Journey of the Universe weaves together the discoveries of the evolutionary sciences together with humanities such as history, philosophy, art, and religion. This course draws on the Journey of the Universe Conversations, a series of 20 interviews with scientists and environmentalists. The first 10 interviews are with scientists and historians who deepen our understanding of the evolutionary process of universe, Earth, and humans. The second 10 interviews are with environmentalists, teachers, and artists who explore the connections between the universe story and the practices for a flourishing Earth community.
Teaching Journey of the Universe (Bindu Mohanty and Tom Collins)
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来自 Yale University 的课程
Journey Conversations: Weaving Knowledge and Action
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从本节课中
Emerging Earth Community: Teaching and the Creative Arts
Humans need to live for something greater than themselves if they are ever to achieve happiness and fulfillment. One way to achieve this goal is to teach children the full nature of our universe. Not just our technologies and our sciences and our arts and entertainments, but the story of the universe itself and what is taking place all around and through them.
与讲师见面
Mary Evelyn TuckerSenior Lecturer and Senior Research Scholar
Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies
John GrimSenior Lecturer and Senior Research Scholar
Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies
[MUSIC]
Tom, welcome.
It's so good to see you again.
>> Thank you. I'm glad to be here.
>> Well we've met over the years and
you're teaching has been an inspiration to high school and high school teachers.
And so we'd love to draw you out today a little bit of that teaching
that you're doing.
>> Yeah >> And how it's effecting students.
And, especially, the universe story that you've been much engaged with for
a long time.
So give us a feel for how high school students have reacted
in various circumstances to a telling of the universe story?
>> Well I think it's been transformative in their life.
The kind of reactions we would get at the end of the course is,
why hasn't all my education been like this?
The students feel like their learning is much more integrated,
much more responsible, much more real.
And they began to feel a little resentful about why all school is not like that.
So I think that's one thing,
just the kind of integrated nature of the universe story.
I think the other thing is feeling like that they were really engaged in
a project that had direct meaning to them and the world around them, and
I think that was very powerful.
>> So integration and meaning for
sure and there's probably been resistance to this too though.
What are those obstacles?
>> Well in telling the universe were also talking about really the, what's going on
currently now with sustainability in the environmental crisis.
In terms of asking the question, the science has been so
clear, what is really standing in the way and why don't we see.
And what are the stories we are telling ourselves?
And what are alternative stories?
So some of the first resistance in really in that of not really wanting to come
to grips with the level of environmental degradation Kind of passing it all off.
It's all political.
It's all opinion.
It's not really scientific.
So there is resistance, and I think it's resistance to a type of pain,
that comes from really seeing what's really going on.
>> The students that you're teaching,
and the students I'm teaching- >> Yeah.
>> Have dealt with a lot of sad, bad news about the environment.
And they have a struggle, as I think we all do, with despair and hope.
And a sense of what is the future going to look like?
How does the universe story give our students
a sense of their role and the possibilities of a sustainable future?
>> I think the universe story gives students many things.
I think the first thing it gives them is hope, by seeing this long term story,
this narrative of which they're a part.
The universe story helps them feel part of something larger than themselves.
It helps them see the kind of evolutionary process that we are in.
It gives a vision of where we're going and what we need to do and where we've been.
It helps us understand that we're directly connected to the Earth.
I think in that way the narrative function of it is very much like an old epoch,
right?
It functions like epoch.
And kind of expressing the kind of vision, the kind of high vision of the culture.
And I think that's extremely powerful.
And all of this, I think is extremely hopeful.
I think it gives vision.
It helps them have some kind of marker in all of this, of how to focus their energy.
How to make change at a local level more important.
How to give of their time.
How to really take some of that despair, which can happen and
really channel it into something positive.
And to feel part of something much bigger than themselves.
>> So it's an antidote to despair and burn out and lack of meaning?
>> I think so. I think so.
>> You said it gives us a sense of the future or
the possible vision of the future.
Can you say anything more about that?
>> [LAUGH] Well, I think one of the most important things is
that the universe story helps us become a little more humble.
And it helps us become more humble by beginning to understand that
we are not the end goal of evolution.
And it also helps us understand that there have been species, many species,
before us that aren't.
Here, now, and I think that humility is necessary
in conjunction with the understanding that we're connected to the Earth,
in terms of really moving into some kind of partnership, into some kind of sense
that we really are in relationship and not a kind of objectification.
And I think that's extremely important and I think that shifts our view of things.
