AN EARTH ONTOLOGY: RECOGNIZING MULTIPLE PERSPECTIVES FOR COLLABORATIVE PROBLEM-SOLVING

People today are on a desperate quest for solutions to enormous and complex issues from climate change to a healthy environment to a sustainable future. Abundant, sometimes conflicting information feeds our anxiety on what we, as individuals, can do. Increasingly polarized culture drives us further into our siloed ways of thinking.

This study juxtaposes the Earth with the philosophical concept of ontology, a field of philosophy denoting categories or how we name the things we know or believe to exist. Geoscientists see the Earth primarily through the lens of data and the messages the Earth leaves for us to decipher. However, science is but one lens that people use to see the Earth. The Earth can also be sacred. It can evoke sensory experience or be seen as a commodity or as our environment. In the end, we all deal with choices in the face of scarcity, the classical definition of economics. Geoscientists can promote the use of these collective, multiple views to spark collaborative thinking in solving the complex problems facing life on Earth.

For example, the wicked problem of Climate Change involves the classic elements of earth, water, air, and fire, and, yet, geoscientists are not always part of the conversation. Even within geoscience, disciplines are siloed by individual knowledge and institutional structures and rewards. Complex relationships of earth components such as energy with strategic minerals and water, mining the sea floor with air temperature and food security, and rising sea level with fresh water, are not clear to the general public even without the added social, economic, political, and cultural realities.

Acknowledging that different viewpoints exist and drive people’s worldviews will help identify the roadblocks and opportunities in working toward a sustainable, livable Earth.