Abstract
We investigated college students’ ability to learn Wild Systems Theory (WST), a 21st century ontology that is consistent with the relational holism of the arts, humanities, and indigenous ontologies, yet is simultaneously consistent with science. WST provides a transdisciplinary alternative to reductionistic philosophies that have pitted science against holistic ontologies for centuries. Specifically, WST conceptualizes living systems as energy-transformers that intake, transform, and dissipate energy to sustain themselves within a cosmic, self-organizing, energy-transformation hierarchy. Because such systems must be thermodynamically open (i.e., be capable of intaking energy as well as dissipating byproducts), their internal dynamics are naturally and necessarily ‘about’ the energy contexts in which they sustain themselves. In short, such systems can be coherently conceptualized as embodiments of context, or embodied aboutness. The notion of ‘embodied aboutness’ opens the sciences to the inherent, holistic relationality and, therefore, meaningfulness, of all reality. We measured students’ ability learn such holism by having them read papers and watch videos about WST and then apply its concepts to describing the multi-scale relational contrasts between images, text, characters, cultures, and realities that can be found in culturally informed graphic novels. We evaluated students’ ability to express an implicit, holistic understanding of these relational contrasts, what we refer to as implicit wisdom (IW). Better understanding of WST predicted higher IW scores, yet explicit plans to learn WST, did not. While simply correlational at present, these findings imply holism can be learned, and has more to with being, feeling, and doing than with thinking and writing.
Presenters
Jerome Scott JordanProfessor, Psychology, Illinois State University, Illinois, United States
Details
Presentation Type
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session
Theme
KEYWORDS
Wild Systems Theory, Indigenous Ontology, Holism, Relationality, Science, Humanities, Arts
