wholly.

CLASS READING: High school (grades 11-12) courses in Ecology, Evolution, Life Sciences, and Zoology; undergraduate courses in Ecology, Evolution, Zoology.

TEACHER RESOURCE: All educators.

“Skunk Cabbage” by Craig Holdrege (2000)
A whole-organism sketch, in words and hand-drawn illustrations, of a “lowly” plant with some extraordinary qualities. This provides both a practical example and inspiration for educators seeking (1) to develop their own practice in holistic studies of life, and (2) a model to adapt for students to practice as well. In attending closely to skunk cabbage (Symplocarpus foetidus), we enter into conversation with a unique and rich world. The skunk cabbage has a fluid, bud-like quality, and in late winter it can melt its way through the snow by means of its animal-like body heat. We have to return to the plant again and again, questioning and searching for understanding. To see the plant’s life, it has to become alive in us. We must, as Goethe puts it, become “as flexible and mobile as nature herself” to penetrate beyond the surface of facts to what gives life and coherence to nature’s creations. Skunk cabbage reveals to us the fluid quality of water in the way it unfolds and decays, as well as in its undulating, flowing forms. And in all of these characteristics we see a vivid picture of early spring — a plant that is bud-like in so many ways and yet unfolds to bring the first life and movement to a still slumbering habitat. With such experiential understanding, every fresh encounter with the plant can be met with expectation of something more to learn. This attitude begins to inform our overall orientation toward nature. Any other plant, bug, or bird appears immediately as a riddle and not a thing. We know it carries within itself a whole, unique world just waiting to be disclosed.

CLASS READING: High school (grades 11-12) courses in Botany, Ecology and Environmental Science; undergraduate courses in Botany, Ecology and Environmental Science.

TEACHER RESOURCE: Lower school (grades 4-5), middle school, high school, and undergraduate educators.

“Bloodroot through the Year” by Craig Holdrege (1999)
A sketch, in words and hand-drawn illustrations by the author, of the life cycle of the bloodroot plant (Sanguinaria canadensis), an early spring forest wildflower. In it, Craig models how to conduct a whole organism study, over time, incorporating meticulous observation, artistic appreciation, and knowledge gleaned from earlier scientific studies. He also clearly describes the holistic, Goethean methodology so that teachers (and their students) can practice it: “We have to get out and observe, actively taking in what nature can show us … My method is straightforward: I go out repeatedly to observe, sketch, and often photograph the plant. Back inside, I try to reform the image I obtained from my observations. It’s quite easy to follow the plant in its early stages, where everything changes rapidly and holds one’s interest. After the flowering stage, it takes much more will to stick with the plant — to see it through the year. Only in the whole cycle of the year can the plant really show itself. How much it reveals depends on the care one takes in observing and on one’s ability to connect the separate observations in order to bring the actual process of transformation alive. Only then does the character of the plant become more tangible.”

CLASS ACTIVITY: Lower school (grades 4-5), middle school, and high school courses; undergraduate courses in Ecology, Environmental Science, and Life Sciences.

CLASS READING: High school (grades 11-12) courses in Botany, Ecology, and Environmental Science; undergraduate courses in Botany, Ecology, and Environmental Science.

TEACHER RESOURCE: Lower school (grades 4-5), middle school, high school, and undergraduate educators.

“Where Do Organisms End?” by Craig Holdrege (2000)
A companion piece to the Goethean exercises described in the study of bloodroot above. In addition to a bloodroot plant being a process in time, it also extends beyond itself, as a physical entity, revealing itself functionally as part of a larger whole. Examples in the article begin with the ant larvae that feed on bloodroot seeds and then disperse them in their waste, and then ranges on to giraffes, and bison. Each example shows how inappropriate it can be to draw rigid lines between organisms and their environment.

CLASS READING: High school (grades 11-12) courses in Botany, Ecology, and Environmental Science; undergraduate courses Botany, Ecology, and Environmental Science.

TEACHER RESOURCE: Lower school (grades 4-5), middle school, high school, and undergraduate educators.

