Pedagogical Ecology for an Alternative Sustainability: With Insights from Francis of Assisi and Contemporary Life Sciences

Giuseppe Buffon and Ivan Colagè
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Giuseppe Buffon: Faculty of Theology, Pontifical University Antonianum, 00185 Rome, Italy
Ivan Colagè: Faculty of Philosophy, Pontifical University Antonianum, 00185 Rome, Italy

Sustainability, 2022, vol. 14, issue 3, 1-19

Abstract: Sustainability is a widely discussed issue nowadays. The “human factor” appears to be the key to a suitable theory of sustainable development and, even more, to understanding the real scope of the issue at stake. We begin by highlighting that the issue of sustainability and the related ecological crisis ultimately stem from the fundamental view of the human–environment relationships. We tackle such a fundamental view from two apparently distant but converging perspectives: the one of Francis of Assisi (the patron saint of ecologists) and the one of contemporary advancements in evolutionary biology known as the “extended evolutionary theory” (EES). This will allow us to highlight how current life sciences ground a strong form of organism–environment complementarity—a core point for any allegedly comprehensive approach to sustainability and ecology. After that, we focus on recent developments in cultural evolution studies that see culture both as the driving force of (recent) human evolution and as the general context where the human–environment relationships take place and develop. Therefore, we argue that the environment exerts a powerful pedagogical influence on the human being and on humanity as a whole. We conclude by proposing a pedagogical criterion for ecology and sustainable development, according to which the modifications caused by the human being to the environment must be assessed (also) for their pedagogical import.

Keywords: cultural evolution studies; ecological inheritance; environment; extended evolutionary synthesis; Francis of Assisi; niche construction; pedagogy; phenotypic plasticity (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
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