Humans in/of/are nature: Re-embedding reality in sustainability sciences

Abstract

Behind the facades of humanity’s technological advances and urban lifestyles, there is in fact no real wall that separates us from the web of life. Biology, physics, Western social theory, and Indigenous scholarship all tell us that we are embedded in the natural world; to operate otherwise is a dangerous misconception and leads to the human-centered ecological crises we currently face. And yet many scientific communities, including those concerned with the environment and sustainability, continue to incorporate human-first, human-separate mental models into their disciplines. In this article, we use the method of Bohmian dialogue to explore the “imagined wall” of false separation and how it manifests in 4 distinct fields: entomology, soil science, food systems, and monetary policy. We ask: How would deconstructing the imagined wall function as the basis for interdisciplinary sustainability research? We lay out where the wall can appear, its consequences, academic and practical resistances, and how each field might move toward truer sustainability without this mental model. We offer suggestions for this process of unlearning and relearning, particularly to those scientists who may have begun to question human supremacy in ontology and epistemology but who have not actively applied such critical social theory to their own work.