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5. The Living Nature of Life — From Mechanism to Organism

Many of the articles in this section are abridged versions of longer articles that can be found at Biology Worthy of Life. You may want to browse that collection of in-depth online chapters. They clarify how common, mechanistic ideas about biological phenomena are misleading and often false. They also reveal how science actually supports a much more dynamic and complex picture of ecological relationships both within and between living organisms. We attempt to advance a nuanced and dynamic picture of life that is crucial for sustain­ability education.

“Reviving the Organism” by Stephen L. Talbott (2016)
The fact that every organism is, in the first place, an activity has radical implications for biology. It was Aristotle who first characterized animals as “self-moving,” and not many in biology today would disagree. Yet this truth is rarely taken with real seriousness. This article lays out some of the most important issues, ranging from the old struggle between reductionism and vitalism to contemporary perplexities of cognitive science having to do with mind and body, perception and consciousness, thought and object of thought.

CLASS READING: High school (grade 12) courses in Life Sciences; undergraduate courses in History and Philosophy of Science and Life Sciences.

TEACHER RESOURCE: Middle school, high school, postsecondary, and postsecondary teacher educators (especially relevant in preparing students to teach science).

“Of Machines, Organisms, and Agency” by Stephen L. Talbott (2016)
Whether we view them at the molecular level or as we naturally encounter them, organisms appear to be agents carrying out intentions, even if unconsciously or not in anything like a human manner. But what do we mean by “agency” and “intention?”

CLASS READING: High school (grade 12) courses in Life Sciences; undergraduate and graduate courses in History and Philosophy of Science and Life Sciences.

TEACHER RESOURCE: Middle school, high school, and postsecondary educators.

“DNA and the Whole Organism” by Stephen L. Talbott (2015)
Excerpts from a much longer article, Genes and Organisms: Improvising the Dance of Life, attempting to show the place of DNA within the context of both the cell and organism as integral unities. A key lesson: the organism knows what it is doing with its DNA.

CLASS READING (grade 12); undergraduate and graduate courses in Life Sciences.

TEACHER RESOURCE: Middle school, high school, and postsecondary educators.

“Let’s Lighten Up Biological Thinking!” by Stephen L. Talbott (2014)
Thinking in biology hasn’t caught up with the results of contemporary research. In particular, an apparent taboo against any explicit acknowledgment of intention and agency in all features and activities of the organism is a serious block to further progress in understanding.

CLASS READING: High school (grade 12) courses in Life Sciences; undergraduate and graduate courses in History and Philosophy of Science and Life Sciences.

TEACHER RESOURCE: Middle school, high school, postsecondary, and postsecondary teacher educators (especially relevant in preparing students to teach science).

“Biology’s Shameful Refusal to Disown the Machine-Organism” by Stephen L. Talbott (2014)
This article critically examines the strong emphasis upon machine-like design in conventional biology and draws from the most recent research findings to argue that this framework is now scientifically obsolete.

CLASS READING: High school (grade 12) courses in Life Sciences; undergraduate and graduate courses in History and Philosophy of Science and Life Sciences.

TEACHER RESOURCE: Middle school, high school, postsecondary, and postsecondary teacher educators (especially relevant in preparing students to teach science).

“Shattering the Genome” by Stephen L. Talbott (2013)
A microorganism known as Deinococcus radiodurans can endure massive doses of radiation that fragment its genome into hundreds of pieces. Its proteins simply reassemble a whole genome from the fragments. It raises a question that turns out to be universally applicable: Where is wisdom stored in the organism? No place in particular — and certainly not only in the genome. Instead, we are led to think of the organism in its totality as an active agent in the world.

CLASS READING: High school (grade 12) courses in Life Sciences; undergraduate and graduate courses in History and Philosophy of Science and Life Sciences.

TEACHER RESOURCE: Middle school, high school, postsecondary, and postsecondary teacher educators (especially relevant in preparing students to teach science).

“Plasticity, Stability, and Whole-Organism Inheritance” by Stephen L. Talbott (2013)
The development of complex organisms tells a dramatic story about the plasticity of DNA in the “hands” of the whole cell and whole organism. The story of development is first of all a story — a narrative with intention and direction — not merely a series of physical causes and effects. The text we present here is excerpted from Steve’s article, Genes and the Central Fallacy of Evolutionary Theory.

