Sixteen Years Since "the Symposium about the Environmental Problem (1992)" : Toward the Epistemology of Science for the Environmental Science

Abstract

Based on the considerations of two kinds of documents, those from the "Symposium about the environmental problem (1992)" and current several leading textbooks of environmental science, I picked up three kinds of antagonism in the epistemology of science: objectivity vs. subjectivity, analysis vs. synthesis, and value-neutral vs. value-oriented. "Modern science" has emphasized the left-side of these binary oppositions, rejecting the right-sides. However, our considerations suggested that the underlying epistemology of the environmental science stands on the right side: subjectivity, synthesis, and value-oriented. I ended this paper by emphasizing that more detailed considerations of the problem of subjectivity are necessary for the development of environmental science.