The Interdisciplinary Constraint on Ecological Reason

Ecological reason consists of the forms and functions of rationality necessary for adequate ecologies of nature and society. In the larger project from which these remarks are abstracted, I attempt to articulate the normative and cognitive moments of ecological reason. Part of that account shows that the epistemological and practical aspects of the cognitive moment have interdisciplinarity as a necessary component. In what follows, I present some of these interdisciplinary considerations. But I must leave out two major elements. First, I will not be able to show a dual linkage between the substantive and functional moments of reason and regressive and anthropocentric tendencies in the use of ecological reason. Second, I do not have the space to provide support for the claim that genuine interdisciplinarity is necessary to move ecological reason beyond modernity s destructive anthropocentrism and beyond recent revivals of premodern, regressive holisms. Here, I first give a brief account of interdisciplinarity; second, I critique one of the strongest accounts of ecological reason to date by showing its specific interdisciplinary deficiencies; and third, I conclude with a suggestion about the practical implications of my mostly epistemological remarks.