And I think the universe story really gives that to students and
to begin to see that they really are in relationship with the Earth and
life around them, and that it's not there for their convenience.
>> And you've spoken about it, and others as well, as an epic.
>> As an epic.
>> What does that do for us?
>> I think the ancient epics really embodied the kind of high ethics or
morals and also goals of a culture, what they thought was most important.
And I think the kind of epic of evolution, the universe story,
really speaks in modern terms of a kind of new awareness
that we're trying to move to, to see our connection to ourselves, each other, and
to the world around us is intimately related.
Not in some kind of objective philosophical.
But in a kind of cellular way, biological way,
chemical way, that is extremely important.
It begins to shift away that we think about our relationships
with each other and with the planet.
>> So from humility to actually an epic journey that might evoke even heroism.
>> A new type of heroism, right, kind of in this new form, and
I think it's not quite known yet what that's going to be.
But one of the things that we did at [INAUDIBLE] was very important.
It's kind of like the epic journey is doing the universe story walk, of really
mapping out in right proportions, the evolution of the universe and
all over the campus, and it took that long to do it, that much space.
It was very powerful.
It's very powerful.
I mean, I did it also.
It's very powerful to just walk and walk and walk and walk and walk.
[LAUGH] And there be nothing, right?
>> [LAUGH] Nothing that we would know.
>> Nothing that we would know.
That's right, and right?
It's all foundational, etc.
But just long periods of time really trying to come to grips
with kind of deep space and deep time, in any kind of way, and really integrate
that in a way that has to do with our life here now and with the world around us.
And it was very profound for kids to do that.
>> Absolutely.
>> Right?
>> And that the first cell took ten billion years.
It's absolutely >> It's unbelievable.
>> Extraordinary.
>> Right?
And I think that's the other thing we have to do educationally is that,
besides these kinds of work projects in terms of the world around us,
I think the store needs to also be schematic in some way.
It needs to be involved with our bodies and our minds, but also with our bodies,
not just doing but But having that experience,
beginning to try to have that experience with these long periods of time,
the depths of space, is very important.
Because it is so profound.
And it's hard to grasp.
Grasping those periods of time or
the size of the universe is next to impossible, right?
>> Yes.
And another approach to this is big history.
>> Yes.
>> You've got the epic of evolution, universe story, big history.
And as I hear about it there's these thresholds
to help us understand time >> Yes.
>> Can you tell us about that?
>> Big history I think is a great way, or another great way,
that's schools can kind of integrate universe story into the curriculum.
It's come out of world history and really thinking that
before we even talk about humans, we have to talk about the universe.
The evolution of the universe and the evolution of the planet.
Because that's where humans come from.
And by setting that context and setting that stage, we kind of move away from this
anthropocentric view of things and move into a much larger understanding.
And kids get that.
I mean, they don't fight that.
And then beginning to think in the same way, big history begins to think about
the human story in terms of these large scale changes, and about energy.
I mean, one of the very interesting things people are talking about is
thinking about for how long all the energy on the planet was solar, right?
And then it was coal.
And now oil.
And just thinking about the energy that we've used and what it's taken.
Students understand that.
It's not complex for them to get.
>> They can absorb this sense.
>> They can absorb it.
>> And at the same time it gives them a larger context of seeing what's going on.
Right. >> And I'm talking about ninth and
tenth graders, right?
I'm doing big history with tenth graders and they don't bat an eye at it.
It's like they get it.
And they talk about the kind of themes that is been developed
in that program to help students handle it.
>> Themes such as?
>> Networks of exchange.
>> Nice. >> Isn't that a great image?
Networks of exchange, right?
So that can be economic networks.
That can be ideas.
That can be disease, right?
That could be a biological flora, fauna, right?
And it also is a great kind of image of connection
that in greater or lesser amount of time.
I mean, it takes the bow and arrow 10,000 years to cross the world.
Get paper printing coming from China through the Middle East to Europe.
That's 700 years, right?
And now we're doing it this quickly.
So it's a wonderful image for them to think of, and
it also shows the connection of cultures.
And that's real important too because that's
part of the story also is seeing that things are connected, right?
That they aren't just dis-incarnate pieces, that
there is a process that's taking place that has different rhythms and times.
But there is a process taking place.
And I think this is one of the things big history brings to the classroom.
Fantastic, so
they can see networks of exchange- >> Yeah.
>> In the biological sphere, but in the human sphere.
>> Absolutely.
>> Exchange, religion, culture.
>> Buddhism goes to China.
