M1 SCIE 11

• environmental knowledge was transmitted orally through stories, chanting and music, and visual arts
• Environmental knowledge can also transmitted experientially. Through teaching of hunting and gathering expeditions and experiencing like nature walks, rituals and dreams jobs
• Elders are esteemed for their knowledge, most knowledgeable
• Storytellers function as teachers within the life of a tribe
• The experiences of a tribe (especially catastrophic events) are recorded through stories, myths, and legends
• Hunters are knowledgeble interms of wildlife and the has a ability to create tools and weapons
• Gatherers are knowledge of fruits, animals, and herbs
• Farmers are knowledge of the seasons, and the signs of the wind and the sky.
• traditional knowledge passed on through traditional means for many generations includes myths, legends, and folklore
• knowledge spans geography and climate: they can "read" signs from nature like the wind, animal behavior, appearance of flora to predict weather phenomena
• Biocultural knowledge: knowledge rooted in both the natural environment and culture (the values and norms) of the people who hold it; it is validated by modern scientific methods
• literacy expanded collective knowledge of society (memories of storytellers)
• earliest material evidence of written word showed that societies kept track of livestock and grains, made bread, wine, and cheese, and recorded astronomical data for time and weather predictions
• Priestly class had exclusive access to stored knowledge, were the only ones authorized to interpret the desires of the gods (heavenly bodies), and controlled much political power, including surplus production
• Sumerians - clay tablets
• Literacy allowed for the expansion of collective knowledge beyond the storytellers' collective memories
• Sumerians (4500 - 1750 BCE) and their knowledge of biology were kept in clay tablets written in cuneiform
• recorded medical lore: treatment of disease, the use of herbs and animal material as materia medica, dentistry, endocrinology, histology, health, and sanitation encompassed both empirical and magical knowledge ○ some diseases were attributed to demonic possession ○can be cured via animal sacrifice (transmission of the demon from the person to the lamb as a sign f compassion to the family)
• the beginnings of abstract scientific thought can be traced back to Greek philosophers
• philosophers were NOT connected to priests but affianced to political powers
• Aristotle may be said to be the first biologist in western tradition
• aristotle explained the distinction between the specialist and the generalist
• specialist - one with considerable body of experience in practical fieldwork
• generalist - one who knows many different areas of study
• defined a species: a group that can breed and produce offspring that can eventually reproduce
• Christian philosophers later tried to integrate Genesis with Aristotle - The Great Chain of Being
• The methods used by these philosophers are similar to that used by the ancients and indigenous people (experience, meditation, and learned intuition) to understand what they believe is the nature of things
• medieval European society is commonly characterized as feudal and hierarchical
• agrarian societies where surplus was few had most of the population concerned with the production of food and goods
• under MEDIEVAL EUROPE & THE GOLDEN AGE OF THE ISLAMIC CIVILIZATION knowledge was relegated to a select literate few, prescribed by a ruling class (the Monarchies and the Church)
• European exposure to east culture was inevitable due to the trade via the silk road, the crusades, and the colonial expansion
• contact led to transmission of culture, knowledge, and tradition with the Arabic, Byzantines, Persians, and the Indians from the Golden Age of the Islamic civilization (12th century onwar
• Aristotelian thought was the dominant view for a millennium in the west until the 18th century. changed when Descartes' arguments proved to be most convincing in Europe
• the experiments on the generation of insects (Francesco Redi)
• ○ transmutation of life (Lamarck) species change as individuals relate to their environme
• Reductionist Philosophy: analysis of a large system reducing the system into pieces or parts
• due to an increase in analytical power, the unit of analysis moved from organism to organ to tissue to cell, and within the cell, its organelles, the macromolecules, and smaller molecules
• ecology was established in the late 19th century ○ the concept of ecosystems emerged in the 20th century which became the basis of systems ecology
• • Environmental science an interdisciplinary field combining the natural and traditional sciences with environmental ethics and social issues
• Scientific Paradigm ○ constellation of achievements, concepts, values, etc., shared by the scientific community