Dr. Vandana Shiva, as any holistic thinker and visionary, recognizes the interconnected nature of the reality we are a part of. She doesn’t just recognize it, but as can be understood from her talk, she lives by it. Similar in how Winona LaDuke lives, and aspires her community to do the same. Nabhan, in describing the connection between former diet and land to the transition to fast food also hits home with the analysis of interconnected phenomena. While each one may be said to target different things, they all describe / shed light on important aspects of the connection between science and culture.

Science is usually propagated as the solution for every challenge life has for us, and phrases such as “we just need to be more efficient and the problem will go away” are constantly bombarded in policy discussions, classrooms and the media. The problem with the standard view of science is that it compartmentalizes everything, at least it tries to do so since the scientific revolution while overlooking important connection. And that is the heart of the struggle between science and culture, notably statistics and economics that determine different policy and business outcomes.

In other words, it can be argued that to solve the problems of climate change and the food system we need to (among other things) reevaluate not necessarily the conventional tools we use (statistics and economics) but the assumptions (world views) we hold while using them. As a simple illustration from the world of economics is the assumption that “X would happen if all else remains constant and only Y changes”. The underlying assumption is that it is possible for anything, everything almost, to remain constant. That couldn’t be farther from actuality, as all things are impermanent, and constantly change though in varying speeds, some noticeable immediately or over time, and some not noticeable at all in a given life time. Yet we still think that assumption to be true. In turn, that leads to a misunderstanding of cause and effect, which in turn leads to unfortunate and unpredicted, at least undesired, circumstances.

What some aspects of the week’s material express is the need to reevaluate our assumptions of connections and cause and effect. Hopefully, if achieved holistically, we could more away from lobbyists of any kind, and focus on finding the culturally appropriate scientific designs that will aid regions and communities in their regrowth.