CLASS READING: High school (grade 12) courses in Life Sciences; undergraduate and graduate courses in History and Philosophy of Science and Life Sciences.

TEACHER RESOURCE: Middle school, high school, postsecondary, and postsecondary teacher educators (especially relevant in preparing students to teach science).

“Promising Themes in Molecular Biology” by Stephen L. Talbott (2011)
For those seeking a more holistic understanding of biology than conventional academic approaches provide, this article highlights a few signs of potential health and transformation, particularly in the literature of molecular biology. The purpose here is to convey a hint of how researchers are increasingly finding themselves grappling with the incredible fluidity and plasticity of organisms under the influence of a governing context, and to point to implications that many biologists haven’t yet fully appreciated due to the inertia of old habits of thought.

CLASS READING: High school (grade 12) courses in Life Sciences; undergraduate and graduate courses in History and Philosophy of Science and Life Sciences.

TEACHER RESOURCE: Middle school, high school, postsecondary, and postsecondary teacher educators (especially relevant in preparing students to teach science).

“Do Organisms Merely Survive?” by Stephen L. Talbott (2002)
A provocative essay illuminating how holistic approaches to biology provide a broader framework for understanding living organisms than conventional reductionist approaches. It suggests going beyond the limits of the conventional, mechanistic emphasis that every organism strives to survive — or, that an organism’s traits can be explained through a process of random variation and survival of the fittest — to recognize that every organism strives to express its own wholeness. “To whatever extent we can actually see a distinctive, characteristic, and expressive unity of the organism that survives — as opposed to mere functional efficiency — we have already demonstrated the inadequacy of the ‘collection of survival mechanisms’ view.”

CLASS READING: High school (grade 12) Evolutionary Biology and Life Sciences; undergraduate and graduate courses in History and Philosophy of Science and Life Sciences.

TEACHER RESOURCE: High school (grade 12) and postsecondary educators.

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6. Agriculture and Sustainability

“Soil, Culture, and Human Responsibility” by Bruno Follador (2016)
This article traces the tragic cultural history that led to the U.S. Dust Bowl of the 1930s as well as to our current soil crisis, and explores what we can learn from it about the inextricable relationship between soil, human culture, and our social and ecological responsibilities.

CLASS READING: High school courses in Ecology, Geography, and History; undergraduate courses in Ecology, Environmental Science, Sustainability, and Science, Technology, and Society.

TEACHER RESOURCE: Middle school, high school, and undergraduate educators.

“The Creature That Has Never Been” by Bruno Follador (2015)
An essay critically examining our relationship to domestic farm animals and how it reflects a lack of understanding about the essential role of ecological reciprocity in sustainable agriculture. Industrialized farming is the result not only of political and economic interests, but also of our own way of seeing, thinking, and speaking about the world. What we meet in a factory farm is not only a particularly efficient system but an expression of human consciousness. If we strive to shift to a more living understanding of nature, we could redefine our breeding goals into a much broader perspective, far beyond just a narrow sense of utility or an abstract sense of animal welfare. The standard of animal health will be provided by the animals themselves — that is, by our own contextual understanding of their wholeness as living beings. A breeder or farmer would then begin to ask: “Am I contributing toward or hindering the organic integrity of this animal? Is it healthy and whole? Will the new characteristics I’m trying to breed for contribute to the health of my farm? And will my farm contribute to this creature’s health?”

CLASS READING: High school courses in Ecology, Geography, and History; undergraduate courses in Ecology, Environmental Science, Sustainability, and Science, Technology, and Society.

TEACHER RESOURCE: Middle school, high school, and undergraduate educators.

“The Inner and Outer Gesture of Composting” by Bruno Follador (2014)
For the farmer or gardener to develop a more personal relationship to the unique organism that their own farm or garden actually is, a whole new commitment to agriculture, composting, and life process is demanded. To work with compost is to humbly accept an invitation to rethink our relationship with the earth while actively engaging in a process of composition. The old saying that we come to know the health of a farm through its compost yard gains new meaning and depth when we begin to understand composting as being an activity that goes beyond utilitarian purposes of yields and waste management. It means to start seeing the compost pile as an outer expression of our way of thinking and relating to Nature. The pile begins to show itself as the outer expression of the gardener or farmer’s inner gesture.

