In the pursuit of studying ourselves or teaching others about complex ecological systems, there seems to be two major assumptions that block our way. First is that the we can use general principles to understand almost all systems and that this deductive learning is actually preferred. Second is that we can teach and apply critical thinking skills that are independent of the content. This book by Atran and Medin provides some valuable insights and counter-arguments to work around these blockages.
The authors are worried about the loss of interaction with the details of nature is resulting in a loss of mental capacity to perform reasoning and induction about the natural world. Others have called this "extinction of experience" or "nature-deficit disorder". The authors provide evidence from a range of studies that involve resident populations with different levels of experience with nature (for example in Mexico or in Minnesota). These study populations are always compared back to freshman and sophomores at major universities, who serve as a control group.
The authors believe that "people who have serious commerce in a domain rarely approach it in a content neutral manner" and they back this up with many examples of expert problem solving that relies on very specific facts and relationships within that domain. I found their use of American undergraduates to very illuminating. They state "Undergraduates, in contrast, have little knowledge to bring to bear on the sorts of reasoning tasks we have used and consequently it is not surprising that they rely heavily on more abstract reasoning strategies", and later "The best predictor of undergraduate typicality ratings was word frequency" in the textbook.
Another section of the book that I found very useful was their investigation of the difference between three co-located cultures with regard to the problem that we call the "tragedy of the commons". Specific indigenous knowledge, folk-ecology, of the Itza' resulted in them using much less land and reaching a "better balance between human productivity and forest maintenance" than either of the other two groups who had moved into that region. The authors reason that the Itza' are aware of ecological complexity and reciprocity and "might not treat resources as traditional decision and game theory suggests" and behave in a way that appears "irrational" to economists.
This book is built on rigorous studies of the culture and social interactions with the natural world. The authors are very clear about the results of their study and when they are extrapolating or giving their interpretation of the results. The subject of their studies, plant and animal taxonomy, is familiar enough to most people to be able to follow the different lines of reasoning.
I enjoyed reading this book and find myself both referring back to the book and using the results of their studies in discussions all the time.
Other related works that I recommend are:
Louv, R. (2005). Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children from Nature-Deficit Disorder. Chapel Hill, NC, Algonquin Books.Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children From Nature-Deficit Disorder
Reed, E. S. (1996). The Necessity of Experience. New Haven, Conn, Yale University Press.The Necessity of Experience
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