The ecology of science and its consequences for the ecology of language

Beginning with three preliminary considerations – on the factual role of prejudices (Section 1), on the relation of nature and culture (Section 2) and on the importance of logic (Section 3) – I compare the logical point of view with the ecological point of view for a new understanding of the philosophy of science (Section 4), the core of which is a theory of knowledge. In this view science is an evolutionarily late type of the Batesonian ecosystems of the mind that nevertheless follow many of the old systemic structures developed in the earlier ecosystems of matter. A problem is that in the past decades we have become used to the Kuhnian description of sciences as paradigmatic or longing for a paradigm-change. This entails the mistake of replacing the overall important value of truth by the concept of power (Section 5) which is unacceptable for an ecological point of view. In the ecological view we gain a new criterion for the dependency of science from the surrounding systems (as politics or economics) by judging its relative intactness in pursuing its scientific goals (Section 6). Language is a most important means for structuring human knowledge and science, but linguistics has not yet contributed much to its theory because of the deficits of the language sciences (Section 7). The ecology of language could repair that by resuming and developing ideas of the Humboldtian tradition (Section 8) which have been lost by the Saussurian and Chomskyan schools, especially that of restoring the environments of the language-systems to its important rights. Unfortunately, many ecolinguists do not recognize the importance of the ecological ideas for a progress in the theory of language and even grammar (Section 9). Therefore the power of change that is included in the ecolinguistic perspective – not only to supply a growing core of linguistic knowledge by some ecological additions but to replace it by a better linguistics (Section 10) – is often underrated.