Seeking a Mature Relationship With the Natural World: Relational Ontology and Amalgam-Being
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Abstract Fostering a relationship with the more-than-human world is understood to be crucial in wilding pedagogies. Yet for many, such a relationship is often developed in early life and is limited in complexity and nuance. In this paper, we propose to investigate what a mature relationship with the natural might look like. We do so in three parts. The first part introduces four moments of surprise or pause: “hunh?!” moments. These lead to four associated observations that suggest contemporary limitations on human relationship with place, and in one case, enhancement of it. They are: an idealisation of childhood relationship with the natural world, which is now kept in a separate category, rendering it inaccessible to the adult; an un-knowing of relationality with the natural world through cultural practices that deny or denigrate such a state; the myth of human autonomy, which comes with multiple cultural repercussions; and finally, what we are here calling natural imagination, which pulls in the opposite direction to the first three. An environmentally rooted Haudenosaunee model regards imagination as not simply the purview and possession of humans, but a shared space between people and the natural world. In response to these, in Parts 2 and 3, we propose that a relational ontology — one that enacts relationship between humans and the more-than-human — cannot be reached simply by progressing further in intent, sensitivity or theorising from the current assumed model of the psychological development. The abyss between current ontologies and an alternative must be hurdled, if it is to be crossed at all. This may be done by challenging presuppositions that underpin current ontologies and psychologies and moving from theorising to enacting an alternative model. Such a model, in part informed by the fungal research of Merlin Sheldrake, may lead to another way of being human, an enmeshing with the more-than-human, which we call amalgam-being.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.006 | 0.005 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.004 | 0.041 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.008 | 0.014 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.006 |
| Research integrity | 0.002 | 0.003 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.003 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".