[LAUGH] >> Exactly, and
takes 1,000 years to reach Japan.
>> Right, and changes and mutates as it does so.
>> Exactly, that these are not static.
>> Right.
>> And that now we're involved in one of the most rapid exchange networks ever.
>> Yes.
>> Globalization and its consequence.
>> Right. >> Yes.
>> But at least they can see the antecedents.
>> They can.
They can.
And to understand that these periods of globalization have been periodic,
that they're speeding up, and that these connections are important.
>> Yes.
Is there any sense though that we can
shape these connections now that they're so rapid?
>> I don't know.
I mean I think that's a great question because the amount of information
that's flowing over these network exchanges.
It seems that now our job is to learn to filter, right?
That there's so much information that's trying to filter and
discriminate between what is valuable and what is not.
But in a real way, the students begin to understand that it's one planet.
>> Yes.
>> Right? That we are connected in that sense,
everything from H1N1, they can look at historical precedence and
now look at the rate of change, without being gloomy.
But also that that's a reality and that's not some kind of new thing.
To looking at the exchange of information and
all of the opportunities that offers us as well.
>> Right.
Right.
So the disease exchanges and
the extinctions that were caused by that and so on.
Are their other examples of this kind of key node of insight into the story?
>> Big history really frames itself around three questions and seven themes.
Economic networks of exchange are one of the themes.
One of the things I love about the program and
why I think it's a great way to think about universe in and high school and
history, is because the three questions are about humans and other humans.
Humans and ideas.
And about humans in the environment.
So it immediately sets the context of a very simple, but
also profound context to think about what the human experience has been.
It also will talk about patterns of population, or talk about the relationship
between science, technology, and the environment, right?
Which are both fascinating ancient questions and
very important, relevant current questions, right?
>> So it fleshes out.
>> It fleshes all that out.
And so for example, they can begin to understand that all the things that we've
discovered, particularly in physics, in the 20th century, about cosmology, and
how it's slowly beginning to affect us, or about tectonic plates, or about DNA.
They can see that there have been other periods with this great flurry of
knowledge and what's possible.
And what can happen then, and how it changes everything.
From our notions of time, to the family, to the, right?
And so grappling with what those things might mean is very important.
>> Absolutely.
So a way of thinking that's nested into time, history, space.
For dealing with present situations.
>> Absolutely.
>> You mentioned science and technology as the theme.
Give us an example of how that works.
>> Well, we could start with the wheel, right?
Kind of classical iron, bronze age stuff.
But we could also talk about the sail, right?
We could talk about the compass, we could talk about rudders.
We could talk about you know paper making.
I mean that's one of the ones I love the most, right?
Paper making of course, and the printing press, kind of seeing that process.
They love to see that.
Muslims and the Chinese meet at the Battle of Talas River and
they capture these Chinese paper makers and slowly and
that leads to paper making and during the madrassas and the great schools.
And that information then gets passed on later to Europe,
which it only would happen when there's paper, right?
And than they can think about what that means about their life
in terms of their Instant access to information.
>> Right.
And the fact that so much did take place in China.
>> Yes. >> As you've said, paper.
>> Yes. >> The compass.
>> Yes. >> We wouldn't have had
the great explorations of the early Ming Dynasty.
>> Absolutely.
>> All the way around to Africa.
>> Absolutely. >> Without the compass.
>> Absolutely.
>> So we see that different civilizations have-
>> Well, and that those make profound
effects.
So for them to consider, what does it mean that our science is
now understanding about things like DNA or plate tectonics?
They're changing our understanding of where we are in the world and
all the ways in which that might begin to change us.
I think this is part of this new kind of global perspective
that is slowly emerging of what, the universe stories being a big part of that.
It's part of this new kind of image that's coming of a kind of planetary
consciousness.
>> Yes, and you could even say, of course, the universe story and
epic of evolution has come from the side of the scientists and so on.
And the big history has come from the side of historians and humanities.
And all of sudden we're getting this great meeting.
>> Well that's the exactly right and that's what so exciting.
>> Yeah, it brings us even to a sense doesn't that we're part
of a planetary civilization that's emerging.
>> I think it is emerging.
And I think these are kind of intellectual symptoms of it.
The kind of on their own,
these disciplines are beginning to have this more global context.
>> Yes, and we can certainly say it's multicultural, there's multiforms,
multireligious, but some kind of planetary civilization.
And all it does awaken, as you've said I think,
the seeds of hope, the seeds of gratitude.
>> Of gratitude, and hope.
