Confronting Climate Change with Indigenous Wisdom and Western Science

Preface

Modern science came about due to a revolution (i.e., “the scientific revolution,” 1543–1660 CE) and eventually became what science is today—one of the weapons to fight against the current climate-change crisis. The revolutionary transition took place during a period of time known as the European Renaissance (1300–1700 CE about). Some European cultural beliefs were changing from ancient Greek thinking to modern Renaissance thinking. The ancient Greek thoughts were accepted as true if they came out of the pure minds of Plato or Aristotle. That was enough to make them true.

Those two Greek philosophers stated that planets moved across the night sky for the same reason the Sun did during the day. Because they are perfect heavenly bodies, they must travel in perfect circles around the Earth, and always with the same speed.

Some natural philosophers spread Copernicus’ radical thoughts about the Earth moving around the sun. It caused some people to become so angry that they burned some of those radical thinkers at the stake.

Johannes Kepler was a natural philosopher (early scientist) and a superb mathematician who was setting aside the ancient Greek way of deciding what or who should be believed, concerning the physical universe. The Greek way was to rely on whatever the purity of Plato’s or Aristotle’s minds dictated. The revolutionaries, such as Kepler, Galileo and Newton, wanted to reason with evidence on their own.

European Renaissance culture of natural philosophers, like Johannes Kepler, adopted the view that valid evidence supporting an idea would determine what or who to believe. European culture altered accordingly. This issue of who to believe continues today concerning pandemics and climate change. The book, Confronting Climate Change, confirms the above by tracking the evidence for a change in culture that evolves from the same questions: How do I decide? and Who do we believe, about climate change?

The book’s subtitle answers this compound question: a sustainability revolution. The historical summary just above looks like a gross overgeneralization without the dramatic details waiting for you to read in the book’s chapters along with its Epilogue. Its conclusion will be illuminated by the collaboration among:

• • people who by tradition or by habit generally live a sustainability culture; and
• • broadly defined: science, economics, engineering, environmental and political-science communities; all motivated to get rid of the cli- mate-change crisis.

All of these people need an international leader or group of leaders with a plan and expertise to rid the Earth of the threat. Keep your eyes on Dr. Mark Carney, Dr. David Suzuki, and other potential nominees as mentioned in the book.

Readers can expect to acquire clear ideas about how scientists do their normal work and how they interact with fellow scientists. This type of content, of cource, is known as “the nature of science” (NOS). Another type is how the scientific enterprise interacts with society, an activity that scientists now call “post-normal science”¹ or “socio-scientific issues” (SSI).² The book points out for the reader when this knowledge is used, mostly at the climate-change crisis.

Accordingly, the book has two goals for readers, with implications for their everyday lives. First, to understand the nature of science, scientists and society well enough to challenge those people who: (a) misrepresent science or scientists; (b) dismiss legitimate scientists’ professional research results; (c) demonstrate the “Dunning-Kruger Effect;”³ (d) cannot distinguish between the latest scientific knowledge and an outsider’s interpretation of it; or (e) engage in other tactics such as threatening violence.⁴ Such people are characterized by the established news media as the anti-science crowd, or the I-am-the-centre-of-the-universe crowd.

The overall argumentation of the book draws on Kepler’s rich concept of harmony to conclude that today’s Indigenous wisdom has a role to play in helping end the climate-change crisis by collaborating with scientists, economists, engineers, political leaders and the general public.

The accompanying culture change will bring about a sustainability revolution. But sustainability is not a strength in today’s world. The world requires a much stronger pulse of sustainability.

1 Funtowicz & Ravetz (1993)

2 Klopfer & Aikenhead (2022)

3 Duignan (n.d.)

4 Lomborg (2022)