Environment Behavioral Paradigms
When the man awakens to the new paradigm it is “the mechanistic conception of Newton and Descartes to a holistic and ecological vision” (Capra, 1996, p.13), let the values anthropocentric and egocentric values in pursuit of the vision of interdependence and makes It is part of everyday life, a fundamental change in our thoughts, perceptions and values.
Studies clarify what is a paradigm. Thomas Kuhn in the Structure of Scientific Revolutions gives two meanings to the word paradigm. The first, wider, has to do with “a whole constellation of opinions, values and methods etc… attended by members of a society, “founded a discipline by which the company is directed to itself and holds the set of their relations. The second, narrower, and is derived from the first means of reference examples, the solutions of problems, taken and held as copies and replacing the explicit rules in solving other problems of moral science (Kuhn, 1970, apud BOFF , 2004).
By comparison between the concepts can be taken as the first concept that is most similar to the studies discussed in this work.
The refusal by “demean the Earth to a series of natural resources or a reservoir of physical and chemical raw materials” as Boff (2004, p. 27), is that the base in pursuit of the new paradigm, to feel the need to use new science and technology to nature, justifying the choice of the concept of paradigm given by Kuhn.
Created by the mechanistic view of scientific revolution represented by Copernicus, Descartes, Bacon, Newton, Galileo describes the world as a machine driven by mathematical laws. The evolution of human thought, the disclosure of chemical processes unmasking the functioning of living organisms has not been able to overthrow the Cartesian paradigm.
The art, literature and philosophy were the initial trigger of the real opposition to this dominant paradigm, with Lavoisier, William Blake, Goethe, Kant and Hutlon begin to differentiate between living organisms as self-reproduction and self-organization and see the integration between the parties and the Planet (Capra, 1982).
In the most remote times, the references to Greek and Roman on Earth were emotional, as Boff describes: Everything was full of respect and veneration, because they saw things as simple inert beings, but full of meaning and irradiation.
The Earth, in the various expressions of Great Mother, of cultivated land and home, was seen as a living organism. It cannot be violated or predators. Otherwise if revenge by storms, lightning, droughts, fires, earthquakes and volcanoes [...] The man had a relationship of reverence and awe in the face of Mother Earth. (1999, p. 64)
According to the author, this feeling was never completely lost in humanity. Spirits were always sensitive to magic and the enchantment of nature, even in modern times that the world massacred and reduced to a container of resources to be exploited by technology. In today this feeling resurfaces from the so-called science of the Earth. They also tend to see more and more the Earth as “Gaia”, a live, super organism highly organized and balanced with subtle, always fragile and always on repeat, as the theory says the scientist of NASA, Lovelock (1991).
The systemic thinking may have been launched from the biological view of the problem observed by biologists of the early XX century.
For Capra (1996), with the systemic view the properties of an organism or living system, are properties of a whole that no party has. Arise from interactions between the parties; if it is dissected in isolated elements, these properties are destroyed.
The systemic thinking has revolutionized the scientific thought, awakened by the impact that comes from the perception that the systems cannot be understood by analysis of its parts, but in a broad, contextual, analytical thinking is the opposite, that to understand anything we must isolate it.
The paradigm shift from mechanistic thinking to systemic thinking leads to reflect on the materialist philosophy in which human beings came to believe the matter as one consistent reality, all phenomena are secondary derivations thereof.
For systemic thinking the matter can be seen in another form, such as energy, “the matter is not simply material but stabilized energy, full of complex interactions,” citing Boff (1999, p.24). Even states that matter, the philology of the word suggests, is the mother of all things, even the life that is self-organization of matter.
The foundations for the creation of dominant paradigms emerged today of the main philosophical currents initiated from the modern era (XVII century) and the development of science.
These generated models of development incompatible with the ecological balance in the process of civilization of the West, which finally broken this environmental crisis. Turn led to the contemporary society of the century. XX, the environmental thinking.