>> And that, I think, is a fundamental sense of renewable energy,
it's our human energy.
>> And moving into relationship with the life around us.
With others, with other humans, and then with the biotic community, also.
In real relationship.
>> Yes.
>> That comes out of that humility and awe.
>> Yeah. >> And all the surprise and
mystery that's there, right?
All the surprise and mystery that's there also.
>> And how we actually move into institutional arrangements.
One of the things that's striking to me, is if we take my field of study,
of Asia, they really came out of the Second World War.
And all of my teachers, Columbia and Harvard and
elsewhere, were students in the Army and Navy laguage schools.
And the hope may be with Islam, that we can move into a greater understanding,
from the clash of civilizations, to a deeper understanding.
>> Speaking of Islam, so in the history sequence,
there are two possibilities with some things you can study.
And one whole track is about the interaction of Europe and Islam.
>> Realizing that Islam actually took the Greek classics, kept them alive,
and they were passed back.
>> And passed back.
>> And the Renaissance happened as a result.
>> That's right. That's right.
>> But these amazing exchanges need to be more visible.
>> Yup. >> The other thing is how we overcome
the stranglehold of the nation state.
>> Yeah. >> Of nationalism.
That my grandfather called, Nationalism: A Religion, was his last book.
And he was trying to study these causes of the Second World War.
But the fact that the EU, the European Union, could've emerged in 60 years time,
gives us, I think, some sense of the possible arrangements of
human communities that can transcend these clashes.
Would you agree?
>> It makes me think of several things when you say that.
I think there are new metaphors that we don't know yet and
that it's, and not just metaphors, but
there are new forms of organization that we don't know yet, that are also emerging.
And one of the things that I think of is,
my grandmother lived in a world where a few of
the rich went to France after college, right?
My parents when they retired did lots of travelling.
The students I teach have probably traveled more places than I have.
And their sense of familiarity with the world,
the fact that they've got real friends from all over the world,
strikes me as something very new and very different.
And what the implications of that are going to be I don't know yet.
But I think it's very possible that they won't live in their native country,
that they'll speak more than one language, and
they'll have friends from all over the world.
I think that's going to change things.
>> Yes, and I love this notion, metaphors that have not yet emerged.
>> Yeah. >> And even the EU,
it's imperfect, it's an economic union, politically not fully realized,
and so all the tensions are there.
But there's something that is real and lasting.
>> Yeah. >> Yeah
>> And that's the kind of thing that we
have to image in metaphors.
>> It just makes me think of some of the metaphors coming out of biology and
then also the universe story, the kind of interconnection, or the web.
>> Yes. >> This notion of kind of web
relationship.
The dominant metaphors of ecology, right?
And being a new way of thinking about social and
political organization is more in kind of a web imagery.
>> Yes, Thomas Beer used to say, we need a biacracy.
Not just democracy.
>> [LAUGH] What a great phrase.
>> Or we need, again, I think it's a source of hope, a sense of the universal
declaration of human rights gave us this element of human freedoms and rights.
But the Earth charter gives us a sense not just of the independence of humans, but
the interdependence of humans and nature.
>> Because as you say, it recognizes not only human rights,
but also the rights of nature.
And again, seeing it as relational, not a subject or object, but as relational.
[MUSIC]
Bindu, welcome.
And we'd love you to introduce yourself, first of all.
Your name, and where you're living.
>> I am Bindu.
I live in Auroville, which is an international city in South India.
It's an amazing experiment in human unity, and it's recognized by UNESCO as such.
We have 2,000 people, and that includes 400 children from 43 countries.
Auroville is based on the evolutionary philosophy, the vision and
work of Shera Vindo so that is our shared ideal and
vision of building the city of human unity.
In 68, and there are of course pictures which document this,
it was just a barren deserted plateau.
It was once a rich tropical forest, but
it had been completely denuded over the years.
And what was supposed to be the center of the city there was just a lone banyan
tree, which a old woman thought was sacred and she actually protected that one tree.
And for the rest it was just a dry arid plateau, and
you could just see miles down to the sea.
And what has happened over the 40 years, and
that's mostly what Auroville is known for,
is an amazing environmental regeneration program in trying to save the soil.
Trying to prevent it from being eroded away by this heavy tropical monsoons
that we get.
So water conservation measures.
And also over 40 years with the help of local people,
we estimate we planted about 2 million trees.
Actually say we planted, the human beings planted one and half million trees, and
the bugs planted another half million.
