Toward a Unity of Mind and Nature

During the past century, a diversity of traditional knowledge and stewardship systems all over the world was replaced by a monolithic conventional resource management science. Until recently, the spread of “modern, rational, scientific resource management” was considered a part of natural progress. The problem is that conventional scientific resource management, despite all its power, seems unable to halt the depletion of resources and the degradation of the environment (e.g., Fletcher et al. 2024 ). Part of the reason for this paradox may be that conventional resource management, and reductionist science in general, developed in the service of a utilitarian, exploitive, dominion-over-nature worldview ( Worster 1977 ). Utilitarian sciences were best geared for the efficient use of resources as if they were limitless, consistent with the laissez-faire doctrine currently alive in neoliberal economics. But utilitarianism is ill-suited for sustainability, which requires a new philosophy that recognizes ecological limits and that sense of unity of nature and humanity ( Bateson 1979 ).