CLASS READING: High school courses in Ecology, Geography, and History; undergraduate courses in Ecology, Environmental Science, Sustainability, and Science, Technology, and Society.

TEACHER RESOURCE: Middle school, high school, and undergraduate educators.

“Context-Sensitive Action: The Development of Push-Pull Farming in Africa” by Craig Holdrege (2012)
How do you control insects by attracting and repelling them at the same time? Hundreds of African farmers, particularly in Kenya, have been delighted to learn that a “push-pull” method really does the trick. The ambitious and economically important research program behind this development tells us a lot about how science can contribute to ecological and social transformation. The article describes key features of such context-sensitive action for constructive social change and ecological protection.

CLASS READING: High school courses in Ecology, Geography, and History; undergraduate courses in Ecology, Environmental Science, Sustainability, and Science, Technology, and Society.

TEACHER RESOURCE: Middle school, high school, and undergraduate educators.

“Pharming the Cow: Animals as Factories” by Craig Holdrege (1997)
Is the cow a complex genetic mechanism that we can manipulate at will for human ends, or is it an organism with its own integrity that warrants our respect? This article exemplifies the power of a holistic, contextual approach to tackle complex issues of technology and animal welfare. “As long as we treat [the cow] as a commercial bioreactor, there is no reason not to continue trying to increase production. But if we remember that the cow is an organism, then we must ask how far we can healthily push milk production. By gaining insight into the cow as a ‘small world, existing for its own sake’ [Goethe], we can recognize its specific characteristics and needs, and begin to fit our actions into its context.”

CLASS READING: High school courses in Ecology, Geography, and History; undergraduate courses in Ecology, Environmental Science, Sustainability, and Science, Technology, and Society.

TEACHER RESOURCE: Middle school, high school, and undergraduate educators.

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7. Impacts of Mechanistic Thinking and Technology

“When Engineers Take Hold of Life: Synthetic Biology” by Craig Holdrege (2014)
What happens when genetic engineers begin to envision the synthesis of altogether new life forms, using Lego block-like “BioBricks?” The ambition may be foolish, but huge resources are now being devoted to it, with grave implications for the biological future. This article provides an introduction to synthetic biology and the ethical and ecological challenges it presents.

CLASS READING: High school (grades 11-12) courses in Genetics and Life Sciences and (grade 12) Social Studies; undergraduate and graduate courses in Ethics, Life Sciences, Philosophy, and Science, Technology, and Society.

TEACHER RESOURCE: Middle school, high school, and postsecondary educators.

“Manipulating the Genome of Human Embryos: Some Unforeseen Effects” by Craig Holdrege (2015)
Pointing to both unintended consequences and profound ethical issues, this article examines the details and the broader context of the controversial 2015 experiments in China to “edit” the genome of human embryos.

CLASS READING: High school (grades 11-12) courses in Genetics and Life Sciences and (grade 12) Social Studies; undergraduate and graduate courses in Ethics, Life Sciences, Philosophy, and Science, Technology, and Society.

TEACHER RESOURCE: Middle school, high school, and postsecondary educators.

“How to Manufacture the Notion of Synthetic Life” by Stephen L. Talbott (2010)
A head-on critique of the emerging field of synthetic bioengineering, euphemistically named “synthetic biology” by its practitioners. An oak tree does not at all have the same way of being as a weeping willow, nor is an amoeba’s movement (whether at the level of the whole organism or of molecular process) choreographed in the style of a paramecium’s. If and when synthetic biologists start discussing how they might reproduce such a unique gesturing — a gesturing they must carefully, deliberately, and knowledgeably compound out of the innumerable molecular activities proceeding simultaneously and interdependently in the cell — all in order to produce from scratch a particular sort of organism with a particular sort of recognizable character, then one could believe they have begun to glimpse the problem of attempting to synthesize life. Otherwise, such efforts are little more than “crude and mostly ignorant, trial-and-error manipulation of already living things . . . a technologically sophisticated discipline of tinkering.”

