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| Robert Frdeman (photo BA) |
Knowledge, exemplified by classical mechanics, or more generally, the experimental sciences, is knowledge that is "certain and precise and quantifiable and repeatable and demonstrable," explained Frodeman. This gold standard of knowledge "marginalizes even something like geology [considered a `soft science' compared to physics and chemistry]." Frodeman said, "The official history of our culture is a story, is an epistemological standard, which systematically marginalizes all of the those things which are most important to us such as ethics, aesthetics, theology, metaphysics, and politics. Geological reasoning, which is essentially interpretative and historical and narrative, gives us a better model for reasoning about our experience than the classic model."
To explore this idea, Frodeman began with Robert Muir Wood's claim in The Dark Side of the Earth that the geosciences only moved forward in this century when they cast off what Wood called "antiquated mapping mentality [which only values quantifiable, repeatable, and demonstrable data]." Frodeman quoted Wood's complaint that this "mapping mentality was marked `by a failure to separate man's experience from the object which he wishes to study.'"
Challenging this concept, Frodeman said, "Mr. Wood has it exactly backwards in his belief that geology should be a disembodied God's eye view of the world. There is no God's eye view of an outcrop." Rather, the rocks and the earth must be interpreted to be understood. So it is with much of our experience. "In the majority of our lives, as with geological evidence, we are not dealing with data which is clear and unequivocal," he said, "but with data huddled in obscurity."
How we interpret such data is illustrated by the experienced driver who "scans the field of vision in search of clues: the paired flashes of animal eyes, the flicker of tail lights, the tell-tale glimmer of bike metal. Like...a professional musician, the experienced driver is not so much following a set of logical procedures, as rather moving along in a flowing river of experience on the lookout for clues that point toward alternative futures," said Frodeman. This, not the quantifiable, experimental method, is "a better description of how human reasoning works."
As humans, we are narrative beings. "Individuals and cultures cast the events of their lives into a narrative structure in order to understand who they are, how they came to be the way they are, and to anticipate where they are going." Geologists rely on similar narratives to understand and interpret the earth.
A geologist's primary method is to observe an outcrop and then a variety of contemporary environments looking for an analogous match. If there is no contemporary environment to use for comparison, geologists combine bits from different environments, extrapolate, and use them to interpret the outcrop.
The reasoning process at the outcrop involves something more that mere mechanical matching of features. Frodeman said, "The geologist engages in what we could call significant seeing, that is, seeing something as a sign." Instead of looking at an outcrop and seeing marks on the rock, the geologist sees the "sign of a creature churning through the mud."
The ability to see in this way is a "knowing your way around a topic or knowing your way around a location, and what kind of questions to ask," what Frodeman called "an orienteering type of knowledge." For example, although no one can know everything about the Grand Canyon, one person can know enough about the rock formations to be able to find water and the way out if left in an unknown side canyon. This sense of orientation allows the geologist to engage their imagination, to envision the outcrop."
Geologists interpret the hidden depths. For example, in the Six-mile Fold area in Colorado, the seamless limestone bed on the surface became, "from the inside, a fold bisected from a stream." The geologist looks at a two-dimensional surface and sees three or four dimensions.
"Geological vision is poetic vision constrained by the sobriety of science—a series of imaginative leaps disciplined by examination and measurement. Defying the stereotypes of science, field geologists are a clan of surreptitious poets," claimed Frodeman. "Geologic vision is embodied knowledge, arrived at through walking the land, seeing the outcrop within its context of the landscape. Geologic insight is a kind of walking meditation."
BA