>> And it's a wonderful example, isn't it, of the potential for
restoration of devastated ecosystems?
>> We actually just did it out of sheer survival necessities.
We needed the shade and
we could literally see the Earth bleeding away in the mountains.
The soil, the water were just take offs the topsoil and
the seas would turn red with that.
So it was just,
yeah, a basic human response to what was happening to the land.
>> And one of the more encouraging things is that the land with care
can restore itself in many ways.
>> Exactly, yeah.
This is what I find very inspiring about I mean all over the world,
you have this mass extinction going on.
And what happened in [INAUDIBLE] is the opposite.
The birds and
the bees starting to return back, so we're bringing back the biodiversity.
>> Let's turn a bit to that new cosmology coming from
your studies here in the Bay Area.
How did you encounter this and
tell us how it affected you when you first studied new cosmology here in the West?
>> I just loved learning the details of the journey of the universe.
Just the scientific objective facts would also move me.
And I really feel it awakened a deeper capacity to love and feel.
And also a deeper understanding of how interconnected
everything is and just the creativity of the universe that just blew my mind.
>> So, by studying it in greater detail and
as you say with scientific objective fact.
You could actually enter into that connectivity in relationality even deeper.
>> Yeah, exactly.
I really think that the new cosmology is
America's virtual gift to the human species.
And it's universal and broad enough that it can be translated
into different contexts that you can use it in a different context.
And I actually prefer using that when I first start offering evolutionary
worldviews to my young students just because of its scientific base.
>> And how did the students respond when you teach this new cosmology?
>> It's been amazing how moved they are.
I think one of the things new cosmology does is
by relating the story right from the beginning of the universe.
It gives the sense of expanse of consciousness.
Just suddenly a little isolated self.
You're part of something much bigger that's going on.
Many of my students are already environmental activists.
They're doing a whole lot of really amazing work in their lives even though
they're so young.
And there's so many environmental activists,
they're often sometimes just burnt out and frustrated.
And this just gives them a deeper meaning, encourages them to
connect to it, because new cosmology infuses them with its spirit.
>> How do you sense that these young people
trying to find their way into their future?
Have a sense of a time that's not just out there, but
a time that's supporting them and their work?
>> I like that phrase of time supporting them.
I think one thing which happens to us in the current historical moment if
you're into environmental activism, you feel my gosh, we're running out of time.
Things have really come to a head here, we have to do something.
And if you have the aspect of the universal time of how
long it has taken for human beings to come to the point they are at.
Then it's almost like, you can take a breath of relief and
say, okay, I can continue this journey.
And what I like about the evolutionary story is that to me it's just
an adventure.
It's not that the goal is guaranteed,
that will actually get to any sort of posited better state.
But we're just being invited to participate,
we're being invited to try to achieve something bigger than ourselves.
To draw more on a resources than we've currently had.
And also the universe story by re-framing it in terms of the universe,
I think it really works well in this current historical moment.
Because what they see is that we're more and more becoming a global society.
And young people very often don't think of themselves as being Indians or
Americans first.
Because the challenges
our planet is facing is very much in the forefront of their minds.
So basically there are parts spinning in this universal adventure for
the planet all being linked into this adventure.
>> And that's what's so rich about your own life and the way you're bridging these
various both continents and evolutionary perspectives as you say.
Which is I think very challenging but also exciting is it for you to be a bridge?
>> Each country's culture is so differentiated,
they evolved socially, culturally in different ways.
And this whole trajectory of human history in the different countries is different
from pre-modernity to post-modernity.
Each culture has taken a different route.
So first, when I visit another country or
culture, I'm just amazed by their differentiation.
But what I find increasingly is I believe, Jay Winter,
the Yale Historian, points this out.
And he says out of this economic globalization has come
about an unplanned emergence of a global society.
Of individuals who do not have anything to do with the political
economic concerns of the nation's states.
So what happens at least in my experience is that I
just encounter other individuals like me.
And on the basis of our shaped ideas of values,
that becomes my community or society.
>> I'm so glad you mentioned Jay Winter because he has this wonderful
book where he speaks as you know.
Of the vision, even a vision of a universal declaration of human rights and
the struggle around it.
And he would speak about these various Utopian visions and
the attempt to realize it.
But he is pointing, isn't he,
to a sense of an ecological vision, a planetary civilization.
>> Yeah.
>> Which is quite hopeful really.
>> Exactly, yeah.
And we can use the same information technology to connect and
align with individuals all over the world.
[MUSIC]
