Well over two hundred years ago, unified traditions of Western thought were recreated as philosophy (including science and mathematics), art (including literature, music, theatre and dance), and religion (including spirituality of all kinds,) all as diversions from nature. Accordingly, today the image below is viewed as an artistic intervention into natural space, in a manner in which art has taken over the former realm of religion and spirit and the natural space is defined by science.

Vancouver Island Folk Festival, Woodland Stage, Courtenay

I believe that this system of divisions no longer describes the world. What’s more, it means that the research and educational institution tasked with defining that new world, the university, has before it the chance for a kind of renewal that has not been possible since the 18th century. As I have walked the hills this past 22 months, moving through colonial, post-colonial and indigenous spaces, often all at the same time, I have found much beauty, many previously undescribed patterns, and many questions. Some of these questions are aesthetic, like this:

Is a Smokebush Beautiful to a Human Because it Shows the Mind its Own Neural Net?

Or is it because it shows the human body its arterial web?

Some of them are scientific, like this:

Why Do Smoke Bushes Have So Much Bloom and So Few Seeds?

Is it the way they are or is it our climate here? And why?

Some of them are philosophical, like this:

Is the Beauty of Lavender an Inherent Property of the Universe?

Or is it created by a human eye? Or by the technology of a camera? Do these questions have an ethical dimension?

I believe these are all important questions. In fact, I have thousands of questions like this. Tomorrow, I hope to begin a series of posts proposing areas of research that would benefit the growth and sustainability of the Okanagan Okanogan as a place, in all senses of that word, as a counter to contemporary philosophies grounded in a global sense of place. Both are important.