Fourteenth International Conference on Interdisciplinary Social Sciences

Abstract

The consensus within the scientific community is that human economic and industrial activity has caused disastrous changes to the biosphere. With the urgency of the approaching environmental catastrophe, there is a need to transform old practices and find new and innovative approaches in both the public and academic spheres. Until now, the social and natural sciences have tended to concentrate in separate silos, with limited knowledge transfer between the two. However, in order to address the broad social problems at the heart of the environmental crisis, all disciplines must unite. Ecological philosophy, the philosophy of building an environmentally sustainable society, draws upon both scientific disciplines, such as thermodynamics, systems ecology and non-linear dynamics, as well the social sciences, such as cultural studies, narrative, and history. Because this philosophy already connects these normally disparate fields, it has the potential to act as a framework for uniting other disciplines. This paper discusses the methodology of my PhD thesis, which utilises the ecological philosophical program to construct a broad approach to sustainable practices on multiple scales. Specifically, the paper explores the role of philosophy in connecting and contextualising sustainability across disciplines. Some examples from the thesis that will be explored are history, economics, and biology. It is hoped that by providing the framework to bridge disparate disciplines, future work will provide superior outcomes, as it is empowered to draw upon a greater body of research, construct more connections between social and historical contexts, and make a larger contribution to knowledge.