CLASS READING: High school (grades 11-12) courses in Ecology, Life Sciences, Philosophy, and Social Studies; undergraduate and graduate courses in Ecology, Environmental Sciences, Evolutionary Biology, History and Philosophy of Science, Life Sciences, Molecular Biology, Philosophy, and Science, Technology, and Society.

TEACHER AND RESEARCHER RESOURCE: Middle school, high school, postsecondary, and postsecondary teacher educators.

Beyond Biotechnology: The Barren Promise of Genetic Engineering by Craig Holdrege and Steve Talbott (2008)
A book written for lay readers, Beyond Biotechnology is an accessible introduction to the complicated issues of genetic engineering and its potential applications. It evaluates the state of genetic science and engineering, examining its actual and potential applications, especially in agriculture and medicine, as well as its dangers. The authors show how the popular view of genetics does not include an understanding of the ways in which genes actually work together in organisms. Simplistic and reductionist views of genes lead to unrealistic expectations and, ultimately, disappointment in the results that genetic engineering actually delivers. The authors explore such developments in genetics, as the discovery of “non-Darwinian” adaptive mutations in bacteria and growing evidence that organisms are far more than mere collections of genetically driven mechanisms. They also answer vital questions that get to the essence of genetic interaction with human biology: Does DNA “manage” an organism any more than the organism manages its DNA? Should genetically engineered products be labeled as such? Do the methods of the genetic engineer resemble the centuries-old practices of animal husbandry? (This 272-page book, published by The University of Kentucky Press, is available for purchase from our bookstore.)

CLASS READING: High school (grades 11-12) courses in Genetics, Life Sciences, Social Studies and (grade 12) Philosophy; undergraduate and graduate courses in Ethics, Life Sciences, Philosophy, and Science, Technology, and Society.

TEACHER RESOURCE: Middle school, high school, and postsecondary educators.

In the Belly of the Beast: Technology, Nature, and the Human Prospect by Stephen L. Talbott (2004)
From Odysseus to the Amazon jungle, from feeding chickadees by hand to the high abstractions of science, this booklet looks at the role of technology in human life and in the management (or mismanagement) of nature, and also assesses our future prospects. Readers may find the insights it offers outrageous or revelatory, but they will never find them conventional. See especially Chapter One: “Deceiving Virtues of Technology.” The printed booklet can be purchased from our bookstore, or downloaded for free.

CLASS READING: Undergraduate and graduate courses in Education, Engineering, History and Philosophy of Science, Information Technology, and Philosophy.

TEACHER RESOURCE: All educators.

The Future Does Not Compute: Transcending the Machines in Our Midst by Stephen L. Talbott (1995)
This prescient, award-winning book correctly predicted — contrary to widespread political and commercial hype at the time — that heavily investing in computer technology for K-12 classrooms would not lead to a renaissance in American education. The book’s concerns and critiques, in terms of the seductions of technology and the too often ignored developmental needs of children, remain pertinent to current wishful thinking about the role of advanced electronic media in the education of children and about advanced technologies in general being the “solution” to all that ails society. (This 481-page book is available for purchase from our bookstore or can be downloaded for free, chapter by chapter, here.)

CLASS READING: Undergraduate and graduate courses in Education and History and Philosophy of Science.

TEACHER: All educators.

“Biological Engineering for Fun and Profit” by Stephen L. Talbott (2011)
This essay offers a critical look at how the very nature of the living organism is being made into a subject for both trivial gaming and commercialized re-engineering. As the examples in this article show, these ambitions and efforts reveal how important it is to move in a different direction — to anchor human thought and action in concrete perception, experience, and respect for living organisms.

CLASS READING: High school (grades 11-12) courses in Ecology and Life Sciences; undergraduate and graduate courses in Ecology, Environmental Science, History and Philosophy of Science, and Life Sciences.

TEACHER RESOURCE: High school (grades 11-12) and postsecondary educators.

