Abstract scientific language cannot replace the particularizing language of love and reverence

Evidence

People exploit what they have merely concluded to be of value, but they defend what they love. To defend what we love we need a particularizing language, for we love what we particularly know. The abstract, “objective,” impersonal, dispassionate language of science can, in fact, help us to know certain things, and to know some things with certainty … But it cannot replace, and it cannot become, the language of familiarity, reverence, and affection by which things of value ultimately are protected. — Rebecca A. Martusewicz, Jeff Edmundson, and John Lupinacci, EcoJustice Education, 547

Categorization

• XREF: Central to the polyad’s listening/observation-as-method thread — protection follows from particular knowledge, which follows from attentive observation. — connects to: Negative dialectics preserves undefined experience as a counterweight to philosophies of science — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 2578; Abstract systems do not colonise the life-world but interact dialectically with it — Anthony Giddens, The Consequences of Modernity, 347
• APHORISMS: Berry’s line reads as durable life-advice about why particular knowledge, not abstraction, anchors care for what we value.
• ADDENDUM: Supports the Grafting & Growth essay’s premise that trees and places must be known concretely to be defended — particularizing over abstract ‘infrastructure.‘

Broader Connections

• Negative dialectics preserves undefined experience as a counterweight to philosophies of science #corroborates (0.78) — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 2578
• Abstract systems do not colonise the life-world but interact dialectically with it #contradicts (0.78) — Anthony Giddens, The Consequences of Modernity, 347