Our Approach to Education
““If we want to achieve a living understanding of nature, we must become as flexible and mobile as nature herself.” — Goethe”
The poet and scientist Goethe developed a new approach to science that weds exact thinking and observation with qualitative and aesthetic sensibility. The Nature Institute is inspired by this approach, and in education programs it aims to open up this new way of seeing for others.
We often view science as a discipline that deals with the world in cool and distant objectivity, gaining understanding of the world through experiments and instruments that overcome human limitations. Goethe wrote provocatively that the human being is the “best and most exact scientific instrument.” He realized that in order to better fathom the wisdom and depths of the world, we need to transform ourselves and adapt our modes of inquiry to the phenomena we are considering.
Much today stands in the way of this approach. We form abstract concepts about the world that we take often to be more real than the things themselves. Filled with our own predilections, we attend to how the world actually appears and how we are interacting with it. And our life becomes increasingly mediated by instruments and devices, we lose faith in our sense experiences and in our ability to discern.
To counteract these habits of mind, The Nature Institute’s adult education programs emphasize immediate experience and practice. Participants practice observation: observation of natural phenomena, observation of thought processes, and observation of how we form judgments about the world. And this observing always involves doing — getting out into nature and observing and drawing plants; painting elements of a landscape; drawing geometric forms that “track” a progression of thought. By weaving together reflection and observation, taking in and actively creating, science and art, we bring ourselves into inner movement, and transformation begins. Our own process of knowing becomes more transparent and nature shows herself from new sides.
Since 2002, our courses have attracted participants from many professions — including educators (kindergarten through university), farmers, artists, scientists, and environmental activists — as well as college and graduate students.
As a course participant has remarked, “It is such a gentle Aha! experience for me — a peeling away of a veil or film that has covered my eyes for years. It again gives me context and tools for seeing the familiar in a deeper and more penetrating way.”
Read other comments from course participants
You may also be interested in reading about a comprehensive survey that we conducted in 2009 to assess the effects of our courses and publications on the lives of participants over a six-year follow-up period.