“Genes and Life: The Need for Qualitative Understanding” by Craig Holdrege (1999)
Which of our genes make us human? None of them and all of them. The question, it turns out, betrays a grave misunderstanding of genes and people. As long as genetic engineers view organisms as mechanisms in a world separate from them, there is no real question of responsibility. Ethical considerations in this case are after-the-fact and considered outside the scientific process. Only when we incorporate the qualitative into the scientific process — when our way of viewing consciously includes the other being from the outset — can we begin to heal this split.

CLASS READING: High school and undergraduate courses in Environmental Science and Life Sciences.

“Why Not Globalization?” by Stephen L. Talbott (2001)
Brief reflections upon the ecology of human society, originally presented at the 2001 Technology and Globalization Teach-In in New York City. Freedom of cultures to choose modernization cannot be denied, and the human individual today cannot help feeling a certain pull toward the global and universal. But this does not imply that we should pursue current globalization policies, which tend to extinguish both cultures and the individual. Truly ecological thinking will be flexible and imaginative enough to hold these “opposites” in harmonious counterpoint — something not yet achieved with the destructive globalization processes of today. Only strong local communities can make globalization worthwhile and every local community is a habitat bound up with neighboring habitats “and so on, ever outward.”

CLASS READING: High school courses in Social Studies; undergraduate and graduate courses in Sustainability, Sociology, and Science, Technology, and Society.

TEACHER RESOURCE: High school and postsecondary educators.

Unintended Effects of Genetic Manipulation Project
This special Nature Institute project tracks evidence of the wide-ranging and never wholly predictable effects of genetic engineering. We have collected examples from the scientific literature, primarily from peer-reviewed journals, and written short reports on each example. These are ordered according to different categories and include effects on the manipulated organisms themselves as well as broader environmental ripple effects. Our compilation of reports is by no means exhaustive and continues to expand over time.

CLASS READING (and Research Resource): High school courses in Ecology, Life Sciences, and Social Studies; undergraduate and graduate courses in Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Molecular Biology, and Science, Technology, and Society.

TEACHER AND RESEARCHER RESOURCE: High school, postsecondary educators and researchers.

Other Resources: For many other Nature Institute resources related to genetics and genetic engineering, see the Heredity, Epigenetics and Genetic Engineering page.

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8. Foundations of Holistic, Contextual Science

“Goethe and the Evolution of Science” by Craig Holdrege (2014)
This article provides a lucid introduction to Goethe’s approach to science for educators and students. As Craig explains, his approach “was truly ecological — he always tried to understand things in relation to their broader connections.” In Goethe’s view, understanding “can only be gained when we consider the relations and connections in which any given subject is embedded. This is ecology as a way of knowing.”

CLASS READING: High school (grade 12) courses in Ecology, Gardening, and Life Sciences; undergraduate and graduate courses in Ecology, Environmental Science, History and Philosophy of Science, Life Sciences, and Philosophy.

TEACHER RESOURCE: Lower school (grades 4-5), middle school, and high school, and postsecondary educators.

“Doing Goethean Science” by Craig Holdrege (2005)
Practicing the Goethean approach to science involves heightened methodological awareness and sensitivity to the way we engage in the phenomenal world. We need to overcome our habit of viewing the world in terms of objects and leave behind the scientific propensity to explain via reification and reductive models. Science is a conversation with nature and this perspective can inform a new scientific frame of mind. This article presents the Goethean approach via a practical example (a study of a plant, skunk cabbage) and discusses some of the essential features of Goethean methodology and insight: the riddle; into the phenomenon; exact picture building; and seeing the whole.

CLASS READING: High school (grade 12) courses in Science; undergraduate courses in Ecology, Environmental Science, History and Philosophy of Science, and Life Sciences.

TEACHER RESOURCE: All educators (especially middle school, high school, and postsecondary educators).

“Rebirth of the Type: Notes on a Recent Paper by Mark Riegner” by Stephen L. Talbott (2013)
An essay reviewing and reflecting on the implications of a significant recent paper by whole-organism biologist, Mark Riegner, which tackles the once-dismissed question whether organisms can be thought of as having an essential nature — that is, whether they exemplify a type or archetype. Riegner suggests that the time is ripe for revival of this concept, if only it is understood correctly. And he turns to Goethe for such an understanding, arguing that recent developments in the biological and evolutionary sciences point toward a serious place for typological thinking of the sort Goethe advanced. (To request a copy of Riegner’s article, write him at mriegner@prescott.edu.)

