{"id":346,"date":"2021-05-02T22:09:26","date_gmt":"2021-05-02T22:09:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wordpress.evergreen.edu\/tmtaa-portfolio-f20-alegra\/?p=346"},"modified":"2021-06-02T04:17:00","modified_gmt":"2021-06-02T04:17:00","slug":"week-six-in-full-bloom","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wordpress.evergreen.edu\/tmtaa-portfolio-f20-alegra\/week-six-in-full-bloom\/","title":{"rendered":"Week Six: Plants & Paradigms"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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This week we will of course continue to weed. Hopefully we can get the whole inner ring done, and begin to haul out all the piles of weeds lying in the pathways and begin to think about preparing for the end of the quarter in a couple weeks. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Garden Work & Research:<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

05\/04\/21:<\/strong> Sun in Taurus, Moon in Aquarius<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Today Le’Allen and I cleared all the piles of weed from the pathways. This was maybe a small task, but made a world of difference. The herb garden is really starting to look manicured and taken care of.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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How its going<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Throughout this quarter I have been delving into some different perspectives of farm management and ultimately, the epistemology that form their foundations. In trying to bridge the gap between the mundane and the mystical, which sprang from my love of and belief in the healing power of both herbs and astrology, biodynamics has been intriguing to explore. In the book Muck and Mind<\/em> by Johnathan Michael Code, he sets out to answer some of the same questions that I have about not only biodynamics, but also the cultural and epistemological foundations upon which our society and current system of agriculture rest. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Epistemology is the study of knowledge, its origins, methodology, validity, and scope. It asks the questions, “how do we know what we know?”, “how is knowledge acquired?”, “what is knowledge?” etc. In order to fully understand the foundations and basis of a way of knowing or a certain paradigm, we must first question how it is we got there, what our initial assumptions or beliefs are to have landed us where we are. It seems to me that these are very important questions to be asking ourselves everyday, however, rarely are we taught, in school or through other avenues, to question the things we believe we know. This is concerning because, “every way of knowing becomes a way of living, every epistemology becomes an ethic” (Code, 47). In western culture, science is the way of knowing that is looked at in the highest regard. This is in part due to the fact that scientific knowledge is most often presented as having arisen from a place of complete neutrality, objectivity, and impartiality. However, science is rooted in its own epistemological frameworks that are rarely made explicit and often go examined. These frameworks are as follows;<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Objective” Reality:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Science is a discipline which insists on the existence of an objective reality. However, this objective reality is also one that cannot be directly experienced and must be realized through theoretical musings and understandings rather than sense perception and a connection with the realm of the body. This arose around the time of Galileo’s act of distinguishing between primary qualities and secondary qualities, the former being those that are “real” and supposedly objective such as shape, position, and motion, and the latter being those that only exist within the consciousness of the observer, things like taste, odor, and color. This resulted in the demotion of direct experience as being relevant in the pursuit of scientific inquiry and knowledge, and placed the observer as secondary and insignificant, creating a deep-seated mistrust of our unmediated sense life, which is inherently subjective, as a viable door to accurate knowledge about the world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Cognitive Amnesia:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The next problem lies also in our unquestioned assumptions about the way that we perceive the world. Our brains are wonderful things most of the time, and help us to make sense of the world around us in wonderful ways. However, there is a distinct connection between our sensory perceptions and our thinking that is crucial to remember and understand. The majority of our everyday cognitive life is rooted in the assumption that we encounter the world and its objects as if they were just “there”, when in actual fact what we no longer are aware of is the organizing activity through which these objects become apparent. Philosopher and scientist Henri Bortoft called this “cognitive amnesia” because we forget that the organizing idea of our cognitive perception is the only reason the whole world is not just a chaotic place of pure sense perception. This means that all scientific knowledge is a correlation of what<\/em> is seen with the way<\/em> it is seen. It is simply another way of organizing the world, which, when unexamined, leads to an obfuscation of other ways of knowing and understanding.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To conclude, science seems to insists on division. Division between subject and object, observer and observed, which creates an epistemology of separation. It is not an epistemology that exists only within science. It has permeated all the pieces of our Western culture. America is founded on independence, on a “pull yourself up by your own bootstraps” mentality, on the premise of conquest and ownership and imperialism. Our religious philosophies portray the Earth as dirty and scary, as man separate from it, not of it. Capitalism fosters competition and a scarcity mindset that is only perpetrated by the growing divide between the haves and the have-nots, and creates a fear of all those we perceive as other. Science has accomplished many amazing, wonderful feats, and I think it does serve a purpose and has its place in the world, but we have to understand and remember that every way of seeing the world and understanding it is just one side of the story and can never give us the whole picture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

05\/06\/21:<\/strong> Sun in Taurus, Moon in Pisces<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Today we continued to weed. We are almost finished with the marshmallow bed, and Yola began working on the tackling the lemon balm.<\/p>\n\n\n\n