The historical background of the main philosophical and scientific currents that influenced the formation of environmental thinking mean to say that these have led to concepts, models and forms of reasoning peculiar, or different paradigms. Highlight the most relevant paradigms of Modern Age to the present day.
The XX century provides clarification to the understanding of this process. The Cartesian paradigm – ” rationalism” The “rational” or “Cartesian rationalism” is a philosophy which arose in the current century. XVII formulated by French philosopher Descartes (1596-1650). This doctrine places on human reason alone the ability to know and establish the truth, regardless of the experience of the senses, rejecting any and all assistance from the feelings and emotions. A sensory experience for the rationalists is a source of confusion and errors about the reality of the world (COTRIM, 1991; CHAUÍ, 1997). For Descartes, science is a deductive and demonstrative rational knowledge such as mathematics. The deduction, or deductive argument, refers to a demonstration, ranging from general to particular, and is capable of reaching a certain conclusion from a set of propositions that links one to the other according to an order (JAPIASSU , 1992). The method of Descartes is the decomposition of problems and thoughts in parts, these parts are organized by causal relationships. So the whole is understood from the fragmentation and analysis of individual shares (Capra, 1982).
Descartes proves the truth of the above, showing the relationship of causation (or causal relations) governing the subject of research (CHAUÍ, 1997). So for Descartes, rationality is direct, e.g. cause and effect. Established the fact that the only absolutely certain and secure, and completely free of doubt focused on its most famous phrase: “I think, therefore I exist.”
Cartesian philosophy was in the focus of intervention in nature is now observed, as to “meet her for her use, control and dominate,” drawing from the power of human reason over nature (CHAUÍ, 1997). Emphasizes that as to understand the intelligence of the things from principles, are the means to dominate them. Descartes said that science must become the masters of human nature and the world. So they have the power to dominate nature through scientific knowledge, being the “master’s owners” of nature, not its slaves (JAPIASSU, 1992).
It is also called the mechanistic philosophy, which includes the world as a machine, ie, the phenomena can be explained by mechanical devices. Argues that the universe is transparent look of the right and that everything can be explained by the particles of matter divisible. Nature is regarded as the world non-human, stripped of all the dynamism, creativity of the whole, all the sensitivity of any conscience, any sympathy or antipathy, all heat or cold, all color, taste and smell , in short, a world completely mechanical, no mystery, no life and no fertility (JAPIASSU, 1992). The Cartesian rationalism influenced the thinking because environmental introduced a purely mechanistic conception of nature in which it has no purpose, and completely at the mercy of human exploitation. Stimulated the development of an instrumental rationality, which means without using any criteria to achieve the purposes, leading to a disrespect and abuse and predatory natural resources and ecosystems, as well as the development of polluting technologies.
Hence the disciplinary division of science classic, there is no connection between the disciplines and independence that are treated. Thus there was also the idea that mind and spirit are separated from the field, or the body, enhancing the mental work on the manual labor, recovery of the body of the mind alone, ignoring the psychological dimension of diseases, among others.
Therefore, the output of man’s nature as he did most of it, the disappearance of the divine vision of the scientific world has created a spiritual vacuum that has become characteristic of our Western culture (Capra, 1982) The paradigm – “EMPÍRICAL” The Empirical is a major philosophical currents of the XVII to XIX. In the explanation of empirical knowledge and any phenomena can be obtained only by observation and experimentation.
They argue that the reason, the truth and rational ideas are acquired by us through the experience, in opposition to the rationalists. In this approach, a scientific theory is a result of experimentation, so that the experiment aims to verify concepts, confirm them and produce them. Using the inductive method, the presentation of assumptions about the object reaches the definition of fact (CHAUÍ, 1997). Contrary to rationalism, empiricism claims that the knowledge begins with the experience of the senses, or the sensations that form perception (vision, hearing, touch, taste, smell). The association produces the sensation of repeated ideas.
The
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