CLASS READING: Undergraduate and graduate courses in Ecology, Evolutionary Biology, History and Philosophy of Science, Life Sciences, and Molecular Biology.

TEACHER RESOURCE: Postsecondary and postsecondary teacher educators.

“The Experiment as Mediator of Object and Subject” by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1792)
Goethe’s seminal essay on the nature of knowing and scientific methodology and experimentation. Because he had learned that “in living nature nothing happens that is not in connection with a whole,” he recognized that a scientist must always view individual facts or results of individual experiments within larger contexts. For example, individual experiments do not provide “proofs;” rather, one needs to carry out a series of experiments, varying the conditions to gain real insight into phenomena.

CLASS READING: High school (grades 11-12) courses in Science; undergraduate courses in Ecology, Environmental Science, History & Philosophy of Science, and Life Sciences.

TEACHER RESOURCE: All educators (especially middle school, high school, and postsecondary educators).

“To Explain or Portray” by Stephen L. Talbott (2003)
What Goethe said of his pioneering morphological research is often repeated of Goethean science as a whole: “its intention is to portray rather than explain” (Goethe 1995, p. 57). Difficult words. The idea seems to be that description — or at least description of the right sort — leads by itself to scientific understanding. This is implied more strongly in another of his oft-repeated koans: “everything in the realm of fact is already theory ... Let us not seek for something behind the phenomena — they themselves are the theory” (p. 307). Goethe is contrasting a particular sort of portrayal with a particular sort of explanation, and is suggesting that the portrayal is a fuller, more adequate form of explanation. This essay briefly sketches the contrast between Goethean portrayal and the constricted sort of explanation that continues to be honored as the ideal of hard science.

CLASS READING: Undergraduate and graduate courses in Ecology, History and Philosophy of Science, and Life Sciences.

TEACHER RESOURCE: Postsecondary and postsecondary teacher educators.

“Of Ideas and Essences” by Stephen L. Talbott (2002)
A response to critiques of holistic approaches in environmental science as veering into “eco-mysticism.” References to the “idea” or “nature” of a plant or animal species does not need to refer to a metaphysical essence of some sort. In fact, in the practice of Goethean science:

• The Goethean researcher is interested in observable phenomena, and has no desire to press behind the phenomena to some sort of metaphysical essence.

• The Goethean researcher who speaks of the nature of an organism is referring to its inner unity of being — “inner” because this unity is conceptual.

• “Conceptual” does not mean subjective. When one struggles to conceive the nature of the organism, one is struggling to find the concepts (the ideas, the interior being) that belong to the organism and are, as formal cause, generative of its unity. (This, however, can hardly make much sense so long as one is bound by our culture’s normal rendering of terms such as “concept,” “cause,” and “idea.”)

• There is no reason to take the observed unity of the organism as unchanging or incapable of evolution. The nature of an organism just is what it is (what it is observed to be), and if it evolves with time, this can be seen as part of its dynamic aspect. The potential for continually transformed expression is, after all, intrinsic to any truly vital idea.

CLASS READING: Undergraduate and graduate courses in Ecology, History and Philosophy of Science, and Life Sciences.

TEACHER RESOURCE: Postsecondary and postsecondary teacher educators.

“Learning to See Life — Developing the Goethean Approach to Science” by Craig Holdrege (2005)
For educators, an introductory guide to teaching methods in holistic science: “I have often thought that if a teacher wanted to have one succinct motto to hang above his or her bed, she’d have a hard time finding a better one than: “characterize, don’t define.” In order to characterize, say, an animal, we have to carry within ourselves a vivid picture of its shape, how it moves, the sounds it makes, its habitat and the ways it relates to its environment. We bring alive through our imagination and speech something of the animal’s nature . . . When we paint a picture of the animal in this way — a process in which the students are involved — the animal can begin to live in the soul of the child or adolescent.”

CLASS READING: Undergraduate and graduate courses in Education.

TEACHER RESOURCE: All educators.

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