The Height of Wisdom

It wasn't that long ago that the best and the brightest of Western science were convinced that "lesser" animals, a definition that included non-native Europeans, were not capable of feeling pain. Oh sure, it was argued, they may look and act like they are suffering, but the "scientific fact" of the day was that this was merely an instinctive response to stimuli that didn't reflect any sort of internal state. After all, only white humans had the capacity for the kind of conscious and individualized thought necessary to perceive such things as pleasure or pain.

This "science" was used as a rationale for all manner of cruelty. From what I can tell, this disbelief in the inner life of others is unique in human culture. Every indigenous tradition with which I'm familiar grants consciousness (or in some traditions a soul), not just to animals, but to plants, fungi, and indeed, all living things, up to, and including, the earth itself. Indeed, as a child meditating upon ant hills in our backyard, I was convinced that I was witnessing evidence of intelligence. 

One of the first big words I learned, however, was "anthropomorphism" (attributing human characteristics to animals), and it was something that intelligent people avoided doing. But anyone with eyes, anyone with a heart, anyone with an ounce of compassion can see that the so-called "science" on this was, and continues to be, horrifically wrong. Of course, the consciousness of my dog is different than my own, but to deny her capacity for intelligence, emotion, and intention, is a stupidity that even a two-year-old can see through.

In April of last year, The New York Declaration on Animal Consciousness was announced at a conference at NYU. As of today, it's been signed by 573 scientists. All it does is declare that maybe, possibly, if looked at in a certain light, at least some other species seem to have the capacity for conscious experience and that this should be considered when making decisions involving animals. Naturally, the other 8 million or so scientists in the world consider this to be grotesque anthropomorphism. The declaration includes ten examples of "recent" scientific findings that support their point of view which you can find by clicking here, but my point is that "science" isn't a synonym for "facts" or "common sense." 

I grew up largely in suburban neighborhoods. Most of my first-hand experience with living animals was therefore with pets, insects, birds, and the occasional reptile. Nevertheless, my early childhood experiences with animals taught me, unequivocally, that they are more than instinct driven automatons, a fact that most scientists, it appears, do not accept as fact. My science teachers tried to disabuse me of my anthropomorphism, but nothing they ever told me has caused me to doubt my own first-hand experiences. "The science just isn't there" they claim. Many even scoff at those of us who know what humans have always known until the so-called European Enlightenment made Westerners feel superior to the rest of the world's "barbarians."

Science is one way of understanding the world, but it's far from the only way. When Walt Whitman proclaimed, "I am large, I contain multitudes" he was expressing a fact about life itself that science is only just now getting around to "proving." When the ancient Tlingit spoke of orca-people and bear-people they were expressing knowledge that Western science still doesn't know. When I stand with preschoolers releasing painted lady butterflies we have observed metamorphosing from caterpillars, they call out, "Bye-bye butterfly," demonstrating understanding that surpasses that of modern science. The truth is that most of what we call "cutting edge science" is really just a new way of looking at what some of us at least have already known. The arrogance of science is that its proofs and methods are the only way of deriving facts from the natural world.

I don't intend anything I've written here to mean that I dismiss science in the way many scientists dismiss other ways of knowing, but rather to make the point that science, and especially Western science, does not hold a monopoly on truth.

“When we are awake," writes neuroscientist Guilio Tononi, "and our eyes are open, they tell the mind what it ought to see . . . but they don’t do the seeing, no, that’s something for the mind alone. For even though the eyes may be shut, as when asleep, or injured . . . the mind still sees, and of its own accord decides what’s to be seen.”

One of my hobbies is to try to understand human consciousness. It’s not necessary to be up to speed on the latest neuroscience in order to be a good educator, especially since the “latest”, by the time it gets to us dilletantes, is already outdated. But I find it fascinating that so many scientists on the cutting edge of research resort to art and poetry in order to explain what they think is true. Tononi, for instance, the developer of the integrated information theory of consciousness (a theory that in some ways "proves" much more ancient knowledge), has written a book called Phi (Φ) based on Italian poet Dante’s The Divine Comedy with a fictionalized Galileo as the protagonist. 

The very notion that our minds, not our eyes, are responsible for seeing is mind-blowing. It’s as if reality is too complex and beautiful to be reduced to mere language or the methodology of Western science. Sometimes it can only be understood through art. Indeed, quite often artists (e.g., Walt Whitman) and especially indigenous artists (e.g., Australian aboriginal dot paintings) reveal “sacred knowledge” long before scientists even knew where or how to look. 

And, gloriously, we can even discover this phenomenon in the artwork of our own preschoolers, an example of which I shared last week.

Among the legacies of Western science is the notion that adult minds are "superior" to the minds of children. There are differences, of course, but to rank minds, to place adult comprehension over that of young children, to place human comprehension over that of animals, goes against lived experience. The greatest knowledge is understanding that truth, or reality, is a creation of perspectives, not competing with one another, but rather each providing another piece, a reflection, an amplification. Truth is large. It contains multitudes. And each time we add a perspective to our understanding, we ourselves become larger and more multitudinous. And there is always a new perspective with which to play. That is the height of wisdom.

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I've been writing about play-based learning almost every day for the past 14 years. I've recently gone back through the 4000+ blog posts(!) I've written since 2009. Here are my 10 favorite in a nifty free download. Click here to get yours.

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