June 7, 2023 Winter 2023
In 4LoveandScience, we unpack what science is all about, from a space of critical inquiry and possibility. How can we navigate the world with scientific methods that have been used by our ancestors? What can we learn from the patterns around us and how can we develop our own methods of discernment and inquiry so we’ll have the ability and power to navigate whatever situation emerges for us? We’ve been following these questions around throughout the spring.
As a learning community, we thought about different ways of patterning, repeating phenomena that are present at all scales of the universe, and started to tune into these patterns. As a class, we fell in love with spirals that truly are everywhere, and found out what we can learn from them if we follow them around for a bit.
Through this class, we explored different stories of science and doing science otherwise. We went back in time to the origin of it all – only to complicate the idea of origins and found different universe stories.
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We sifted through ways of creating identity by learning how the periodic table works, how systems of labeling and not-labeling are attempts to capture and name matter and identity. We learned about this way of sorting matter, and about how elements change in terms of pressure and time, how elements can go through profound processes of transformation and come back to a later form of themselves through radioactive decay. Sometimes, this change can be a very violent process. Other times, that can be gentle, too. We are looking out for the ways in which gentle change and generative change is possible and how we can repeat, deepen, and amplify this process of change by creating larger waves and echoes.
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We thought about motion between polarities, about waves, and waviness, fluctuations, and contrasts. We reflected on different ways of bringing about change that are not rooted in exerting pressure and force but work with oscillation, motions of flow that are not binary, and how to amplify waves to ritualize these cycles. How can we move together in a swarm, a flock, a pack, and connect to the species and life forms around us? What can we learn if we bring the right kind of noise into our well-structured daily lives, learn how to sense different things when the water is muddy, and practice tuning into different frequencies? How can we build a practice where we learn how to work with what’s already there, build low-energy technologies and tune into the environment around us?
We thought about scale, how to tune into the scale to the lives around us and what kind of non-human forces come into the picture when we do. We worked with place-based practices and grounded our ways of doing science otherwise in the places we intimately know. We started with ways of thinking and ended with ways of teaching. In the end, our participants came up with their own methods and projects to teach their learnings to others.
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