Theory of Knowledge - Course Companion for Students Marija Uzunova Dang Arvin Singh Uzunov Dang

and the behaviorists willfully saw dogs as machines, without feeling. Isseeing
Descartes
as without feeling a similar arrogance? One way to stop seeing trees, or rivers, or hills,
plants
learning
Language
Do you need to understand Potawatomi
1.
learn the lessons of animacy, or is it
to
for a person like Kimmerer to
enough
How would you describe the relationship
2.
speaking an Indigenous
between
and understanding Indigenous
language
in the world?
perspectives
To what extent can Indigenous
3.
about the natural world
knowledge
Traditional ecological
III.3
(TEK)
knowledge
Indigenous people of the world possess an
The
knowledge of their environments, based on
immense
of living close to nature. Living in and from
centuries
richness and variety of complex ecosystems, they
the
an understanding of the properties of plants
have
animals, the functioning of ecosystems and
and
techniques for using and managing them that is
the
and often detailed. In rural communities
particular
developing countries, locally occurring species
in
relied on for many—sometimes all—foods,
are
fuel, building materials and other products.
medicines,
people’s knowledge and perceptions of the
Equally,
and their relationships with it, are often
environment,
elements of cultural identity.
important
1994; former
(Mayor
General of UNESCO)
Director
ecological knowledge (TEK) is
Traditional
label used to describe and give validity
a
traditional, local and folk knowledges
to
from ecology to environmental
spanning
in a language like English
becaptured
treats the non-human world
that
Should we break grammatical rules in our
4.
to incorporate new ideas such
languages
To what extent does Le Guin, in the
5.
above, suggest a way of being and
quote
that parallels the grammar of
thinking
without having to learn it?
animacy,
Unlike other elements of
metaphysics.
knowledge, it has been embraced
Indigenous
modern science, particularly in the fields
by
land management, conservation, medicine
of
botany. What is it about TEK that has been
and
attractive to modern scientists? Why has
so
knowledge been relatively accessible?
ecological
does this compare with the uptake of
How
perspectives in other disciplines,
Indigenous
as mathematics and art?
such
of the interest stems from growing
Part
of the scale and urgency of the
awareness
damage confronting us, namely a
ecological
planetary mass extinction and climate
sixth
We encounter a related phenomenon
crisis.
the growing popularity of nature-religions
in
Chapter 6, III.3. As Henry Huntingdon
in
Nikolai Mymrin describe, TEK is seen
and
having passed the practical test of being
as
for generations of people who have
useful
on this detailed knowledge for their
“relied
have literally staked their lives
survival—they
its accuracy and repeatability” (Huntington,
on
1998).
Mymrin
III. Methods and tools
III. Methods and tools
only as ‘natural resources,’ is to class them as fellow beings—kinfolk.” (Le Guin 2016)
For discussion
asobjects?
explain the lessons in English?
asanimacy?
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