Theory

Abstract

AbstractThe chapter engages Karl Popper’s ‘World Three’ (theory) and explores how the theoretical aspects of natural philosophy enfold both scientific attempts to explain the natural world, and ethical or spiritual aspects of the human behaviour towards nature. This chapter includes an extended discussion of Hans-George Gadamer’s account of theory, which stresses that theory and practice are inseparable. A theoretical account of nature is thus intimately connected with the formulation of an appropriate way of behaving towards and within nature. Theory change (such as that envisaged in Thomas Kuhn’s idea of a ‘paradigm shift’) involves seeing the natural world in a new way, and thus behaving towards it in a new manner. These ideas can also be expressed using the notion of a ‘social imaginary’, as set out in the works of Charles Taylor.