Given that the modern science of ecology came into being as part of an effort among biologists and other scientists to describe and interpret and theorize the complex interplay between living organisms and their environment. This, like many other scientific explorations seems to fragment matters into many distinct component parts without taking and intertwining the wholeness of the inquiry.
To argue for a broader ecology means, rather acknowledging that the ecological understanding ought to be set within the widest possible framework and include not only the effort to understand how organisms interact with their environment, but also how these ecological networks shape and are shaped by human culture and thought, including human emotion, reason, imagination, and yes soul. To speak of ecology in this way is to acknowledge that the term itself is being extended beyond its original strictly scientific meaning to encompass a much more extensive area of thought and experience, as Gregory Bateson did many years ago in his influential book ‘steps to an ecology of mind’.
In our present World and in particular our thought process and language, be it descriptive or generative, we need to question much more beyond the narrowness of the nominated frameworks. The invitation here is to stretch beyond the given narrative so that we can see for ourselves and qualify the core of what is being stated or omitted. We need to stretch ourselves beyond this scientific and mechanistic narration to include the ‘Imaginal World’. Our ancestors, before the industrial and scientific revolutions were in touch with this ‘Oneness’, the inclusion of all people and that of the natural World. Thinking, decisions, and actions that are inclusive of the mechanistic and imaginal, sitting equally, are sensitized and restorative of all that is.