[ K 1, 1 ]
We, in fact, have no single edge or boundary, but are rather part of a continuum that extends outward from our center of consciousness, both in a perceptual (epistemological-existen- tial) and in a biophysical sense—our brain centers must have oxygen, water, blood with all of its elements, minerals, etc., in order to exist, but also, of course, must connect to the cosmos as a whole. Thus our own personal bodies form part of the universe directly, while these same bodies are miniature uni- verses in which, as noted, millions of living creatures subsist, operate, fight, reproduce, and die.
Thus ecos for us must include that which our consciousness inhabits, the house of our soul, our ntchítchank or lenapeyókan, and must not be limited to a dualistic or mechanistic-material- istic view of bios. Ecology must be shorn of its Eurocentric (or, better, reductionist and materialist) perspective and broadened to include the realistic study of how living centers of awareness interact with all of their surroundings.
(Forbes, Jack – Indigenous Americans; Spirituality and Ecos . 2001)
[ K 1 , 2]
But what a spectacle the succession of men’s opinions presents! There I seek the progress of the human mind, and I find virtually nothing but the history of its errors. Why is its course-which is so sure, from the very first steps, in the field of mathematical studies – so unsteady in everything else, and so apt to go astray? . . . In this slow progression of opinions and errors, . . . I fancy that I see those first leaves, those sheaths which nature has given to the newly growing stems of plants, issuing before them from the earth, and withering one by one as other sheaths come into existence, until at last the stem itself makes its appearance and is crowned with flowers and fruit – a symbol of late-emerging truth.
Turgot, Oeuvres, vol. 2 (Paris, 1844,), pp. 600-601 (‘Second discours sur les progres suc cessifs de l’esprit humain” ).:11 [Nlla)2]