Well we are clearly in agreement and i am extremely familiar with all the characters you have quoted.
David abram has challenged our scholarly interpretation of animism. I just wonder if at some point that topic becomes a bit jane goodalled so to speak. Where suddenly the collective perceptions shift.
Animism isnt so much a belief but expression is how pre literate cultures experience. Thats an extremely difficult thing to convey clearly into modern culture.
I did find it Interesting recently in a ken ham ark debate that extremely harsh atheists here on rf revolted when i said noahs ark story is a pre literate story probably dating back 12 20kYears ago. They panicked like church folks!!! Since if that is true then it is impossible to understand from a modern literate perspective. These things progress along lime music from expressed to eventually being recorded starting in the early 20th century.
Notice i start to roll back into art. That to me is a very very important topic not subject to philosophy itself. Bit a few philosophers were artists! Most are dull.
My education was in the mathematical dominant study in science but I believe the study of the natural world can be described in multiple languages including the mathematical, the descriptive languages and the artistic in both word and art. Each has its unique view yet can be integrated when open to that view. It is no surprise That the origins of the study of Ecology were viewed this way because of its complexity.
Between the late 18th to the early 19th centuries the development of romanticism in science as an alternative view from the purely imperialistic and reductionist science which became the predominant approach. This was a reaction to the Enlightenment view with its reductionist mathematical approach as the only way to define nature and control nature. The romantic movement felt this limits our understanding nature and countered that man needed to coexist with nature rather than control it.
Our current scientific community focuses on the mathematical explanations which leads to designing experiments reducing the variables to get better mathematical predictions. But we also know the more we manipulate the conditions the less it reflects what we are studying.
Enlightenment, required the information of knowledge to dissect the world into its smaller and smaller categories known as reductionism in order to understand every aspect of nature. Romanticism had an alternative view that the unity of man and nature and that science should not cause the division of nature and man. Their approach was still based observation of facts and careful experimentation but without being too controlling.
Johann Goethe’s talked about flashes of insight as essential to gaining knowledge. Although careful measurement and mathematical approaches are certainly important to our scientific knowledge there is also other nonmathematical approaches of understanding that are also important and not as emphasized in the scientific academic world. This reminds me of what I read on Dalton who spent years measuring weather readings with no direction yet came up with the insight of the concept of the atom. This idea was not from careful measurement even though careful measurement proved his ideas was basically correct readjusted as new measurements refined and changed the idea. Alexander Humboldt enthusiastically took careful measurements but it was his feeling of connection with the land and general observations which developed his important understanding of the unity of the land and its interaction with the different physical elements. Darwin and Wallace both detailed observations yet the concept of evolution for both of them was not through reductionism but through recognizing larger patterns.
It is interesting that Humboldt despite his fame in the past has been almost forgotten except for those who remind us that he predicted so accurately that what we were doing to our environment would ultimately prove to be so true today.
Animism whether symbolic or in actual belief is one that reminds us that we live in a world of equally important life and physical aspects that deserve the same respect we have for other humans. I found a nice recent book describing this “Braiding Sweetgrass” by Robin Wall Kimmerer who describes blending animistic beliefs with her career as a botanist.
I found this quote from Donald Crosby who is a proponent of religious naturalism interesting - “Natural scientists can no longer lay claim to objectivity but rather that the objectivity of their findings can no longer be regarded as absolute and must be reinterpreted in a manner consistent with recent awakenings to fallibilistic character of science ant to the sometimes startlingly abrupt, unpredictable changes in its basic theories. It is no longer plausible to view science as the sole guardian of objectivity or as the exclusive source of reliable knowledge. The objectivity of particle physics is different from taxonomic biology. Poets and painters can tell us things about the complexity, diversity, and fullness of our experiences of nature that physicists cannot and these can be essential things to take into account in our thinking of nature.”
