Poetizing Justice: The Value of Mystery After Its Disdain in Education

• In Event: 26.056 - Challenging the Discourse of Environmental Education: Tropes, Metaphors, Boundaries

Abstract

Increasingly during modern times our educational aims are directed toward elevating knowledge at a cost of marginalizing mystery. The following philosophical paper argues for a doctrine of mystery, by exploring what mystery is, its relationship with knowledge, the history of its marginalization, and the implications this has for education writ large, with a focus on environmental education research and praxis. A comprehensive literature review of mystery from philosophical, scientific, and theological perspectives, and its synthesis and analysis has generated a topology of domains, realms, and senses of mystery underscoring the conclusion that a doctrine of mystery is important for ontological, epistemological, and ecological reasons.

Authors

• Douglas David Karrow, Brock University

• Sharon Harvey, Arizona State University